On Friday, April 21st, Waring's Sustainability Elective orchestrated a day of special Earth Day-related activities. For the third year in a row, to mark the occasion of Earth Day, there were no regular classes held. Instead, Rowan Mulder '23, Sarah Patey '24, and other members of Waring's student-led Sustainability Elective created an entire day of programming centered around climate awareness. Students signed up for activity periods focused on gardening, identifying nature, letter-writing for sustainable causes, planting trees around campus, off-campus beach cleanups, and much more.

The students also arranged presentations from two all-school speakers - Pete Christopher and Jon Grabowski (P '26). 

Pete Christopher speaks at Earth Day Special Day

Pete Christopher works with NOAA fisheries writing regulations with the goal of balancing the sustainability of our marine life with the well being of the fishermen. He gave a very informative presentation on this topic and answered many questions. Thank you Pete. 

Jon Grabowski is a current Waring parent and principal investigator at the Northeastern University Marine Science Center, studying the relationship between fisheries management and restoration ecology. He gave a wonderful presentation on his work in the field of marine science – thank you Jon for your contribution to the Waring community!

The day concluded with a grounding mindfulness exercise on the Mine Field; fortunately, the weather cooperated and brought us all some much-needed sunshine.

The celebration was Waring at its best, with students taking the lead and guiding each other through important talks and activities. The students organized the day from start to finish, creating a memorable and educational experience that their peers will not soon forget.

February is Black History Month! Group 3 (10th Grade) Art students read and discussed Race and Representation by bell hooks and watched the documentary Black Art in the Absence of Light, a contemporary survey of Black achievements in American art. Students selected an artist to research, and spent two weeks getting to know their visual syntax as well as the context around their work, how and if they address race, representation, and visibility in American society. Students wrote a notecard, created several studies of their artist's work, and gave short presentations in class.  

Please stop by the Forum to view this excellent student exhibition or view the work online on the Waring Smugmug Page.

Waring debaters, judges, and parents had a fabulous experience at the Harvard High School Tournament,  held in Cambridge on February 18-20. This tournament, the largest in the nation, had over 2000 debaters and judges in attendance. Waring had success in all levels of the tournament.

Micah '26 had a record of 6 wins and only 1 loss, debating with a colleague from Concord Carlisle HS. They won the trophy for elimination rounds, tying for 17th in a field of 175 teams. Robbie '29, debating alone in the middle school division, earned a trophy for 17th in a field of 168 teams. Also competing with distinction were Gigi '27 & Leo '28, Michael '26 & Ava '26, and Wilhelmina '26 & Ana '26.

Judging for Waring were our advanced debaters: Cam '23, Alex '24, Mikaila '24, and Eliza '24.

We were assisted by our parents who drove to and from Cambridge each day, and Coach Tim Averill ran the tabulation room all weekend.

The team will return to competition at the Mardi Gras Tournament at Shrewsbury HS on March 4.

Lykos Robotics, one of Waring's three First Lego League teams, is featured in an article on the NASA website! For their Innovation Project (which won first place at the FLL State Tournament at WPI) Lykos team members studied the idea of putting a solar farm on the moon, and contacted NASA scientists for help. The NASA engineers were very responsive, and the students emailed back and forth with them and talked with them by phone several times as they did their research and prepared for competition. A couple of weeks ago, a public affairs writer from NASA reached out and asked to interview the students about the experience. The article just came out yesterday. The students are really excited- feel free to ask them about it! Click the NASA logo below to read the article on the NASA website. 

For the third consecutive week, the Waring Debate Society had success, this time at the Keith West Memorial Tournament, held at Boston Latin School on Saturday, January 21. Four of our teams qualified for the Massachusetts State Tournament this spring: Eliza '24 & Mikaila '24, Gigi '27 & Micah '26, Wilhelmina '26 & Ana '26, and Thomas '27 & Leo '28. 

Also debating with distinction were our middle school teams: Robbie '29 & Maddie '29 and Cira '28 & Spike '27. Most of the competition was high school students, and I was proud of the efforts of our younger and less experienced debaters.

Waring was supported by our judges: Parents Jamie, Terry, and Alex. I worked in the tabulation room for the day. I was very excited that the tournament offered a prize for the judge who wrote the most outstanding ballots (as judged by the Boston Latin students) and this award, The Keith West Adjudication Award, went to my grandson Wilbur from Concord Carlisle High School.

