Across Boroughs, Lower School Students Gather in Silence and Community

On Friday, April 24, the oldest Lower School students from Friends Seminary, Mary McDowell Friends School, and Brooklyn Friends School gathered at Brooklyn Meeting for a shared Meeting for Worship. The gathering grew out of a collaboration led by Erin Gordon, Head of Lower School, Kara Kutner, Director of the Center for Peace, Equity, and Justice, and colleagues from Mary McDowell and Brooklyn Friends. Together, they imagined a morning that would give students a chance to meet peers from other New York City Quaker schools, learn what they share in common, and experience how other school communities practice Meeting for Worship during the school day.

Students began in small mixed groups with a simple icebreaker that invited them to learn about one another through everyday details and shared experiences before moving upstairs into the Meetinghouse for Worship.

Before entering into silence, student representatives from each school helped introduce the Meeting. Students had been asked to consider two queries in advance: “What does Meeting for Worship or Silent Meeting mean for you?” and “What do you want others to know about Meeting?” Lower Schoolers reflected on those questions, sharing what silence, listening, stillness, community, and worship mean in their own school lives.

For Friends students, it was also a chance to see that Meeting for Worship is both deeply familiar and slightly different depending on the community. Across the three schools, students recognized the shared practice of sitting together in silence, listening with care, and speaking when moved. They also noticed small differences in language, rhythm, and tradition. Those similarities and differences became part of the learning.

Near the close of the gathering, Erin led an “After Thoughts” moment, a reflection practice familiar to Lower School students at Friends. Students were invited to think about the experience they had just shared: what felt similar, what felt different, and what they might carry back to school.

The morning offered a clear reminder that Quaker education is not separate from academic life at Friends. It is part of how students learn to listen, reflect, ask questions, and recognize the Light in others. In gathering with peers from across the city, students practiced those values in real time and returned with a broader sense of the community to which they belong.