“ Not a day has gone by that I have not learned from my boys, be it personal, intellectual, or educational.”
I have learned at Saint David’ s that what goes on outside the classroom is, in many ways, just as important as what goes on in the classroom. We’ ve read The Pigman, Fahrenheit 451, Around the World in 80 Days, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, The Prisoner of Zenda, I Heard the Owl Call My Name, And Then There Were None, Catcher in the Rye, the Telemachy of Homer, A Christmas Carol, A Midsummer Night’ s Dream, To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, The Count of Monte Cristo, Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, and, Lord of the Flies, to name a few.
But, and not excluding dangling modifiers, gerundives, diagramming sentences, and boatloads of vocabulary, lessons are learned on both sides of the desk. Not a day has gone by that I have not learned from my boys, be it personal, intellectual, or educational. My boys have embraced walk-a-thons, knockout tournaments, pie sales, basketball shootouts, ice cream sundaes, candy drives, t-shirt sales, dodgeball and
“ Not a day has gone by that I have not learned from my boys, be it personal, intellectual, or educational.”
pizza nights with the Lower School, reading stories and doing math with the first graders, carrying boxes of groceries, toting books crosstown to build back a library destroyed by fire, singing Christmas songs and trading bad jokes at the Assembly, and writing letters to the troops abroad.
When an alum comes to my room to visit after a few months or several decades, I try to drop everything my current class is doing to introduce and share memories from our times together. My present boys are surprised with what I remember about the alum. Each graduate is special – then and now. That visit is the highpoint of my afternoon!
Constricted by the constraints of length, I cannot name all my boys with a relatable anecdote, but, as I said to a prospective parent recently, no two days are ever the same at Saint David’ s, and the common denominator is the thousands of young men I have had the pleasure of working with.
For about a dozen years, I, along with being a homeroom, English, and religion teacher, was also the Director of Athletics – some of the longest days I have ever had. Working with our teams outside the classroom gave me the opportunity to learn, as well. Boys tick inside and outside the class, and those years I had that opportunity to see another, important side of them. Outstanding seasons – did I mention the Red Basketball team was 35-1 over two years, all the while practicing on the concrete backyard, after we shoveled off the snow, gut-wrenching defeats, standings that were very important, league leaders in goals and points, choosing the Red and White Soccer and Softball teams on a weekly basis, and, most importantly, walking back from Central Park, all highlighted those years.
Boys raising funds for the Ethiopia Schools initiative.
Spring 2026 • 25