Quaker education fosters belonging, confidence and lifelong ways of thinking that shape not only successful students, but grounded, compassionate humans prepared for the world. In this reflection, George School parent Sydney Lewis P’25 and recent alum Halaylah Lewis-McGlothan '25 share the value of their George School experience from their own perspectives. 

Sydney Lewis P’25

I'm the proud mother of a George School graduate, and I am the Director of Equity and Inclusion at Newtown Friends School. Our school shares its campus with GS, so I know George School pretty well. The vast majority of parents at Newtown Friends School send their children to George School. That's a serious vote of confidence, right? 

This is a message quite specifically for parents of middle-school-aged students. Yes, George School has a strong academic program; academic rigor is here. But your child could get that elsewhere. Yes, there are strong athletics here; but your child could compete elsewhere. Yes, there's a wonderful theater and arts program here, and your child could perform or create elsewhere. I want to share with you what George School offers that can’t be found elsewhere. 

I’ll start with a question. As parents, what do we really want from our child’s high school? 

Our children are the most precious parts of our lives, and our most important job. We get to have them, to rear them, to love them, and to launch them into the world. What we most want from their school is a partner in really seeing our precious kids for who they are. We want a school community that welcomes them, knows them and loves them. We want the people at our child’s school to take the time to get to understand them in all their wonderful neurodiversity and help them think through and best understand the way they need to think. We want a school community who sees our LGBTQIA child and tells them, “Whoever you are, whomever you love, you can be here.” We want somebody to see our conservative-thinking child and tell them, this is a space where we connect and have civil discourse and share our perspectives openly and safely. We want to be sure there’s someone at our child’s school who will look at them and know they're a little anxious right now, and then know how to support them. We want a space that is dedicated and committed to being welcoming, inclusive, and affirming.  

We want our children to be known.

That's what happens at George School. Is it perfect all the time? No, we're humans. But is it always attempting to get there? Absolutely, 200%. That's part of the George School package. That's the thing you may not get at another school. It's why I chose to send my daughter to Quaker schools, and to George School. She would have gone to a highly regarded, highly-rated, blue ribbon public school in the district where we live, but I purposefully chose a setting where I was confident they would see her, and they did.

George School has an excellent visual arts program, with all levels of ceramics coursework. There is even a wood-fired kiln on campus. My daughter never took ceramics at George School. Still, I have ceramics made by her all over my house. Because during her free period, she would go with her friends to ceramics class, and Amedeo, the ceramics teacher, got to know her and saw that she loved the work. So he stayed after school, and came on weekends to show her things, to teach her things, to fire things for her. She never took a class from him for credit, and yet she learned from him. She got involved in a whole host of things, and grew to be a leader. She was seen in ways that allowed her to reach her full potential. The things on the outside that can sometimes get in the way, are not in the way here. At George School, there is strong academic rigor, there are amazing athletic opportunities, and there are multiple varied ways to explore the visual, musical and performing arts. At George School, your child will make friends from all around the world and engage in higher level discourse that they’ll come home and tell you about, and it will blow you away. But most importantly, at George School, whomever your child is, there are people here who are going to love them. And isn’t that really the point?

Halaylah Lewis-McGlothan '25

I’ve always struggled to pinpoint one or two specific “best parts” about my experience at George School. It’s a hard thing to do, because every step of the way during my time at GS, I was supported and encouraged to do so many things that shaped me as a person. Now, as a new student at Princeton, I often find myself thinking, “At George School I…” I constantly draw on my George School experiences; they prepared me for college, and I’m confident they will stay with me throughout my entire life.

I could talk about how the academic rigor set me up so well for an Ivy League education, but more importantly, George School taught me how to think. In my current freshman seminar, we're talking a lot about some very philosophical, conceptual ideas. And throughout my time at GS, we learned a lot about how to connect the subject that we were learning about with the real world, and how to understand things from many different perspectives. So now, in every class, I'm finding myself looking at each subject through a different lens than many of my peers. The community at George School helped me to see things from a more global perspective. I'm comfortable connecting with fellow students from all over the world because George School taught me how to do that. George School taught me how much more powerful learning can be when you learn with those who have varied perspectives and experiences.

Being part of the George School community taught me to be comfortable being myself with anyone I meet. I feel confident. I feel sure of myself in every class. As an admission ambassador at GS, I learned how to talk to new people, to share with them the community I was passionate about, and to learn about what interests them. George School is all about community, but that community is what you make of it. George School prepared me to be someone who understands how to think, appreciates a global perspective, who can confidently connect with others to build community wherever I am.