November 2020 Newsletter

Dear Bancroft Friends,

 

The spirit of thankfulness, grace, and compassion was on full display this November all across our campus. 

 

This includes an immense amount of gratitude as a school towards those of you that generously made donations to Bancroft this week as a part of our annual Giving Day. We raised over $55,000 from 214 donors to surpass our Giving Day goal and lend support to our school's annual budget needs. This money goes directly into the Bancroft Fund, which supports every aspect of what makes our school special including helping to attract and retain our talented faculty, equipping our scholars, athletes, and artists with the tools they need for success, and offering financial assistance to deserving students. Thank you for your continued support and loyalty. If you would like to contribute to this effort, please visit our website and make a gift today.  

 

In the Lower School, gratitude was on the menu — quite literally. For the fourth year in a row, kindergarteners hosted a gratitude breakfast for friends and families. This being 2020, of course, the event was held via Zoom. Yet there was an unexpected benefit to sharing thanks remotely: Family members from around the country and around the world could join the call. Finding those moments to bridge holidays and generations is just one way Bancroft educators go above and beyond.

 

Meanwhile, sixth grade students took a community-minded approach to literature. Sixth grade advisories hosted a Zoom book club with their families to explore themes in the novella Seedfolks. And while the discussion was deep and fruitful, so was the advocacy students displayed in conjunction with the reading. After learning about the work of Worcester's Regional Environmental Council, the students raised more than $700 to help with the organization's work with urban gardens.

 

The Upper School has its own way to bring a warm holiday spirit to campus: With yarn. Students have been busy knitting-and-purling their way through November with the goal of making hats for some of our Worcester neighbors. That's one way to build a close-knit community.

 

The Bancroft commitment to warmth — literal, emotional, intellectual — is something we value across the grades and across the seasons. We hope the spirit of inclusion and community continues to grace our classrooms (and your homes) as we collectively and individually celebrate the traditions and holidays that bring us joy.

 

Best,

Trey

Trey Cassidy
Head of School

A CLOSE-KNIT COMMUNITY

Walk through the quad on a sunny November day and you might hear something a bit out of the ordinary — the click-click of knitting needles. A group of students across all four Upper School grades have joined Knitting For Good as part of the 'miniterm' program. 

 

'Miniterms' are designed as a way for students to come together around shared interests, Robin Silverman, Upper School Latin teacher and Dean of Students, explains. The other November 'miniterm' classes were Sports Analytics, Historical Musicals, and Bulldog Strong (a fitness class).   

 

"We decided to make hats because it was an easy project and one that beginners could easily learn," says Silverman. "No previous knitting experience was required to join and we had a wide range of experience — from experts to complete novices. The more advanced members of the group quickly took on the role of mentor and helped their less-experienced peers with every aspect of the project."

 

By coming together at the end of each day, students formed new or stronger connections with one another. And by the end of the month, every student had made at least one hat completely on their own, and a few eager knitters made between 15-20 hats. Students decided they had created enough (more than 60 hats in total) to donate them to two different organizations: The smaller hats to children supported by WRAP, the Worcester Refugee Assistance Project, and the larger hats to Abby's House, which provides shelter and support for homeless, battered, or low-income women in Worcester.

 

"Almost all of the knitters in the first session will be participating in a second Knitting for Good class and we have added a few more to the group," Silverman says. This time, the plan is to make fingerless gloves, and again, students will decide where to send the finished projects.

SEEDS OF KINDNESS

Community gardens were on the minds of sixth graders — in literature and in Worcester. As a group read-aloud, sixth grade students excavated meaning from Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman, a novella about people coming together to tend a garden, told from diverse perspectives (13 in all). 

 

"Students were expecting a traditional linear narrative, but the structure of the novella offers different points of view, from people living in Cleveland to those who are not necessarily from the United States," says Abby Church, one of the sixth-grade advisors. "Students all had favorites, and when they dug deep for memorable moments to share in their presentations, their think-alouds showed how much they appreciated the richness and depth of the characters."

 

Students shared their new insights with their parents in an evening Zoom event. "One family in my advisory, new to the school, reached out and said how helpful it was to gather and put faces and names together," Church says. "This event provided an opportunity to be social and meet other families."

 

The idea of cultivating a community garden extended beyond the literary to the literal. The Middle School community service program had already worked with Worcester's Regional Environmental Council (REC) the last few years, clearing the garden and helping with maintenance. Partnering with the organization was a natural connection. Students fundraised more than $700, an amount that was matched by a generous donation from the Salmon family. 

 

"It is my understanding that REC has a very specific use for the funds," says Church. "They will be using the money to pay for perennial plants such as fruit trees, part of their permaculture philosophy."

THANKS FOR SHARING

There is perhaps no better way to kick off a weekday morning than with a group of grateful Kindergarteners. For the fourth year running, students hosted a gratitude breakfast the week before Thanksgiving. 

 

"We spend November thinking about the spirit of Thanksgiving and ways we can show our appreciation for people, places and things we have in our life," explains Kindergarten teacher Maureen Cabral. On the menu: Student writing — and the first chance kindergarteners have to share their writing with a live audience. 

 

This year's guest list was a little different, though, given the realities of social distancing. Parents, siblings, and even grandparents were invited to join a Zoom call — and the technology was an unexpected bit of joy for relatives who tuned in from around the country and even a few from abroad. "One of our parents, [Upper School Science Teacher] Taryn Surabian, wrote to me the next day how it was so special for the grandparents to be on the Zoom presentation," says Cabral. "We can feel so disconnected in the pandemic, this was a wonderful way for grandparents to share an important experience with their grandchildren." 

 

The breakfast was so successful Cabral is thinking about running a similar event in January. Who doesn't have a New Years' wish or two to share this year?

GIVING DAY 2020

You did it! Over 200 members of our community generously made gifts to help us SURPASS our Giving Day goal on Giving Tuesday to raise $55,000 total.

ART CORNER

We're adding the Art Corner to Shorelines to highlight some of the amazing student work coming out of Bancroft art classes. Enjoy!

Intro to Visual Art 

"Students take Introduction to Visual Art at any point in their high school career," says William Chambers, Upper School art teacher and chair of the art department. "Ten classes in the course are on ceramic sculpture. They work with pinch, slab, and coil techniques to create a variety of functional and decorative pieces using air dry clay. The limitations of our new environment meant that students needed to work in miniature. The final project is a recreation of a real object commonly found at home and an abstract version of that." 

Enjoy these pieces from Gus V. '23, Effie E. '23, and Maddie W. '23.

Lucy B. '21 (Advanced Visual Portfolio)

"Lucy created a socially engaged art piece as part of her summer AVP homework," says Chambers. "This came out of a discussion in our Spring 2020 class around artists using their work to serve causes they care about. I think her project speaks for itself. She documented this work in the fall and used it as part of her college application portfolio."

Shorelines is produced by the Marketing and Communications Office at Bancroft. If you have questions or story ideas please contact jcarlton@bancroftschool.org.

Bancroft School

110 Shore Drive • Worcester, MA 01605 • (508) 853-2640