Campaign for St. Patrick’s at Sixty Enhances Whitehaven Campus

St. Patrick’s is indeed full of activity, as students who have attentively watched all of the construction on the Whitehaven Campus this fall can attest.  In honor of our 60th Anniversary, the Campaign has supported  the current Strategic Plan through four key projects. The new MacArthur Campus, designed for a full-sized, innovative middle school program, opened in September 2017. Adjacent Design & Collaboration Labs for students and faculty on the Whitehaven Campus became available this fall, and the redeveloped Nursery School and Kindergarten playgrounds, hampered by permitting delays and an incredibly wet late summer and early fall, will be opening soon. Work begins on the new Sports Deck, adjacent to the Gymnasium & Performance Center, during spring break, with projected completion in advance of the 2019-2020 school year. Having raised 90% of the $4-million goal, the Campaign seeks to push past that goal set three years ago, given the reality of rising construction costs.  We are incredibly grateful to the more than 100 members of the St. Patrick’s community who have generously supported the important capital facilities improvement goals of the Campaign thus far and invite those who have not yet participated to invest in St. Patrick’s.

These upgraded facilities will enhance the educational experience for all of our students and strengthen the position of the Day School well into the future. We are deeply gratified to see the results in action at the MacArthur Campus. It is a bright, contemporary space designed specifically for young adolescent learners that can fully accommodate the current student body in Grades 6, 7, and 8 and support modest growth over time.  Students appreciate the open floor plan and modern furnishings as they mature academically and socially. Teachers are similarly enjoying the instructional opportunities provided by the new building to enrich an already innovative program with integrated studies and collaborative, project-based learning. After successfully delivering on the first project of the Campaign for St. Patrick’s at Sixty, we are thrilled to reignite the community’s excitement as students and teachers are now putting the Whitehaven Campus projects to good use for highly engaged teaching and learning. Let’s explore in greater detail how the facilities improvements substantively enhance the program from the viewpoint of our faculty.

Design & Collaboration Labs 

Design thinking and creative problem-solving are evident in abundance across the St. Patrick’s educational program. You may be familiar with the Leprechaun and Gingerbread Baby traps designed collaboratively by Lower School students in homeroom units to solve storybook problems. Day School families built marble runs and designed Jamestown monuments in our temporary design lab on Parents Visiting Day last year. The Tinker Space, available both before and after school in Grades 3 to 5, has offered students an opportunity to expand and share their construction, engineering, and design skills for a number of years. 

With the opening of the MacArthur Campus last year, Grade 6 joined Grades 7 and 8 at 4590 MacArthur Boulevard, NW, to form our middle school program. As Grade 4 homerooms moved upstairs to the vacated Grade 6 classrooms on the Whitehaven Campus, we opened up precious physical space. The former Grade 4 classrooms were thus  reconfigured this summer as inspiring Design & Collaboration Labs. 

The new Design & Collaboration Labs, one for students and one for teachers, support the development of a culture of creativity, collaboration, and innovation. Art teacher Elizabeth Markowitz, the Design Thinking Specialist & Design Lab Coordinator, is taking the lead in this work. The labs expand valuable learning opportunities for students and teachers and remove hurdles to engaging in even more such projects.  A wide-open, intentional space for design challenges fits the way elementary-age children typically address these types of projects.  To create, they spread out their materials and array themselves across a table or on the floor. Additional storage space allows for a broad range of materials to be at the ready, giving all students easy access to the appropriate materials to manipulate, build, and create. Teachers more fluidly follow student interests and build upon their understanding to move to the next concept or related theme. 

The designated spaces refocus community energy and shift students to a frame of mind conducive to creative work.  Crossing the threshold of the Design & Collaboration Lab allows the student to focus on appropriate risk-taking and testing and iterating approaches that result in successful problem-solving.  Students collaborate according to skill sets or preferences towards a common goal. As a team, one student may design the component circuit board while another constructs the overall assembly to complete a project or solve a problem. Elizabeth observes, “Teachers are excited to see students shine in different ways as they work thoughtfully with partners and grow ideas together, turning them into physical designs. Students build skills in planning, labeling, and constructing.” Students are empowered to innovate and gain confidence in their abilities and are given the opportunity to appreciate the gifts and talents others bring to the table.

