Alums Return to PDS! Our students never forget the positive impact that a PDS education has on their lives. Throughout the year, we create opportunities for our alumni to visit the school and participate in important traditions and share their interests, experiences, and knowledge with current students. Expect to see alumni join in for upcoming Thanksgiving and WinterFest all-school activities. In January, newer alumni participate in the annual alumni college panel where they share practical advice with current seniors about the college experience and address everything from navigating the dorm experience to accessing important first-line contacts like academic and residential advisors, to negotiating first-year surprises.
Winter Sledding. The “sledding hill” near the playground is always a popular place in the winter months.
Food Bowl™ Hudson Valley, A Poughkeepsie Day School Community Project is an amazing undertaking where kids create public art out of non-perishable food items to feed the hungry and raise awareness about hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition here in the Hudson Valley and worldwide. PDS is committed to inspiring learning in everyday life and has been leading other schools and organizations to use Food Bowl as an opportunity to demonstrate how math, science, engineering, design, tinkering and the humanities merge into our everyday awareness.To date this event has collected over 30,000 pounds of food which has been donated to the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley and other local food pantries. This year, due to covid, students will be doing an internal version of this event. More to come on how the community can get involved!
Pizza Fridays. It’s a long-time tradition at PDS for younger students in the upper school to order pizza for all students and employees for lunch on Fridays! It’s so much fun that students almost forget they are learning many valuable skills while performing this important service – from organization and spatial reasoning, to algebra, to money management, and accountability.
Annual Meeting of the Eagle Society. This tradition involves lower school students reciting poetry as they are inducted into this society of poets and poetry lovers. Legend has it that the Eagle Society was the brainchild of legendary former PDS lower school head Cope Craven and learning specialist Gretchen Lytle. Everyone in the school is invited to participate. The ceremony begins with a trumpet fanfare heralding the arrival of the Grand High Eagle whose identity is a secret zealously guarded by the elders of the lower school community! The ceremony opens with the group recitation of “The Eagle” by Alfred Tennyson and concludes with Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.”
PDS’s Annual Xibit E Poetry and Art Opening. Coordinated by art teacher Wayne Toepp, this event features the work of our very talented high school artists and poets.
Take One Picture. Inspired by the Take One Picture program in the U.K., this event has become an annual tradition in the lower school. It starts with the selection of one painting from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. Students then meet in multi-age groups to brainstorm a project that reflects and responds to the painting. Finally, students meet and create an original art project to share with the rest of the school. Projects over the years have included skits, murals, dances, songs and even baked creations!