"We prepare students to engage in the world that is and to help bring about a world that ought to be."
News and Multimedia Archive
2026
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May
Student Service Committee Spotlight | Eli ’26 and Ian ’26
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For Eli ’26 and Ian ’26, service has become one way to understand what community means in practice.As seniors and leaders of the Upper School Student Service Committee, both students have spent the past three years helping classmates find meaningful ways to take part in service. At Friends, Upper School students complete service hours as part of their Upper School experience, and the committee helps make sure students have regular, accessible opportunities to contribute throughout the year. The Committee is responsible for organizing drives, setting up letter-writing events, choosing nonprofits, counting donations, and finding moments in the school year when students might be ready to give their time or attention.This year, Eli and Ian helped the Committee become more visible in the daily life of the Upper School. Through grade representatives, students brought forward ideas from their classmates and helped shape service projects that reflected student interest, current events, and community needs.“I think this year, we really improved our presence within the School,” Eli said. “Now people know what the Service Committee is and who their grade reps are, which is not necessarily how it has been in past years.”
The process of choosing organizations to support is student-led and influenced by Quaker decision-making. Around Valentine’s Day, for example, the committee runs Candygrams, inviting students to send notes and small treats to friends, classmates, and advisors while raising money for a nonprofit organization. For the project, each grade representative brought forward a nonprofit organization, and the committee considered the options together before deciding where the funds would go. The group also thinks carefully about timing and relevance. This year’s Candygrams supported PinkAid, an organization connected to breast cancer support and research. In a previous year, the committee supported Day One, which works with young people affected by dating abuse and domestic violence.Last year, the committee changed course after learning about the wildfires in Los Angeles and their impact on the Friends community beyond 16th Street. Village School in Pacific Palisades, led by former Friends Head of Lower School John Evans, was destroyed by the fires. For Eli, Ian, and the Committee, the decision to support the school through Candygrams felt immediate and personal: a way to stand with another school community facing loss and displacement.“That really showed me that our community is going to help one another, whether there’s an incentive to it or not,” Ian said.Beyond fundraising, the committee has organized letter-writing events, including letters to political figures advocating for specific issues and cards with supportive messages for immigrants detained at the border. Drives are another regular part of the Committee’s work. After collecting items over the course of a week, students often gather to sort, count, and prepare the donations.This year, Eli and Ian were especially proud of the Service Committee’s collaborations with other student groups, particularly culture clubs. The goal was to make service feel more connected to students’ lives and to create opportunities that grew out of specific communities and traditions.One collaboration with Asian Culture Club invited students to fold origami, which was then sent to nursing homes. Another, with Jewish Culture Club, connected students with the Hebrew Union College soup kitchen, where volunteers can help serve meals on Mondays.Eli first brought the soup kitchen idea to Jewish Culture Club after remembering a visit there from his own Hebrew school years. As a fourth grader, his former school volunteered at the soup kitchen together, and years later, he saw an opportunity to bring that experience to Friends students as a way to connect service and Jewish tradition. The first visit was such a success that the group returned twice this year.Their work has also extended across divisions. Both students were part of recent collaborations with younger students, including the Lower School Post Office project, where Upper School students helped introduce charitable organizations and support younger students as they considered where to donate the project’s proceeds. These moments gave Upper School students a chance to lead while helping younger students see service as something they can begin practicing now.“I think community service is meant to bring people together,” Ian said. “Whether it was across cultures or across school divisions, that’s something I consistently saw, and I hope to continue to see next year.”As they prepare to graduate, Eli and Ian hope future members of the Student Service Committee continue to build on this year’s momentum: making the Committee more visible, working closely with culture clubs, and creating service opportunities that feel connected to students’ lives.“I’d love to see that continue,” Eli said. “I’d also really love to see more culture club collaborations. I think that was really the highlight of this year.”For both seniors, the work has shown how service can help students feel more connected to one another. Through the Student Service Committee, Eli and Ian have helped their peers see service not only as something to complete, but as something they can take part in, shape, and continue. -
Day of Service Connects Students With Community Partners Across New York
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Click here to view more photos from the Day of Service!
Friends Seminary students spread out across New York City and the surrounding boroughs this spring for Day of Service, working with community partners in parks, gardens, food access organizations, historic sites, older adult centers, and environmental stewardship programs.
Lower and Middle School students participated on May 6, while Upper School students began the work earlier this spring on April 30. Across divisions, the day connected service with curriculum, reflection, and Quaker practice, giving students a chance to learn from community partners while contributing to work already underway across the city.
For the Lower School, the day marked an important milestone: the first time Lower School Day of Service moved off campus. The experience was part of a developing Lower School Community Engagement Framework, designed to make service more intentional, age-appropriate, and connected to the curriculum. In the weeks leading up to May 6, students took part in lessons that introduced the Quaker themes guiding their grade-level work while also helping them learn about the community partners they would visit.
Those themes were not abstract. They were built into classroom conversations, read-alouds, projects, and reflection. Students considered what it means to be part of a community, how people care for one another, what stewardship looks like in a city, and how advocacy begins with noticing needs close to home.
