Middle/Upper School Wellness Day

It was a beautiful day to welcome our students and families back to campus for our lower school open house, middle school and upper school orientations, and the senior ice cream social.

As we welcome our faculty and staff back to campus, early year teachers created bouquets after discussing what they plan to bring to their classrooms this year to make them grow and flourish.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma is often considered the highest standard for college preparatory education. This year, 40 members from the Class of 2024 were IB diploma candidates.

The WFS football team recently hosted athletes from Special Olympics Delaware! WFS student-athletes and Special Olympians participated in drills together and enjoyed water ice together.

“Most of all, we want our Reading Tour to be about kids, about our responsibility to them, including our responsibility to nurture their promise, to see each of them for who they are, and to listen and talk with, not just to and about them.”

As part of our comprehensive College Guidance program, we welcomed the Class of 2025 back to campus for Application 101. Students worked on completing the Common App, refining their personal essays, and scheduling their 1-on-1 college counseling meetings for September. Afterward, seniors gathered for a pizza lunch. It was great to see them excited and engaged about the college process!

Tripp Young ’25 was presented with a 2024 Union League of Philadelphia Good Citizenship Award in March. Starting in 1946, the Good Citizenship Award recognizes high school students who demonstrate good citizenship and encourages them to stay actively engaged in their communities. This annual program recognizes and awards nearly 300 high school juniors from the Greater Philadelphia region.

Ellie Driscoll ’25 and Jillian Farley ’25 traveled to Indiana University in Bloomington to attend the Best Buddies Leadership Conference 2024. They spent three days learning how to become better leaders, how to spread awareness and kindness, and how to promote inclusion through sessions, classes, and guest speakers. They also met  students from all over the country and world to share ideas.

Temi Lufadeju '25, Elizabeth Pisano '25, Tripp Young '25, and Avery Martinenza '25 participated in the Congressional Delegation Youth Conference at Delaware State University, where they met with Senator Chris Coons, Senator Tom Carper, and Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester. They learned about their roles as the next generation in government and engaged in conversation about ongoing issues such as pollution, climate change, and women's rights. During the afternoon, they broke into small groups and met with experts in fields ranging from World Peace to social justice in Wilmington. 

Inspired by their mothers’ entrepreneurial spirits, Anya Agarwal ’25 and Layla Baynes ’25 founded the Entrepreneurship Club at WFS during the 2023-24 school year.

Wilmington Friends School has partnered with the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Social Impact Strategy and Schoolyard Ventures, an organization that develops university-level, real-world learning opportunities for high school students, to offer the Social Innovators Program to upper schoolers.

WFS faculty and staff members traveled to Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, on Juneteenth to attend the unveiling of Freedom Memorial Sculpture Park. This new park uses art to honor and remember the ten million Black Americans who were enslaved in America. 

In late June, 11 WFS upper school students traveled to Acadia National Park in Maine with teachers Kelley Cox and Sara Woodward for a QUEST service learning trip in partnership with Earthwatch.

Recently, 4th graders held their annual electric convention, an opportunity to showcase their electric projects to lower school students and faculty. 

Earlier this month, teachers Courtney Miller, Lara Munch, and Rodri Saldana led 17 WFS upper school students on a trip to Panama as part of Vámonos Tours. Students spent time visiting with the indigenous people of the Emberá-Wounaan community, engaging in service work on the San Blas Islands, assisting older adults at Hogar Bolivar, exploring the Panama Canal, learning how to salsa dance, and touring the Sergio Perez Delgado Bilingual School.

We did it! Volunteers from the WFS community assembled 27,500 shelf-stable meals in just over two hours.