WINTER 2008-2009 Flintridge Preparatory School The best way to predict the future is to invent it. —Alan Kay INSIDE page 3 Profiles in Excellence page 11 New Faculty Political Strategists Shed Light page 17 Alumni Profile: Mark Gangi ’84 page 18 Alumni News Mark your calendars for Saturday, March 21, 2009 for the upcoming Flintridge Preparatory School Benefit — Rebel with a Cause. The festivities will be held at Universal Studios Hollywood’s Globe Theatre at 6:30 pm, and will feature a fun atmosphere, catering by Wolfgang Puck, music, an amazing auction and entertainment. The funds raised this year will help support our athletic programs for grades 7 through 12. These funds will be used to improve the field and other athletic facilities at Prep, and to pur- chase equipment for the athletic teams and programs. Invitations will be going out in February to current families. If you are an alum or a parent of an alum, and are interested in receiving an invitation, please contact Connie Campbell at [email protected]. We would love for you all to join us! Go ReBelS! www.prepbenefit.org CALENDAR 1 JANUARY MARCH Wednesday, January 14 Tuesday, March 10 Dance Concert, Norris Reception for students admitted to grades 7 & 8 Monday, January 19 School holiday: Thursday, March 12 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Reception for students ’11 admitted to grades 9-12 S Wednesday, January 21 SIM Early dismissal: Thursday, March12 – Sunday March 15 LENEA end of second quarter BY Spring Musical, Norris Thursday, January 22 – Wednesday, January 28 Monday, March 16 CONTENTS Semester final exams No classes: faculty in-service 2 From the Headmaster Thursday, January 29 – Tuesday, March 17 Friday, January 30 New student contracts due 3 Feature Story No classes: semester break PROFILES IN EXCELLENCE Thursday, March 19 – As Prep looks ahead and begins the strategic planning Friday, March 20 process for its next phase of growth, we are guided by the FEBRUARY Prep Science Fair principles of excellence, community, and sustainability. Monday, February 2 The first of a three part series, this feature profiles current Classes resume Saturday, March 21 examples of excellence at Prep. Parents Association Benefit Tuesday, February 10 Rebel With a Cause Financial aid application 8 Take Note form due Thursday, March 26 – Students are honored at Fall Awards Ceremony for their Friday, March 27 academic accomplishments. Friday, February 13 Senior Horizons 7th Grade Dance, Gym 9 On Campus Friday, March 27 Meet the new members of the Board of Trustees; the Monday, February 16 End of third quarter Crawford Family Gymnasium gets a make-over; Leo Club School holiday: raises awareness and funds for local program; what teachers Presidents’ Day Monday, March 30 are up to during the summer; political strategists discuss School closed: profession and ideas with students; Prep’s new faculty. Friday, February 27 spring break begins Re-enrollment contracts due 12 Spotlight APRIL The fall play, Servant of Two Masters; Junior Parent Dinner Monday, April 6 (JPD); the Winter Music Concert. Classes resume: fourth quarter begins 13 Replay Sports reports of fall’s Rebel teams. 17 Alumni Profile Architect Mark Gangi ’85: Design Excellence for a Sustainable Future. 18 Alumni News Including Calendar of Alumni Events. Front Cover: photo by students in advanced photography it’s easy: Donate online (see backstory on page 29). www.SupportPrep.FlintridgePrep.org Back Cover: (l–r) Illustrated literary quotes by Jordan Manker ’11 and Sidney Golombeck ’11 from Mr. Bradley’s Digital Prep now accepts American Express and Discover, Design class. as well as MasterCard and Visa. From the Headmaster OUR BRAVE NEW WORLD As he was completing law school in the early nineties, Barack Obama began to sketch out the book that would become Dreams From My Father, his memoir in- spired by William Faulkner’s reminder that the past is never dead or buried… it isn’t even the past. More than a decade later, Obama wrote a book called Audacity of Hope. The integration of past into future and the change of focus from remembering to anticipating describes this moment at Flintridge Prep. Last year was rich in recall, as we celebrated our 75th Anniversary, and this fall we turn intently to the 21st century and beyond to envision a school for our grandchildren and their children. Our self-study for our 2010 accreditation visit has combined with our strategic planning exercise to produce a series of questions, as we imagine the intellectual, interpersonal and internal lives of our students, and the Flintridge community that extends beyond our immediate gates. What does preparation for this century look like? How do we preserve our liberal arts tradition, and expand it to accommodate the new brain research, the increas- ing importance of creativity and risk-taking, the necessity of global awareness and the opportunities and challenges of a digital world? How should