October17 Sibling Applications Due

18 SPEAK Event - Dan Coyle (7:00 - 8:30p)

21 Late Night (Date Night) Party (6:00 - 9:00p)

24 Conference Day - NO SCHOOL

25 Evening Conferences (4:00 - 8:00p)

28 Fall Movie Night (6:15 - 8:30p)

31 School Photos (all week)

See full calendar here

November1-4 School Photos

1 Math Night at SFFS

2 Community Meeting for Worship (8:40 - 9:10a)

2 Middle School Tech Night (6:30 - 7:30p)

3 Booktopia (6:00 - 9:00p)

5 POCIS Conference

7-10 ERB Tests

7 Alumni Reunion (6:00 - 8:30p)

8 Board Meeting (6:00 - 9:00p)

11 NO SCHOOL - Professional Development Day

CIRCLE BACKOctober 13, 2011

Field Testing CellScopes

Mealworms Under Study

Introducing Building Friends

san francisco friends school * 250 valencia street * san francisco, ca 94103 * 415-565-0400 * sffriendsschool.org

San Francisco Friends SchoolOctober 13, 2011

Talking About Talent at SFFSIf Dan Coyle gets you thinking, join new Friends School student and fam-ily counselor Katherine Preston for a discussion about talent, practice, hard work, achievement and other ideas raised by Dan Coyle’s SPEAK lecture. We will be joined by some of Friends School’s own highly talented parents who have differing views on just what it takes to reach the Olym-pics or Carnegie Hall.

Details:October 20, 8:30aFriends SchoolMary Hossfeldmahossfeld@gmail.com

Café Nicaragua Open!

On Thursday mornings from 8:05-8:30, 7th graders will be selling coffee on the picnic tables to support their trip to Nicaragua. Coffee will be from Miraflor, a community north of Leon, that the students will visit. The community is committed to sustain-able farming and harvests the coffee together before selling it at local mar-kets. We look forward to seeing you!

Get Mixed Up - It’s Potluck TimeBased on Quaker-8 Dinners, the SFFS Mixed-Up Potlucks bring SFFS parents together in new groups to create connections and build friendships. It’s a great way to get to know families outside of your regu-lar social circle or child’s grade.

First Step - HostingWe need hosts to volunteer their homes for the events. The potluck can be brunch, lunch, or dinner, limited to adults or include children - as a host you pick the date and time that work best for you. Ev-eryone will bring a dish and a good time should be had by all. If you can host a potluck, please click here: http://bit.ly/n9o94V

Second Step - Sign UpsParents sign up online and will be assigned to a random potluck in January and February. Questions?Theresa Kolish, tkolish@me.comChris Baker, chrisb@jvmlending.com

SPEAK - Dan Coyle on TalentHow does a humble storefront music school in Dallas, Texas, produce Jes-sica Simpson, Demi Lovato, and a succession of pop music phenoms? According to NYT bestselling author Daniel Coyle, it’s the nature and in-tensity of their practice habits.

Coyle is the author of “The Tal-ent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.” He visited hotbeds of talent around the world - places that seem to breed ten-nis phenoms and pop stars. And he found that they share similar habits of coaching, motivation and deep, deep practice -- a pattern that shows us a new way to think about talent and how to unlock it.

Details:October 18, 7:00pCathedral of St. Mary of the Assump-tion, 1111 Gough Street (St. Francis Hall, lower level)

Fall Movie NightWe’re going to celebrate Autumn with an evening at the movies; a great way for our whole community to relax together. There will be a movie for the younger set, one for the middle schoolers, and plenty of FREE pop-corn. Last year’s movies (Babe and The Princess Bride) received rave re-views from parents and kids alike, and concession sales raised over $550 for the 8th grade class trip! The top secret movie selection process for this year is currently underway....

Details:October 28 6:15 - 8:30pJesse Miller jessemiller@reedsmith.com 415-659-5973

Late Night (Date Night) PartyDrop your kids off for a night of fun (and treat yourself to a child-free dinner)! Pizza, a costume contest, a treasure hunt, and all sorts of exciting games. We’ll show a short movie to wind down the fun.

Details:October 21, 6:00 - 9:00pMarina Vendrellmvendrell@sffriendsschool.org

San Francisco Friends SchoolOctober 13, 2011

In 7th grade biology at San Francisco Friends School, students are experi-menting with a technology that could impact people on the other side of the world. Students are testing out the CellScope, a portable microscope that takes pictures through an iPhone which can be shared with people near and far.

The CellScope works much like a traditional microscope. Researchers place a sample on a glass slide, illuminate the sample, and focus on it with an objec-tive lens. The difference with the CellScope is that the image travels through a series of mirrors and appears on an iPhone connected to the device. Once the image is focused, researchers can snap a photo of the enlarged sample and email it around the world.

The CellScope is being developed by the Fletcher Lab at UC Berkeley, led by bioengineering professor Daniel Fletcher. The original purpose of the Cell-Scope was to aid in the detection of diseases in remote areas of third-world countries. Imagine a farmer in a village who has all the symptoms of tubercu-losis, but has no access to doctors who could test his blood. With the CellScope, a field researcher can image his blood on a slide, take a photo, and send it off to a doctor to diagnose it half a world away. “There are doctors who can diagnose this - they just aren’t where the patients are,” said Fletcher.

