Steevie's Notes

Dear Parents and Guardians,

We have been having a full and most cheering time these past four weeks, meeting with many candidates for faculty positions at our School and making the hard decisions as to whom we think best for our students/your children. Everyone we met, however, was a good and talented person.

Jason Milliren, Scott Hunt, David Flynn, Al Lewis, Joanna Evans, Andre Green and I have initially been doing the interviewing, and when one or two have been absent we have invited strong candidates a second time. As of mid-July, Jonathan Lamb (Jon), our new Dean of Academics, became an integral part of the process.  Jason will remain a valuable member of our community.   

Ideas, programs, and daily designs have greatly benefited from our candid and genial deliberations. Jon Lamb is a person who refreshes us as he brings his 30 years’ experience at Perkiomen School and Rumsey Hall to bear on our good School.

All of us up here on the mountain at The Storm King School will be proud to introduce to you the new faculty and administrative members for the 2010-2011 academic school year.  These delightful and energetic individuals bring more than 60 years of combined independent school experience teaching and coaching, have served as dorm parents, and have worked as members of their communities. They are ready to help our young people prepare for success in college or university by helping them take intelligent and energetic steps toward that goal.

Our enrollment is looking sturdy with David Flynn’s and Joanna Evans’ ministrations, and we believe our numbers will be where we need them as we open.

Our residential program, with several new people joining us, has a lovely additional structure of ‘family’ groups, working and eating together each week, mixed as to ages and backgrounds for just that ‘family’ appellation. Al Lewis has been working with the new and returning dorm people over the summer to work out all the details.

I am, and the Board of Trustees joins me in this, looking forward to the excitement of returning students and our refreshed as well as new courses (four more AP’s: History of Art, Economics, Statistics and Computer Science) being designed right now by the faculty. I am reading some of their texts but also catching up on poetry and prose I have to put aside too often during the year. New plays, off Broadway in the main, and new art shows in the city, and music everywhere are also on my ticket.

We do miss the noise and bustle of a filled campus; equally, we need to catch up on good ideas, take pertinent courses (almost half the faculty seems to be doing this over summer), and fortify ourselves for the opening days. Exuberance is in the air.

Yours for the summer days ahead –

Helen Stevens Chinitz

With spring truly here and delight in sun, warmth, outdoor sports and events permeating all we do, we are able to put the great February snow behind us, step over puddles from exceptional rains, and throw open windows for the sounds of birds under a higher pitched voice from that of Lacrosse and Ultimate Frisbee.
 
Black Rock Forest is open to us now and the winds have pruned most of the trees. Much poetry is being written here at the School. A literary adventure with Harold Heno to Ireland, Wales, and Scotland (we upped the sales of Ulysses, I believe) was a great success. SKS students re-discovered the great authors known only to them cursorily.
 
I had a delightful turn-around trip of a few days in Bangkok with a group of alumni that wish to help the School—a most charming group of gentlemen, people the School can be proud of in so many ways.
 
Ahead of us, just this side of a dance program, play and graduation will be Viva Las Vegas Casino Night on April 23rd. Please join us for one FABULOUS evening! All of the proceeds will benefit The Storm King School's Scholarship Fund.

As most colleges and universities' fiscal year end earlier than us, we hope our dedicated alums will take some time to visit for the Graduation ceremonies on June 5th.  We ask them to come and speak with seniors about their time away from Storm King. With warning, I am usually able to put up five or six of you in Spy Rock.
 
Here, up on the mountain, the return of spring permits a whole new outlook. As winter disciplines us––spring helps us transcend worry. It pushes us out of ourselves into an arena of possibility.

We have weathered the weather and the good faculty and grounds staff who were on campus through it all are a bit weary but triumphant.  The students, both the international students and the U.S. students, were good sports, helped each other; and as the snow never let up, they dug us out all six days to help the campus. James Smith with his crew heroically returned the campus fully to us this Tuesday, when again it snowed a bit.

Many lessons were learned: character emerges clearly in such times. Although many international students left and went home early if their grades were strong (their families so very far away wanted them to), those who stayed were strong workers and cheerful ones for the rest of us.

Technology enables all our students to go online for class work and homework assignments. We need not drop a stitch, as they say. While we on campus had no electricity, those at home had no excuse for not having all work done and done well over that period.

Spring vacation starts this Saturday after a Friday concert, one with alumni returning to join the students.  A parent party at Spy Rock will precede this and should be great fun as we prepare together for Viva Las Vegas night in April.