we attend even further to the emotional and ethical needs of our students? In what new ways can we promote leadership and mentorship? And how deeply can we develop further our sense of community on campus, and beyond through the alumni and their parents, greater Los Angeles, and the educational world across the nation? Ultimately, how do we act to perpetuate the Flintridge Preparatory School experi- ence for the children of the 22nd century? Last night, as I entered Norris Auditorium for our Holiday Concert, I was feel- ing tired and a little daunted by the scope and scale of these questions. I thought briefly of ducking out the back door, getting to bed early, and catching the ab- breviated concert in Friday’s assembly. As I listened to the music, however, from the Flintridge Singers through the Jazz Ensemble, through the orchestra, I found myself moved and exhilarated by the quality and sincerity of the performances. During a break, Tom Fry pointed to the stage and remarked, “Several of those kids were in a soccer game in the mud this afternoon, and will have a test tomorrow morning. They’re amazing.” By the finale, with notes of Vivaldi’s “Gloria,” com- bining singers and instrumentalists, going to bed was the furthest thing from my mind. I felt limitlessly hopeful — and audacious. Peter Bachmann, Headmaster 3 profiles by Anne Wullschlager BY LENEA SIMS ’11 in excellence LAST YEAR, while celebrating the 75th anniversary of Flintridge Prep, we looked back at the history and evolu- tion of the school. From its beginning in 1933, Flintridge has been on a path of re-invention and progress. Having acknowledged and celebrated the school’s history, we now turn our sights toward the next phase of Prep’s growth. We Excellence can be obtained if you are at a point where existing goals have been achieved and care more than others think is wise; new one’s must be generated and pursued. A new strategic plan will be developed and ideas will find form. It is a year risk more than others think is safe; of reflection and imagination, as we take inventory of where dream more than others think is practical; we are and consider where we are to go. Three principles have been expressly mentioned as guides to both our review and expect more than others think and trajectory: excellence, community, and sustainability. is possible. — anonymous This first PrepTalk feature will identify areas in which Prep currently achieves excellence, profiling specific teachers and programs, which are definitively outstanding in achieve- ment and vision. The following two PrepTalks will consider the other two principles of community and sustainability. Our alumni profile in this issue begins the conversation on sustainability. 4 ways of thinking, ways of seeing Tim Bradley As a culture, we have long considered the visual arts department requires students to “refreshingly fearless and novel in their left-brain to be the superior half with its solve problems. But unlike the sequential approach to problems.” Embracing that voracious organizing, analyzing, and cal- thought process students use to solve an fearlessness and “learning to trust a culating. Heavy left-brained activity is what algebraic equation, the way to solve the thought process that operates below the education and industry have valued and questions asked by Bradley requires a very level of consciousness, and recognizing tested. It is the foundation of the informa- different cognitive approach. when to apply it” is the primary goal of tion age that has rocketed us to our present For example, students were recently the Prep arts experience. condition. But there is new evidence that asked to visually represent how they have Collaborating with Mrs. Cooper’s 8th society is and will be increasingly desirous saved the world. Mr. Bradley describes it as grade English class, 8th graders get their of right-brained thinking as we start to an impossible assignment. “They cannot first taste of Mr. Bradley’s visual problem question and reconsider our understand- analyze their way out of it,” he says with a solving with an assignment based on ing of progress, as well as outsource the smile. In this way it is really a process of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and its knowledge-work abroad that was once letting go of how one has been told to do empathetic theme of putting yourself in being done at home. (Read further on this something, and instead give over to the someone else’s shoes. Students must visu- topic in A Whole New Mind, by Daniel H. likely unorganized, playful zone of free ally represent, through a series of photos, Pink). association. The fact that our minds are still how a character in their outside reading Preparing our students for a culture working quite actively and creatively with- book would perceive an everyday object of and economy that increasingly values and out all the linear left-brain interference is the student’s choosing.