The Design & Collaboration Labs are configured to grow with the program and expand to embrace robotics, circuitry, and programming. A nearby space, the Design Shop, accommodates woodworking, power tools, sewing machines, and other resources for student innovation. Science teacher Will Cook, who has partnered with Elizabeth in the past in the Tinker Space, is excited by the possibilities for students to engage in “mixed-age, unconventional, combinatory thinking.” Students learn empathy as they recognize that their peers have strengths that they may or may not share. Understanding and valuing what each student brings to the group strengthens the bond between and among students. 

Will sees terrific potential for the Faculty Design & Collaboration Lab to facilitate professional sharing between faculty meetings, which may include demonstrations showcasing the potential of design curriculum work in the new space. Elizabeth describes the lab as “a hub for sharing of best practices, joy in our common mission, and modeling of lifelong learning. With consistent touchpoints and opportunities for connection, collaboration around curriculum design creates positive outcomes for faculty and student engagement.” This imaginative work will improve the teaching and learning in  classrooms as well as the collegial esprit de corps among the faculty. 

Pull out Quote: “The end game is to emphasize the collaborative nature of learning to our students and build their capacity for flexible thinking and the ability to experiment and revise approaches to solve problems.” Elizabeth Markowitz, Art Teacher and Design Thinking Specialist & Design Lab Coordinator

Outdoor Spaces at Whitehaven

Outdoor play and recreation are important to childhood development, physically, cognitively, and socially and emotionally. St. Patrick’s students spend a significant portion of their program day outdoors. Every day, Nursery School and Kindergarten students have recess at three different times, and Grades 1 to 5 classes have two opportunities for outdoor play.  The gross-motor skills developed in active play are closely knit to the development of fine-motor skills in our youngest students. They learn to enjoy time with their peers, build relationships, and negotiate tricky social situations on the playground, in addition to enjoying the physical benefits of fresh air, exercise, and a break from classroom activities. They return from recess refreshed and ready to take on the next academic challenge.

“The new design maximizes the use of space on the Nursery School and Kindergarten playgrounds and connects the two areas through the big-block play zone,  allowing students to use both recreation areas more naturally,” said Head of Lower School Jenifer Congdon. Jen mentioned that beloved equipment features are maintained in the new design, such as the monkey bars, which serve as a rite of passage for Kindergartners. Places that invite imagination through a connection to the natural world and offer students quiet play possibilities are featured in the maze and treehouse structures on the Nursery School Playground and the log meeting area on the Kindergarten Playground. Active areas with embankment slides, swings, a climbing wall, and a broad, flat space for games complete the recreation opportunities. Head of Nursery School Paul Lorenzo-Giguere is excited that the topography is “tamed to allow ball play and trike riding.” Giguere believes, “The new playground is a quintessential environment and leading example in the area's early childhood development institutions of how young children can and will learn through play.”

The Sports Deck, coming late next summer, will be built on a platform above the parking pad on the west end of the Gymnasium & Performance Center. The Sports Deck will provide a flat, hard, all-weather outside surface currently lacking on the Whitehaven Campus.  Accessible from either the inside of the Gymnasium or from a separate exterior entrance, it will provide flexible use during general recess or physical education classes for students Kindergarten and older. “There was a real sense that we needed a hard play surface for basketball and four-square games, and St. Patrick’s responded to that need,” said Assistant Head of School/Head of Upper School Dan Spector. While the space most directly benefits Grades 2 to 5 by expanding their recess options, Dan also anticipates that Grades 6, 7, and 8 will utilize the deck outside of the school day, for example for basketball practice on a nice day.

These projects extend and deepen the excellence of the programs we offer our young people while equipping  the Day School to move forward with strength, agility, substance, and grace in a rapidly changing world. The Campaign ensures this generation, and future generations, of families that St. Patrick’s will function at the best-practice level in every aspect of our shared life―in academic classes, at play, and in preparation for high school. We invite you to make a gift to the Campaign and invest in St. Patrick’s.  Thank you!