June
2001
We caught up with three alums of the class of 1995, who
completed 5-week senior projects at Miquon during their senior year at
Friends Central. They are Josh Buono, Claire Laver, and David Sokoloff.
The senior project is intended to be an in-depth piece of work of the student’s
choosing, generally off campus, and to provide focus for the end of the
senior year.
Articulate and soft-spoken the three alums took some time to describe for us the perspective they each have on their past here, their senior project, and how their experiences at Miquon prepared them for high school and beyond. Here is what they told us:
Josh Buono will go to Cook College at Rutgers University this fall, where he’ll study marine science. His project, in which he enlisted Claire and David as well, was to paint a mural in the stairwell in the Moore Building. He was motivated in part by the wish to “give something back” and in part by the memory of how he saw Miquon when he was here as a child, “a sort of Fantasy Island” full of color and variety. So, what else? Together with Claire and David, he painted a Miquon map on the wall of the landing, an aerial view of the grounds with all the major landmarks, with the lyrics of the school anthem “Miquon in Our Hearts” along the bottom. Although he’ll be pursuing his interest in marine studies in college, he deeply values the experience of art at Miquon, of learning about color, about clay, about different media, and all the things he could choose to express. He felt that Anne Brady took the children’s artwork seriously and encouraged experimentation. And then of course, he remembers that they had the time to be creative. “We learned to be self-reliant, we had to. We could choose what we wanted to do, but then we had the responsibility to get it done ourselves”. He added “the kids here want to do well. They want to work. The teachers create that kind of excitement.”
Claire Laver, who will be starting at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall, divided her senior project at Miquon three ways. First she spent time with Beth and Bob in the nursery, going with them to visit elderly residents at the Masonic Home and helping out in the classroom. At the same time she developed a project using black and white photography combined with interviews and quotes from the children. She also worked the sketches and painting for the mural project with Josh. In her mind, Miquon was special as a place where children are encouraged and given time to learn from each other. She thinks that Miquon alums end up doing well in other settings because they have learned how to ask themselves what they want to do, learning to choose among a variety of environments and activities, rather than just going along with a schedule or a crowd. She felt little or no peer pressure because “there were always other kids interested in something else—we respected each other’s freedom to decide what to get interested in.”
David Sokoloff is headed for the University of Rochester where he’ll explore his interests in philosophy, education, and sociology. His project combined all three of these interests, as a study of children’s interactions in an educational environment, especially the differences between their social behaviors inside the classroom and outside. He focused on Joan and Jeri’s 5th and 6th grade group. Inside observation went splendidly and he had ample opportunity to watch what happened without intruding. Almost immediately, however, he ran into problems trying to observe the children outside the classroom: they go everywhere. One of the conclusions he drew from his study and from his work with Claire and Josh on the mural was that Miquon was miraculously unchanged. “We all thought it would fall apart without us” he confessed. “We saw changes coming and heard about plans to build [the Moore building].” With his interest in sociology he was also aware of the effect that demographic and social changes outside could have on the school. Nevertheless, he finds the basic goals and philosophy remarkably consistent: “the essence is the same, it’s just the details that have changed.” One of those consistent principles, he finds, it that “kids live up expectations” and learn very early to return the respect and mirror the principles that their teachers and parents model for them. He feels that as a small school, Miquon offers greater opportunity for children to develop as individuals, so that by 4th, 5th, and 6th grade they are independent thinkers, using their time and resources to best personal advantage.
All three agreed that the process of education at Miquon
reaches its fullest expression in sixth grade, when the independence and
leadership that have been growing inside come out and are recognized by
the whole school. After all, the best education is the one that prepares
you to go on to something more.