Friends Select School is a private Quaker

Religious Society of Friends

The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...

 school in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

. The school has approximately 530 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, and focuses on college preparation in the "upper school" (grades 9 through 12). With a history dating to 1689, Friends Select has been located at 17th St. and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Benjamin Franklin Parkway is a scenic boulevard that runs through the cultural heart of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Named for favorite son Benjamin Franklin, the mile-long Parkway cuts diagonally across the grid plan pattern of Center City's Northwest quadrant...

 since 1885. The school has close connections with the Race Street Friends Meetinghouse

Race Street Friends Meetinghouse

The Race Street Friends Meetinghouse is a historic and still active Quaker meetinghouse located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.The meetinghouse, at 1515 Cherry Street, served as the site of the Yearly Meeting of the Hicksite sect of the Religious Society of Friends from 1857 to 1955...

, or Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, built in 1856, which is used by students and faculty for Meeting for Worship

Meeting for worship

A meeting for worship is a practice of the Religious Society of Friends in many ways comparable to a church service. These services have a wide variety of forms, creating a spectrum from typical Protestant liturgy to silent waiting for the Spirit .A Meeting for Worship may start with a query;...

 each Wednesday. The school is under the care of both this meeting and the Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia, or Arch Street Friends Meeting House

Arch Street Friends Meeting House

Arch Street Friends Meeting House, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a Friends Meeting House of the Religious Society of Friends . It is the oldest meetinghouse of the Religious Society of Friends still in use in the United States and the largest in the world.Pennsylvania founder and Quaker...

, built in 1804.

History

Friends Select School traces its history to the founding of the first Friends school in 1689. Friends Select has existed in its current form since 1833 and has been at its present location since 1885.

Lower school

Class size usually ranges from 17 to 20 students, with assistant teachers providing additional support in pre-kindergarten through grade three.

Middle school

Class size ranges from 16 to 22 students. Students have separate teachers for English, history, mathematics, science, and world languages. Specialists teach music, performance, visual art, and physical education. Seventh and eighth graders sit for final academic exams. All students receive letter grades supplemented by extensive teacher commentary.

Upper school

In Friend Select’s college preparation Upper School, students master core academic content. The courses—English, history, mathematics, science and world languages—require ever-increasing levels of independence, critical thinking and leadership.

Class size ranges from five to 18 students, and major courses meet five times in a six-day cycle, including a double period for each course.

Faculty advisors counsel students on academic and social issues. A grade dean, a faculty member who monitors student progress and oversees the grade’s advisory structure, remains with the class through graduation. Advisories, groups of eight to 10 students, also stay together through twelfth grade.

Athletics

Friends Select has several athletes who are expected to perform at the next level at even beyond.
The athletic program, open to students in grades six through twelve, helps students build a sense of self-esteem and of community through teamwork and individual accomplishment. Students learn skills and strategies of the games and participation in the athletic program encourages good sportsmanship, responsibility, and time management skills.

Facilities
Friends Select’s athletic facilities include:

• 25-yard swimming pool
• Full gymnasium
• Wrestling gymnasium
• Weight-training room
• Girls' locker room
• Boys' locker room
• Roof-top athletic fields (includes 8 tennis courts, field hockey field)
• Fitness/dance studio
• Soccer, softball and baseball fields in Fairmount Park
• Vesper Boat House
  Vesper Boat Club
  Vesper Boat Club is an amateur rowing club located at #10 Boathouse Row in the historic Boathouse Row of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1865 as the Washington Barge Club, the Club changed its name to Vesper Boat Club in 1870...
  
  

Friends Schools’ League Participating Schools
Abington Friends School

Abington Friends School

Abington Friends School, founded in 1697, is a K-12 private Quaker secondary school in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania . It is the oldest primary and secondary educational institution in the United States to operate continuously at the same location under the same management...

, The Academy of the New Church, Friends' Central School

Friends' Central School

Friends' Central School is a college-preparatory, Quaker, coeducational day school for nursery through grade 12 located in Wynnewood, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....

, George School

George School

George School is a private Quaker boarding and day high school located on a rural campus near Newtown, Pennsylvania, USA. It was founded at its present site in 1893, and has grown from a single building to over 20 academic, athletic, and residential buildings...

, Germantown Friends School

Germantown Friends School

Germantown Friends School is a coeducational K-12 school in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States under the supervision of Germantown Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends . It is governed by a School Committee whose members are drawn mainly...

, Moorestown Friends School

Moorestown Friends School

Moorestown Friends School is a private Quaker school located at East Main Street and Chester Avenue in Moorestown, New Jersey. As of the 2009-10 school year, the school had an enrollment of 668 students and 81.0 classroom teachers , for a student–teacher ratio of 8.2...

, The Shipley School

The Shipley School

The Shipley School is a coeducational, independent, college-preparatory day school with approximately 835 students in pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade...

, and the Westtown School

Westtown School

Westtown School is a coeducational, college preparatory day and boarding school for students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade.-About Westtown School:...

 are the other eight members of the conference.

Sports

Fall athletic offerings Field hockey Field hockey Field Hockey, or Hockey, is a team sport in which a team of players attempts to score goals by hitting, pushing or flicking a ball into an opposing team's goal using sticks... Soccer Cross country Cross country running Cross country running is a sport in which people run a race on open-air courses over natural terrain. The course, typically long, may include surfaces of grass and earth, pass through woodlands and open country, and include hills, flat ground and sometimes gravel road...

