PDS Graduates 22 Students

Attorney, mediator and advocate for restorative justice and the founding director of Restorative Justice Initiative, a Partner Project of the Fund for the City of New York, Mika Dashman ’93 (bio), a PDS alumna, will be the featured speaker at Poughkeepsie Day School’s Class of 2017 Commencement on Wednesday, June 14. Head of School Ben Chant and Amanda Thornton, president of the school’s board of trustees, will award diplomas to 22 seniors, who hail from Dutchess, Ulster, Orange and Putnam counties and China. Since the Town of Poughkeepsie independent school graduated its first high school class in 1970, this rite of passage has been witnessed by all students and faculty in addition to the graduates’ families and friends. Each senior will participate in the ceremonies through a speech, reading or performance, and the school’s jazz ensemble will perform. The event begins at 10am in the school’s Buccelli Athletics Facility and the community is invited to view it via live stream video at https://www.youtube.com/user/PoughkeepsieDay.

A New York State–certified mediator, Mika has worked on criminal court cases and facilitated community conferences through the New York Peace Institute. She also facilitates peacemaking/community-building circles for organizations, student and professional groups. The Restorative Justice Initiative is a citywide, multi-sector advocacy project promoting restorative principles and practices in New York City’s neighborhoods, courts and schools. Its work is applied reactively, in response to conflict and/or crime, and proactively, to strengthen community by fostering communication and empathy. Before beginning her work in alternative dispute resolution, Mika spent more than six years providing direct legal services to the indigent at several New York City non-profits, including Housing Works, Inc., where she also worked on all aspects of the agency’s civil rights impact docket. Mika is a two-time recipient, in 2015 and 2017, of the David Lerman Memorial Fund Fellowship in Restorative Justice by the Project for Integrating Law, Spirituality and Politics. She is a graduate of the City University of New York School of Law and Sarah Lawrence College. She spent her childhood in Woodstock, New York, and attended Poughkeepsie Day School from 1988–1992.

In addition to completing the school’s demanding college-preparatory program, each Poughkeepsie Day School senior participated in a four-week, off-campus internship in May. For more than 25 years, the school’s internship program has enabled PDS seniors to explore or further develop their academic and personal interests through real-world, unpaid on-the-job placements. This year, sponsors included such area organizations as Vassar College, Planned Parenthood Mid-Hudson Valley and The Chamber Foundation, Inc., as well as Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Half Moon Books and Clinton Vineyards. Students also volunteered at Studio Russell James, MTA New York City Transit, Children’s Museum of the Arts and Women’s Environment and Development Organization in New York City and in not-for-profit and corporate settings as far away as China and South Africa. A formal presentation detailing students’ internship experiences will be held for their families the evening prior to graduation.

The graduates are: Christopher Canfield, Jr., Brewster; Victoria Dema, Fishkill; La’v’al Davis, Highland; Anne Gundeck, Lagrangeville; Joseph Pullman, Newburgh; Jie (Jim) Han, Wei (Slim) Li, Yingyin (Joanne) Luo, Chufan (Alex) Wu, People’s Republic of China; Yosef Abdelrahman, Charles Burns-Bahruth, Tiana Fishler, Emily Frank, Claudia Hinsdale, Poughkeepsie; Daron McShane, Poughquag; Katherine McKeon, Sonomi Oyagi, Red Hook; Benjamin Shaw, Rhinebeck; Jane Cole, Stone Ridge; Rachel Powers, West Hurley; Elias Levey-Swain, West Park.