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OUTSTANDING PRIVATE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

They’re Out to Change the World
The three S’s of New York’s oldest K-12 coed school

When he was a New Jersey Senator, Jon Corzine got asked some pretty tough questions, particularly from some fourth graders at Friends Seminary Lower School.

Days before the 2004 presidential election, then-Sen. Corzine visited a classroom at the East 16th Street school to talk about the voting process, recalls Teri Hassid, head of the Lower School. When Corzine opened up the floor for questions, he surely was not expecting one boy’s query about weapons of mass destruction. The governor answered, wiped his brow and called on a little girl who asked, “How do you expect the private sector to pay for social security?”

At Friends Seminary, the only kindergarten through 12th grade Quaker school in Manhattan, educators and administrators alike strive to nurture the whole child. Hassid explains that this is achieved through the fostering of the “three S’s”—silence, study and service.

“Balanced experience creates balanced human beings,” says Principal Robert “Bo” Lauder, asserting that while Friends exhibits the academic rigor of any other school, its dedication to service and silence sets it apart. This commitment has stood the test of time; founded in 1786 as Friends Institute, the school is New York’s oldest K to 12 co-educational learning institution.

“Students are involved in the real world,” says Hassid, echoing the school’s mission statement, part of which states: “We do more than prepare students for the world that is: we help them bring about the world that ought to be.”

Courtney Retzler has taught at the Friends Lower School for 23 years. She, too, points to the holistic curriculum as the school’s greatest source of pride.

“The learning is experiential and integrated,” says Retzler. Noting that these buzz words sometimes lose meaning from overuse, she highlights the collaboration between teachers of all subjects around a core theme.

For example, for more than a decade, the first grade has run a working post office as part of its unit on city life. After observing mail within the school, tracing its path from delivery to destination, the class travels to a local post office where they meet the mail carriers. The students then orchestrate their very own post office that serves the entire Lower School, complete with handmade stamps and envelopes. Upon completing the unit, the students donate their proceeds— collected from the penny charge on each letter delivered—to the homeless shelter that runs out of one of the school’s classrooms every night.

More than an extra-curricular activity, community service is a cornerstone for the rest of the Friends curriculum. Beginning with the school community, students expand the focus of their service as they go on in years.

“In kindergarten,” explains Melissa Soto, who is entering her second year as a teacher at Friends, “they are still very much in the ‘me’ realm, and so we focus on taking care of our own classroom environment, feeding the class pet and composting our trash.”

But in Retzler’s third grade class, students organized a food drive for City Harvest, a non-profit organization in New York City dedicated to the eradication of hunger through food rescue and distribution. The students advertised the drive with posters and visited every classroom in the Lower School to ask for canned good donations. Every week, the class collected and sorted the food, learning not only about hunger in their own city, but also exercising their skills in math, science and public speaking.

“You immediately see the education of broader community-mindedness,” says Erana Kratounis, one of three Lower School PTA vice presidents and mother of a third and fourth grader. She recalls that when her daughter came home from the first week of kindergarten, she told her mom that she loved her new school because the class just made muffins for the homeless shelter.

“We provide them with the opportunity to make connections themselves, to see the interconnectedness of the world,” says Matt Schlee, a first grade teacher at Friends for nine years. In all grade levels, teachers will not simply answer questions but rather work with students to find an answer by visiting the library or conducting a science experiment.

Friends further promotes independent learning through its commitment to the practice of silence. Classroom teachers begin each morning with a short silence, and once a week, the entire Lower School convenes in the school’s historic meetinghouse. Teachers themselves are stunned when, in June, even the kindergarteners can remain silent for as many as 15 minutes.

“Silence teaches the children they can turn inward,” says Schlee. He recalls last year’s annual Peace Week, when the entire Lower School held a meeting at the Mahatma Gandhi statue in Union Square with the great pacifist’s grandson, Arun Gandhi.

“I was amazed at how quiet and peaceful Union Square seemed at 9:15 a.m., with all these people running around,” he says, adding that silence affects the school on all fronts, including the academic. “Silence is something you can take with you.”

- Lee Norsworthy