Welcome to the Communications Zone

Our Academic Calendar for the 2023-2024 school year is now available on our website. Each year we review our calendar, with the goal of optimizing time in the classroom for our students, while providing our teachers enough time for curricular planning, report writing and professional development. We also strive to keep the same number of school days consistent year-to-year and on par with our peer independent schools. We are committed to offering special programming for professional development, report writing, and conference days through our Auxiliary Programming department.

You will notice a few small changes to this year’s calendar. Read more to get the details.

Dear Families,

In the second week of February, the TPS community will participate once again in Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools. This annual event began in 2016 in Seattle, when on one day, thousands of teachers wore Black Lives Matter t-shirts to school.

Read below to find out what Movement and PE classes have been up to for the past month. Next week we look forward to engaging in Black Lives Matter Week of Action, with activities centered around Black athletes, their contributions to society on and off the court, and the guiding principles of the BLM movement.

In preschool and kindergarten, the students just completed their hula hoop unit. During the unit students worked on their locomotor and gross motor skills by spinning the hula hoops and doing exercises like jumping, hopping, and skipping in or around the hula hoops.

Last week, our Preschool B class welcomed two experts to support their study of animals that live in trees, inspired by the all-school theme From Roots to Branches. Part of their study has been making costumes to wear in their treehouse and these visitors helped fuel ideas for what they might wear! Their study, as with our whole Early Childhood program, is driven by their questions, curiosities, and what teachers observe them taking interest in. As these interests take shape throughout the year, teachers help facilitate student research, creative expression, and authentic, project-based learning.

Each week, we'll feature an interview with a TPS staff or faculty member so you can get to know them. This week, meet  Josie Sepel (she/her):

Dear TPS Community-

I write to you today to acknowledge the violent attacks upon the Asian American community who were celebrating the Lunar New Year, as well as the brutal killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, who was stopped for a routine traffic violation and was beaten by law enforcement and died three days later. We understand that a video that depicts the incident of Mr. Nichols’ detainment will be released later this evening. We expect this video to be very challenging to watch and process. Philadelphia and other cities could see some of the protests that occurred in June 2020 when George Floyd was brutally murdered. 

Each week, we'll feature an interview with a TPS staff or faculty member so you can get to know them. This week, meet Rachel Adams-Kaplan: