Dear Friends,

Welcome to our new school year. The classrooms are humming with purpose and meaning right off the bat. The School in Rose Valley is very much based on relationships, trust and community. Our students take their roles as leaders, mentors and community members very seriously. Their kindness, compassion, and inclusion are proofs of the efficacy of our social skills program. These are life long skills that will help them lead deeper, more satisfying lives. Our staff has worked tirelessly this summer. We have reflected on best practices, asked hard questions, and challenged old assumptions to develop new initiatives. In doing so we considered our core values, our students’ needs, our program development, current educational research, our physical environment and allocation of resources. The results of these efforts are some grand and exciting changes.
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Sustainability Spotlight
Announcing Our New Look!

For us, sustainability goes beyond just environmental sustainability. The National Association of Independent Schools, of which we are a member, has challenged all schools to make decisions and think in terms of financial, global, programmatic, demographic and environmental sustainability. As such, SRV strives to be more efficient and less costly, more aware of opportunities for local, national, and global partnerships, and more focused on the skills and values that the children will need as they enter a world that will expect them to be able to work with many different kinds of people from many different kinds of places. We must work to be more inclusive, more easily understood, and less unapproachable financially and socially. And of course, as we have for over 75 years, we need to continue to incorporate environmental sustainability into our teaching and practice, becoming more green and less wasteful.

The new design of our logo, web site, and communications materials is something we have done intentionally to help us meet many of the above goals. By more clearly articulating what The School in Rose Valley is and by being better understood by the prospective parents of today who are living in challenging times in terms of the state of education in our country, we hope to attract more families looking for a progressive model of educating young children. This will increase our enrollment to healthy levels, ensure our financial health, and make it possible for us to be a thriving educational institution for children far into the future.
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Educational Experiences
The Teachers Had a Busy Summer!

Teachers were busy this summer. In addition to the Preschool and Program Teams’ collaborative work on the new Preschool Curriculum and Dawn (our new Science teacher) and the Program Team’s work on the new Science Curriculum, many teachers attended workshops, seminars or classes. In some cases, they taught as well. For example, both Molly (preschool) and Annie (Kindergarten and Art) taught at the Wallingford Community Art Center. They also took an African Dance Workshop and Molly took a Tie Dye Workshop. Kate (our librarian) took two graduate level classes at Drexel University: Information Resources for Young Adults, and Education – Best Practices. Jodie (Music) took voice lessons (talk about life long learning!), and Sara (1st and 2nd grade teacher) taught music to middle school students in the Chester Children’s Chorus Summer Learning Program (CCCSLP). Sara also served as the reading resource person for the CCCSLP. In addition, she continued her research on self-efficacy and learning with Swarthmore College professor, Anne Renninger. Robin (our Service Learning and Partnership Coordinator) served as a Contributing Editor to the Schools Journal, a publication with national circulation that documents the subjective experience of teaching. Dawn attended various workshops at the Governor’s Institute for Environment & Ecology such as Agriculture and Society, PA Songbirds, Journaling and others. She also attended a PA Amphibians and Reptiles Seminar as well as the L.L. Bean Kayaking Essentials I class! The teachers' enthusiasm for personal and professional growth will no doubt spill over into lively classroom activities this year!
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Who's Who
Spotlight On Our New Faculty
and Board Members

We would like to welcome our new faculty and board members for the 2006-2007 school year.

Dawn K. joins SRV as the new Science and preschool-4th grade sports teacher. She has a BS in Elementary Education from Chestnut Hill College, is currently finishing her Masters in Environmental Education from Arcadia University, and volunteers once a week at the Schuykill Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. Lauren F. joins us again as an assistant teacher in the five day preschool. Lauren has a long history with SRV. She attended summer camp here as a child, became a camp counselor in our preschool camp program years ago, taught in our three day preschool class prior to having her second child, and now has her oldest son, Jacob, enrolled here.

Thank you to Ross S. and Kara Z. for their time, leadership and commitment to SRV as new members of the board. Ross is an in-house counsel for DuPont, where he focuses on resolving major litigation for the Company and counseling clients. Ross is trained as a mediator and professionally interested in alternatives in resolving conflict. He is married to Kim, the lead teacher for the two-day pre-school, and he is the father of two Rose Valley students, Christopher and Jane. Kara has served on the SRV Development Committee for the past year, and is starting her second year as a class parent for her daughter Caroline’s kindergarten class. Kara is currently practicing family law with a boutique firm, Berner & Klaw, in Philadelphia, and dedicates significant time to pro bono work with the Volunteers for the Indigent Program as well as the Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

If you would like to learn more about the teachers, staff or board members at The School in Rose Valley, please visit our website.

