Ada Li ‘18 shares her success with dorm parent and fifth-grade teacher Natasha Busick as Jennifer Dai ’16 looks on.
Other ways in which dorm students have contributed to student life in the Lower School include helping in classrooms, serving as study buddies after school, and tutoring in math sessions and Olympiads. Last year, Phromnachanok Ketphan ’15, a Tai Scholar who now attends Te Citadel, Te Military College of South Carolina, shimmied and paced in his traditional Tai military uniform as he taught Busick’s students dance moves and marches in preparation for their Veterans Day parade.
For most of the dorm students, English is not their primary language. Kylie Wong ’18, from Hong Kong, shared her language skills last year by being a Mandarin mentor to a Middle School student. Tey met twice a week, prefaced with regular communication with the mentee’s Mandarin teacher, Sara Fromme. Both students benefitted from the pairing: the mentee received the language support he needed, and Wong developed more patience as she strove to find innovative ways to help him learn new words. “Te experience helped me with my patience because I’m not a very patient person. It was really nice to train my patience and teach him another way to approach this letter, and this is another way you can remember how to read this,” said Wong. Steve Brennan, Middle School academic coordinator, says of
3
the mentor-mentee relationship: “It is more meaningful than working with an adult. Tere is a good connection because the Middle School student sees the older student as blazing a path to success in Upper School. And the older student, who was not long ago a Middle Schooler, is given a chance to lead and serve.”
In the Upper School, a remarkable seven of the 11 members who comprise the Policy Board are dorm students. Te Policy Board is the Upper School’s elected student government and consists of roles such as representatives for Service, Identity, and Civics. Tose serving on the Policy Board formulate policies and think critically about important issues at the school.
Daniel Ewnetu ’17 is the first dorm student in OES’s history to become student body president. A senior from Seattle, Washington, Ewnetu is a Rainier Scholar3
as well
as the 2015 recipient of the Patty Jeanne Semura Award.4 Tis is also Ewnetu’s fourth year on the Policy Board. When asked what motivated him to run for student council, he said, “When it came time to decide whether to run for president, I thought about the projects I was working on and how they would have a bigger impact if I was student body president.” Ewnetu, along with his colleagues Simon Hatcher ’19 and Jack Morningstar
The Rainier Scholars program is an 11-year academic program in the Seattle area for students of color. Through rigorous academics and leadership development, the program provides personalized support for scholars and families from sixth grade through college graduation. It is “committed to eliminating barriers to educational
opportunities and growing new generations of diverse college graduates, career professionals, and community leaders.” 4
The Patty Jeanne Semura Award was established in 2003 by Jack and Pat Semura to honor their daughter, Patty Jeanne, class of 1999, who died in 2001. The award, determined by vote of faculty, recognizes a sophomore at Oregon Episcopal School who possesses the vision, creativity, and potential to make a difference in the world, and who is an active builder of community. Of the 14 recipients, six have been dorm students.
18 Oregon Episcopal School
www.oes.edu
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
