[wzslider autoplay=”true” info=”true”]
PICTURES BY QUINN MULHOLLAND
BY ORLI HENDLER
Rumors about Westminster: preppy, rich, Christian, beautiful campus, and amazing athletic fields. Pretty much all of these are true, but that’s not all there is to the school. The school and the students are organized, studious and extremely friendly. Westminster is the second largest private school in the country with 1,846 students elementary through high school in the 2011-2012 school year. They have 13 buildings and 9 athletic fields for a total of 180 acres of school campus. They offer 27 AP classes and have a 92 percent pass rate (3 or higher) on the AP exams. That being said, Westminster students are not all work, no fun as might be expected based on the numbers. I guess Westminster provides a way to succeed, exceed and enjoy it too.
Setting up a day to shadow a Westminster student was definitely a familiar task for the Westminster staff. After emailing the high school principal, Mr. Peters, about shadowing a student, I received an email from his assistant, Mrs. Cooke, asking for a bio about myself including what grade I was in, what interests I had, and what my hobbies were, so that they could place me with a person who had the same interests as I do. From Mrs. Cooke’s emails, I already knew that the person I was shadowing, Mark Alar, was a junior, the manager of the football team, and had more free periods on Thursday than Wednesday. It turns out that Mrs. Cooke had also told him about us. By the time I got there, he knew my name, my school and my reason for being there. He had even read my article about shadowing a Crim student.
I arrived on the Westminster campus around 8:55. I took the second left and then the first right into the visitor parking, parked my car then walked up the hill to the building called Askew. Mr. Justice, the assistant principal, was waiting at the door. He shook my hand then ushered me inside, directing me to the principal’s office. Mrs. Cooke sat at a desk across the room and introduced me to Mark. I was surprised to see that Mark was not wearing a uniform. Westminster, I realized, actually doesn’t have uniforms with plaid skirts and polos. I shook Mark’s hand and introduced myself. Then we hurried upstairs to European history. (We missed homeroom and we were late to first period. Sorry about that Mark.)
I would like to point out that we did not miss any morning services or prayers. Though the school is religiously affiliated, and the head of the school is an episcopal priest, it is not centered around Christianity. Turns out, the school only has three services during the school year, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, and bible study classes are only taken freshmen year (old testament) and senior year (new testament).
The Euro teacher, Mr. Hudson, welcomed us in and Mark quickly introduced me. He took his seat in the front row and opened his school-issued Mac laptop to take notes, so I slid back to the empty back row and took a seat. There were 10 students in the class, not including me. Mr. Hudson said that class period was a little smaller than normal and most are around 12 students, though they ranged from eight to 19 students per class. I looked around as the students resumed their discussion on a film they had watched. Mr. Hudson, I gathered, was the coach of the lacrosse team. Pictures of teams from past years hung on the wall next to me and in the opposite back corner, a deer head sported a lacrosse hat.
The class was starting a new unit that day, so we got to play a game where we had to figure out who the people were in the pictures on the ActivBoard. They were all influential people who would come up in the unit. The middle one was the easiest: Louis XIV. The outside two were a little harder and it took some hints from Mr. Hudson before we got Peter the Great on the left and Oliver Cromwell on the right.
After an engaging lesson about change in trade during the seventeenth century, we headed across the lawn and down some steps to Broyles Art Center where Mark had band. We walked up the steps and along the balcony to the band room. On the way, Mark told me they had a concert last Monday night so they might have a free period. I figured that meant not playing instruments and hanging out in the band room. We got to the end of the hall where Mr. Martin, the band director, was coming out of another door. Mark made introductions, then asked if we had a free period. Mr. Martin confirmed that we did, so I followed Mark through a door and down the stairs to the lobby of the arts building. I guess we weren’t going to waste time doing nothing in the band room after all.
