A major forte at an independent school such as Oak Knoll is the bespoke nature of its college counseling program. Smaller class sizes, lower faculty to student ratios, and individualized learning allow students to be known and honored for their unique abilities and personalities. At Oak Knoll, this enables our college counseling team to tailor a highly personal approach to researching and applying to universities which is introduced to freshman and sophomore parents each year at our College Counseling Roadmap — a late Spring session for families of ninth and tenth graders that offers the following expert advice for gradually navigating school visits, applications, interviews, and acceptances.

In the Spring of 2023, our 4x800 track and field relay team was proactively invited to compete in the historic Penn Relays — the country’s oldest and largest track and field competition. The invitation was a historic moment and further affirmation for our fleet-footed athletes. Whether it is cross country in the fall, indoor track in the winter, or track and field in the Spring, Oak Knoll is making its presence known. In this short podcast (5:12 mins), Coach Mickey Cassu and our Senior Team Captains share thoughts on why our teams are doing so well. 

Considered the mother of multicultural literature for her groundbreaking research, Rudine Sims Bishop has said that young people need books that are mirrors (that allow them to see themselves and their own experiences), windows (that they can look through to see other worlds), and sliding glass doors (that allow them to enter other worlds.) With that in mind, Oak Knoll sophomore Amelia Pace ’25 is celebrating her Asian American roots and inviting others to see and enter into her world with a selection of books she curated to honor Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Amelia’s maternal grandparents emigrated to the United States from Japan after World War II. Later, her father, Italian American, and her mother, Japanese American, met in Tokyo, married, and settled in New Jersey. Both cultures are honored in their home, where English and Japanese are commonly communicated. 

“I’ve been a member of the Asian American Pacific Islander Society at school since seventh grade, and it’s nice to have that sort of community,” said Pace. “Recently, I was offered the opportunity to take on a leadership role, and I just thought that it’s so important to share my culture — not just for people who have similar backgrounds to me, but also for the wider community here — whether through recommending reading or making presentations when possible. Asian literature is just so fascinating, the style of writing, and I feel that it’s so important for people not of that background to be able to glimpse into the lives of these characters.”

According to recent research, the number of children 0-17 years of age who read for fun has dramatically dropped over the last decade. Those who said they read for pleasure “every day” or “nearly every” day have plummeted from 38% to 25%. Experts attribute this drop to a variety of factors including: the rise of technology and digital entertainment, the decline in numbers of caregivers who read aloud to their children at home, and some schools who focus on the acquisition of reading “skills” which leads to students approaching reading as work rather than fun. Oak Knoll prides itself on being a community that bucks that trend and furnishes our students with a lifelong love of reading.

On Thursday night, April 20th at 7:00 pm a truly newsworthy event will take place in the Tisdall Hall gymnasium at Oak Knoll. In this short podcast, Kelly Childs, 7-year Oak Knoll Athletic Director, former Assistant Commissioner at the Big East Conference, and former Athletic Director for Marketing at Seton Hall University, tells us about the upcoming powerhouse women in sports panel entitled “Celebrating 50 Years of Title IX at Oak Knoll.” Register here.

Join us on Friday, April 21st at 7:00 pm in the Mother Mary Campion Performing Arts Center where multiple creative arts disciplines will converge for our annual Dance Concert. Listen to this short podcast as Creative Arts Teacher Carlee Bennett describes what's in store! Admission is free but reservations are recommended. Call 900-522-8150 or email carlee.bennett@oakknoll.org.

Fifteen years ago, a helpful blog post might have listed five ways parents can assist their children in becoming computer literate. As the wave of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine intelligence (MI) crashes over society, it is now vital that parents assist their children in becoming “reality” literate. 

One of the cunning aspects of chatbots such as ChatGPT and others from Microsoft and Google are that they return information to users in natural language. Unlike a simple Google search that returns text and links scraped from the internet, AI synthesizes millions of bits of information and seeks to “chat” with the user as a means of cultivating a relationship. Users, especially younger users, may be fooled into thinking there is a real person on the other side of the conversation. That could be costly.

It is not surprising that the tuition page on many private school websites has a large “bounce” or exit rate. Private schools provide a high value education, customized curriculum, signature experiences, and individualized attention—which has led to annual tuition fees that can seem daunting to many.

Many families believe in the value proposition of private school, and may even have the means to afford 40-60% of tuition but never apply thinking their household income, while too little to pay full tuition, is too high to qualify for aid. These families are unaware how valuable they might be to the private school community and the incentive a school might have to meet them part-way.

During a recent three-day Community Impact Symposium in Washington DC, four Oak Knoll High School students gathered with students from across the country to share ideas on how they could make more positive and systemic changes in their school and local communities.

The goal was to work in teams to identify various approaches taken to local, state, and national levels and work with their schoolmates to draft a vision statement and action strategy to take back home to Oak Knoll.

Oak Knoll's Upper School Librarian, Elinor Takenaga, has curated a short list of literary fiction and non-fiction this February to encourage our young readers to read not only books about Black History but also books by Black authors who write about a variety of topics/storylines. Here are a few of her suggestions: