Tolstoi, shockingly, had it wrong. To begin ANNA KARENINA, he wrote: “All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

But we, in WISE, know that each WISE family, each WISE school, each WISE program and each WISE student is happy – and DIFFERENT – “in its own way”.

So to celebrate the differences, we are going to spotlight different WISE projects as they make their way through the WISE season, from beginning to end. And if you would like to bring your WISE project to our attention, just email ellennodelman@wiseservices.org with a description of what you’re doing and where you are going with it.

One Different WISE School                                                                                           We’ll begin with a school that is different from, but just as happy as, most WISE schools: Rockland Country Day School, in New York’s Rockland County. RCDS is different in two specific ways: it is one of the smallest schools to be involved in WISE, but it also has one of the largest percentage of seniors in WISE–100%.

The Beginning:                                                                                                                   It was halfway through the 2007 – 2008 school year that RCDS learned about and signed up for WISE. By that time, it was getting quite late for the seniors to come up with full-fledged projects, but, undaunted and enthusiastic, they dove in and came up with an amazing assortment of projects. Diverse in every kind of way, the seniors, all twelve of them, some international students (from China, Tibet and Korea), some commuters from nearby New Jersey, others residents of the far-flung reaches of Rockland County, created a photographic record of the class, worked with a mid-wife, volunteered in a medical clinic, waded into the river and did research on bugs, worked in data entering and crunching in a town office, learned how to break-dance, worked in a geological laboratory, worked in a counselling agency, worked in a women’s clothing
store to find out about women’s fashion, designed furniture, designed a campus walkway and learned, by doing, about woodworking.

And Today:
Today, WISE is part of the school’s DNA — perhaps the one thing all students look forward
to in the senior year. It certainly beats the college application process! This year’s senior
class has an equally wide range of projects going. Unusually, it includes only two WISE internships this year — but independent WISE projects galore…on all of those MUCH more to come!