The Pingry School

Indeed, reading is a passion of Sophie's, and one she feels empowered to explore at the Lower School. "I love fantasy and mystery and novels and realistic fiction—really, any books, just not biographies," she explains, matter-of-factly. By extension, she also loves to write, and recalls a 24-page work of realistic fiction that she penned last year in Mrs. Sherman's writing class, of which she is particularly proud. "I just loved her class. I wrote this story about a girl, Natalie, who has a twin sister and moves to a new school. Her experience was awful, nothing like mine at Pingry. To build suspense, I had to break her leg, she got bullied, her sister was rude to her. But in the end, she survived," she says, smiling at the memory of the plot line she designed. 

Sophie also loves to act, and was thrilled to perform in the school's staging of Seussical, Jr. last spring, in which she played a Wickersham brother ("a monkey that makes trouble," she explains). This year, as a fifth grader—her last on the Short Hills Campus—she can't wait to perform in A Year with Frog and Toad. And she is excited to dig in to the reading and writing projects in Dr. Pearlman's Language Arts class. What does she enjoy most about being a Pingry student? "I really like the community, how everyone helps each other out, and all the challenges," she says. "I also really like the new gym—it has a rock wall and cargo net!" 

A turning point in Leo's love of math came in the Lower School, when Math Specialist Verna Lange encouraged him to join the school's Math Team. "That's when I really saw more of math, more than just what's taught in classrooms," he recalls. "The problems really interested me. They were problems I never saw before, and it really showed me different ways of solving them."

A Pingry lifer, he helped co-found, with three friends, the Middle School Math Center, a place where he can tutor peers in the subject he's so passionate about. "I remember teaching a student how to expand x plus y squared. They were making the same mistake I used to make, so I told them to use the FOIL method—first, outer, inner, and last. I learned that trick in sixth-grade algebra. It felt good to be able to share it."

Leo plans to continue playing tennis and basketball for Big Blue when he transitions to the Upper School, and looks forward to competing in the Upper School Math League (he has competed with them three times already, as an eighth-grade student). "I think Pingry offers a lot of opportunity to do different things," he says. "I doubt that a lot of other lower and middle schools would have a Math Team. If I didn't join that team, I don't know where I would be."

Growing up with an older brother who often recruited her as his wrestling partner, Kaley learned a few things about the sport and wanted to give the team a try. Mr. Sullivan’s response? Join us! Being the only girl on the Middle School’s team didn't bother her a bit. “I kind of liked that I was different from everyone else,” she says. “In the end, I was part of a team, so, boy or girl, it didn't really matter; we were all in it together. And all the boys are my friends.”

Also a ballerina since the age of two (she recently had to give up dance due to a full schedule), Latin class with Mrs. Kelleher—the fun discussions and her crazy homework assignments—and science class are among her favorite academic subjects. For the cheerful, rising Upper Schooler, it’s hard to pinpoint what she loves most about Pingry.

“There are so many things,” she says. “It's diversity, the teachers, all the activities. I just love it here."

“I’ve been teaching for over 40 years and I’ve never seen a Kindergartner tackle a 1,500-piece puzzle,” said Mrs. Previti. “They begged us to let them do puzzles instead of go out for recess. They were like ants!” (As a point of comparison, she adds, 100- to 200-piece puzzles are more the norm for this age.) Every day after lunch, during activity time, the boys worked, calmly, cooperatively. First they sorted the pieces into containers by color, each student took a color, and they got to work assembling the borders. The brain-bending interior soon followed. At one point, without uttering a word, Colton and Max switched places so they could better access their parts of the puzzle. Pieces were readily exchanged, as needed. Arguments never broke out. When a comrade expressed interest in joining the group, he was quickly absorbed, and made a “puzzlemaster-in-training.”

A longtime puzzler herself, Mrs. Previti related easily to her students’ passion. When her grandson received a holographic puzzle as a gift and found it too challenging, she spent days staying up past midnight to finish it, and surprise him.

Each year brings a new crop of Kindergartners with new interests and infatuations. Mrs. Previti won’t soon forget her Puzzlemasters. “It all started with a single puzzle, but it evolved into an enrichment class,” she mused. “It was just an activity, and then it became so much more.”

Meet More Pingry Scholars

He wanted to wrap up a project on conflict dialogue that he was working on for Dana Sherman’s writing class (banter with his older brother Daniel ’22 provided ideal fodder). Then there was an expository essay on character traits that he was ready to dive into, also for Mrs. Sherman’s class. When those assignments were complete, he could settle in to Jon Krakauer’s 1997 bestseller Into Thin Air, the gripping account of the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster. He had begun the 400-page book three days earlier, and only 150 pages remained.

