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MID-ATLANTIC EPISCOPAL SCHOOL ASSOCIATION
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Greetings!
By now many of you have completed your academic year, have already or will soon bid farewell to graduating students and will host concluding faculty meetings. While summer is a time for recharging, it is also a time to take stock of what was done well and what can be done in a new way. You engage in this discipline in your schools and we do this at MAESA also in the form of a Board of Governors retreat each June. Let us know how we can best serve you in your school by sending your thoughts to
maesaschools@gmail.com.
In July, MAESA will email and mail invitations to renew your membership for the 2018-2019 school year. Please be on the look out for those letters and renew your membership before September. Your support through membership dues is appreciated and essential to our programming, thank you.
There is much to be thankful for as we hear from our schools.
In this month's feature
"Why I Teach in an Episcopal School
" we hear from Linda Morgan Stowe, Chair of Fine Arts and Organist/Choir Director at
Saint James School, Hagerstown MD
as she reflects on being a student then teacher in the Episcopal tradition.
Then learn about renovation and building plans at
Christ Episcopal School, Rockville MD
in
"Spread the Word".
We'd love to feature one of your faculty members or a school activity in MAESA Matters.
Contact us
to be included.
Up Next:
New MAESA Event!
MAESA is pleased to announce the addition an
Episcopal Schools Day Service in Richmond, Va.
on Wednesday, October 17, 2018 for our central Virginia schools. We are very grateful to All Saints Episcopal Church for hosting our service. Please
contact us
to make plans to attend.
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2018-2019 MAESA Event Dates
Mark Your School Calendar
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September 21, 2018 MAESA Member's Meeting
at
St. Andrew's Episcopal School.
Our keynote speaker will be
Rodney Glasgow,
Head of Middle School and Chief Diversity Officer at St. Andrew's Episcopal School, Potomac, MD. Join us to hear about creating meaningful diversity and inclusion programs in your school.
Richmond Episcopal Schools Day Service October 17, 2018
at
All Saints Episcopal Church
in Richmond and hosted in partnership with St. Catherine's School.
MAESA Early Childhood Conference October 26, 2018
at
St. Stephen's & St. Agnes School
lower school campus in Alexandria, VA. MAESA's 2018 conference features teacher-to-teacher workshops for our early childhood educators. MAESA schools have a wealth of talent among the faculty. Please consider asking your faculty members to propose a workshop for the conference.
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"Why I Teach in an Episcopal School"
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Linda Morgan Stowe
Chair of Fine Arts and Organist/Choir Director
Saint James School, Hagerstown MD
My professional life is framed by two occasions when I have been ‘transported’ to Episcopal schools which have proven to be life-changing for me. The first came when a last-minute decision was made to send me to Chatham Hall in Virginia. I had been festering in mediocre schools in Florida before there were other options. We packed the car at the end of my first week in tenth grade and drove to Virginia. I had my interview with the rector, Rev. William Yardley, and went off to classes that same day with no sense of where I had landed. I only knew that I felt transported into an extraordinary community, and ultimately, found my vocational calling. I found it a place where students of diverse backgrounds were open to exploration and learning, where I was surrounded by encouraging teachers, and the beautiful St. Mary’s Chapel. I was a budding musician, and there was not only a wonderful organ at my disposal, but an exacting teacher and choir director. I discovered the Book of Common Prayer and the practice of daily evening prayer in addition to Sunday mornings, and subsequently was confirmed in the Episcopal Church while in college.
The second call came with the opening of an opportunity to teach at St. James School in Hagerstown, Maryland, where the Rev. Dr. Stuart Dunnan has been headmaster for 26 years. The school has just celebrated the 175
th
anniversary of its founding, and there has a been a good deal of digging into history. Reflection on the goals and tenets of its founders reveals that their ideals for a Church School remain at the core of Saint James today. This has also been a year of change as we celebrated the retirement of three faculty members with over 100 years of service to the school and welcomed a number of new ones. The question, then, expressed as fear by our many of our students was: will Saint James no longer be the place I knew and loved?
However, the school remains rooted in its daily patterns of community worship and seated meals. Aside from classes and athletics, it is this coming together to sing and pray and eat which shapes us individually and collectively. Our relationships are strengthened through confession, forgiveness, reconciliation, and grace because we know we are loved by God and by each other. This faithfulness to its founding principles sustains it today, while allowing it to change and grow.
Teaching in an Episcopal school both frees me and charges me to love each child as God loves them, to show it to those who do not yet recognize it, and marvel in the beauty we assume is within each person. Because students have been welcomed, they have the power to welcome others. They are more willing to discover, to be transformed, to be vulnerable, and learn to be honest, grateful, generous, brave, and kind. At the end of the year, as we celebrate their many achievements, my faculty colleagues and I trust that they will continue to grow in faith, confident in God’s love for them, responsive to his grace, and willing to do his will as leaders for good.
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"Spread The Word"...news from our schools
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Caroline Chapin, Head of School
Christ Episcopal School, Rockville, MD
Excitement is Building at Christ Episcopal School as Plans Unfold for a New Building and the Remodeling of Classrooms in the Historic Church Building.
Since 1966, Christ Episcopal Church and School, in Rockville, Maryland, have played an integral role in educating children and preparing them for leading productive, faithful lives within their families, schools, churches, and communities.
As a parish day school, Christ Episcopal School is strengthened by its connection to Christ Church, and the two communities become one, offering a unique experience for their intricately joined communities. Christ Church provides Christ Episcopal School with a spiritual foundation for its community of diverse religious backgrounds, and the School provides the Church with a vitality and energy that can only come from the daily presence of children. Together, Christ Episcopal Church and School have nurtured children to become kind, confident, well-rounded individuals prepared to contribute to their community and thrive personally, spiritually and academically for fifty-one years.
With these years of service to Rockville and the surrounding community, however, has come the usual wear and tear on its classroom space. The school’s instructional space within the church building is in need of a facelift. And, in order to insure the Church’s and the School’s continued longevity and financial sustainability, the decision has been made to consolidate its current real estate by divesting of an older building and building a new, smaller building that better suits its needs. At a total of 12,000 square feet, the new building will occupy an empty lot already owned by the Church and will provide the School with a singular presence on S. Washington Street in the historic district in Rockville. Administrative offices, lower school classrooms, library, art studio, and a much-needed practice gymnasium will be housed in this beautifully designed space.
Things are moving along and excitement is building as the final plans have been released. In addition, the remodeling of one of the Church’s and School’s most often used rooms, The Murdock Room, will begin this summer!
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Let us hear from you!
Katherine F. Murphy
MAESA Executive Director
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