Parent Volunteer Newsletter

April 2024

Yoga w/ Julie Haesche

Join us for a delightful morning yoga experience exclusively for the parents of Rumsey Hall School. Explore a variety of yoga practices, including breath work, meditation, & postures - from gentle seated stretches to empowering standing & balancing poses. Come together to unwind, recharge, & experience the blissful benefits of this post-drop-off class. All skill levels are welcome. Mats & props are provided, but feel free to bring your own.

Class is led by Julie Haesche, a certified and award-winning yoga teacher and owner of Washington Wellness.

Class duration: 50 minutes

Location: Rumsey Hall / Allen Finkelson Gallery

Cost: $25 / class

*Minimum of 3 people per class

Pilates w/ Heather

Pilates is for EVERYBODY. Join us for morning Pilates where we will be incorporating the basics of Classical Pilates Mat work with an extended repertoire of contemporary Pilates exercises. Focusing on strength, stability, posture, flexibility, and breath. Bring your own mat and props

will be provided.

Heather Szymanski is a fully certified Pilates Instructor who teaches at Mind Body Connection Pilates Studio and Phys-Ed, both located in New Milford CT.

“Pilates is complete coordination of body, mind and spirit.” – Joseph Pilates

Class Day: Friday mornings 8:15-9:15

Class Duration: 60 minutes

Location: Rumsey Hall/Gymnasium

Cost: $20/class

Upcoming Events

April 12

Rumsey Circle General Meeting

We invite you to join us Friday, April 12 @ 8:10 am for our next Rumsey Circle General Meeting. Craig Ough, Upper School Character and Community Living Department Chair will be joining us to discuss the community service and SEL programs. We will also discuss RCPA spring events and hear from Head of School, Ian Craig.

May 3-8

Spring Book Fair

We are excited to welcome back River Bend Bookshop for our spring Book Fair! Stay tuned for more details and ways to volunteer.

May 10

Teacher/Staff Appreciation Day

We love to take time each year to thank our teachers and staff for all their hard work and dedication. We hope you join us in celebrating them on Friday, May 10. More details to follow.

Rumsey’s 6th Annual Giving Day is coming!

Show your support #ForRumsey and ring the bell by making an Annual Fund gift on Wednesday, April 17 or make your gift early. Help us reach our goal of securing 75 alumni gifts, reaching over 75% school-wide participation, and closing the $200,000 gap on the way to meeting our $945,000 goal.

All gifts, regardless of the amount, make a collective impact and help enhance the experience of every student in our Rumsey Hall family. *

Thank you… and Go Blue Dogs!

* If you’ve already made a donation to the 2023-24 Annual Fund, THANK YOU!

Ring the Bell for Rumsey -Donate Today!

The Women

Kristin Hannah

An intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over- whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

Learn More

The Anxious Generation

Jonathan Haidt

From New York Times bestselling co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, an essential investigation into the collapse in youth mental health—and a scientifically proven path to health and strength

There is no bigger public health story now than the collapse in youth mental health. The numbers are terrifying and dominate our headlines. There has been much debate over how we got here, and what to do next, and bestselling author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is at the white-hot center of that discourse. Haidt has spent his career speaking wisdom and truth into the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the perfect storm contributing to a public health emergency for Gen Z.

For the cohort that hit puberty around 2009, their sense of self developed as the threads of three dramatic technological and social changes smartphones and life with the constant companionship of a screen, front-facing cameras and the bevy of apps that thrived on selfie-culture, and social networks that reduced engagement and affirmation to likes and hearts alone.

Learn More

The Last Animal

Ramona Ausubel

Jane is a serious scientist on the cutting-edge team of a bold project looking to "de-extinct" the woolly mammoth. She's privileged to have been sent to Siberia to hunt for ancient DNA, but there's a catch: Jane's two "tagalong" teen daughters are there with her in the Arctic, and they're bored enough to cause trouble. Brilliant, fiery, sharp-tongued Eve is fifteen and willing to talk back to the male scientists in a way her mother is not. And sweet, thirteen-year-old Vera, who seems to absorb all the emotional burdens of her small family, just wants to be home in Berkeley, baking cakes and watching bad TV.

When Eve and Vera stumble upon a four-thousand-year-old baby mammoth that has been perfectly preserved, their discovery sets off a chain of events that pits Jane against her colleagues, and soon her status at the lab is tenuous at best. So what does a female scientist do when she's a passionate devotee of her field but her gender and life history hold her back? She goes rogue.

Learn More

Parent Articles

Snapchat Uncovered - Teens Discuss Pitfalls of this Popular App

Snapchat, the platform most widely used by teens to communicate with each other, is ever-evolving and constantly adopting new features to make it more enticing. Did you know they now have a whole section like TikTok called Spotlight? Have you heard about Snap Scores and how it can fuel feelings of unpopularity? Did you know that teens are getting fed all sorts of sexual content, including ads for Only Fans? (What is Only Fans? - Wikipedia)

Is Social Media Addiction a Real Thing?

When does the social media spider web become more than just excessive time spent on devices? When is it an addiction? While variations of this question are explored in all 3 Screenagers films, I just released a podcast episode that is all about this question. In it, I speak with Anna Lembke, head of addiction medicine at Stanford and author of Dopamine Nation, as well as a young woman who was formally an aspiring influencer and driven by all the likes and such that come with social media.

Listen to the podcast

Join Us on Facebook!

We invite you to join our private Rumsey Circle Facebook Group to stay connected with fellow parents, get notifications about meetings, upcoming events, and volunteer opportunities!