Friends School teacher Saber Khan has led the development of the CellScope into an educational tool. Khan introduced students to the CellScope last year and plans to integrate its use in his curriculum even more this year. One lesson involves having students create a “pollen map” of San Francisco. Stu-dents can go to different locations in the city, collect pollen samples and magnify them at that location, and upload photos of the samples with geotags that identify the exact location of the sample. Once enough samples are uploaded, a geotagged map can be created.

“I’ve been working with a group of 8th graders since the summer to try different investigations with the device,” says Khan. “Our experience and feedback will help guide how it’s developed, used, and shared in the larger sense.” One of Khan’s hopes for the CellScope is that it could be made cheaply enough to replace the bulky, delicate, expensive, traditional microscopes found in public schools. “The CellScope’s portability and durability make it a strong candidate to open the world of microscopes to more students across the country.”

In November, students from San Francisco Friends School will join researchers from the Fletcher Lab to demonstrate the CellScope at the Bay Area Science Festival’s Discovery Day at AT&T Park. Visitors will be able to look at prepared samples through the Cell-Scope or get to examine their own hair or skin samples up close. The students and researchers will also dem-onstrate how the CellScope can image blood cells and fingerprints.

- Shannon Range, Director of Communications & Saber Khan, Middle School Science Teacher

Field-Testing the CellScope

It is hard to believe that San Francisco Friends School is nearly a decade old. Just yesterday we were figuring out how to create a Quaker school at 117 Diamond. To-day, we are flourishing at 250 Valencia and looking forward to the next ten years.

Drawing on our history of thoughtful and deliberate planning, the Board of Trustees and the administration have developed a vision for this second decade of Quaker education in San Francisco. At the core of this vision is our school’s com-mitment to exceptional academics in a diverse educational community and ensur-ing that we fully live our mission to be deeply rooted in our local neighborhood.

The Building Friends Campaign is the next step in making this vision a reality. Last week, we launched this $6.5 million campaign to fund two key initiatives for the future of our school:

Friends Community Scholars

Friends Community Scholars will provide scholarships to high-achieving mid-dle school students who live in the surrounding neighborhoods. Scholars will be chosen for their demonstrated academic ability, their capacity for hard work, their willingness to participate in the life of the school, and for their potential to add to the diverse perspectives that create a vigorous learning environment. Friends Community Scholars will strengthen our academic program by broad-ening the diversity of our community, cement ties to our neighborhood and deepen partnerships with Mission community institutions, and formalize the school’s strong commitment to making a Friends education accessible to all. Complete 250 Valencia

Completing the build-out of 250 Valencia will allow our teachers to expand upon and improve a vibrant K-8 program. Plans include creating a theater, a Learning Commons (library and media center), two music studios and two language classrooms, as well as a staircase allowing 3rd floor access for K-2 students. Adding these new spaces will free up an additional art studio, a din-ing hall, nature lab, and office space for learning support, high school counsel-ing, and technology. Finishing the 3rd floor will impact children at every grade level, whether by providing rainy-day PE space, choral music space, a dance facility, or access to the gymnasium for our youngest children.

As with our first campaign (Light the Way), this will be another all-hands-on-deck effort – our goal is 100% community participation. A very enthusiastic and energetic campaign committee of trustees, lower and middle school parents have banded together to lead the charge and strengthen ties between the 270+ families that now make up our community. We are also pleased to report that every trustee and campaign committee member has already made a pledge to get the campaign off to a flying start. Last week’s campaign kickoff was met with resounding enthusiasm. In fact, many eager volunteers are already jumping at the chance to start hammering up the dry wall on the 3rd floor and building sets for the black box theater. In the coming weeks and months, you will hear more about Building Friends. We hope each of you will support the campaign as best you can. Thank you in advance for your participation. As always, we welcome your thoughts and questions. - Koof Kalkstein and Staci Slaughter, Co-Clerks of the Board

Introducing The Building Friends Campaign

San Francisco Friends SchoolOctober 13, 2011

Pizzas, Pickle, & Monsters, Oh My! With 10 teachers and about 90 students, there’s lots to do in Extended Day. We’ve been putting our new convection ovens to good use, bak-ing pumpkin cookies and whole wheat pizza from scratch. In lower school, students help make the famous (or infamous, if you are trying to pick your child up at that time) second snack almost everyday.

Middle schoolers help make their own special snack a couple of days a week (deviled eggs, crepes, omelettes, etc.) On the yard, we’ve been playing pickle, baseball, knockout, kickball and learning new jump rope songs. The library has been packed with students working quietly on homework, or curled up in a corner reading a book. In the lower school ED room, we’ve been making lots of art work and origami.

Last week for monster week, we made a stop motion animation. And that’s not all that’s going on! There’s enrich-ment classes, music lessons, volleyball, cross country and the middle school play to boot. Trumpets are playing and thespians are budding.

REMINDER: Late Night (Date Night) PartyNext Friday, Oct. 21st, ED will host the Late Night (Date Night) Party from 6:00 - 9:00p. There will be pizza, a costume contest, a treasure hunt, all sorts of exciting games, and a short movie. RSVP to mvendrell@sffriendsschool.org by Oct. 19th. Normal ED billing rates apply.

Mealworms Under Study2nd graders draw out their inner scientist as they observe, question, and learn about the lives of mealworms.