Our teams of Eliza & Mikaila and Micah & Cam travel to Atlanta GA next weekend to compete in the Barkley Forum for High Schools at Emory University.

"In his 1959 Sermon on Gandhi, Dr. King elaborated on the after-effects of choosing nonviolence over violence: “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle’s over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor.” In the same sermon, he contrasted violent versus nonviolent resistance to oppression. “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.” Source: www.kingcenter.org

On Friday, Jan 13, the Waring community gathered for an extended ASM time to honor the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. We reflected on several passages of King’s where he discusses Beloved Community and then we listened to a portion of Bernice King’s talk on the King Center’s 2023 MLK Day Theme: It Starts With Me: Building A Beloved Community Mindset to Transform Unjust Systems. In her talk, Bernice outlines some aspects of cultivating a beloved community mindset, which, when practiced alongside courageous direct action toward transforming unjust systems, is a powerful tool of love and social change. Below are the tenets of beloved community mindset that she highlights:

• Understanding that we are interconnected and interdependent
• The ability to disagree without demeaning each other
• Employing peaceful means in our quest for peaceful ends
• Mental and spiritual conditioning to correct injustice and inequity without canceling, wishing destruction upon or seeking to destroy the person who propagated the injustice or inequity
• Evolving from mere pity and apathy to compassionate action
• Collaborating without compromising on justice
• Embracing the philosophy and methodology of nonviolence as the pathway to the Beloved Community

After our all school discussion and collective visioning of what it means- looks like, feels like- to cultivate beloved community, we broke out into tutorial groups and reflected on the following questions, which students then inscribed on panels of a community art project designed by Marika Whitaker. Tutorials also worked on several different local service projects, creating dog toys for the Northeast Animal Shelter, decorating bags for Ellis Square Friends, and assembling snack bags for Beverly Bootstraps’ After School Programs. 

We invite you to come by the ASM space to see the completed mural and to join us in reflecting on beloved community: holding and building King's vision and practice for a loving and just world. For more information and resources, please visit the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. (https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/)

• Take a minute to allow yourself to dream and envision Beloved Community. What is the shape of the word beloved ? what is the shape of the word community ?When you imagine being in the midst of beloved community what does it feel like, look like, sound like to you?
• What conditions are necessary for cultivating a beloved community? What do we need more of, what habits do we need to release in order to build beloved community? 
• How does cancel culture and wokeness relate align or contradict with the idea of beloved community? 
• How is the idea of beloved community co-opted by white people who want to skip over the work of reconciliation?
• What is one commitment you can make individually toward cultivating a mindset of beloved community?
• What is one commitment (or one word) that your tutorial can make in order to cultivate a beloved community mindset here at Waring?

Congratulations to Waring's own Rebecca Reed, who is one of this year's winners of Airtable's Interface Designer Contest for the digital "Teaching Tool" she designed for curriculum planning and student information. Read more here - and brava, Rebecca!

Created entirely by Waring’s parent community to show their deepest gratitude for Waring’s teachers and staff, the Faculty Grant Program provides funding for Waring employees to pursue enriching experiences beyond the walls of campus. The Faculty Grant Program affords faculty and staff the opportunity to think outside the box, pursuing passions for subjects that they might not otherwise be able to access. In return, they will then bring that experiential knowledge back into the classroom to inform and enrich their students’ learning. In just four years, generous donors to the Faculty Grant Program have already made over 20 grants. Read below about this year’s grant recipients.

Construction on Waring School's new energy-efficient, eco-friendly school building is well underway. The new building will house Waring's All-School Meeting space, administrative offices, several classrooms, and the porches, nooks, and cubbies unique to Waring. Check out the progress below!

French classes had to get creative this spring to keep Waring's French Skit tradition alive. While a transition to remote learning could have put a stop to the fun, shared performances, classes chose to get innovative and created many outstanding online plays. Check them out below!

Music has found beautiful new ways to flourish at Waring School even while we're apart. More than 100 Waring students, families, alumni, and faculty collaborated to record a moving virtual performance of Bill Withers' "Lean on Me."

For the second year in a row, Waring students have swept the top three prizes at the Beverly Public Library’s Teen Poetry Contest.

Students from 15 schools submitted more than 500 poems for consideration. Waring students accounted for eight of the twelve finalists in the high school division and two of the fifteen finalists in the middle school division.

The results of Le Grand Concours 2020 are in and impressive! 