Kindergarten students focused on community through their work with God’s Love We Deliver. In preparation for and during their visit, students learned about volunteerism and the organization’s work supporting New Yorkers living with serious illness. Their service included a hands-on crafting activity connected to gratitude for volunteers, helping even the youngest students see that care can be expressed through small, thoughtful acts.
Grade 1 students explored stewardship through the lens of neighborhood and city parks, partnering with the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association. Their work asked them to notice the shared spaces around them and consider how caring for a park is also a way of caring for the people who use it.
Grade 2 students focused on integrity, relationship-building, and the question, “Who is in our community?” Students visited older adult centers through New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, connecting their learning to the importance of presence, respect, and intergenerational care.
Grade 3 students worked with Earth Matter, connecting equality, sustainability, and stewardship through hands-on environmental learning. Their work also created a meaningful point of connection with Grade 8, who partnered with Earth Matter as well. Across divisions, students engaged with questions about waste, soil, food systems, and responsibility to the earth—different developmental entry points into the same larger work.
Grade 4 students examined stewardship, activism, and advocacy through the history of civic engagement in New York City. Their work with Friends Place and the Museum of the City of New York helped students think about how people have used their voices, choices, and collective action to make change in their communities.In the Middle School, students carried this work into broader civic, historical, and environmental contexts.
Grade 5 students traveled to Flushing Meeting and Bowne House, grounding their Day of Service in simplicity, Quaker history, and reflection. Their schedule included service projects, a tour, lunch together, Meeting for Worship, and closing reflections.
Grade 6 students partnered with RISE for a beach cleanup, connecting stewardship to the shoreline and the city’s coastal ecosystems. After their service, students gathered for a brief Meeting for Worship on the beach, bringing silence and reflection into the work itself.
Grade 7 students visited the Quaker Cemetery, where equality served as the guiding theme. Through volunteer work, a tour, Meeting for Worship, and time together outdoors, students considered history, memory, and the responsibility of caring for shared places.
Grade 8 students traveled to Governors Island to volunteer with Earth Matter. Their day included travel by subway and ferry, advisory-based activities, Meeting for Worship, and hands-on service with the Earth Matter team. As the oldest Middle School students, they brought a growing sense of independence and responsibility to the day.
In the Upper School, students worked with community partners across New York City, taking part in projects connected to food access, environmental stewardship, care for public spaces, and community support.
Grade 9 students volunteered with City Harvest and Rethink Food, connecting their Day of Service work to food access, sustainability, and care for New Yorkers facing food insecurity. Through these partnerships, students supported organizations that recover, prepare, and distribute food across the city, while considering the systems and relationships that help communities care for one another.
Grade 10 students volunteered with Riverside Park Conservancy, contributing to the care and stewardship of one of the city’s major public parks. Their work asked students to consider how shared green spaces are sustained, and how caring for the city’s parks is also a form of service to the wider community.
Grade 11 students worked with Earth Matter, taking part in hands-on composting and stewardship work connected to sustainability and care for the earth. Together, they bagged 1,124 pounds of compost, weeded the lavender field, sifted compost from the farm in preparation for Earth Matter’s move to a new site, removed contaminants from compost piles, and decorated and filled sample bags of compost to bring home.
Grade 12 students volunteered with several community partners across the city. Some students worked with West Side Campaign Against Hunger, supporting an organization focused on food access and dignity for New Yorkers. Others volunteered with Broadway Community, which provides meals, clothing, showers, shelter, and other forms of care to neighbors experiencing hunger, homelessness, and poverty. The visit was facilitated with support from Friends parent Bryan Mealer, Director of Social and Spiritual Support at the organization. Additional Grade 12 groups worked with God’s Love We Deliver in Manhattan and Brooklyn, supporting the organization’s work preparing and delivering medically tailored meals to people living with serious illness.
And seniors in Stefan Stawnychy’s History of the Adirondacks class volunteered at a local boathouse through a partnership arranged with longtime substitute teacher and former Upper School History Chair Lorne Swarthout. Students received an introduction to boat building, the kinds of work supported by the boathouse, and the history of the site itself. They then took part in basic cleanup and organizing, including sanding, painting, dusting, and arranging life vests. At the end of the service portion, students helped launch a full-size rowboat so the team could test a recently completed patch job.Across all divisions, Day of Service asked students to practice what they learn every day at Friends: to listen carefully, act with integrity, notice the needs of others, and understand themselves as part of a wider community. The day also reflected the way Quaker values are woven into the curriculum—not only named in classrooms, but practiced through relationships, city partnerships, reflection, and action.From Kindergarten students learning about gratitude and volunteerism to Upper School students working with food access and environmental partners across the city, the day offered students a simple but lasting lesson: service begins with attention. It begins by noticing who and what is around us, asking what care requires, and taking part in the steady work of building a more just and connected world. -
Across Boroughs, Lower School Students Gather in Silence and Community
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On Friday, April 24, the oldest Lower School students from Friends Seminary, Mary McDowell Friends School, and Brooklyn Friends School gathered at Brooklyn Meeting for a shared Meeting for Worship. The gathering grew out of a collaboration led by Erin Gordon, Head of Lower School, Kara Kutner, Director of the Center for Peace, Equity, and Justice, and colleagues from Mary McDowell and Brooklyn Friends. Together, they imagined a morning that would give students a chance to meet peers from other New York City Quaker schools, learn what they share in common, and experience how other school communities practice Meeting for Worship during the school day.Students began in small mixed groups with a simple icebreaker that invited them to learn about one another through everyday details and shared experiences before moving upstairs into the Meetinghouse for Worship. Before entering into silence, student representatives from each school helped introduce the Meeting. Students had been asked to consider two queries in advance: “What does Meeting for Worship or Silent Meeting mean for you?” and “What do you want others to know about Meeting?” Lower Schoolers reflected on those questions, sharing what silence, listening, stillness, community, and worship mean in their own school lives.