Winter athletic offerings Basketball Basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules... Swimming Swimming (sport) Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native... Wrestling Wrestling Wrestling is a form of grappling type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. A wrestling bout is a physical competition, between two competitors or sparring partners, who attempt to gain and maintain a superior position...

Spring athletic offerings Baseball Baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond... Softball Softball Softball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of 10 to 14 players. It is a direct descendant of baseball although there are some key differences: softballs are larger than baseballs, and the pitches are thrown underhand rather than overhand... Tennis Tennis Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all... Crew Crew A crew is a body or a class of people who work at a common activity, generally in a structured or hierarchical organization. A location in which a crew works is called a crewyard or a workyard...

The arts

Lower School

Art

The art curriculum, often interdisciplinary and multicultural, centers on engaging lessons based on the elements and principles of art and design. A major focus each year is the Lower School Artist Study. Weekly sessions in the art room from pre-kindergarten through second grade are taught in half-class groups.

Music

Music is a multi-tiered program offering singing, Orff instruments, movement and at least two stage performances per year. These revolve around thematic studies, or might simply be songs, skits, or dances that develop from students’ collective creativity. There are two weekly sessions in the music room for pre-kindergarten through second grade; three weekly sessions are offered to grades three and four.

Artist Study

For a period each year, the lower school studies a special artist, one whose life provides an interesting story and whose artwork has a special appeal to children. Artists chosen recently have included ceramist, naturalist, painter and printer Walter Anderson; sculptor and teacher Dr. Selma Burke; architect Frank Lloyd Wright; illustrator and author Charles Santore; ceramist Josefina Aguilar and designer/director Julie Taymor. The objective is to experience the vision of an individual artist, learn ways that art is used in various cultures and come to appreciate the choices that each artist makes in terms of work and life. Each student artist creates his or her own artwork based on the themes and techniques of the artist being studied. The study concludes with an exhibit of every child's work and an interdisciplinary music-drama-art performance.

Middle School

Fine Arts

All middle school students take drama, visual arts and music each year. In addition, students can choose to participate in orchestra or chorus. These are performing ensembles. There is also an annual middle school drama production open to any middle school student who wishes to participate.

Upper School

Fine Arts

Students complete at least two fine arts courses. Offerings in the performing arts include Choir, Introduction to Directing, Instrumental Ensemble and American Music in the 20th Century. Courses in the visual arts include Art Foundations, Drawing and Painting I and II, Photography I and II, Introduction to Filmmaking, Studio Major, Graphic Design and Metalsmithing.

Philadelphia Museum of Art Research Project

In year two of the Interdisciplinary Sequence, ninth grade students study at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There, students select a work of art from the Medieval to Renaissance periods as their research focus. The culmination of the course is an evening at the museum, where each student presents a detailed and comprehensive description of a work of art to an audience of parents, friends, faculty and museum-goers.

Extra-curricular activities

Co-curricular involvement is an integral part of each middle schooler's experience. It may include the literary magazine, mainstage theater, student government, peer tutoring, movie night and more. In addition, each student is required to participate in at least one season of after-school interscholastic athletics per year.

Upper school students select co-curricular activities from a variety of options. Opportunities include two mainstage productions each year, instrumental music and choir performances, student government, and such organizations as the Multicultural Student Union, the Jewish Student Union, the Falcon (student newspaper), The Cauldron (arts and literary journal) , Worship & Ministry, the Operation Smile Club, and the Mock Trial Team. In ninth and tenth grades, all students are required to participate in at least one season of after-school sports or in one theatrical production. Friends Select competes in the Friends School League and with other independent as well as public and parochial schools.

Notable alumni

• Barrie Ciliberti, former Maryland State Delegate
  Maryland House of Delegates
  The Maryland House of Delegates is the lower house of the General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Maryland, and is composed of 141 Delegates elected from 47 districts. The House chamber is located in the state capitol building on State Circle in Annapolis...
  
  
• John McWhorter
  John McWhorter
  John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist and political commentator. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. His linguistic specialty is creole and the process through which it forms.-Early life:...
  
  , 1983, linguist and Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute
  Manhattan Institute
  The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative, market-oriented think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J...
  
  
• Andrea Kremer
  Andrea Kremer
  Andrea Kremer is an American television sports journalist. She currently works as a correspondent on HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel." Until the 2011 season she worked as a sideline reporter for NBC on the network's coverage of Sunday Night Football.Kremer has covered more than 20 Super...
  
  , 1976, sports reporter for and NBC Sports
  NBC Sports
  NBC Sports is the sports division of the NBC television network. Formerly "a service of NBC News," it broadcasts a diverse array of programs, including the Olympic Games, the NFL, the NHL, MLS, Notre Dame football, the PGA Tour, the Triple Crown, and the French Open, among others...
  
   and former reporter for ESPN
  ESPN
  Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
  
  
• Jeff Cooperman, 1980, the managing producer of The Colbert Report
• David Schlessinger, founder of Zany Brainy
  Zany Brainy
  Zany Brainy was a United States retail store chain owned by FAO Schwarz that sold educational toys and multi-media products aimed at children ages 4–12...
  
  , a United States retail toy store, and Five Below
  Five Below
  Five Below is a privately held chain of discount stores found in a number of states. The store, as the name suggests, sells products that cost no more than $5.00. The chain is aimed at teenagers and pre-teens, but has many products for adults...
  
  , a United States retail variety store
• Wendell E. Pritchett, chancellor of Rutgers University–Camden
• Danielle Kelechi Fitzgerald, 2011, National Champion Fencer

External links

• Official Website of Friends Select School