Sidwell Friends School Child Development Center

Lower School Philosophy
Quaker Values

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The values and beliefs of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, are the foundation for our Lower School and are integrated into every part of the community. These core valuesor testimoniesare at the center of our teaching philosophy. Quaker testimonies include equality, peace, social justice, simplicity, and service to others. Friends believe in that of God in every person and in the peaceful resolution of conflict. The School fosters these values in all areas of the curriculum.

Quaker Meeting for Worship also is an integral part of the Lower School. Students are guided to quiet their bodies and to open themselves to the silence of Meeting where they have the time to reflect and to deepen their inner spirit. Out of the silence adults and children occasionally share thoughtful messages in a spirit of mutual respect. All Lower School children, from pre-kindergarten through fourth grade, join their teachers and staff members in weekly Meetings for Worship. Parents are welcomed at these Meetings too. These 20-minute gatherings may take place in the Bethesda Meeting House, in our classrooms with a visiting class, or with the whole school gathered together. Readings, music, and thoughtful observations may be included, especially when the entire school is together.

Since the founding of The Society of Friends, members have posed a series of questions or Queries as a guide to their beliefs, a means to examine their lives, and a way to measure their actions. These open ended questions replace a formal doctrine and encourage ongoing reflection. For more than 25 years, Lower School students have developed and written their own monthly Queries for consideration of the community. These questions reflect issues and concerns relevant to their own lives: friendship, fairness, peace, understanding, nature and environmental issues, celebrations, differences, conflict resolution, service, and the world around them. The following are examples for community consideration:

How do we keep greed from growing in an I want everything world?
First Grade

Do you have the courage to stand up to your friends when they are not being fair and just to others?
Second Grade

How can we learn to see and appreciate the beauty of everyday things around us?
Third Grade

In this new year, how can we make peace in our world, resist peer pressure, and not hurt others?
Fourth Grade

Community service plays an important role in the Lower School experience, nurtured by the Quaker belief that it is important to let your life speak. For several decades students have brought a vegetable to school on Wednesdays to help create soup for Marthas Table, a Washington, D.C., soup kitchen. For this project two classes work side by side, often younger children paired with older children, and chop the donated vegetables. These vegetables are then delivered to Marthas Table by parent volunteers where the soup is cooked. On designated Saturdays families are invited to meet at Marthas Table to make sandwiches to feed the hungry.

Many other service activities are woven into the fabric of childrens lives at Lower School such as fourth graders sharing their love of books by becoming reading buddies with younger students at a D.C. public school, collecting nuts and seeds for reforestation of native trees, and working on environmental clean-ups of the Anacostia River. Opportunities for service within our own school community often include a day of planting bulbs and flowers, learning to compost soup vegetable cuttings, and helping sort campus recycling materials. Nurturing a sense of responsibility and care, as well as developing the habit of helping, grows from these acts of service.