For Friends students, it was also a chance to see that Meeting for Worship is both deeply familiar and slightly different depending on the community. Across the three schools, students recognized the shared practice of sitting together in silence, listening with care, and speaking when moved. They also noticed small differences in language, rhythm, and tradition. Those similarities and differences became part of the learning.Near the close of the gathering, Erin led an “After Thoughts” moment, a reflection practice familiar to Lower School students at Friends. Students were invited to think about the experience they had just shared: what felt similar, what felt different, and what they might carry back to school.The morning offered a clear reminder that Quaker education is not separate from academic life at Friends. It is part of how students learn to listen, reflect, ask questions, and recognize the Light in others. In gathering with peers from across the city, students practiced those values in real time and returned with a broader sense of the community to which they belong. -
April
Focus on Friends: Yuxi Lin
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As a student stepping into Yuxi Lin’s sixth or seventh grade English classroom, you know you will be seen, heard, and cared for—not just as a learner but as a young person discovering who you are and who you want to become.In her classroom, student voice and agency are not afterthoughts; they are intentionally cultivated as the foundation of the learning experience. Yuxi thoughtfully designs instruction that responds to students’ academic needs while also honoring their social and emotional growth, creating a space where every student feels supported, valued, and empowered.A firm believer in teaching through a Diversity Equity and Belonging (DEB) lens, Yuxi ensures that her curriculum is inclusive, relevant, and reflective of the diverse identities and perspectives her students bring. At the same time, she intentionally introduces voices and experiences that may be unfamiliar to them expanding both their understanding and their empathy. During the seventh grade poetry unit, for example, students engage with works by poets such as Ada Limón, Basho, Terrance Hayes, Robert Hayden, Dylan Thomas, and Emily Dickinson. They also explore a range of poetic forms including haiku, sonnet, villanelle, and ghazal and encounter poetry written in multiple languages, including those offered in our Modern Language program. Through this work, students grapple with translation, gaining insight into how meaning can shift across languages and cultures.Yuxi’s commitment to a DEB framework also extends to the diverse learning profiles in her classroom. She embraces differentiation as essential to meeting students where they are in their individual learning journeys. Last summer, she collaborated with a fellow Middle School English teacher, to develop a short story unit centered on diverse, accessible texts. As Yuxi explained, their goal was to “deepen students’ understanding of storytelling and help them improve their craft as storytellers,” while also “widen[ing] our students’ knowledge of creation stories and folklores from other cultures and connect with the innate and ancient human longings within them.” In its first year in the sixth grade English curriculum, the unit not only captivated students but also challenged them to grow as readers and writers.By centering student needs and leading with DEB, Yuxi creates the conditions for meaningful and lasting learning. She equips her students to think critically, ask thoughtful questions, interpret texts deeply, share their voice with confidence, and explore perspectives that differ from their own, resulting in powerful learning moments. In doing so, she fosters a classroom culture where risk taking is encouraged and celebrated!It is no surprise that each April, our seventh grade students share their original spoken word poetry in front of the entire Middle School during Meeting for Worship. Powerful moments such as this are a testament to Yuxi’s incredible teaching practice. She consistently sees, hears, and cares for her students, empowering them to step forward and be fully themselves.
Focus on Friends is an initiative of the Friends Seminary administration designed to celebrate the people and programs that make our community thrive. Each month, a member of the Senior Administration will select an individual, group, department, or office—uplifting those who are doing exciting work, leading with creativity, or simply contributing in meaningful ways to the spirit of Friends. This month’s story was chosen and written by Michelle Cristella, Head of Middle School. -
From The Studio to The Stage to The Met | Student Spotlight: Ezra ‘27
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One of Ezra ’27’s award-winning photographs begins with something many of us recognize: the quiet instinct to search for an open seat. For him, that seat is not just an empty space, but one filled with possibility, carrying its viewers from the studio to the classroom, from the fields of Vermont to the waters of Cape Town, from the energy of downtown to the stillness of the Meetinghouse. This spring, that journey continues at one of the world’s best-known museums.This year, Ezra has achieved a remarkable combination of 19 Gold and Silver Keys and Honorable Mentions for his work in poetry and visual art. One of his four Gold Key-winning photographs is being shown at The Met from March 27–May 18 through the New York City Scholastic Awards, presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Another one of them is Open Seat, a photograph taken during the School’s Global Education trip to South Africa last spring.
