The Friends School of Atlanta

Bringing forward more than 325 years of excellence in Quaker Education

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.

Pam Upchurch: Building a Community of Learners

Visit The Friends School of Atlanta on Friday mornings, and you’ll witness a memorable sight: a group of schoolchildren sitting in complete silence, contemplating. This isn’t detention; no one misbehaved. This is Silent Meeting. Sitting in the the front of the meeting room, as she has for nearly 25 years, is Pam Upchurch. And next to her sits her class, silent, gazing, drinking in the new experience. Most experiences are new for them—being only four or five years old.

Pam has been with the school from the beginning. As a parent, I recall taking my daughter on a tour, meeting Pam, and sensing something almost immediately: Her calm demeanor connects with those around her, and with young children most of all.

“I think I was born to teach, especially younger people,” she told me earnestly, without a hint of egotism.  “Teaching always energized me.”

It’s hard to imagine that Pam initially wanted to be an accountant. It wasn’t until she landed a substitute teaching job at a preschool near Atlanta that she realized she had a calling. She would almost become giddy when she got the call from the regular teacher. “And after spending a day with the kids, I would just feel so energized–noticing their similarities, their differences. It was just amazing to me.”

During the first six weeks of class at The Friends School, Pam and her colleagues foster what they call a “community of learners.”. They talk to the children. They listen. They get to know one another and build a foundation for the years to follow.

“We don’t just talk to them,” Pam said. “We allow their voices to be heard. And we make them curious about peace and respect in the classroom. When they know the expectation is to be respectful to others, it plays out that they become more in tune to what the needs of others are.”

This complements the school’s longstanding Buddy Program in which eighth graders pair up with the youngest children. “They feel cared for,” she said, “and that instills their desire to care for others.”

Those eighth graders often sit with their buddies during Silent Meeting. Sure, some wiggle and get a little impatient. These are preschoolers, after all. But for the most part, they’re thinking not just about themselves, but about their buddy, their class, and their school. In children so young, it’s really something to see.

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.

School People: Waman French

By Tim Heston

Waman French remembers driving with his uncle on Long Island one Thanksgiving, pointing out schools on the road—which for the Frenchs wasn’t at all unusual. As Waman’s father put it, the Frenchs are “school people.”

School people go back generations in the French family. His grandfather was a Columbia University professor fully engaged in the progressive education movement. A generation before him the Frenchs taught in one-room schoolhouses in the newly-formed state of Kansas.

For school people, teaching is more than a profession; it’s a distinct approach to life. Waman put it this way: “It’s the idea of being part of an optimistic community that sees education as something more than the act of teaching,” Waman said.  “They see a community that aspires to being better, and sees education as the answer to many of those questions we ask in life, both personally and as a society.”

On the road on Long Island, Waman’s uncle pointed out the local sights along with a few of the local schools: a public school here and a prestigious boarding school there, complete with iron-wrought gates and the obligatory ivy climbing the walls.

Then Waman saw another school that didn’t look like any other: tidy, somewhat unadorned, yet not institutional. “That’s a Quaker school. They’re different,” his uncle said in an enthusiastic tone, with no hint of irony or contempt.

That was the first time Waman had heard about Quaker education, but it wouldn’t be the last. He grew up, couldn’t escape the family trade and joined the teaching profession, working at a Friends school in Brooklyn before moving to Atlanta, where he helped launch the Friends School of Atlanta.

Quaker schools were, and are, different, and it’s a difference many school people have embraced, Waman included. I embraced that difference when I toured the school four years ago with my daughter. I talked with teachers and (especially) students about the Quaker difference. These weren’t typical eighth graders. They all exuded a pleasant mixture of kindness, intellectual engagement, empathy, and confidence.

At Friends School of Atlanta, we have teachers, students, parents, and alumni who make a community of “school people”—and in this blog, during the ensuing weeks and months, we’ll tell their stories.

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.