Heathwood Hall Episcopal School

I wrote copy for Allen MAC client Heathwood Hall’s annual fund solicitation brochure. The school is in Columbia, South Carolina.

Annual Fund Solicitation Brochure

Excellence at Heathwood Hall means…

• small classes
• dedicated teachers
• student involvement (K-12)
• a philosophy program
• tennis courts
• an enrichment program
• advanced placement courses
• 24 computers
• flying kites
• college tours
• scholarships
• outdoor education
• open enrollment
• Project Adventure

From the first day a child walks into his first class at Heathwood, his life changes. He learns to see the world in a new way, to stretch his mind and body to meet new challenges, to discover meaning and value in everyday experiences, to function autonomously among his peers. Perhaps most important, as a result of his years at Heathwood, the child learns to think.

The program at Heathwood Hall is not easy. Standards for performance are high. The school’s learning environment is meticulously crafted. Each child is inspired to accept each new challenge with enthusiasm and determination.

What is it that makes Heathwood Hall such a special place? There is no simple answer, for Heathwood’s excellence has always found expression in a variety of ways, each of which has made its unique contribution to the overall character and quality of the school.

Walk into a classroom at Heathwood Hall. On the average, you’ll find 18 students there. That’s because small classes create the optimum learning environment, allowing teachers to devote more individual attention to each child.

It’s not only through small classes that children benefit from individual attention at Heathwood Hall. In the Middle School, each child’s day is custom-scheduled based on his or her abilities in each discipline. Certainly, it takes more time and trouble to distinguish the areas in which each child can excel from those in which he or she needs to develop more fundamental skills and to devise a class schedule that addresses those needs. At Heathwood this is an integral part of the Middle School’s approach to the child as an individual.

Maybe you’d like to sit in on one of Heathwood’s philosophy classes. You’d be able to see first graders solving philosophical puzzles and problems of inference, both through independent thinking and lively classroom discussion. In the Middle School, you’d find children developing more complex techniques of critical thinking, learning the value of inquiry and developing alternative modes of thought and imagination. Older children would be engaged in even more complex reasoning tasks, such as developing their abilities in deductive and inductive reasoning and considering the nature of justice. Few schools in the nation offer an extensive philosophy program. Fewer still offer such a program to children in such a broad range of age groups. But at Heathwood, the philosophy program is considered a vital addition to the more traditional curriculum throughout the school.

Talk to any of Heathwood’s faculty members. You’ll find an intelligent, caring individual who is truly devoted to professional achievement at the highest level. The average Heathwood teacher has eight to ten years of classroom experience. As often as not, he or she has a master’s degree or is enrolled in a master’s program. Typically, he or she is a well-rounded person who spends time outside the classroom in activities ranging from serving as a panel member at the National Convention of Teachers of English to running in the Boston Marathon.

Stop by the Project Adventure outdoor education course. You’ll find students testing the limits of their own strength, skill and endurance in a safe, controlled setting. Or go by and see students rehearsing for the school’s latest dramatic production with an interest and enthusiasm unmatched on many Broadway stages. Look at the concentration applied by a third grader as she intently studies the video display of a computer terminal. Stop by the school principal’s office and find a senior comparing admission requirements at Tufts, Brown and the University of Virginia, or perhaps planning a series of campus visits with classmates. Or see a child in the lower school learning to read his basic sight words which are painted on the sidewalk as well as written in his first reading book.

Taken individually, any one of Heathwood Hall’s special programs and practices would be considered an impressive example of innovation in education. Taken collectively, they demonstrate a determined commitment shared by the school’s faculty, students and staff to be among the nation’s truly superior independent schools. It’s a commitment that’s also shared by hundreds of parents, alumni and friends of the school who support Heathwood by contributing to the Annual Fund. Their gifts help produce dozens of tangible results, from top performance on achievement tests to admission to some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities. To join in that commitment is to become a part of the truest expression of excellence at Heathwood Hall.

Excellence Means Steady Growth Year After Year

In 1951, Heathwood Hall opened its doors to 98 students in kindergarten through fourth grade. Today, the school enrolls more than 700 K-12 students. The size and quality of its faculty have increased at an even faster rate, from 8 to 63, with a corresponding expansion and improvement of the curriculum. In the past five years alone, course offerings in the Upper School have increased from 28 to 63. Certainly, it is not by coincidence that over that same five year period, contributions to the Annual Fund increased from $37,000 to $92,000.

The success of this year’s Fund Drive will have a direct impact on whether or not Heathwood Hall realizes its full potential for excellence in the coming years. Please do your part to assure that excellence.

Annual Fund Solicitation Flyer

Excellence is $100,000 for the Heathwood Hall Hall Annual Fund

Synergism is defined as “cooperative action of discrete agencies such that the total effect is greater than the sum of the effects taken independently.” Stated simply, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

At Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, a number of discrete agencies come together to produce an exceptional total effect. Stated simply, that effect is excellence in independent
education.

If you were to examine each of these agencies in turn, you might begin with a look at Heathwood Hall’s administrators. Their knowledge, dedication, and leadership are an important part of the school’s formula for excellence.

Among Heathwood Hall’s faculty, you’d find an exceptional degree of expertise in a number of diverse disciplines, combined with a universally-shared devotion to the profession
of teaching.

Among its students, you’d find a genuine love of learning characterized by a common willingness and ability to study and master each new concept presented with dedication and
enthusiasm Another important ingredient in the school’s excellence is its physical plant. The buildings and grounds that make up the campus provide the setting in which the school’s people can function. Within those buildings are all the text books, microscopes, chalkboards, desks, maps, computers and other trappings that play their parts in producing educational excellence at Heathwood.

Within the rich context of the school, each of these elements makes its own contribution, one playing off the other to create a total synergistic effect much greater than any one could produce independent of the others. Likewise, if any single area begins to deteriorate, the functional effectiveness of the others is also diminished.

The goal of the 1984 Annual Fund Drive at Heathwood Hall is to raise $100,000 in contributions from parents, alumni and friends to provide about eight percent of the school’s operating budget. That amounts to less than $150 for each of Heathwood’s students.

Although $150 per student doesn’t seem like much by itself, it can help buy a new microscope for the science lab or a jar of finger paint for the kindergarten, a new volume of Renaissance poetry for the library or nets for the tennis courts. It can help pay a teacher’s fees at a computer seminar or provide tuition assistance for deserving students. It can pay a light bill or buy a new costume to be worn in the school’s latest drama
production.

Of course, tuition funds buy many of these basics. But when added to tuition, gifts to the Annual Fund can and do buy excellence. That makes your tax-deductible gift to Heathwood
Hall’s Annual Fund an essential ingredient in the school’s formula for excellence, an ingredient only you can provide.

If you’d like to do your part to assure continuing educational excellence at Heathwood Hall, give today to Heathwood’s Annual Fund. Your contribution will, when combined with the others, help create a whole much greater than the sum of its parts— namely, a school dedicated to true excellence in independent education.