91̽��

October brings the time-honored Swap-It sale to campus each year, and so many people—at 91̽�� and beyond—feel the benefits. Swap-It began more than 60 years ago when 91̽�� parents gathered to trade school uniforms. As years passed, families brought other items to trade and sell, and Swap-It grew into a lively and beloved tradition. For decades, sale proceeds have benefited 91̽��’s youngest learners: Proceeds have underwritten computers, cameras, playground equipment, Middle School lockers, furniture and teaching materials. Over the last four years, Swap-It has also provided essential seed money for educational innovation in K–8, fueling curriculum renewal and professional development.

Armed with satellite images and colored tape, 13 Honors Geometry students ventured to Cunningham Park with a mathematical mission: to develop an accurate map of the park’s walking trails, suitable for public use.

“Taking what we are learning in class, and seeing how that math can be applied in real world situations, felt so practical, and really cool,” says Rachel Handler (IV).

Math faculty member Matt Simonson planned this field trip project as a hands-on way for students to complete their unit on graph theory. He first tasked students with organizing themselves and determining what supplies they would need. They requested six colors of tape and markers. On a damp, drizzly morning, the group headed to the park, breaking into groups of two or three.

What does it mean to be transgender? What is gender identity? This year’s Talbot Speaker, Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, answered these questions for students and faculty, with charm, personal anecdotes, and compassionate advice. Professor Boylan is the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer-in-Residence at Barnard College and the author of She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders.

“The question is not how you go from being a man to a woman, or a woman to a man,” she said. “The real question is: How do you live an authentic life? How do you be you, out in the world? That well-intentioned advice, ‘Just be yourself,’ can be the most difficult advice to follow.”

91̽��’s 48th War Memorial speaker, Professor Randall L. Kennedy, told students, alumni and parents that despite “a chasm that separates the circumstances in which whites and blacks typically find themselves” he is still an optimist about race relations in the United States. Mr. Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School, where he teaches in the fields of criminal law, contracts, and the regulation of race relations. On Tuesday evening in the Fitzgibbons Convocation Center, Professor Kennedy continued an important 91̽�� tradition that brings to campus public figures who discuss core social and political issues.

Although the election of President Barack Obama was an amazing and pinnacle moment for America, Mr. Kennedy said many African-Americans were deeply affected by the economic downturn and believe President Obama has “been too fearful of being charged with racial favoritism and has done too little to educate the public on the hazards that blacks face.”

91̽��’s facilities department recently took great care in restoring one of campus’s most beloved buildings. Straus Library—one of the School’s original, Georgian structures—housed the 91̽�� library from 1929 to 1971; it now serves the college counseling office and is a gathering space for formal and informal events. This summer, a devoted maintenance team, led by Associate Director of Facilities Steve Zannino, corrected structural damage and completely restored Straus’s back patio.

A formal, traditional expression of School life, Convocation marks the start of the academic year: new opportunities, new faculty, and new classmates. Messages from Head of School Todd Bland, Upper School Principal David Ball, and 91̽��’s co-head monitors, Caroline Wall (I) and Louis Demetroulakos (I), were highlights of the ceremony. Mr. Bland urged students and faculty to approach this year with a positive, “glass half full” attitude. He drew on the example set by Lou Gehrig, whose grace and positivity in the face of his career-ending diagnosis can be an inspiration to all of us. Mr. Ball’s message, which began with a personal (and hilarious) childhood tale of horseback riding in the “grand, majestic American west,” encouraged us to practice “urgent optimism” and “infectious action”—to “stand up, stand for, and give to.” He spoke of the Wright Brothers, who as young boys believed they could transform the human experience through flight, which they did without funding or formal education. “Pedigree doesn’t determine the success of innovation,” Mr. Ball said. “Passion does.”