AndoverMagSpring2015

John HurleyPhillips Academy, Andover High School, and Lawrence SchoolsWith the help of Phillips Academy and Andover High School student volunteers,PALS provides year-round educational and mentoring support for more than 40seventh- and eighth-graders from families in nearby Lawrence, Massachusetts.John HurleySeventh-grader Jailyn works on her spirit animalsculpture with ceramics instructor Elizabeth Wilkin (left)and with PALS Director Greg Wilkin (right).Since its founding in 1988, PALS hasprovided fun summer and academic-yearlearning experiences for well over 1,000Lawrence, Mass., middle school students.One of the program’s most satisfyingaspects is that the learning goes both waysand in circles. High school and college-ageteacher-mentors learn skills to “reachand teach” the lively seventh- and eighth-​graders—who themselves often returnto PALS a few years later as particularlyeffective teacher-mentors.Language arts, math, science, music,sports, and chess have been essentialprogram components for many years,but the addition last summer of a distinctvisual arts component—ceramics—wassomething new, wonderfully hands-on,and instantly popular.Art instructor Elizabeth Wilkin invitedPALS seventh-graders to make spiritanimals from earthenware clay, with theoption of turning their animals into boxes.Creations included a duck with ducklingson its back, a turtle, a mermaid, a dragon,and an eagle with a secret box. Studentscolored with underglaze and oxides, andWilkin applied the final clear glaze. Theeighth-graders, meanwhile, made lanterns;the only real instruction, says Wilkin, wasto “put into them something that gavethem joy and what they hoped for.” Thoselanterns were lined up and lit during thePALS closing celebration.Wilkin, wife of PALS Director GregoryWilkin, will be back this summer andalready is planning at least one change:She hopes to have the eighth-graders maketheir lanterns from porcelain, which,though fragile, is a logical choice becauseit is translucent. She’d also like to make theprojects more integrative with subjects thestudents are studying, so while the olderkids might write poetry based on theirhopes and joys, tying in to work they’redoing in English, the seventh-graders’ spiritanimals could reflect their biology studies,perhaps including something that inspiresthem in science.“It’s always fun to see what they come upwith because it’s an expression of somethinginside them,” says Wilkin. “It adds totheir being when they’ve been able to ‘say’something and have everybody see it.”The PALS program, which has workedwith students from the UP AcademyLeonard and Parthum middle schoolsfor many years, recently added a thirdLawrence school, UP Academy Oliver.A total of 21 rising seventh-graders and21 rising eighth-graders—all highly recommendedby their teachers—will cometo campus by bus each day for five weeksthis summer, some for the first time andothers for the beginning of their secondyear. Elizabeth Wilkin hopes that amongthese smart, motivated, and enthusiasticLawrence youth also will be some of thecity’s most creative.•1961Time magazine proclaims: “By snubbing Social Registerdullards and by combing the country for bright recruits of allraces, religions, and incomes, [Andover is] fast becoming moredemocratic than homogeneous suburban public schools.”•1963| | | Muthoni Githungo from KenyaPA hosts a consortium of independentgraduates from Abbot, thanks in partto a $2,000 scholarship raised on herbehalf by her classmates.•1963schools to find ways to recruit minoritystudents for admission. From thisconvention, A Better Chance (ABC) is born.Andover | Spring 201533