Thomas, who began Pingry as a fourth-grade student, has always enjoyed reading and writing. But, he admits, if it weren’t for Mrs. Sherman’s writing class—a new offering in the Lower School, and part of the students’ comprehensive language arts curriculum—he probably wouldn’t write on his own.

It also helps that Pingry teachers collaborate, with intention. So, when Dr. Pearlman began reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH with Thomas’s class and discussing the concept of character traits, Mrs. Sherman segued into a related creative writing assignment, asking Thomas and his classmates to describe, in detail, a character of their own imagining.

“Every year, with every teacher, my writing improves,” he remarks. “Every teacher is different, and I learn so much.”

Meet More Pingry Scholars

A two-time all-state selection and Central Jersey Player of the Year in high school, Mr. Murdock would go on to a successful collegiate career at Providence College, including an appearance in the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament, followed by six years of professional play overseas. When he broke his foot on Yao Ming’s size 22 shoe during a game in China, which required three surgeries over the course of a year to correct, he was forced to rethink his future.

“It was the end of my professional career, but it was an opportunity to pursue a different career in education,” he remembers.

Now a Middle School history teacher, Admission Counselor, and Head Coach of the Boys’ Varsity Basketball Team, Mr. Murdock has been making an impact on Pingry students, in various capacities, for a decade.

“I’ve always viewed education and coaching in terms of developing young students or athletes, providing them with a set of life skills that will take them beyond the walls of Pingry—how to be part of a team, how to work hard through adversity and demonstrate resilience, how to be proud of accomplishments and appreciate those moments. It’s gratifying to see young people develop into their full potential,” he says.

Indeed, he shares the story of a prospective Middle School student he met with in the Admission Office many years ago, who, along with his family, voiced concern that Pingry would be too difficult for him. Sitting with the student, allowing him to share his strengths and weaknesses and discover that he had more to give than he thought, is what Mr. Murdock cherishes most in his work.

Fittingly, Ms. Sullivan is co-director of the Green Group and Outing Club, and she teaches Pingry’s Environmental Art class, one of the only K-12 schools in the country to offer such a course. Her task? Attuning students to the wonders of nature, and the ways in which their nearly 200-acre campus can serve as their palette. A few years ago, Pingry supported her participation in a summer residency in Italy on “best practices” for environmental artists. Not long after, she spearheaded the construction of Pingry’s first outdoor classroom, and worked with other members of the faculty and students to create a multi-purpose campsite in the woods, complete with five tent platforms, which can sleep up to 20 people, and a hiking trail, four-tenths of a mile long.

More recently, she traveled with a group of Pingry faculty to Santa Fe for the Independent Schools Experiential Education Network (ISEEN) conference, exploring additional techniques for applying experiential teaching and learning to the classroom. The conference advanced her ability to incorporate STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) initiatives into the classroom. (She already teaches technology—digital filmmaking, Adobe Design programs, and 3D printing—in many of her arts classes.) This support of professional growth, and the school’s flexibility in allowing for cross-disciplinary collaboration and experimentation with curriculum, fuels her passion as a teacher, and as an artist.

“Pingry is a ‘yes’ school,” she notes. “If you have a good idea that you’re passionate about, you are given the tools you need to realize it.”

Meet More Pingry Scholars

Her period 6 freshman class last year was just such a class. It was the first or second day of the new school year, she recalled, and they were having an animated discussion about their summer reading. One girl raised her hand and asked if they could share books off the list. “That launched us into a big discussion about Go Set a Watchman, which had just come out; students began sharing off-the-list books and asking one another ‘Oh, did you read that? You should!’ They all wanted to be reading what their peers were reading,” she said. “It was a dream.”

Driven students aren’t the only highlight of Ms. Taylor’s Pingry teaching experience. The freedom to plan extracurricular activities—a particularly relevant play or performance, for example—is another. “At my previous school nobody really planned field trips because it was an insurmountable hurdle. Here, it’s easy to organize, and it’s supported.” Two years ago she started a creative writing class, and began leading an annual creative writing trip to Rutgers’ Zimmerli Art Museum. Here, students, guided by a faculty member from the National Writing Project, immerse themselves in a morning-long writing intensive, using the surrounding artwork as their point of reflection. Afterwards, the class has lunch in New Brunswick, giving them a chance to bond and discuss their writing.

Aided by small class sizes, classroom bonding is customary at Pingry. This is an important dynamic, especially when students are asked to share their poetry. (Establishing a Weebly website for students to post and share their work is another new initiative that Ms. Taylor recently launched.) It generated such a rich discussion, she spent two more weeks on the unit than intended, but, she says, it was well worth it. And, at Pingry, that’s all that matters.