News & Notes from the Junior School - 4.29.16

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Mrs. Hartnett writes,

Geese…

One of the many wonderful things about being a teacher is that I am always learning something. Sometimes what I learn is an important life lesson, sometimes it is a new fact, an interesting bit of information, or a new way to look at something or someone. Sometimes what I learn is brand new to me, and sometimes, it is a “refresher” on something that I learned before but perhaps forgot. This year, I did learn some new things, some new things about…..geese. Geese and people.

Here is what I learned:

Fact #1: As each goose flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the birds that follow. By flying in a V formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone. The lesson learned? People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

Fact #2: When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it. The lesson learned? We need to stay in formation with those headed where we want to go. We need to be willing to accept their help and to give our help to others.

Fact #3: When the lead goose tires, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to the point position. The lesson learned? It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership. As with geese, people are interdependent on each other’s skills, capabilities and unique arrangements of gifts, talents, or resources.

Fact #4: The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed. The lesson learned? We need to make sure that our honking is encouraging. In groups where there is encouragement, the production is much greater. The power of encouragement and of enthusiasm is the quality of honking that we seek.

Fact #5: When a goose gets sick, wounded, or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again. Then, they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock. The lesson learned? We definitely need each other!

THE LAST NEWS AND NOTES FOR THE YEAR

On Friday, May 13, I will write the final edition of this year’s News and Notes from the Junior School. Although the Spring exam schedule is included in this newsletter, this final edition will contain, among other items, detailed end-of-year exam information, as well as locker clean-out and claiming lost and found items. I hope that you have enjoyed reading our postings and that you have found them to be helpful and informative. New ideas are always accepted, so if you have a thought for the improvement of N 'n N, please do let me know!

AIM HIGH SUPPLY DRIVE

Aim High St. Louis is an academic and personal enrichment program for motivated middle school students. Saint Louis Priory School began hosting the program in 1993 and remains committed to the students and mission of Aim High. Your donations will help Aim High provide more than 400 students with a backpack full of school supplies to be used for the 2016-2017 school year. Download a flyer...

DR. FUREY – THURSDAY, MAY 5

Form II parents and boys are reminded to join us on Thursday morning, May 5, from 8:00 am until 8:45 am, for a talk by Priory’s educational psychologist, Dr. Rob Furey. I hope that you can join us for this informational and valuable presentation. No RSVPs necessary.

TIMED TESTING POLICY INFORMATION FOR CURRENT FORM I STUDENTS

For Parents of current Form I students, Class of 2021,

This information is to alert you to policies concerning extra time for testing and for exams next year in Form II and beyond.

In Form I, all students are allowed unlimited time for tests and exams. In Form II, however, the boys follow the timed-testing policies which are in place for the high school students. These policies state that only those boys who have documented results from testing with an educational psychologist can be given extra time for class testing or for exams. The clinical results must clearly indicate that extra time is warranted and must state the length of extra time to which a student is entitled. Once a boy’s test results have been received by the School, he will receive all extra time as indicated in his test results.

Now that your sons are approaching the completion of one full year of Priory and its curriculum, you have a much clearer understanding of academic procedures and whether or not time constraints, or any other testing issues, were problematic. If your answer is yes, I encourage you to contact an educational psychologist who can determine factually how best to proceed. If you need referrals, please contact Dr. Robert Furey, PhD (314-434-3690 x 137, or rfurey@priory.org), who will assist you.

Please be aware that it can take several weeks to schedule an initial appointment with an educational psychologist.

Please feel welcomed to contact me with any questions you may have.

EXAMS EXAMS EXAMS

LOOKING AHEAD

Effort is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true. John Keats  

John Keats (1795 – 1821) was the latest born of the great Romantic poets. Along with Byron and Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the movement, despite publishing his work over only a four-year period. During his short life, his work was not well received by critics, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson and Wilfred Owen was significant. The poetry of Keats was characterized by detailed imagery, most notably in the series of odes which remain among the most popular poems in English literature. Keats’ letters are among the most celebrated by any English poet.

When Keats died at the age of 25, he had been seriously writing poetry for barely six years — from 1814 until the summer of 1820 - and publishing only for four. His first poem, the sonnet, O Solitude, appeared in the Examiner in May 1816 and his collection Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and other poems came in July 1820 before his final voyage to Rome. The compression of this poetic apprenticeship and maturity into so short a time is one remarkable aspect of Keats' work.

It is said that the total sales of Keats' three volumes of poetry amounted to only 200 copies in his lifetime. Yet, about Keats it was written: "When he died at the tragically early age of 25, his admirers praised him for thinking ‘on his pulses’ – for having developed a style which was more heavily loaded with sensualities, more gorgeous in its effects, more voluptuously alive to actualities than any poet who had come before him." His skills were acknowledged by his influential allies such as Shelley, Hunt and to a lesser extent Byron, though Keats did receive some harsh reviews. Thirty years later, the situation had changed. With Milnes's full biography and with Tennyson as his champion, Keats' work slowly entered the established canon of English literature.

In 1882, Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote in the Encyclopedia Britannica that Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale is one of the final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages,” declaring that "each generation has found it one of the most nearly perfect poems in English.” Harvard University literary critics have proclaimed that Ode to a Nightingale "is the most serenely flawless poem in our language.”

Ode to a Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that of times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

Please accept my gratitude for your unfailing support of the boys and of the School.

Diana B. Hartnett
Director of the Junior School
Saint Louis Priory School