“I want each person to have their own relationship with the work rather than forcing one fixed interpretation,” Ezra explains with a smile, saying he feels the piece resonates with the School and the Meetinghouse.Across his work, Ezra uses photography, painting, poetry, and personal memoir to explore identity, memory, self-perception, and feeling. His pieces often bring together experimentation and reflection, with a strong interest in how inner life can take visual form. His talents span cooking, baking, sculpture, ceramics, performing arts, and graphic design, making full use of what the School offers and making those experiences his own.This year, Ezra is taking Painting with Morgan Acheson, Middle and Upper School Visual Arts Teacher, where he has been experimenting with image transfers using gel medium, moving beyond wood to surfaces like fabric, and exploring gelli plate transfers. The work is layered in both process and meaning, enthusiastically described as “prints on prints on transfers.”Morgan has known Ezra since Grade 5 and describes him as “a true force in the studio.” What stands out most, she explains, is that Ezra “is not an artist who stays comfortable,” but someone who “actively seeks out new possibilities and explores the unknown” while remaining grounded in his own point of view. In class and in the studio, that means he is often “answering questions through art making, documenting his process, reflecting on it, and using each project as a way to push into something new. For Morgan, teaching Ezra has felt less like a one-way exchange and more like “a true partnership.”Ezra has also gathered a great deal of inspiration from Art History: Pop to Present, taught by Upper School Visual Arts Teacher Jesse Pasca. Jesse has seen that same willingness to think beyond a finished object and into the larger questions art can raise. Ezra recently presented a performance project proposal titled Mirror, a five-week, around-the-clock installation imagined as a metaphor for codependency. In the proposal, Ezra would mirror a participant’s every action, giving up his own autonomy to examine the invisible burdens people can place on one another in society.The project drew on artists he had studied in class, including Marina Abramović and Tehching Hsieh, whose work asks what happens when time, vulnerability, and the body become part of the art itself. Ezra ended his presentation with a question for the room: “If you held someone’s survival in your hands, would you nourish them or exhaust them?”
That same openness and maturity led Ezra to The Mountain School in Vershire, Vermont, a farm-based semester program where Upper School students live close to the land, study sustainability and food systems, and build community through shared work. There, he captured Goodbye, a photograph of the art studio on a misty day, with one warm light glowing from inside. The Gold Key-winning piece holds two ideas at once: finding light through art and learning how to live with loss. He had considered calling it “I’ll leave the light on” or “I’ll leave the door open,” a phrase that holds the possibility that “you can always come back.”
In The Hanged Man, Ezra turns movement into a single, layered image. The piece began as a 15-minute video of him changing outfits, shifting positions, and moving through a room. He then composed the footage into a photo collage, placing around 12 versions of himself in the same space. For Ezra, the work reflects “different parts of me that coexist.” The piece recently received a Gold Medal in Experimental Photography from the Scholastic Awards and was selected to be displayed at the Scholastic Inc. building.His creative reach has also extended into the Brooklyn Museum’s Creative Practice program, where he taught weekend classes in the children’s photography group, supporting younger students as they explored image-making. The experience gave him another way into art—not only as something to create, but as something to share, explain, and help others discover.It also led directly back to his own work. While helping with the class, Ezra came across a group of old film slides from the Museum’s archives that he became especially drawn to. He brought some home, taped them together into a sheet, and used light to project the images across his body. In the final photograph, the slides appear almost like a dress. Ezra describes the piece as being about time and space, since the slides hold memories captured by someone else, yet in the moment of the photograph they are literally projected onto him. Titled Chronos, the piece became another Scholastic award winner this year.
