Our Community

May 8 marks the beginning of Teacher Appreciation Week. “Official” Teacher Appreciation originated in 1953, and teachers have Eleanor Roosevelt to thank for its inception.

North Shore Country Day alum and clinical director, Dr. Paula Castillo ’90, discusses lessons learned from her time as a student and her life of service. 

Students at NSCD celebrated the Lunar New Year with traditional activities like making dumplings and creating cut paper decorations. Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese New Year, is the most important holiday in several East Asian countries, marking the start of the Chinese lunar calendar. The holiday starts anytime from mid-January to mid-February depending on the year.

Middle school Chinese language students have new pen pals in Taiwan. The connection came from a friend of NSCD Chinese Teacher Yun-Chu Chen, who is a high school English teacher in Taiwan. Students in Taiwan sent letters written in English and pictures of themselves to North Shore Country Day students, who wrote back in Chinese. 

On Monday, December 6, author Kyle Lukoff talked to North Shore Country Day middle school students about his new book, “Too Bright To See,” a 2021 National Book Award Finalist. The book is a haunting ghost story about navigating grief, growing up and growing into a new gender identity.

Last November, fourth graders in Linda Kiracibasi’s lower school music class studied Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ode to Joy on the eve of his 250th birthday. As part of the project, they looked at new lyrics, written in 2008 by the late Pete Seeger, an American folk singer and social activist. Then they took a stab at writing their own verse—using words that would be easy to understand and appropriate for younger children in lower school.

A group of NSCD middle school students participates in the Illinois Music Educators Association District 7 Junior Chorus Festival, while two others each sing solos as part of the Village of Winnetka's Veterans Day ceremony.

This fall, upper school social studies classes incorporated a monuments project as a response to protests around certain statues and monuments. Teachers challenged NSCD students to first recognize how monuments reflect historical agendas, not just the past itself. Then they asked them to create a monument that reflected a just and complex view of the past.

The NSCD junior kindergarten (JK) class collected 29 pairs of pj’s for the Pajama Program, a national nonprofit organization that promotes and supports a comforting bedtime routine and healthy sleep for children to help them thrive. For every pair of pajamas collected, Scholastic Book Clubs contributes a brand new book to accompany the donation. 

NSCD held a Fall Day of Service on Saturday, November 13, benefiting The Bloc in Chicago and Connections for the Homeless. More than 200 food items were donated on Saturday for The Bloc, supplementing what had already been collected by an upper school student-led food drive.

The NSCD upper school troupe, The Duff Players, will perform “You want some lunch? You betcha!” on November 18, at 4 p.m. in the auditorium. The Duff Players is a cast of upper school students tasked with bringing to life a collection of third and fourth grade stories through movement, music, costumes, props and much more.

Almost 150 children received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Friday, November 12, during a vaccination clinic held on campus. The school partnered with the Illinois Department of Public Health to provide pediatric doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged 5-11, as well as booster doses of Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for faculty and staff. The clinic was open to NSCD students and their families, even if siblings attend school elsewhere. 

The upper school has a new student club this year with a goal to bring therapy dogs to campus once a month to reduce stress and depression. Mac Devereux ’23 decided to start the Paws for Patrick club because his dog Gigi, a Bouvier des Flandres, is a certified therapy dog involved with the local organization.

Congrats to former Raider Paige Forester '19 on her 100th collegiate point in field hockey at MIT. 
 

The NSCD Raiders nearly pulled off a miraculous day-2 comeback, trimming a six-stroke deficit to one, to finish in second place in IHSA Class 1A at Prairie Vista Golf Course in Bloomington, Illinois, on Saturday, October 9, 2021.

North Shore Country Day graduate Kali Pfannerstill, Class of 2020, was recently featured in the Lawrence University athletics news. Kali played volleyball at NSCD where her mother, Jen Pfannerstill, was a science teacher and volleyball coach. Jen was a Lawrence graduate and also played on the volleyball team.
 

North Shore Country Day upper school students take to the stage October 8 and 9 to present the fall play, “Drop Dead!” by Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore.

North Shore Country Day’s annual Homecoming festivities cautiously returned to campus October 1-2, 2021, after a pandemic hiatus last year. Students celebrated all week long with spirit days, decorating the campus and an outdoor pep rally for the entire school on Friday. Later that afternoon, the entire school community—from junior kindergartners to parents— participated in a series of one-mile fun runs that zigzagged through campus.

North Shore Country Day’s first community gathering of the school year—known as the opening Morning Exercise or Morning Ex—took place on Sept. 10 and began with a reading of two poems, “Our Own Path” by Nikki Giovanni and “Dawn Revisited” by Rita Dove. 

Students, faculty, staff and even a few parents spread out on the playing fields in front of the auditorium for the first in-person all-school gathering in more than 18 months. Head of School Tom Flemma welcomed and introduced new members of the school community—including 114 new students. Of those, 19 hail from outside the Chicago metropolitan area and seven are from outside the United States. 

North Shore Country Day has unveiled a new Raider mascot logo. The new design was created by alum Nico Gibson, class of 2006. Gibson is founder and design director of the creative collaborative CRCL, senior brand designer at IDEO and design director at Beyond Athlete Management.

The Chicago Sun-Times announced the Grammy-winning musician Richard Marx, North Shore Country Day Class of 1981, release of his debut memoir “Stories to Tell” (Simon & Schuster), which shares its name with a 2010 album.

The North Shore Country Day Camp is back for its 71st season! On June 21, campers arrived on the school's 16-acre campus, ready with sunblock, swim gear and a strong desire to make new friends, learn new skills and push themselves to grow.

At just 23 years old, Ava Suppelsa ’15 has a songwriting career not unlike those writers twice her age. Ava grew up on Chicago's North Shore in a home where she was exposed to music ranging from old-school country to jazz and modern pop.

For the first time in more than a year, NSCD students performed live on the auditorium stage March 11-13 for the spring musical production, “Hindsight 2020: Looking Back to Our Past Selves and Looking Forward to Who We Strive to Be.”

North Shore Country Day held its first-ever virtual benefit on February 25, bringing in more than $350,000 for student scholarships and supplemental support—an ever-increasing need for current and future NSCD students. 

Student Maeve Devereux '21 reflects on how grateful she is for NSCD teachers during the pandemic and their support in helping students adapt to remote and on-campus learning.

North Shore Country Day senior Isabella Cho of Wilmette, a 2020 National YoungArts Foundation (YoungArts) award winner in writing, was recently named a 2020 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts.

The evening of Friday, June 5, seniors and their immediate families drove their cars onto the field and formed neat rows in pre-marked spaces.  While the ceremony was slightly pared down from a typical year, omitting a traditional processional, chorus performances and the ringing of the School bell to close out the evening, many of the important elements remained.

The spring 2020 annual benefit took on a different look and feel in honor of its 100th birthday and it was a rousing success, bringing in more than $440,000 for student experiences.

One by one, our individual poets went up on stage and wowed everyone in the room. Their words resonated and their performances were impassioned and thoughtful. Our group poets also impressed the audience with their honest portrayal of high school in their piece.”

Anita Rao ’21 and Niabelle Comeau ’23 joined more than 100 high school students from across the country in Iowa where they spent three days in January campaigning for presidential candidates in the lead-up to the Iowa Caucuses.

Twenty-five Lower School students competed in a regional Destination Imagination (DI) tournament in February and one of the teams qualified to move on to the state competition.