A Great Week for Guest Speakers

Students recently welcomed guest speakers to campus to help them expand upon things they are learning in the classroom.

In the Lower School, students welcomed the 2017-18 McLeish Lecturer Jesse Holland, author of the nonfiction summer reading title Black Men Built the Capitol, to a recent assembly where he talked to boys about his passions: writing, history, and comic books.

“You can write a book,” Holland encouraged the boys. “All it takes is the will to do it. If you have a book where you don’t like the ending, write a new ending. If you’re waiting for the next book to come out in a series you like, write it yourself.”

Upper School students welcomed Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper, head of higher education and research at Shakespeare’s Globe, the London organization that runs the replica Globe Theatre. Noting that most high school and college students learn Shakespeare by reading the plays, Karim-Cooper reminded students that the plays were written to be performed in very specific performance spaces and encouraged students to incorporate acting and attending performances into their study of Shakespeare. A timely visit, indeed, as the Upper School play this fall is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

STA and NCS held a coordinate chapel in the Cathedral with the Rev. Dr. Patricia Lyons, missioner for evangelism and community engagement for the Diocese of Washington. In her homily, Lyons reminded students what it means to attend an Episcopal School, where all students are encouraged to explore and deepen their particular faiths.