Continuing his relationship with the Brooklyn Museum, last May two of his works, Am I to Reap What My Father Has Sown? and Self-Study // Reflections on Childhood, were featured in the exhibit Legacy: How Will You Leave Your Mark? His work tackled inheritance, self-perception, memory, and identity.Back at Friends, Ezra plans to take Advanced Studio next year, the Visual Arts Department’s capstone course, designed for motivated students interested in any artistic discipline—including photography, film, painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, and fiber—and eager to fully explore their creative potential.Since sophomore year, Ezra has taken ChoreoLab, a choreography and composition course where students study the craft of dance creation. He plans to continue the course through senior year and is also deeply involved in performing arts. This year, he was one of the leads in Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, and he designed the poster for the production—a fitting example of the way his creative work moves across the School, from the studio to the stage and back again.What makes Ezra’s evolving portfolio so compelling is not only his talent, but the way he keeps reaching, staying curious and open to new possibilities. He remains empathetic, asks questions of others and himself, and lets each part of his academic career influence the next: the studio, the stage, the classroom, the Meetinghouse, and the wider world.One of Ezra’s Gold Key pieces is currently on view at The Met Fifth Avenue in the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education through May 18, 2026. Click here to learn more. -
Focus on Friends: Kevin Romero
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If you’ve passed the Common Room lately, you’ve likely heard catchy tunes and seen Kindergarten or Grade 1 students moving with purpose and a surprising degree of independence. It’s not accidental. It reflects Kevin Romero’s carefully structured, skill-based approach to teaching PE.Kevin teaches PE to our youngest learners with a clear, structured approach and a steadfast belief in their potential. Each class is composed of a carefully laid out progression of skills differentiated to meet the needs of individual students. In any given class, all children could be working on a given skill, like catching, but there might be four different versions of how they can practice, ensuring that every child has a way to practice that allows for both challenge and success.In addition to his work in the Lower School, Kevin teaches Middle School fitness and coaches Girls’ Varsity Soccer, Middle School Basketball, and Middle School Softball. His presence spans the full K–12 experience, allowing him to build lasting relationships with students as they grow.Kevin’s journey to the classroom began in El Salvador, where soccer was his world. After moving to the United States. to play for the New York Red Bulls U18 team, he balanced English studies at BMCC with a job in food service. His true calling emerged when he began coaching for Super Soccer Stars. While playing for local teams like the Brooklyn Italians and Baruch College, Kevin realized he was as comfortable coaching three-year-olds as he was elite travel players. This passion led him to Queens College, where he pursued a degree in Physical Education.Though Kevin joined the faculty full-time in September 2022, his history with Friends runs deeper. He previously served as a coach, substitute, and a vital "floater" teacher during the pandemic. During that time, he began to see how special the Friends community was, the ways in which everyone worked together and supported one another. When a full-time PE position opened, he stepped into the role with a deep understanding of the community.Through his work Kevin is developing a movement foundation for our youngest students that promotes confidence, collaboration, and patience. “Working with young children for so long [at Super Soccer Stars and at Friends] helped me to understand where kids come from,” he says. “Sure, it’s about the skills they are learning, but it’s more about the success they are achieving.”That success is often fostered in small moments. When a child struggles, Kevin drops to one knee to meet them at eye level. "I don’t baby them or change my voice," he explains. "I get excited with them for what they can do."When asked what keeps him at Friends, his answer is immediate: "The kids. Their curiosity and their smiles when they do something they didn't know they could do before. There is nothing better."
Focus on Friends is an initiative of the Friends Seminary administration designed to celebrate the people and programs that make our community thrive. Each month, a member of the Senior Administration will select an individual, group, department, or office—uplifting those who are doing exciting work, leading with creativity, or simply contributing in meaningful ways to the spirit of Friends. This month’s story was chosen and written by Erin Gordon, Head of Lower School. -
February
Focus on Friends: Mariella Bonilla (En Español)
