“ Saint David’ s has adapted boldly to changing times while remaining steadfast in its purpose: to educate boys through rigorous academics, moral introspection, and critical inquiry.”
It would be the funds generated by this endowment that would ensure our ability to provide not only competitive salaries, but also competitive total compensation packages, including health and retirement benefits, and professional development, both of which would continue to motivate our teachers and strengthen their commitment to the school. Hence, in 2009, Continuing Our Best Traditions: The Campaign for Saint David’ s Teachers and Boys was born.
This campaign went hand-in-hand with our new strategic plan— a commitment to improve the quality of our sons’ experience in the classroom through two supporting initiatives, the Curriculum Initiative which looked to align our curriculum horizontally and vertically by discipline throughout the school and our Faculty Initiative, which focused on creating greater supervision and evaluation of faculty and their programmatic improvement through streamlined and enhanced professional development.
The Curriculum Initiative
In order to continue to fulfill our historic commitment to the most rigorous intellectual pursuit, the Curriculum Initiative was a critical examination of all that we teach our boys and the varied ways we teach it vertically through the school by discipline and horizontally across grades and disciplines. As a result of this undertaking, virtually every aspect of the curriculum( scope and sequence) was subjected to intensive evaluation and renewal. This process began with three essential questions: What do we want our boys to know, to do, and to value? In essence,“ What do we want them to learn?”“ When do we want them to learn it?” and“ Why?” By fusing our academic and ethical aspirations, these questions helped to ensure that all modifications were consonant with our mission and our values. And so, guided by our mission and informed by our history, we took the most current educational research and reworked courses to maximize true learning and deepen understanding. We reached ever farther beyond the walls of the school by launching our Signature Learning Experiences and partnerships with preeminent New York City scientific, cultural, and educational institutions, as well as focused more on interdisciplinary learning, collaborative thinking, and effective communication.
The new directions of the Curriculum Initiative were quickly seen throughout our school in all program areas. Some examples follow:
The importance of building toward fluency in a second language was recognized as an essential skill for the future, not just for communication, but for broadening the mind’ s perspective. Saint David’ s has always been known for its deep thinking, careful and deliberate consideration of curricular change, and strategic planning. In 2008, the school’ s administration and language faculty began to study the idea of adding an elementary school foreign language( FLES) program in Grades Pre-K through Five. At the time, Spanish and French were the two modern languages offered only to Grades Six through Eight. Latin was only offered in Grade Five and by choice, in Grades Seven and Eight. In 2009, Saint David’ s decided to roll out a full Pre-K-Eight Spanish
The importance of building toward fluency in a second language prompted Saint David’ s to initiate a schoolwide Spanish program, which fully rolled out in 2011. Now, each June, rising eighth graders travel to Salamanca, Spain, for two weeks of immersive language study and cultural exploration.
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