Sixty-eight of the 147 Waring students who participated in the National French Contest were named national laureates. For the first time ever, three Waring students led their division by posting national high scores.

Every Monday, for the past seven weeks, our Writing Department has invited the Waring community to participate in a communal writing project.

Each week, the Writing Department shared a new prompt and published some of the previous week’s best responses.

The resulting community-made journal is a powerful record of our time during remote learning and physical distancing.

More than 1.5 million students from across the United States took the Preliminary SAT test this fall. Finishing in the top 4 percent of all test takers were three Waring juniors—Cole Cunningham, Sparhawk Mulder, and Griffin Wells.

In March, Waring’s Writing Department announced a weekly community writing project.

Every Monday, the Writing Department shares a new prompt and publishes some of the previous week’s best responses.

Waring's three 3D printers are rarely silent while students are on campus and have continued to buzz even in their absence.

Francis Schaeffer, Waring's STEM Coordinator and FLL Coach of the Brickwolves, has kept the 3D printers in Waring's makerspace busy the past few weeks making face masks. Each mask takes about nine hours to print and another 40 minutes to assemble using instructions supplied by Waring alumnus Bennett Ahearn '03.

In March, Waring’s Writing Department announced a weekly community writing project.

Every Monday, the Writing Department shares a new prompt and publishes some of the previous week’s best responses.

On March 24, Waring School switched to a remote learning plan in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Faculty began conducting classes via Zoom and Google Classroom, music teachers continued with voice and instrument lessons, and our Athletic Director shared weekly workout schedules. Our Writing and Art Departments challenged our community to participate in weekly writing prompts and community art projects. Musicians began to share weekly #TuesdayTunes performances on Waring’s Facebook and Instagram, and we continued to gather every Friday for a (virtual) All-School Meeting. 

In March, Waring’s Writing Department announced a weekly community writing project.

Every Monday, the Writing Department shares a new prompt and publishes some of the previous week’s best responses.

Since Waring School implemented a remote learning plan, students in Michelle Ramadan’s Humanities Class have met regularly on Zoom to continue their discussion of World War I.

To conclude the unit, the ninth and tenth graders have been working on a poetry and art response to the poignant novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Yesterday, April 16, they were joined in class by four accomplished poets.

Waring’s Art Department launched “The Waring Art Connector Project” just one week ago. Already alumni, students, parents, teachers, trustees, and friends, from Alaska to the Turks and Caicos Islands, have contributed more than 50 pieces of artwork to the collective gallery.

Every week since Waring implemented a remote learning plan, Waring’s Writing Department has invited students, faculty, parents, and friends to participate in a weekly writing project. 

Every Monday, the Writing Department announces a new prompt and shares some of the previous week’s best responses.

This week is World Health Worker Week, so today we thank the many Waring alumni who work every day to keep our communities safe and healthy. Here are a few of the many Waring alumni doing extraordinary things now to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.

Waring students helped promote intercultural awareness, friendship, and compassion by once again participating in the Portraits for Kindness Program organized by the Memory Project.

Every Monday, Waring’s Writing Department invites you to participate in its weekly writing project. 

Last week the prompt was: “It's likely we are all seeing much more of our family than we are used to. Think about a time during the past week when you interacted with someone at home in a way that was surprising, funny, or interesting. Describe that interaction. You might want to include details of setting, timing, or dialogue.”

At the bottom of this blogpost, you will find this week’s new prompt. Everyone is encouraged to participate alongside our students. Please submit your responses to Jill Sullivan (no more than 250 words) by each Friday.

Below are three of our favorite responses from last week.

While attending the Boston Youth Climate Strike in September, Waring’s FLL Robotics team noticed that while passionate about climate change, many of their peers knew little about embodied carbon, an enormous source of carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, embodied carbon, which makes up 40 percent of the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, wasn’t mentioned by the strike’s speakers at all.

In memory of John K. Dineen, a Waring Board Member Emeritus, the Amelia Peabody Foundation has generously gifted the school a $100,000 grant in honor of the longtime friend of Waring School.

We are pleased to announce that after much hard work on the part of our certified athletic trainer, Colleen Jenkins, MS, LAT, ATC, and the Athletics Department as a whole, Waring School has received the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) Safe Sports School Award for its commitment to keeping young athletes safe.

The award champions safety and recognizes secondary schools that have met the recommended standards to improve safety in sports. The award reinforces the importance of providing the best level of care, injury prevention, and treatment.

