The Friends School of Atlanta

Bringing forward more than 329 years of excellence in Quaker Education

Alumni Spotlight featuring Morgan Phillips-Spotts

Stories are at the heart of FSA, moments that we feel seen, places we’ve been, the people we’ve loved and who have influenced us. This month’s Alumni Spotlight is about just that, meet Morgan Phillips-Spotts, Class of 2001. Morgan, seen here with her brother, shared about her experiences at FSA and how that has shaped her company, Momo’s Book Club. 

Momo’s Book Club is a subscription book club for kids that’s designed to make a child’s home library as diverse as the world. 

How do you think FSA helped you find your voice? As weird as it sounds, silent meetings. I started attending silent meetings when I was 5 and I remember there were a couple that went off the rails (I think there was one where we talked about frogs for a while). There was a lot of joy and laughter in those but the biggest thing is that the teachers didn’t course correct. I kept waiting for an adult to tell us to stop but that didn’t happen. They let us have this moment about frogs. Silent meeting gave me the courage to express my thoughts and my teachers gave me the space to do so.

What is your favorite memory from FSA? Most of first grade. Linda and Diana made that whole year so great. This was the year we found Shelly and she became our class turtle. We had a leprechaun come to visit and the classroom got turned all around and then we got extra recess and then a scavenger hunt to find the treasure left for us. I think this year was part of the reason I really love the storytelling aspect of theater. We were reading “The Witches” and at the beginning the narrator is describing what a witch looks like and then adds “it may even be your teacher reading this to you right now.” and then Linda looked up at us and then went back to reading and we immediately ran down the list she just gave just to confirm. I remember us complaining that we were tired in the afternoons after lunch (no more naps for 1st grade) and they added a quiet time with carpet squares if you wanted to rest or read at a table. It felt great to be listened to. Little things like this made that year really fun for me.

The SPICES (Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, Stewardship) are deeply ingrained into all aspects of teaching, helping kids build empathy, understanding, and allowing them to build what each of these is to themselves and their community. 

How did the SPICES come into play in that mission? I think equality and community have the biggest impact on Momo’s Book club because true equality would be seeing all types of people on your bookshelves, showing kiddos that other people who aren’t exactly  like them can be the heroes of a story too. And that we’re all part of a global community so let’s take the time to walk in someone else’s shoes for a bit.

What is your favorite book in the club/ or a book that had an impact on you as a child? It’s hard to pick a favorite but I think City Green is one of my favorites. It’s about a little girl who brings her block together by creating a community garden in the vacant lot next door. It’s a good read!

Momo’s Book Club

Everyone Deserves to be the Main Character

middle school libraryBy my second or third year of teaching Language Arts at FSA, I’d become pretty familiar with the books in my classroom. I had spent a lot of time organizing them, taking out volumes that were damaged, and generally making sure that the books were available to students not just as classroom books but as usable library books. I’d gotten pretty good at pointing students towards books that they might want to read, helping them to find stories that reflected their interests, or showing them new possible interests.

One student, however, was stumping me. They were an avid reader, and they liked romance stories, but they kept rejecting the books I suggested to them. Finally, the student told me the problem. “I don’t like reading romances,” they said, “because they’re all based on heterosexual people.”

This statement floored me.

I knew that romances and other stories that focused on LGBTQIA+ characters existed. Yet I could not name one book in our current library with that characteristic.

Here in front of me, I had a student who loved books and who loved to read, and I couldn’t successfully share stories with them because they didn’t see themselves in the books on our shelves. Their enjoyment for books was significantly damaged because they were tired of reading books that only represented the heterosexual norm.

This conversation made me wonder about the representation in the books I’d read as a student. Had I ever read a book about LGBTQIA+ characters? I could only name one gay relationship in a book: Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood from the Mortal Instruments series, which I hadn’t read until after high school. Alec and Magnus are two of my favorite characters in the series, but they are side characters. And were they the very first gay couple I’d ever read about? It’s entirely possible that they were, that I had gone through the entirety of high school and not seen gay people represented in a book.

My discovery made me question even more. Had I ever read a book with a main character on the cover who was Latina? Had I ever read a book where the main Latina character had a Latino dad and a white mom? Had I ever read a book where one of the Latina character’s main joys was playing lotería at her grandmother’s on weekends? Had I ever seen any books about Latinx people at all that weren’t about drugs or gangs or struggles?

In short: Had I ever had the chance to see myself in the stories I read?

The answer, I feared, was a resounding “no.”

When I transitioned from being the Language Arts teacher in charge of books to the Middle School librarian, I knew that more than anything, I wanted my library to be a place where students from different places and identities could find something that they loved. But that wasn’t going to be possible if students from different places and identities were not represented in the books we had.

