IS RIVERS CREAtING - The Rivers School

I s R i v e r s C r e a t i n g
The Renaissance Student
By Adam Conner-Simons
Tall and soft-spoken, carrying
himself with a calm confidence
and a gentle smile, Charlie Rugg
’09 is a quiet and unassuming
character on the Rivers campus. If his demeanor
does not suggest an All-American
soccer player so much as, say, a
pensive sketch artist, it may be
because…well, he’s both.
Emily Creedon ’09 is similarly
tough to pin down. While
she is frequently involved in
school theater productions and
plays piano for the jazz band,
you wouldn’t want to box her
in as the artsy type—she’s also
an All-Scholastic softball player
and was the only high school
student in the country to present research
at an international science conference this
past summer.
Rugg and Creedon are undeniably interesting
personalities at Rivers, and the
school is not shy about acknowledging
their accomplishments (and those of many
of their peers). But the stories of these students,
with their diverse experiences mixing
art, academics, athletics, and more, beg
the question: are they truly representative
of Rivers Perhaps just as important, does
Rivers actively foster such Renaissance men
and women, or would they turn out that
way regardless of the school they attend
The answer, it seems, is not as cut-anddried
as one might hope. Rivers certainly
deserves much of the credit for instilling in
students the importance of a liberal arts
education - for starters, by requiring students
to take six full trimesters of art
classes, including three upper-level courses.
“It’s a continuous learning process, usually
spread out over three or four years,” says
Head of Upper School Patricia Carbery.
“This challenges students to go far beyond
their comfort zones and develop creative
skills they never thought they had.”
For every uninterested kid who may
gripe at the prospect of taking two full
years of arts courses, there’s a
student like Rugg who might
not have otherwise thought to
take such classes but ended up
enjoying it and excelling (if his
slew of student art awards is
any indication).
Besides the art requirement,
there is also the simple
fact that Rivers organizes sports
practices, music rehearsals, and
other events without significant
scheduling conflicts. “You can do three
seasons of sports and still play in the school
bands year-round,” says athletics director
Jim McNally, “which is hard to come by at
a lot of high schools.” Henry Eisenhart ’08,
for instance, was on the soccer, basketball,
and baseball teams at Rivers while also
playing trombone in the jazz band.
And while it would be difficult to discern
between causality and correlation, many
members of the Rivers community cite special
programs and workshops
that they believe help inform
students’ perspectives as early
as middle school—including the
mandatory 7th-grade media
literacy class and the annual
three-day leadership program,
which Head of Middle School
Susan McGee says “fosters a
sense of exploration and risktaking
that permeates into the
classroom and becomes completely integrated
into the Rivers environment.”
More influential than any individual
classes or activities, however, is the open,
inclusive culture that Rivers tries to promote.
At another school, a 18-year-old soccer
star like Rugg might be ostracized by
his sports team if he professed a love for
fine art. At Rivers, though—a school that
holds weekly meetings that feature announcements
of arts and sports awards
alike—interests of all kinds are encouraged
by students, faculty, and staff. “One week
six different people came to the art room
asking if they could see Charlie’s latest portrait,”
says art teacher Catelin Mathers-
Suter. “At other places it might not be cool
to excel in the arts, but here it’s something
students strive for and celebrate.”
Such a culture also in some small part
diverges from the typical high school experience
filled with jocks, nerds, theater
geeks, etc. While students certainly don’t
pretend that Rivers is completely immune
from such clique distinctions, the school’s
status as a small private institution—with
intimate classes, special academic programs
and unique curricular requirements—helps
encourage exploration, self-discovery and
a community conducive to Renaissance
students. “There definitely are cliques here,”
Rugg says, “but you wouldn’t be
judged harshly if you stepped
out of your group.”
Students’ freedom to explore
numerous paths is further
re-affirmed by their teachers’
mirroring multiplicity of interests.
From science department
chair Stewart Pierson, a former
semi-professional soccer player
who also dabbles in music and
12 • Riparian • Spring 2009