Message from Head of School Margaret Haviland

 

Westfield Friends School lights a brilliant path for children. As a Quaker school, we honor the Divine essence in every student; we find power and wisdom in our differences; and we seek truth through active, joyful, collaborative inquiry. Our graduates go on to lead lives of conscience and consequence. The world we seek for our children begins here.

As presented by Westfield Friends School Head of School, Margaret Haviland

Welcome to the 2020-2021 Westfield Friends School Annual Report. Our theme this year is Gratitude For Our Community.

Our community includes our students and their families, our many generous donors, our faculty, our volunteers, and more.

We are grateful for all the donors who reached deep into their pockets to support us financially so that we could operate while being intentionally below student capacity. This was a necessity to keep us well socially distanced.

Our gratitude includes the donors that made possible the reimagining and reinhabiting of the lower level of our main building. This space has been reimagined into a Science Lab with a separate prep room. This room makes it possible for every teacher to plan experiments to hold in the space. We have a larger music room which allows for more movement and more instruments and singing together - even during the pandemic. And we have an improved Art space which includes a separate 2D art room and a pottery studio with a kiln.  We are a lucky school.

We are grateful for the donors who make our Special Events possible throughout the year. These special events support Responsive Tuition. This program makes possible a Westfield education to a wide variety of families.

For Giving Tuesday, our generous community considered Westfield in their giving during this annual generosity movement held on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.

We held our 4th Annual Golf and Tennis Outing even though we were in the midst of the pandemic and so many things were unknown.  In September we gathered as a community at Riverton Country Club. We masked-up, teed up, served up, and with the tennis courts to the golf links, this new venue gave us a wonderful gathering of our community at a highly successful event.

For two years, the pandemic  has challenged our spring event. This past year, the third year, Westfield  pivoted to an entirely virtual event.  The Development Committee was committed to finding a new way to celebrate and bring together our community.  And in  partnership with Georgetti's, Haddon Culinary, and Moore Brothers Wine Company a new concept came into being.

We are grateful for the benefits that Westfield has enjoyed through partnerships with many organizations. These organizations provide us with services and wisdom and help that a small school could not otherwise afford.

Burlington County Department of Health provided invaluable information, insight, and services throughout the pandemic. Friends Council on Education, ADVIS, NJAIS, all provided guidance and resources to navigate the pandemic. They created space for supportive ongoing conversations on leadership and the challenges and opportunities facing our schools. They also created space and time for engaging and transforming the work our schools do to create equitable, inclusive, places of belonging for every student in our care.

We are grateful for all the volunteers, including those that helped bring our library back to life for our youngest learners.

We are grateful for the legacy of Mr. William Probsting who we lost on September 20th of this year. We are grateful for his love and life-long dedication to the school and his incredible vision for Friends education.

Mr. Probsting lived his Quaker values; he believed that there is that of God in every person and that every person is an expression of the Divine. Alums have told us khownow he sought to cultivate their gifts. Further, he knew within himself that his role was to nurture that of God from within himself in service to Westfield Friends. Everyone always felt loved, seen, and known by him. Generous in spirit, Mr. Probsting epitomized the servant leader.

We are grateful for the alumni that shared their stories with us throughout this last year, some of which can be seen on our website’s Where Are They Now .  Many alums  also reminisced about Mr. Probsting, sharing their stories as well as support towards the Bill Probsting Scholarship Fund.

We are grateful for the sacrifices that Parents and Guardians made to keep children isolated and, therefore, keep our school open. 

We are grateful for the faculty for putting up with the frigid conditions, for being isolated within sections of the building, for rigid adherence to masking and social distancing - all of which were necessary to operating an in-person school.

Faculty also provided hybrid learning opportunities so that children who needed to learn from home for health or family-need reasons were able to continue within their classes and with their classmates.  They even got to participate in the fun, community building activities and games.

We invite you to look through each section of this online report to learn more about our gratitude for our donors and see all that we accomplished in the last school year. You will also see many you can continue to support Westfield and help us create the world we seek.