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Maestra de español en el Upper School, Mariella Bonilla trae alegría y un profundo sentido de trabajo bien hecho a sus alumnos y alumnas mientras estudian español juntos. Su aula les inspira - y ella es la primera en decir que ellos y ellas le inspiran a la vez. Hay un sentido palpitante de cuido en la manera en la cual Mariella enseña: sus estudiantes se sienten seguros en su habilidad de arriesgar y cometer errores mientras lidian con nuevo vocabulario, formas verbales y sintaxis, animados para producir lenguaje coherente y cada vez más sofisticado. Este apoyo y cuido constante es algo que sus estudiantes sienten desde el primer momento que entran en su aula.Para Mariella, su papel como maestra de español es una profunda responsabilidad. Ella representa su cultura, su latinidad, y su lengua no simplemente como asignaturas para estudiar, sino como vehículos para la comprensión - ventanas hacia identidad y conexión. En el aula de Mariella, la práctica intencional de ver y ser visto es una lección meta que refleja, y a la vez profundiza, el contenido de la lengua y la cultura.Una inmigrante del Perú que ha construido una vida en EE UU y ganado su doctorado a través de la Beca Turner del Centro de Educación Inclusiva en Stony Brook University, Mariella sabe que la representación importa. Los lectores bilingües y biculturales - los que habitan una identidad híbrida y un espacio de entremedio - entenderán como liderar en espacios donde uno habla un segundo idioma requiere coraje e integridad. Mariella lleva esta tranquila fuerza interior a todo lo que hace, mostrando a sus estudiantes que la identidad no es algo de lo que huir, sino algo que se reclama con orgullo y dignidad.Hace poco una alumna le exclamó, “Usted es una inspiración!” En Mariella ven lo que es posible: orgullo con humildad, perseverancia con propósito, y una pasión para aprender y crecer arraigado en curiosidad y rigor intelectual abierto.Antes de dedicarse a la enseñanza, Mariella trabajó quince años como asistente legal acompañando a comunidades inmigrantes. Esa experiencia da vida a su aula, donde centra la literatura y las voces de su pueblo latino, especialmente la representación de mujeres latinas que navegan la migración, la pertenencia y la resiliencia. Recientemente, participando en un panel sobre historias de inmigración, reflexionó sobre su “identidad híbrida” y el regalo de moverse fluidamente entre idiomas y culturas. Invita a los estudiantes a ver que vivir entre mundos no es una debilidad, sino una forma poderosa de comprenderlos.Los estudiantes en el aula de Mariella se estiran a través del estudio de obras literarias de complejidad, como El Quijote de Cervantes y “Dos palabras” de Allende, y cuando terminan un estudio de una obra desafiante un aplauso colectivo de alegre reconocimiento de esfuerzo, crecimiento, y logro compartido muchas veces estalla. Pero la dedicación de Mariella hacia la conexión se extiende mucho más allá del aula, llegando tras el Atlántico a nuestro intercambio con Colegio Sant Ignasi en Barcelona, donde ella ha tomado un papel de liderazgo creciente. Como guía, mentora y compañera en el aprendizaje, Mariella hace modelo de curiosidad intercultural y respeto mutuo, ayudando a sus estudiantes a experimentar el idioma como relación vivida en las clases de Sant Ignasi y con sus familias de acogida. En los pequeños descansos en grupo en el café querido Santa Gloria, al lado del colegio, Mariella les anima a escuchar, reflexionar y apreciar las perspectivas diversas - una encarnación de los principios del “Portrait of a Learner” de Friends.A través de su enseñanza y su presencia, Mariella demuestra una apasionante camino de aprendizaje a lo largo de toda la vida. Su aula nos recuerda que la educación es un acto de reconocimiento: viéndose el uno al otro plenamente, valorando cada voz, y eligiendo la conexión. Mariella nos enseña a todos que la enseñanza no es meramente la adquisición de conocimientos, sino la cultivación de la empatía, apertura, integridad y compromiso con la comunidad. En su clase, sus estudiantes hacen más que dedicarse a la maestría de un idioma - son testigos de cómo la curiosidad, el coraje y el cuido pueden guíar no solo el aprendizaje sino también la vida. -
Peace Week 2026: Poetry, Jazz, and the Practice of Listening
“It was in this Meetinghouse where I cultivated my spirit, where I found peace, where I found communion,” Willie Perdomo ’85 proclaimed, his voice carrying through the wooden benches and the quiet they hold. “It was in this Meetinghouse that I declared myself a poet.”Read More
Perdomo—an acclaimed poet, educator, author, and former New York State Poet Laureate—returned to Friends Seminary on Thursday, as the keynote speaker for Peace Week 2026, addressing students, faculty, families, alumni, and friends gathered in the Fifteenth Street Meetinghouse. The event, held in alignment with this year’s Peace Week theme, Growing in Peace, Grounded in Spirit, offered an evening of poetry, music, and reflection centered on community, memory, and the formative power of place.
The program opened with a welcome from Interim Head of School Rich Nourie and an introduction from Kara Kutner, Director of the Center for Peace, Equity, and Justice, followed by original poetry from Grade 8 Peace Week poets Mila '30 and Katinka '30. Their readings grounded the evening in student voice and set a reflective tone.
Music and poetry came together in Variations on “That’s My Heart Right There,” a collaborative performance featuring Perdomo’s words set to jazz. Led by Upper and Middle School Performing Arts Teacher Nikara Warren and performed by student musicians, the piece underscored the idea of peace as something created collectively through listening and creative exchange.
In his keynote address, Perdomo reflected on his years at Friends Seminary and the role the Meetinghouse played in shaping him as an artist and as a person. Growing up in New York City in the 1980s, he spoke of poetry as a means of witnessing and survival, and of silence as a practice that taught him how to listen. The evening concluded with closing remarks from Kirsti Peters, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Belonging, reinforcing Peace Week’s focus on peace as a lived and shared practice.