Students from across Massachusetts submitted more than 12,000 pieces of art and writing to this year's Scholastic Art and Writing Contest sponsored by The Boston Globe.

Rising to the top of the extremely competitive contest were 14 Waring students who received 16 awards. Leading the way were seniors Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui and Benny Weedon who both won multiple awards.

The latest edition of Le Temps Retrouvé, Waring School's journal of student art and writing, is now online!

The student-made journal includes work by every class year, from Core to Group 5. Within the journal’s pages are personal essays, poems, and school news as well as sketches, photography, linear function art, and much more.

Created entirely by Waring’s parent community to show their deepest gratitude for Waring’s teachers and staff, the Faculty Grant Program provides funding for Waring employees to pursue enriching experiences beyond the walls of campus. The Faculty Grant Program affords faculty and staff the opportunity to think outside the box, pursuing passions for subjects that they might not otherwise be able to access. In return, they will then bring that experiential knowledge back into the classroom to inform and enrich their students’ learning. In just three years, generous donors to the Faculty Grant Program have already made possible 18 grants. Read below about this year’s grant recipients and about the enriching trips, workshops, and lessons they have planned with their grants.

With only 24 hours of our 11-day Debate trip to China under my belt, in the middle of Beijing, amid the hum and bustle of rush-hour traffic, I watched my host crash her bike head-on into an oncoming cyclist. This was after she rented three different bikes that were either missing pedals or a seat. After the first crash, we pushed even harder on our pedals trying to get home, but it soon became apparent that Suzanna, my host, was lost, very lost in an enclosed college campus. 

The Waring Debate Team traveled to Beijing, China, in November for an international debate tournament and to build upon strong relations with our friends at T.H.I.S. (Tsinghua, Highschool, International, School). While in China we traveled to spectacular places, bonded with friends, and cleaned up at T.H.I.S’s debate tournament.

No team in the world has scored more points in the world’s most competitive student robot contest than the Waring School Brickwolves this season.

During the awards ceremony at the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Eastern Massachusetts Championship on Saturday, December 14, it was announced that the Brickwolves’ 600-point run in the tournament’s Robot Game was a new global high score.

Nearly 40,000 teams from 100 countries compete in the FLL Robot Game. To date, no other team has reported a score greater than 560 points during a FLL-sanctioned competition.

Design. Test. Refine.

For the past several months, eighth graders in Waring's STEM science class have been using 3D-modeling software and 3D printers to design and then print the parts for a balloon-powered car.

The course emphasizes a design-build process and the use of the scientific method to observe problems and test solutions.

Earlier this week, members of Waring School’s FLL robotics team led an Introduction to Robotics workshop at Centerville Elementary School.

More than 40 young students attended the workshop to pick up the basics of EV3 coding and to learn how to computer program a robot to navigate a maze.

Because of exuberant interest in the workshop, the Waring School Brickwolves will expand the program to include a ten-session Introduction to Robotics Club for Centerville students beginning in January of 2020.

Tiffany Soucy hurries from the booth to a stage window that floats slightly askew. As she runs down the center aisle, she grabs a student to steady the windowpane so she can adjust it. “Does that look right?” she says. “I’m not the best at seeing if it’s level. Hey, Mattie, is this level?”

It was build-day in theater, and tech week was only six days away and the performance two weeks out. A lot had to be done to get Shakespeare's Sister running smoothly. As the Technical Director of the show, it’s her job to oversee the set, props, costumes, and everything in the booth. She is one of the most important people in the theater. She keeps the show running.

More than 240 debaters participated in the AGD International Debate Tournament in Beijing, China. Three Waring students were recognized among the top-six performers, earning Speaker Awards–Julie Durning (6th), Jack Martin (5th), and Arion Carraher-Kang (3rd).

After falling behind 0-1 in the Liberty League Men’s Soccer Championship game with an NCAA tournament bid on the line, Hobart College relied on a bit of Waring magic to even things in the second half. 

In the 63rd minute, Waring alumnus Nick Wigglesworth ’16 launched a pass from the 50-yard line to the opposing box. There to receive it was fellow Waring alumnus Kyle Patrick ’16 who blasted the ball into the back of the net.

For such a small school, Waring has had a remarkable track record of preparing soccer players for collegiate success.

It was unseasonably warm in Boston as thousands met in Boston City Hall Plaza to participate in a school strike to address global warming on Friday, September 20.

