The Term Online
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The Nature Connection - Potomac’s Unique Focus
By: By Cort Morgan, Potomac Faculty
The mission of every school is stewardship, the cultivation of something one will never possess. The most obvious stewardship is the nurturing of young lives, and the essence of a school environment, of course, is an intangible fabric of relationships. The tangible surroundings, though, are inseparable from the experience. Turn-of-the-century philosophers and teachers like John Dewey and Maria Montessori recognized this reality, as did the founding families of The Potomac School. About a decade before the school appeared in a house on Dupont Circle, Walt Whitman, too, considered the effects of environment on children:
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Debate Club Excels in First Year of Competition
Potomac’s Debate Club, whose members had never before competed or traveled, entered the world of competition this fall with stellar results. A high school teamis normally required to debate in the Novice Division throughout its first year of competition. However, on the strength ofwins in their initial outings, the Panthersquickly moved up to the junior varsity level.
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From Potomac to Hollywood - Alumni Shine at the Oscars
By: By John H. Arundel, Potomac Class of 1981
Far from the shimmering klieg lights of Hollywood’s Oscar night, the lights in The Potomac School’s drama department in McLean were dark March 4, while 3,000 miles away four of its Academy Awardnominated alumni walked the red carpet. By the end of the evening, two of the school’s graduates emerged victorious, clutching shiny statuettes and fulfilling dreams of winning the ultimate industry accolade.
By the next morning, the hallways of Potomac were buzzing with the news that Davis Guggenheim, a 1979 graduate, had won an Academy Award for Best Documentary for his film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and first-time screenwriter Michael Arndt, a Great Falls native who attended Potomac from 1974 to 1981 and graduated from Langley High School in 1984, had won the Original Screenplay Oscar for “Little Miss Sunshine.”
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Journey to Ethiopia: Students, Alums, Faculty Bring Home Challenges
By: Ali Bhanji, Director of College Counseling
Our city-bred driver from Addis Ababa steered the four-by-four off the dirt road to cut short our journey to a water project in rural Woliso. Suddenly, a woman came running towards us, brandishing a stick, yelling, and hitting our vehicle. Apparently, we were in the midst of her potato field. As we looked around, it was clear that our vehicle had ripped her potatoes from their roots, leaving a trail of debris behind us.
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Alumni Teachers at Potomac
By: Tom Macy
Be it lengthy or not, when a period of time passes at a successful school, it is natural to speculate whether or not it has retained the core values and goals with which it began. Perhaps most importantly, is there a recognition by former students of the experiences they held important when they return and observe as adults what is happening presently? By asking several of these former students, a number of them distinctly qualified to respond because they returned as teachers, it is apparent that Potomac continues to retain a unique character which positively persists and which would undoubtedly delight its founders.
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