Since my conversation with that student, my goal for our Middle School library has been to incorporate books in which students can see themselves. I sought out books that had Black children doing magic on the covers and Latinx children playing soccer. I looked for graphic novels by Gene Leun Yang, a prominent American-Chinese author, and removed books from our space that had outdated and offensive portrayals of Indigienous Peoples. I added books that feature students who aren’t neurotypical or able bodied, and I made sure that all of our stories about diversity weren’t just stories of violence or struggle.

Having a diverse library doesn’t just help students who are part of a minority group. Diverse literature helps everyone to see that there are so very many people in the world and that one way of thinking isn’t the only way. For too long, the standard of literature has been that of white male authors, and while such books can carry value, there are so many other perspectives available to us. Reading is about opening minds and learning new things, and reading books by the same kinds of people about people who look the same limits not only a student’s potential to learn, but also a student’s potential to love what they’re reading.

Students from every identity deserve to see themselves in the books they’re reading. They deserve to think of themselves as the main characters, worthy of a cover, and not just a side character or comic relief.

Today, in my 7th year at FSA, I have students in my library constantly. They come in every day and find something new to love, and if we don’t have something they can connect with, I make it my job to try and get it for them.

One of our newest, and one of my favorite shelves in our library right now, is our LGBTQIA+ fiction section. It’s small, still growing, but it is unapologetic. I think of that student from my 2nd or 3rd year and the conversation we have every time I see it. 

My biggest hope for our library is that every student will get the chance to feel welcomed, seen, and loved in this space.

 

by Yvonne Rodriguez

If you would like to send a book to the Middle School Library the dream list is here.

A Community That Never Leaves You

Want to know what The Friends School of Atlanta is like? Ask Karen McMichael, known to her friends at FSA as Kaymac. She will be retiring as the school’s administrative assistant at the end of the 2017-2018 school year, but Kaymac’s Friends School journey started years before, when she and her husband decided to send their son, Ian, to FSA in 1998.

“Our son was at Georgia State University’s Child Development Center,” Kaymac recalled. “They recommended the Friends School for him, specifically because he wasn’t any trouble and he was [and still is] very bright. They felt he was going to fall through the cracks in the public schools. We visited FSA first, and to tell you the truth, we didn’t visit any other school.”

After Ian started attending, Kaymac volunteered her time and soon found that the culture fit her like a glove. She felt at home, so much so that when she was brought on staff full-time in 2001, the transition was virtually seamless.

She’s done a bit of everything over the years. She does website updates, performs some registrar work and helps with admissions in ways that coworkers identify as completely responsive, patient and effective in bringing calm to often stressful situations. She has taught word processing, Photoshop, jewelry making, among other subjects; and, as a teacher’s aid in reading, has experienced the joy of witnessing a child’s “aha” moment, the initial spark of understanding, of conquering a small hill, looking back with pride, and looking forward with confidence. “The squiggles on the page, the letters, now mean something to them,” she said. “It’s different with every child, but once you witness it, it’s something you never forget.”

“Kaymac’s smile and gentle nature was refreshing as well as encouraging to the children that she assisted with reading,” recalls long-time first grade teacher Celest Samas. “Her love of books has inspired generations of FSA first graders.”

The entire FSA experience is shaped by a kind of empathy that anyone associated with the school—staff, teachers, students, parents, alumni—knows very well. “Early on, working here and sending my son to school here, I learned about not judging people by my life. Consider what the other person’s life is like.” That is, she doesn’t judge someone based on her own life experiences, but instead tries to truly understand the complete context, and how the whole of a life shapes a person. It’s living the expression “knowing where the person is coming from,” but on a much deeper level.

This philosophy even lends itself to her teaching. Speaking about Kaymac’s jewelry-making middle school exploratory, 6th graders Katy and Paideia said, “Kaymac gives lots of freedom to express yourself, always makes space for laughter and responds right away when you need help.”

Living it comes through listening instead of waiting to talk. It also comes through feeling at home in silence, be it during class, silent meeting or during administrative staff meetings, where silence plays a key role. After someone expresses an opinion, everyone sits for a brief period of silence, allowing time to reflect on what was just said. That builds understanding, reinforces empathy, and buttresses FSA’s unique, enduring community.

“I’ve loved this place since the first day my son started school here, and I’ve never stopped learning. It’s such an amazing community.”

Those who have worked side by side with Kaymac in the administration, whether for decades or just a few years, are not sure how to move forward without her capable, reassuring presence. “It would be impossible to enumerate all of the ways that our beloved Kaymac has served the school community,” according to Waman French, Head of School. “Speaking personally, Kaymac has provided the ultimate support during some very difficult times as well as joyous ones.”