Quarterly Glimpse Into A Group
SRV's Summer Camp

It’s been another successful year for SRV’s summer camp! 250 children, ranging in age from 3 to 14, enjoyed eight weeks of art, nature, dance, drama, sports, woodshop, archery, and general activities. The campers made jewelry, sewed their own bag/backpacks, wrote and performed a musical, baked banana bread, made oobleck, played all sorts of outside games, went on creek walks, took swimming lessons, and made their own fairy tales. Some of the campers even made up a band with the more musical counselors. SRV’s camp is broken into 4 programs: the preschool program, 5 & 6's, the general program for children who are 7 to 12, and our counselor-in-training program for young teens coming out of 7th and 8th grade. Headed by SRV Camp Executive Director Mary K., our counselors are teachers (some with Masters), professional counselors, artists, musicians, college students and high school students. The camper/counselor ratio is approximately 4 to 1, with about 20% of the campers as SRV students and the rest from near and wide. As one camper said, "If the world was like SRV camp, it would be a much better place."
For more info on what the groups are up to, click here.

What’s On The Calendar 2006-07

• October 4, Apple Day – Save the Date!
• October 21, High Spirits – Save the Date!
• November 4, Putter Day – All Are Welcome!
• November 6-10, Book Fair
• November 18, Admissions Open House
• November 24, Alumni Games

Update your information for the latest announcements and mailings on all the exciting activities at SRV.

Campus Corner

Ridge, our Facilities Manager, has been hard at work in our Organic Garden & Learning Center this summer. Our bumper crop of peas grew to over 7 1/2 feet tall!! We will have wonderful fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from seed, along with some Bread and Butter pickles to sample. Marigolds 30 inches tall and sunflowers over 10 feet draw bees and butterflies galore. Left over soil from Rawson’s renovation was moved to the garden to make a new bed which gives us another 300 sq. ft. Compost and manure have been added and freshly tilled beds await the children. Gourds were started this summer in anticipation of the children making bird houses out of them in the fall. Stop by to enjoy our harvest any time!

From The Archives

Our transformation of Rawson is complete! We are pleased to open the doors to this newly renovated, kid- and environment-friendly facility which houses our preschool and third and fourth grades (Main Circle). Please stop by campus to see Rawson’s new look – inside and out!

Rawson was built in 1952 with an addition in 1962.

SRV’s Alumni News

Many SRV alumni find their way back on campus.

Right now, there are three alumni on the board. Finance Committee Chair and alum, Sam B. has served on the board off and on for over nine years and two of his children attended SRV. Volunteer Coordinator, Maria R. attended SRV from kindergarten through sixth grade and is now the mother of Jesse (Oldest Group) and Gabriel (Primary Circle) currently at SRV. Development Committee Member, Rob O., in addition to being an alum, is the parent of a recent SRV graduate.

We also have several current parents who are SRV alumni who now have children enrolled at the School. Marcy S., ‘72, travels here daily from Philadelphia to send daughter, Hannah to kindergarten at SRV. Marcy lives in Center City and is a mortgage broker. Persephone (F.) B.’s son, Hugh, attends kindergarten. Persephone graduated from SRV in ‘73 and is now Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at University of Delaware. Go to Amazon to purchase her first book Crimes Against the State, Crimes Against Persons: Detective Fiction in Cuba and Mexico. Willa (B.) S.’s daughter, Laura is in our Oldest Group, and her children Maggie and Harrison attended SRV and now attend the Westtown School. Willa is a member of the SRV class of ’71. Karyn (R.) P.’s daughter, Savannah, attends preschool. Karen graduated in ‘88 and is currently teaching at Friends Select School in Philadelphia. She recently left a position at Pendle Hill, the Quaker Study Center in Wallingford.

For more information about alumni and their whereabouts, go to the Alumni portion of our website. If you are an alum yourself (or know one you could pass this on to), please be sure to update your contact information with us by emailing it to development or by logging onto the Alumni Email Directory on the web site. We want to know how you’re doing, what your up to and if you have news to share. Come back and visit anytime!

Investing in SRV’s Future

Our 2005-2006 Annual Fund was a resounding success! Thanks to the generosity of all of our donors, $136,000 was raised to ensure our students experience a unique path towards a profound destination. Look for ways in the coming months to participate in this year’s Annual Fund campaign through your time, talent and resources.

If you would like to learn more about how you can show your support of SRV’s teachers, students, educational program, Organic Garden and Learning Center, building and campus renovations, and more, please contact our Director of Resource Development, Karla, at 610-566-1088 or visit our website.