Peck Cuts The Ribbon on New Building, New School Year

As they disembarked from various modes of transport to begin the academic year, they entered a dramatically transformed campus - the result of more than two years of construction funded by a $13 million capital campaign dubbed “The Peck Promise: The Campaign for Excellence Elevated.”

 

An aged cinderblock gym, which for 60 years obscured a magnificent view of New Jersey’s iconic Lindenwold Mansion, was no longer present at the center of campus. Students burst forth onto a beautifully landscaped quadrangle that inhabited the new open space. As a complement to Lindenwold’s  sense of timeless tradition , the new Peck Commons building gleamed to the west of the quad.

 

The Peck Commons, a new state-of-the–art community hub, houses (among other things) a multi-purpose performance space, a large central dining room to support the school’s family dining program, two airy choral/instrumental music classrooms, and a character education classroom known as the InDeCoRe Lab. (InDeCoRE stands for Individual Development and Community Responsibility – which is the hallmark of the school’s character education culture.)

 

As students ventured further into campus, they discovered brand new administrative offices in the F.M. Kirby Family Lower School, constructed to make space available for an expanded and updated Lower School science lab.

 

Over in the Upper School, students explored two new beautifully appointed science laboratories adjacent to the school’s fine arts rooms and woodworking shop. With a robotics lab at its center, this new Upper School interactive learning space is referred to as Peck’s “STEAM Wing.” STEAM, short for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math, represents several of the disciplines central to the school’s transformational curriculum -  a curriculum that fosters an innate sensitivity to design, the ability to look closely at problems, see how parts interconnect and relate to a whole, and better realize a student’s own agency in their learning.

 

After settling in, students once again poured forth onto the central quadr for a ribbon-cutting ceremony that officially opened The Peck Commons for the 2019-20 school year.  Each student received commemorative pom-poms,which they joyfully waved while cheering on fellow student Sahil Shah ’22, who had the honor of gleefully cutting through a large blue ribbon with a giant pair of scissors. Following the ceremony, students entered The Peck Commons for the first time to participate in the traditional first all-school assembly of the year.

 

Though the ribbon-cutting event inaugurated The Peck Commons for the new school year, The Peck School’s public grand opening event occurs on October 5, 2019 Members of the greater Morristown community are invited to join Peck families, past and present,  for Homecoming: The Peck Promise Revealed, an afternoon of family fun on campus. Attendees will have the opportunity to explore the new Peck Commons and a variety of additional enhanced learning spaces. Learn more at www.peckpromise.org.