As students gathered, temperatures approached 80 degrees, capping the hottest summer on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Approximately 115 Waring School students, nearly two-thirds of the school, skipped classes to participate in the Boston Youth Climate Strike, which drew more than 10,000 participants. More than four million students went on strike globally to protest climate change.

Each fall, Waring's school year begins with a four-day Camping Trip to North Woods Camp on Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. Tutorials stay in cabins, classmates sing in circles, and new acquaintances become close friends.

For new students, it's their first taste of what it's like to be a member of the Waring Community.

Last December, students in the Waring Inclusion and Diversity Alliance met to give input on Waring’s Diversity Statement. An updated statement would reaffirm Waring’s commitment to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community.

Several students wrote their thoughts down on notecards.

We asked “Where has your Waring education taken you?” and alumni responded with selfie videos from all over the world.

They answered: Burlington, Vermont; South Bend, Indiana; Bologna, Italy; graduate school; teaching careers; music professions; and much, much more...

Watch the full video below.

At this past weekend’s World Championship in Detroit, Waring School’s robot finished 22nd in the robot game.

This finish put Waring in the top .06% of the 40,000 teams that competed worldwide in the 30th season of the FIRST LEGO League (FLL).

Before their flight home, the trio of Owen Cooper, Chris Douglas, and Peter Hanna, all eighth graders at Waring, had already used a computer program to tear one of the world’s best robots apart.

Of the 26 poems chosen to be finalists in Beverly Public Library’s 23rd Annual Teen Poetry Contest, 15 were composed by Waring School students. Sweeping the top three places in the high school division and grabbing a third-place finish in the middle school competition were four members of the Wolfpack.  

More than 500 poems were submitted to the contest and blindly judged by three local, published poets. Twelve of the thirteen finalists in the high school division were written by Waring students.

Twenty-five eighth graders from Waring School in Beverly, Massachusetts, walked up Dexter Avenue in downtown Montgomery towards the Alabama State Capitol building. It was late March, and the camellias that surrounded the building’s grand marble staircase were in full bloom.

Fifty-four years earlier, almost to the day, 25,000 protestors marched up that same avenue and gathered near the same steps. For five days and four nights, the civil rights advocates had marched 54 miles along U.S. Highway 80 from Selma to the Statehouse.

Gareth Buhl, a senior at Waring School, has been named a finalist in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Competition.

More than 1.6 million students entered the competition by taking the PSAT, National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test in the fall of 2017. Less than one percent were named semifinalists and even fewer (just 7,500 students) were named finalists last month.

Students from across Massachusetts submitted nearly 20,000 pieces of art and writing to this year's Scholastic Art and Writing Contest sponsored by The Boston Globe and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.

Rising to the top of the extremely competitive contest were seven Waring artists and two Waring writers. Leading the way were Gold Key recipients Will Stomberg '20 and Arion Carraher-Kang '21 as well as Silver Key winner Julia Kautz '19.

Created entirely by Waring’s parent community to show their deepest gratitude for Waring’s teachers and staff, the Faculty Grant Program provides funding for Waring employees to pursue enriching experiences beyond the walls of campus. The Faculty Grant Program affords faculty and staff the opportunity to think outside the box, pursuing passions for subjects that they might not otherwise be able to access. In return, they will then bring that experiential knowledge back into the classroom to inform and enrich their students’ learning. In just two years, generous donors to the Faculty Grant Program have already made possible 11 grants. Read below about the amazing projects this year’s recipients will undertake with their grants.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Another edition of Le Temps Retrouvé is hot off the digital press.

From the editor, Head of School Tim Bakland: "Waring School is a place of ideas and 'voices' — voice in its many forms, written, poetic, artistic, musical, athletic, whimsical, serious, adventurous, and all the rest. Le Temps Retrouvé is one of many venues in which you’ll find the very essence of Waring School through student expression."

For the next six weeks, at Waring Downtown (290 Cabot St), the artwork of Sarah Malboeuf '19 will hang alongside the abstract oil paintings of local, professional artist Miranda Aisling. 

The initiative, organized by Miranda, aims to introduce Waring students to Beverly-area artists who have created a living around art. 

For months, Waring students in John Wigglesworth's Earth, Ocean, and Environment class have conducted field work in Gloucester to support their oceanographic research projects. Last week, they visited Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to discuss their work with world-class scientists.