NEWS AT OLIVERIAN SCHOOL

May 2011

05.31.2011
Electives Week: Everything Equine
Everything Equine students spent a great deal of time riding horses and traveling to other farms to experience different aspects of the horse world. Course topics included driving, jumping, foaling and many others. This class definitely created a few more equine enthusiasts at the school!

For a complete list of Electives Week course offerings and descriptions, click here.

Please visit our Facebook Page or Flickr account to view more pictures.

05.30.2011
Electives Week: Landscape Photography
Students in Landscape Photography clas../../s experimented with the proper technique for using digital cameras to take landscape images. Students learned about exposure and the equipment necessary for a sound landscape photograph. The group also enjoyed warm weather while searching for interesting landscape subjects!

For a complete list of Electives Week course offerings and descriptions, click here.

Please visit our Facebook Page or Flickr account to view more pictures.

05.25.2011
Message from Headmaster, Randy Richardson
As we move toward the end of the school year and the graduation of the Class of 2011 we are excited to celebrate the accomplishments of this class and Oliverian is determined to continue learning and growing as a school. This combination of celebration and reflection geared toward change is very important and deliberate here at Oliverian.

We are making many vital changes for the 2011-2012 school year that will enable us to maximize the connections between faculty and students and to ensure that we can uniquely and powerfully serve each student. As we look toward next year, we will improve our residential life program by returning to a primary dorm parent model. Oliverian dorm parents will have dorm parenting and student mentoring as the primary priorities in their job descriptions. They will work with students in many other settings, but student support and the residential curriculum will be their principal focus.

Not only will this change allow us to provide more attention and support to students beyond the school day, it will free up vital time and energy for our academic faculty to focus on finding the right balance between challenge and support in the classroom. While we have a unique curriculum designed to be more student-centered in a quest for our students' strengths and affinities, it is also intentionally college preparatory and standards-based. With a range of learning styles and abilities in the classroom, small classes, and teacher preparation and responsiveness are the keys to our success. In addition to reducing our teachers’ residential responsibilities, we will also be dedicating a part-time learning specialist to assessing tutoring students. The goal will be to work even more to help all of our students understand their own learning challenges and strengths with an emphasis on further developing executive functioning skills.

This increase in faculty will also allow us to provide more support in several other key areas. Our student/teacher ratios will improve giving advisors more time to work with fewer students and families. We are also working to give our counseling program more support through our dorm parents and a new Director of Residential Life. In addition, we are currently developing a stronger substance abuse recovery program. This program will be led by one of our dorm parents so that we can focus support for these students in the afternoons, evenings and weekends. We will focus on 12-Step programming through Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings on and off campus, and dorm parents will be trained to support all of our students with a focus on education and sobriety.

Change is never easy, and we do not take the time, work, or expense lightly. However, we understand the makeup of our students, and we are absolutely determined to give them the education and support they need and deserve. We have unique, complex, and wonderful students, and we will continue to provide them with a unique, responsive, and outstanding education.

Warmly,
Randy Richardson
Headmaster

05.24.2011
Summer Session Adventure
While the Oliverian Summer Session is primarily designed to be a supportive alternative academic experience, it will also include all sorts of good ol’ fashioned summer fun! In addition to weekend overnight and day trips, we will be making a significant journey in the middle of the summer to the beautiful Adirondack Mountains.

The goal of our middle intersession trip is to take a mid-summer break and to inspire additional learning through hands-on experiences. Beyond just having fun, we will learn about the American rural experience through adventure, stewardship, arts, and culture. We will begin our journey with a 3-hour trip from the White Mountains to the unique rural environment of the Adirondacks. At six million acres, Adirondack Park is larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Great Smokies, Glacier, and Grand Canyon national parks combined.

The adventure component of the trip will be highlighted by the opportunity to climb and “fly” through the Adirondack forest in the largest tree top adventure park in the United States, followed by a rafting trip. With guides that emphasize safety and accommodate different levels of ability and interest, students will enjoy swings, suspended bridges, slides, zip lines and even an aerial surf board.

Students will also take a number of day trips to explore a bit of local history, culture, and art of the Adirondacks. There are many great Adirondack museums, including options as diverse as the Wild Center and Fort Ticonderoga. We will also strive to learn and help others through stewardship opportunities, music, theater, and visits with local artists and artisans.

As we travel home on July 23rd, back to the Oliverian valley, we will have many great Adirondack learning experiences and stories to inspire our final three weeks together as a community.

05.23.2011
Electives Week, Oliverian Land Trustees
Oliverian Land Trustees electives class was a great collaboration with the Upper Valley Land Trust to engage in real life land conservation. The students worked as volunteers helping UVLT manage invasive species and monitor their conserved properties. The students earned stewardship credit and enjoyed the beautiful sunny weather all week.

For a complete list of Electives Week course offerings and descriptions, click here.

05.20.2011
“Thank you, Oliverian Family, for setting him on this journey, his journey.”-Parent Testimonial
Dear Oliverian,

After meeting with Costa’s teachers and advisors and hearing stories about Costa, it struck me that Costa is in relationship with not only teachers, advisors, counselors, and administrators, but the school’s entire staff from cook to grounds keeper, etc… And this entity of people are Costa’s “Oliverian Family.” The other thing that struck me was that Costa was more of a “young man” in the true sense of the word around each of you. He was more mature, more respectful, more open in his communication, etc… It was as if I were in the presence of a future version of himself. Comments from his teachers and advisors spoke of improved academics, better follow through, leadership and mentoring qualities, etc… I’ve been trying to move Costa into this direction for the past three years and have failed; however, in six months time, his Oliverian Family has accomplished all of this and so much more.