Likewise, Nancy Bent, Director of Advancement, shared, “Kaymac is so utterly reliable, so meticulous with detail, so unflagging in her willingness to serve however she is needed. I will dearly miss partnering with her on the work of the school.”

Kaymac may be retiring this year, but she—like all the students, staff, teachers, and alums who have passed through The Friends School’s doors—will never stop being part of the FSA community.

 

By Tim Heston

Tim Heston has written for business magazines since 1996. He’s won some awards here and there, but his greatest achievement is being the proud parent of an FSA fifth grader.

The Then and the Now: A Parent Reflection

I sat in the pews with the other parents and watched as my teenager stepped forward at the 8th Grade Mentor Ceremony during a recent Silent Meeting. As she lit a candle in honor of her final weeks of her Friends School education, a wave of realization crashed over me. It was as if I had had my back turned to the surf, even when I knew I had been staring at it intently all along.

How could she have jettisoned through nine years in the blink of an eye? It was just a split-second ago when she first experienced The Friends School of Atlanta during a visit day. At the ripe old age of 4, she was wearing the tiny clothes I picked out for her that morning, with her hair—still too short and thin to form a single ponytail—pulled back in six different piglet tails sprouting out at all angles of her head like a little strawberry blonde blowfish. When I picked her up after the visit, she couldn’t WAIT to go back. WHEN COULD SHE GO BACK?!?! DID SHE REALLY HAVE TO WAIT ALLLLL SUMMMMMMERRRRR???

The earliest years—with her teeny-tiny classmates holding hands with their big eighth-grade buddies and sitting in laps during Silent Meeting, the line of booster seats waiting like little soldiers near the front door on field trip days, losing teeth in lunch foods, rest periods and head lice and playdates—careened into the now—with lanky, sullen, grown-up-not-grown-up classmates now holding hands with their little Pre-K buddies and offering them laps during Silent Meeting, the line of trail hikers proceeding at individuated paces up the 5-mile trail on the ultimate overnight class field trip, losing patience with adults and all gangly limbs akimbo, school exploratories and acne and group texts.

I have watched intently as my baby blowfish has swum through a sea of SPICES and exploded into becoming a protest-marching, creative-writing, book-toting, animal-rescuing, underserved-representing, K-pop-extolling, still-loves-her-mother-acting young woman, and I am so very grateful to FSA for shepherding us both at all points between the then and the now, for always holding us in a warm Friends’ embrace, and for being the village that it takes to raise a child.

 

By Sarah Rosenberg

All Sides of the Picture

photo drivingNancy Bent knows about seeing the world with open eyes. Her father moved the family down south in the 1950s to work as a UPI photographer. He saw it all—the race riots, the protests, the fear, and the strong yet peaceful tenacity of those who stand up for their beliefs.

He spent years as a photojournalist and a television producer in Atlanta, and his experience taught Nancy to see the world in a specific way. You have one picture of reality with two (or more) sides. You see it all, unfiltered, and, with knowledge and empathy, move forward with conviction to do what’s right.

That conviction eventually brought her to The Friends School of Atlanta, first as a mother, then as a board member, and, starting seven years ago, as a school administrator. She’s now FSA’s Director of Advancement and Admissions.  Serving all three roles has given her unique perspective.

It can be summed up in an experience Nancy had as an FSA parent, looking at a child’s drawing posted among many others in the school hallway. The school project had to do with human and civil rights, and the stick-figure sketch was of a little girl holding hands with two moms. At first Nancy thought that her daughter—who, after all, has two moms— had drawn it. This was the mid-1990s, and having two moms or two dads wasn’t viewed quite like it is today.

But her daughter hadn’t drawn it. It was a girl who the year before had teased her, saying, “You can’t have two moms. That’s illegal.”

Teachers and administrators intervened and got the children and parents together. Turns out the girl’s parents didn’t believe what their daughter had said. “Bottom line, the girl was just being mean,” Nancy recalled. “She was 8; it can be tough age. I got it. I wasn’t upset with anybody, and it was all handled respectfully.”

The next year, when the teacher asked children to draw something that showed a human or civil right, that same girl thought of her classmate and friend. Next to the drawing she wrote, “Everyone has the right to have a family.”

The girl learned all sides of the picture, moved forward with conviction, followed her heart, and did what she thought was right.

That, in a nutshell, is a Friends School of Atlanta education.

By Tim Heston

Tim Heston has written for business magazines since 1996. He’s won some awards here and there, but his greatest achievement is being the proud parent of an FSA fourth grader.