Click here for more photos from his keynote address. -
Discernment by Design
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On February 17 faculty and staff gathered for Professional Development Day with a clear purpose: strengthening curriculum work by grounding it in Quaker pedagogy, Diversity, Equity & Belonging (DEB), and the Portrait of a Learner. The morning began by centering shared values and naming the strong practices already present across divisions. Interim Head of School Rich Nourie and Director of Diversity, Equity & Belonging Kirsti Peters presented Quaker Pedagogy and DEB Goals and Practices, with a core goal of growing the community’s collective capability to seek deeper understanding through the discernment tradition. The session framed curriculum not simply as content coverage, but as an expression of what a learning community believes—about students, about belonging, and about the responsibilities of teaching.From that foundation, K–12 Dean of Studies Hassan Wilson presented the Portrait of a Learner, underscoring that its elements were informed through last year’s Professional Development Day and grounded in faith and practice. Positioned as both a statement of purpose and a practical guide, the Portrait served as a shared reference point for curriculum decision-making—clarifying what students should experience, demonstrate, and carry forward as learners and community members, and how those aims connected to Quakerism and DEB commitments in everyday classroom life.Later in the morning, educator and consultant Allison Zmuda joined the community to introduce curriculum documentation and storyboarding as tools for designing coherent learning journeys. The session invited faculty to think of curriculum not only as a sequence of lessons, but as an intentional narrative—one that made learning visible, aligned outcomes with experience, and helped students connect knowledge, skills, and meaning over time. This work was supported by the Core Curriculum Team—Chris Cincotta (Kindergarten), Olivia Elliott (Grade 3), Elena Hartoonian (Upper School Mathematics), Leana Phipps (Middle School English), and Stefan Stawnychy (Upper School History and History Department Chair)—who helped anchor the approach in the lived realities of teaching across divisions and disciplines.The afternoon shifted into departmental breakouts, creating dedicated collaborative time to begin applying the day’s shared language and structures to course work and departmental goals. With a common framework established—rooted in Quaker practice, strengthened through DEB commitments, and articulated through the Portrait of a Learner—departments used the time to align, draft, and begin shaping curriculum documentation that reflected both academic rigor and a mission-driven vision for student growth. -
Focus on Friends | Mariella Bonilla: Language as Identity, Literature as a Bridge
Read MoreUpper School Spanish teacher Mariella Bonilla brings joy and a deep sense of accomplishment to her students as they study Spanish language and literature together. Her classroom inspires them—and she is the first to say that they inspire her in return. There is a palpable sense of care in the way Mariella teaches: students feel safe to take risks and make mistakes as they wrestle with new vocabulary, verb forms and syntax, eager to produce coherent and increasingly sophisticated Spanish. This steadiness of purpose and care is something that students feel from the moment they enter her classroom.
For Mariella, her role as maestra de español is a profound responsibility. She represents her culture, her latinidad, and her language not simply as subjects to be studied, but as vehicles for understanding—windows into identity and connection. In Mariella’s classroom, the intentional practice of seeing and being seen is itself a lesson—one that reflects and animates the study of language and culture.
As an immigrant from Peru who built her life in the U.S. and earned her Ph.D. as a Turner Fellow through the Center for Inclusive Education at Stony Brook University, she knows that presence matters. Bi-lingual, bi-cultural readers - those who inhabit a hybrid, inbetween-ness - will understand how leading in spaces where one is speaking a second language requires great courage and integrity. Mariella brings this quiet inner strength to everything she does, showing her students that identity is not something to shrink from, but something to claim with pride and dignity.
Not long ago, a student told her, “You are such an inspiration!” In Mariella, students see what is possible: pride carried with humility, perseverance shaped by purpose, and a passion for learning rooted in curiosity and intellectual openness.
Before entering academia, Mariella spent fifteen years as a paralegal working alongside immigrant communities. That lived experience shapes her classroom, where she centers the literature and voices of “mi gente”— especially the representation of Latinas navigating migration, belonging, and resilience. Recently, speaking on a panel about immigration stories, she reflected on her “hybrid identity” and the gift of moving fluidly between languages. She invites students to see that living between worlds is not a weakness, but a powerful way of understanding them
Students in Mariella’s classroom stretch themselves through the study of complex Spanish-language texts—like Cervantes’ Don Quijote de la Mancha and Allende’s “Dos palabras”—and when they complete a demanding work of literature, applause often fills the room in a collective, joyful recognition of effort, growth, and shared accomplishment. But Mariella’s commitment to connection extends far beyond the classroom, reaching across the Atlantic to the Barcelona exchange with Colegio Sant Ignasi, where she has taken increasing leadership. As a guide, mentor, and fellow learner, she models intercultural curiosity and mutual respect, helping students experience language as a lived relationship. In daily group coffee breaks in Barcelona at the favorite Café Santa Gloria, Mariella encourages students to listen, reflect, and appreciate diverse perspectives—an embodiment of the principles of Friends’ “Portrait of a Learner.”
Through her teaching and her presencia, Mariella embodies passionate lifelong learning. Her classroom reminds us that education is an act of recognition: seeing one another fully, valuing each voice, and choosing connection. She demonstrates that learning is not merely the acquisition of knowledge, but the cultivation of empathy, openness, integrity, and a commitment to community. In her classroom, students do more than master a language—they witness how curiosity, courage, and care shape both learning and life.