Mark decided to take the free period to give me a short tour of the campus. We started in the arts building, since we were already there. He took us into the theatre and showed us the stage. We also peeked in the Westminster bookstore, which looked like an actual college bookstore, school paraphernalia and all. Then we went down the path to Turner Gym. On the way, Mark explained that each building housed a different subject and they were all named after the rich people who donated money to build them. Not only did Westminster name their buildings after donors, but they also named their rock climbing wall, their pool, their weight room, their basketball and volleyball courts, their baseball fields and their football/soccer stadium. Besides naming everything, Westminster also has a thing for paw prints. From the moment I turned onto the campus, it was obvious that an extremely large wildcat with paws as big as me had marched through some green paint then wandered down the streets of Westminster and passed all the athletic fields. I guess he got the same tour I did.
Mark had to go help a teacher grade some papers, so I decided to wander around the campus. I talked to some 10th graders sitting on a bench doing work outside and I watched elementary school kids run around asking the older student who were working outside questions for a survey. One of the kids ran up to me to ask what my favorite Westminster tradition was. I apologized and told him that I didn’t go to Westminster. His teachers were calling him to return to the rest of his classmates who were huddled around a bench where two other students had been working (and were now being bombarded with questions), so I sent him on his way.
I walked back toward Pressly Hall because Mark’s next class started in 15 minutes.
As I walked up, a guy jumped off a bench where he was talking to his friends and ran over. He introduced himself as Sam, and asked if I was the one from Grady. I said I was. He asked me how I was liking Westminster and offered to introduce me to some more people. We walked across the lawn to where Mark was sitting on the steps with a couple other people. Sam introduced me to everyone there, including Mark, but by that time we had to head up to third period.
Precalculus was with Mrs. McGreaham. Once again, Mark introduced me to his teacher and I took a seat in the empty back row. The first part of class was dedicated to taking a quiz so I contented myself with reading the witty poster on the wall next to me. It was covered in math puns, things like “Smoking is the leading cause of statistics” and “?r2, or are they round?” (if you don’t get it, say it out loud). The rest of the class was spent learning about polynomials and practicing problems as a class. They used TI Inspire calculator software on their Macs which Ms. McGreaham also used and projected on the board.
As we left math, Mark informed me that we had double bio next. Both fourth and fifth period were biology class. At Grady, all three lunches are during third period but at Westminster, the three lunches spanned over fourth and fifth period. That meant that lunch split the biology class period.
By now, our routine had become flawless. We walked into the class room, Mark introduced me to his teacher, Ms. Harper, then I took the empty seat in the back of the room. This class was completely full with 19 students so I sat at the lab table in the back. Sam was in biology with us and he came to sit at the lab table too. They did a warm-up quiz where they sent answers anonymously from their Macs and they would appear on the board. It was like Activote Eggs, except they used Macs instead of eggs and the questions were not multiple choice. After that, everyone pulled up the same PowerPoint that Ms. Harper had put on the board and they started going over notes. We went through a couple slides before we were dismissed for lunch.
I followed Mark outside, through a door and into an underground passage. As we walked, Mark told me that they called their lunch period “awkward lunch” since it wasn’t lunch one, two or three. Ms. Harper just let them go and told them to be back at a certain time. The plus side to awkward lunch was that there were much shorter lines, so you could get food quicker. Lunch that day was tacos. There was a choice of beef or pulled pork as well as options for vegetarians and vegans. Once you had a tortilla and your choice of meat, you could go to the bar which contained all the ingredients to make a perfect taco. I had a taco but there was also a salad bar and a sandwich bar.
We returned back through the tunnel and took our seats in the classroom. Everyone pulled out their Macs and pulled up the PowerPoint again. At 2:40, the bell rang to announce the end of school, and the beginning of “back work,” time dedicated to tutorial-like teaching.
By the end of the day, I was pretty good at finding my way around the buildings and I thought I had learned Westminster well, until I realized that this was only a piece of the large campus. I got in my car, and followed the paw prints backwards to the main gate. I made a right past the large Westminster sign and headed home.