Costa still has his challenges and goals for improvement for the second semester, but what I want to convey is that by being out of the toxic environment of his former school and living at his Oliverian home, Costa has had time to reflect about who he is and his future. Also, living more on his own, the dorm life, and working with teachers, advisors, and counselors who have taught him how to better himself in the areas of prioritizing, time management, organization and preparedness, and mostly, to reflect on his feelings and be more authentic in his relationships, Costa is starting to mature and become more of who he is on the inside. Through this process, he is starting to realize that he has the ability to control his destiny, and all the choices and decisions he makes, impact his future – Costa is learning to accept responsibility instead of always reacting and blaming others. He is still on his journey and has much more to learn, but he is miles away from that person who was on a dangerous and self-destructive path when he first enrolled at Oliverian back in September. Admittedly, Costa has made his share of mistakes and bad choices at Oliverian, but as Randy told us, he was glad that Costa made those poor choices as he was then able to experience the consequences and learn from them. Randy also told us that Costa is at a stage where he is wrestling with “the good person inside versus the person who he thinks he must portray himself to be to others.” We are encouraged by this as we see that Costa is beginning to learn that his outcomes are more positive when he allows his authentic self to prevail. My hope is that Costa’s journey of learning and self discovery will continue in this positive direction; these positively wonderful lessons of life instilled by his new family, his Oliverian family.

Thank you, Oliverian Family, for setting him on this journey, his journey.
Jimmy Ferrara
Parent of Costa Ferrara ’11 (Montclair, VA)

05.18.2011
Oliverian School Announces the Appointment of Two New Members to the Board of Trustees
At their May 6th meeting, the Oliverian trustees unanimously (and enthusiastically!) approved the appointments of two new members to the Board. Both parents of recent graduates, Susan Kerr Dragone and Herschel H. “Buzz” Quillen III are longtime supporters of Oliverian and bring great knowledge and expertise to the School’s governing body.


Susan Dragone, mother of Brady Dragone ’10 and a graduate of the Trinity School in New York and Duke University, is the former director of programming for CBS Sports. Susan and her husband, Al, live in Atlanta, GA with Brady, a freshman at Hampshire College, and Brady’s two younger sisters.





Buzz Quillen, father of Francesca Quillen ’09 (a sophomore at the University of Colorado – Boulder), is president of H.H. Quillen & Co. – a commercial real estate firm in Wilmington, DE. A graduate of the Peddie School and the University of Delaware, Buzz previously served on Oliverian’s Advisory Committee.

Oliverian welcomes Susan and Buzz “back” to Oliverian, and thanks them for their continued stewardship of the School.

Jess Cabrera ’12 (Washington
Crossing, PA)

Randy Richardson, Headmaster

05.03.2011
Summer Session at The Oliverian School
Spring has finally come to the Oliverian Valley. This season is always special as it brings everything from the Oliverian Olympics and student-faculty soccer games to college news and graduation. Although I still found snow as I hiked this past weekend, we all enjoyed true t-shirt weather on campus. Some of our bravest students even went swimming at a nearby swimming hole despite the freezing winter runoff water. We are all striving to focus on the present and take full advantage of all of the beautiful weather and great opportunities immediately in front of us, but we know that spring is also the time to plan for summer and beyond.

Spring is an exciting season full of great weather and new beginnings, but it can also be a somewhat scary time for some of our students and families as they decide what comes next in the summer and the 2011-2012 school year. Every Oliverian student-story is unique, but we have many students who have struggled at home with everything from substance abuse to difficult family interactions and patterns of avoidance. We have designed our more traditional school calendar partly based on our strongly held belief that students and their parents need some vacations, even in the face of inevitably difficult moments, to connect as a family and work through challenges together.

For many of our students, it is vital to plan now for the Oliverian Summer Session, or another program for the break. We have found that it is not wise for students to spend an entire summer at home without clear and structured plans, including fun, positive, and engaging activities. If you have not already planned for the summer, please begin the process soon, and reach out to your child's counselor and advisor for help.

Mel Lohrer '13 (Carlisle, MA), Kara Kliesing (Humanities Teacher), and Amanda Silversmith '12 (Bedford, NH)

With all of this in mind, I ask you to consider the Oliverian Summer Session as a great option filled with a combination of learning and fun. Veteran faculty member Bessa Axelrod, Summer Director, is busy working with the Olverian administrative team to finalize summer plans based on our 3-1-3 model. We are excited to have two interns from the University of New Hampshire Outdoor Education program also helping design some of our summer activities.

Summer Session begins on Sunday, June 26, 2011 and ends on Saturday, August 13, 2011. The first three weeks and the final three weeks combine an exciting array of team-taught interdisciplinary electives, more traditional academic classes for credit recovery and enrichment, and group weekend adventures. The middle week is an extended trip and adventure expedition designed as an exciting break and offering a range of mostly outdoor fun activities. The Oliverian Summer Session provides students with the opportunity to bring fun and productivity together. They will not only make academic progress, but also enjoy many great camp-like experiences and connect with other students and faculty in a small and supportive program. We know the program works because of the emotions and comments expressed by students and faculty members at our final celebration last summer. In addition to all of the learning, there was a great community feeling share throughout the summer.

Good luck with your summer planning, and if you have not received information and an enrollment agreement for the Oliverian Summer Session, please contact Julie Gaffey in the Admissions Office (603-989-5100, ext. 7104) and she will send you a packet immediately.

Warmly,

Randy Richardson
Headmaster

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