St. Paul's School (New Hampshire)
- This is about the St. Paul's School in the United States. There is also a St Paul's School (UK).
St. Paul's School is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire, United States, affiliated with the Episcopal Church. It was founded in 1856 by Dr. George Cheyne Shattuck, Jr. The 2,000 acre (8 km²) New Hampshire campus currently serves around 530 students. The school became co-educational in 1971 and is one of only a handful of remaining 100% residential boarding schools in the U.S., and one of the only ones whose entire faculty resides on campus. St. Paul's attracts students from all over the United States and the world. Though the school is nominally a religious institution, the faiths represented in the student body include nearly every religion as well as nonbelievers.
St. Paul's is part of an organization known as The Ten Schools Admissions Organization. This organization was founded more than forty years ago on the basis of a number of common goals and traditions. Member schools include St. Paul's, Choate Rosemary Hall, Deerfield Academy, The Hill School, The Hotchkiss School, The Lawrenceville School, The Taft School, The Loomis Chaffee School, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Phillips Andover Academy.
Millville
The school's buccolic 2000-acre campus is familiarly known as "Millville", after a now-abandoned mill whose relic still stands in the woods near the Lower School Pond. Though the campus is located a few miles from the center of Concord, a small city, the campus feels secluded and rural. Few members of the outside world regularly venture onto campus save for non-Faculty employees of the school, and so the community becomes virtually a world unto itself.
Though the school owns 2000 acres, the overwhelmiing majority of this acrage is comprised of wild and wooded areas. Most of the buildings are relatively close to one another.
There are 18 dorms, nine boys' and nine girls', all of which are single-sex and house between 25 and 40 students apiece. The arcitecture of the dormitories varies from the gothic, collegiate style of the "Quad" dorms to the spare, modern Kittredge building. The newest dorm, palatial Kehaya, was constructed in 1992, and its donor stipulated that it be forever a girls' dormitory, presumably to prevent boisterous high school boys from defacing the dorm's stately rooms.
Classes are held in six buildings: language and humanities classes meet in the Schoolhouse; math classes, in Moore; science classes, in Payson; visual arts, in Hargate; music and ballet classes, in the Oates Performing Arts Center; and theatre classes, in the New Space blackbox theatre. The Schoolhouse, Moore and Payson form a quadrangle.
The Ohrstrom library, constructed in 1991 to the tune of several million dollars, houses some 70,000 books and overlooks the Lower School Pond. Across the pond from the library, students sunbathe and swim off of "the Boat Docks," so called because they were once used for crew.
Perhaps the focal point of the campus is the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul, also known as the New Chapel. Constructed in the late 19th century, the Chapel is designed in the style of a gothic cathedral, and was the first instance of this design in America.
The Structure of the School Year
Most students (approxmiately 100 out of 140 in each graduating class) enter St. Paul's as freshman. Freshmen are known as Third Formers. Originally, St. Paul's accepted students at age 12, and these students were known as "First Formers." The school stopped accepting First Formers when it began to accept girls in 1971. Another 30 students enter the school as sophomores – Fourth Formers – and less than 10 enter as juniors – Fifth Formers. St. Paul's does not accept Sixth Formers as new students. The academic year into three terms: Fall Term, which runs from the start of school in early September till Thanksgiving break; Winter Term, which runs from after Thanksgiving break until Spring Break at the beginning of March; and Spring Term, which runs from after Spring Break until the end of the School Year in the second week of June.
Daily Life
Like many private schools in its area, St. Paul's operates on a six-day school week, meaning that classes meet on Saturday. Wednesdays and Saturdays, however, are half-days, with athletic games in the afternoons. Days packed with activity are both exhausting and engaging, a fact perhaps best summed up by the aphorism that "the days are long and the weeks fly by."
For Paulies, as St. Paul's students (and, incidentally, alumni) are called, most school days begin with Chapel. This mandatory interfaith half-hour meeting occurs four times a week (every school day except Wednesday and Saturday.) Four rows of bench seating face in on either side of a center aisle, instead of forward, with Third Formers (Freshmen) sitting in the front rows of each side, Fourth and Fifth Formers in the second row, Sixth Formers in the third, and finally, Faculty members in the last row. Chapel begins with a reading. Each reading is sourced from fonts of wisdom as varied as Scripture, Lance Armstrong's autobiography, the Bhagavad Gita, and the poetry of e.e. cummings. Following the reading is either a speaker or a presentation. Speakers can be alumni, Faculty members, Sixth Formers, luminaries brought to the community, or community religious leaders, and others. Presentations are usually musical performances by students, and can be jazz, classical, a capella, or even (occasionally) rock and roll. The headmaster then says prayers, including a prayer for any community members whose birthday it is. Chapel is concluded by "reports and announcements," which include general scheduling reminders, announcements of disciplinary action, and student events like movie screenings or club meetings. Students often perform short skits during Reports to plug their events.
After Chapel, a full day of classes await students. St. Paul's conducts all its classes (with the exception of science and some math classes) in a round-table format – known as the "Harkness method" – encouraging discussion between students and the teacher, and between students. Students learn not only from a world-class faculty, but from each other, and are engaged and included in each classes. The average class size, according to the School's website, is 10-12 students. Each class meets four times a week for fifty-five minutes. For humanities, science and arts classes, one class a week runs an additional thirty minutes.
Rather than offering a Physical Education class, St. Paul's requires all its students to play sports for all six terms of their Third and Fourth Form years, and for any three terms during their Fifth and Sixth Form years. These sports range from a world-champion crew team (more on that later) to club hockey, an intramural sport designed to acquaint even non-skaters with the game of ice hockey. See the St. Paul's School website page on athletics offerings [1] for a complete list of sports offered. It should be noted that students studying ballet are exempted from the athletics requirement and ballet classes meet after classes during athletics.
