Dear prospective students and families,
Each morning, young artists and musicians, mathematicians and scientists, readers and writers, social scientists and historians bound through the doors of Friends Select’s lower school, eager to greet their teachers and friends. Once inside, they engage with teachers who take great care to talk with them, observe them, listen to them, and truly understand who they are. From that place of feeling truly known, our students are able to engage with challenging ideas and content, stretching themselves in ways important to them while also contributing to the learning of their classmates. Our program draws upon the strengths and passions of children while developing the skills, conceptual understandings, and sensibilities they will need to thrive in today’s world.
As Quaker educators who trust in the inner wisdom of children, we know that each student comes to school with unique lived experiences, knowledge, and insights that should be honored, accessed, and built upon. With that belief as our guiding light, we teach not to fill the child’s mind with our own wisdom but rather lead them in constructing their own knowledge. In doing so, we foster in our students a sense of ownership and investment in the learning at hand. Empowered with a sense of agency over their learning, students in the lower school learn early on that school is not something done to them but instead that school is done by them.
Nestled into the heart of Philadelphia, our unique Center City location as a school affords us opportunities to build exciting and integrated educational experiences with the museums, cultural organizations, parks, and historical landmarks right outside our doors. Through frequent walking trips, pre-kindergarteners engage in a study of Sister Cities Park. Kindergarteners visit the many institutions and public spaces on the Parkway within their Benjamin Franklin Parkway Study. In their Food Study, first graders walk to the Reading Terminal, coffee shops, markets, and food pantries to learn about the people and systems that bring us our food. Second graders learn about community, culture, and immigration in their Neighborhood Study of Chinatown, and they spend a semester studying paleontology at the Academy of Natural Sciences, just a short walk away. Third graders learn about freshwater ecosystems through several visits to the Academy, and in their Lenni Lenape Study, they learn about the native people of this land who lived here long ago and still do to this day. Fourth graders head out to museums and landmarks to enrich their learning about the American Revolution and they visit sites around the city that once served as stops on the Underground Railroad. From an early age, children in our lower school understand that learning takes place not just within the walls of their classrooms but in the world around them.
I invite you to learn more about our lower school program. I hope you’ll visit so you can meet our wonderful team of educators and witness the dynamic learning that takes place here every day.
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Sincerely, Dave Younkin Director of Lower School |
