2006-2007 Fall/Winter Directions - Friends' Central School

out of their immediate environment and asking them to rethink
almost every aspect of how they’ve learned to live their lives.
Take for example our meal plan. We are a vegetarian school.
This decision was made for two reasons. On the one hand,
many of our students come from families in which a healthy
diet is neither a focus nor an economic possibility. Greens and
complex grains just aren’t part of a lot of their dinners. So we
have assumed a responsibility for improving our students’ diets
as well as their minds. But the decision is also an ethical one.
We hope that if the students are required to eat different foods,
they will develop an openness to the world in general.”
The school’s holistic approach is one of the
things that impresses Anne most about the program,
and she firmly supports its sense that it is admitting the
whole family, not just the individual student. After all, she
explains, “We are not saving kids from their situation. We are
empowering families to support their children in their attempts
to improve their lives and opportunities.” In order for it to
accomplish this goal, the school has to encourage the traditions
FEATURES – ALUMNI/AE
and strengths of its students’ neighborhoods and families, even
as it pushes them to seek broader opportunities and experiences.
This delicate dance is most apparent when the students
reach eighth grade and graduate. One third to one half of them
go on to independent schools in the city or boarding schools.
While boarding schools have more funding and a more level
playing field, they also take the kids further away from their
communities and disrupt family life. Day schools, on the other
hand, keep kids at home, but also force them to confront dramatic
socio-economic and social differences on a daily basis.
Whatever path they follow after EHS, Anne believes that her
students’ chances of having a better life depends on their connection
to their families and homes. As she says, “It is all about
coming back and improving the community not just sending
the individual off to participate in a different, better life.” She
may have been born a teacher, but the way she sees education
as a family affair certainly has its roots in her early experience
at Friends’ Central.
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