Twice a week, students attend Seated Meal. Seated Meal (or "Seated" as it's called by students at SPS) requires formal attire (which is, not coincidentally, known at St. Paul's as "Seated Meal attire.") Seven students and a faculty member are randomly assigned to each table, and the meal is eaten "as a family," so food is served from communal serving dishes, and the table is excused only after everyone has eaten. Seated is generally a good opportunity to meet people whom you would otherwise never have gotten to know. Even the contingent of community members (which contains both students and Faculty) who find Seated a bore are glad: once upon a time, every meal except Sunday breakfast was a Seated Meal!
In the evenings, meetings are held for clubs and activities including music ensembles like the Chorus and Band, a capella groups (the all-male Testostertones, the all-female Mad Hatters, and the co-ed Deli Line), the Debate Team, and other extracurriculars.
Somewhere in this schedule, through free periods, time eked out between sports and dinner, and long hours into the night, students complete a full load of homework.
Traditions
The school is known for its many longstanding traditions. For example, near the start of the school year—on a sunny, crisp Fall day—the Rector announces an unplanned "Cricket Holiday" in morning Chapel. Classes are cancelled for the day and the students participate in a variety of fun activities, plus rest and relaxation. The Cricket Holiday dates back to the first Rector, Henry Augustus Coit, who preferred cricket over baseball as a "more refined sport."
Winter and Spring Terms also have their own surprise holidays. During the frozen month of February, the Missionary Society (which has nothing to do with conversion but is instead the school's community service organization) plans and announces Mish Holiday. The holiday is announced the day before, and the entire school turns out for a theme dance. The next day is a holiday. Late in Spring Term, the Rector calls another holiday, called Rector's Recess.
Students who participate in "club" sports (intramural) at St. Paul's are assigned to one of three teams for their entire school careers—"Isthmian," "Delphian" or "Old Hundred." Student also are assigned to one of two "Boat Clubs""—"Halcyon" or "Shattuck." The rivalry of the clubs has lasted for more than a century. If a graduate's descendent attends the school, he or she is assigned to the same clubs.
The Annual Inter-House, Inter-Club Dorm Run takes place late in Fall Term. Students are invited to earn points for their dorm and club by running in a 2-mile cross country race. For most of the non-cross-country athletes, participating – not winnning – is the point, and anyone finishing in under 25 minutes is counted. Pizza parties are awarded to both the dorm with the fastest runners and the dorm with the most participation.
During a weekend in the Fall Term, the Student Council holds "Cocktails," a dinner/dance formal where Sixth Formers are paired up with Third Formers, and Fourth and Fifth Formers are generally paired together as well.
During "Anniversary Weekend", held on the first weekend of June, alumni converge on the school for get-togethers, reunions and to march in the Alumni Parade. Each Form (class) marches down Chapel Road in chronological order, starting with the oldest living alumni (currently, the earliest Form represented is the Form of 1934, with one 89-year old alumnus who marches every year.) In the back of this long column is the about-to-be-graduated Sixth Form.
St. Paul's students once had a close relationship with the Grateful Dead and other jam bands. Several Grateful Dead histories make note of the pyramid dialect that was born at the school. Phish played in the Upper (the School's dining hall) on May 19, 1990.
Athletic Firsts
The first ice hockey game ever played in the United States was played at St. Paul's School. The hockey program has enjoyed a long history with several notable alumni, including Hobey Baker and Malcom Gordon. America’s first racquets and squash courts were built at St. Paul’s in 1883. (The American sport of racquetball is a fusion of handball and the British game of squash). These first courts were the birthplace of squash tennis.
Another first came for St. Paul's School in 2004 when its crew team won the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup in the Henley Royal Regatta, beating Winchester College, St Paul's School (UK), Pangbourne College and Abingdon School.
On a sidenote, in recent years it has been only rarely possible to have the pleasure of "Playing Hockey Beneath the Chapel " because the pond rarely freezes over anymore, at least not to the satisfaction of the school's security director.
Notable alumni
- Burnet Maybank Director of SC Dept of Revenue, and noted author
- Hobey Baker Renowned Hockey star and War Hero of WWI
- Archibald Cox Watergate Special Prosecutor
- Annie Duke Tournament Poker Champion
- John Franklin Enders, Nobel Laureate in Physiology/Medicine
- Edward Harkness Philanthropist
- Jeff Halpern, NHL Player
- James Rudolph Garfield, U.S. politician
- Frank T. Griswold III Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church
- William Randolph Hearst Newspaper Publisher
- John Lindsay Former New York City Mayor
- John Kerry U.S. Senator (D-MA) and 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate
- Jamie Koven, World Champion Rower
- John Jacob Astor IV Member of the Astor family who died on the RMS Titanic
- James W. Kinnear Former President & CEO Texaco, Inc.
- Howard Lederer Tournament Poker Champion (brother of Annie Duke)
- Bernard M. Makihara Former CEO Mitsubishi Corporation
- Rick Moody novelist, author of The Ice Storm
- J. Pierpont Morgan, Jr. Banker and Philanthropist
- Samuel Eliot Morison Author, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Harvard Professor
- Robert Mueller Current director of the FBI
- Judd Nelson Actor
- Catherine Oxenberg Actress
- Lewis Preston President, World Bank
- Don Sweeney, NHL Player
- William Taylor Publisher of the Boston Globe
- Jim Thompson Silk Trader (Thailand)
- Garry Trudeau Cartoonist
- Cornelius Vanderbilt III
- Owen Wister American Writer
- Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Film and Television Actor