Focus on Friends is an initiative of the Friends Seminary administration designed to celebrate the people and programs that make our community thrive. Each month, a member of the Senior Administration will select an individual, group, department, or office—uplifting those who are doing exciting work, leading with creativity, or simply contributing in meaningful ways to the spirit of Friends. This month’s story was chosen and written by Kara Kutner, Director of the Center for Peace, Equity and Justice. -
January
Focus on Friends: Isabel Dominguez—Building with Heart, Craft, and Community
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In the bustling studios of Friends Seminary’s Visual Arts Department, the steady hum of creativity has a heartbeat—and many times, that heartbeat can be traced back to Isabel Dominguez. As a Lower School art teacher and K-12 Visual Arts Department Chair, Isabel is a deeply respected educator whose guiding influence spans from our youngest learners in Kindergarten to our more advanced senior art students. Isabel is known for her unwavering commitment to student-centered teaching, creativity, and instinctive leadership.Isabel joined Friends in 2013, stepping into a Lower School art program with enormous potential and positive energy. As she became acclimated to the school, one of the areas that Isabel examined closely was the woodworking curriculum—she approached this with the care of both an artist and an architect—assessing and imagining what could be. She spent time studying how young students interacted with tools and materials, and she began to reshape the goals of the curriculum with respect and intention for student capacity and agency.Through Isabel’s work and care, the woodworking program evolved and is known as one of the gems of the Lower School experience. Walk into the woodworking studio (the Shop or Room 3, as it is also known), and you’ll witness a space alive with purposeful motion and activity—saws whispering through wood, hammers tapping with rhythmic confidence, and students collaborating with a natural ease. Students, some only a bit taller than the worktables they stand beside, set to work with Japanese hand saws, hammers, nails, and squares, fully aware they are trusted. And they rise to meet that trust every day.That trust is Isabel’s signature. She believes deeply in children’s ability to handle real tools and real materials, and in their need for physical engagement and authentic artistic challenges. Her curriculum and instruction prompts them to think, problem-solve, refine, and persist. It asks them to create projects that will last—not temporary pieces, but works that are built with care, pride, intention, and craftsmanship. In this way, Isabel invites students not only to create art, but to also build confidence in their own abilities.Isabel’s approach mirrors the values she brings to the larger K-12 department as their department chairperson. She leads a team of talented and passionate art educators—each with their distinct artistic specialties and identities. Within this collection of voices, through creative, open, and honest leadership, Isabel has fostered harmony, mutual respect, and a shared focus on students. Colleagues consistently describe her as grounded, warm, and fair. She listens deeply. She collaborates authentically. She recognizes each teacher’s strengths and encourages them to pursue their own artistic, professional, and personal growth. Isabel is the kind of leader who notices when a colleague needs space to develop a new idea, when a teacher could benefit from pursuing outside professional development, or when the department as a whole needs time to regroup and reflect. She is equally committed to the day-to-day responsibilities of running a K-12 department and the long-term need to nurture a vibrant arts culture.Perhaps what makes Isabel so widely admired at Friends is that she teaches and leads with her whole heart. Whether she is guiding a five-year-old as they cut their first piece of wood or supporting a colleague who is preparing new curricula, she brings a reassuring presence, empathy, and a belief in the creative potential of every individual. She knows that the arts are simply not about producing objects—they are about cultivating ways of seeing, understanding, and expressing what it means to be a human being.More than a teacher and a department chair, Isabel is a builder—of programs, of confidence, and of community. And Friends is immeasurably stronger for all that she has built.
Focus on Friends is an initiative of the Friends Seminary administration designed to celebrate the people and programs that make our community thrive. Each month, a member of the Senior Administration will select an individual, group, department, or office—uplifting those who are doing exciting work, leading with creativity, or simply contributing in meaningful ways to the spirit of Friends. This month’s story was chosen and written by Devan Ganeshanathan, Associate Head of School. -
A Not-Quite-Narwhal Kind of Gallery
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KME and 1MK have been working on a shared art project that began, fittingly, with a story about belonging.
A few weeks ago, 1MK parent Brianne Garcia (P'37)—a contemporary, self-taught artist based in New York City whose vibrant abstract work explores color as a language—joined the Lower School for Meeting for Worship during LGBTQ History Month. Their message invited students to celebrate both similarities and differences, and to notice how much of who we are can be seen on the outside…and how much lives quietly within.
That theme carried into the classroom through a read-aloud of Not Quite Narwhal by Jessie Sima. In the book, Kelp is raised by narwhals but feels different: his tusk is shorter, and he’s not the strongest swimmer. When a current carries him to the surface, he meets unicorns and discovers he doesn’t have to choose just one identity—he can be both a land and sea creature. It’s a gentle, joyful story about self-discovery, identity, and making room for the whole of who you are.
Inspired by Kelp’s journey, KME and 1MK artists created pieces that explore identity—both visible and invisible—through color, shape, and personal detail. The shared display demonstrates what students have in common and what is special about each of them: everyone begins with a silhouette, yet each artwork is entirely unique.
On Monday, December 15, the work culminated in an official “gallery opening” outside the classrooms, opened by Brianne, who returned to share the story with both groups and help launch the exhibition. And because a gallery opening should feel like a gallery opening, the day included a dark-curtain slow reveal, a read-aloud of the sequel (Perfectly Pegasus), and a menu featuring sophisticated hors d’oeuvres (school snacks) plus bubbles (sparkling grape juice).
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2026
Friends Seminary actively promotes diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism in all its programs and operations, including admissions, financial aid, hiring, and all facets of the educational experience. To form a community which strives to reflect the world’s diversity, we do not discriminate on the basis of race or color, religion, nationality, ethnicity, economic background, physical ability, sex, gender identity or expression, or sexual orientation. Friends Seminary is an equal opportunity employer.
Friends Seminary — the oldest continuously operated, coeducational school in NYC — serves college-bound day students in Kindergarten-Grade 12.
