Throughout the year, at Chicago Friends School, we reflect on and discuss Quaker Values in community meeting. We recently finished talking about simplicity, and I was forced to pause and think about how hard this is for young kids who are growing up in today’s America. The Quaker value of simplicity might be best recognized…
Every month, a contingent of our students heads to The Admiral at the Lake for an ongoing service project with the residents of the assisted living community there. However, the Admiral was hit hard by the polar vortex this winter, with frozen and burst pipes; unfortunately, they are still recovering as they continue working through…
Our second Day of Service for this school year was centered on trees and we observed it on Arbor Day, of course! We began the day with Meeting for Community. Afterwards, students in grades K-3 walked over to Senn High School, where some of our students presented poems about trees and the high school students…
I went to recess today for the first time in several weeks, and found myself reflecting on actions of some of our boys with pride. This recess, a group of our boys were playing a long game of touch football in the snow. They called fouls, passed, ran, and chased for almost the entire recess…
Every week, our school community gathers for Community Meeting, where we reflect on our Quaker values and share time together in the manner of a Quaker meeting. Recently, when we started reflecting on Peace, I changed the format of Community Meeting. Our habit in Community Meeting was to have a discussion and then a query,…
Most of the Field Museum’s collection is in the basement. There are almost 20 million taxidermied animal specimens in their collection. A few thousand are on display. Every artifact that reaches the floor represents a choice. It was chosen as an important piece of our natural history that deserves to be seen and studied. The…