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We love our Pops! First graders had a great time carving jack-o-lanterns. After the seeds settled there were vampire bats, scary teeth and even a cupcake! 
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  Narrowing the list of schools you are interested in applying to for your child can be an overwhelming task. Once you have completed your research, contacted each school’s Admission Office and completed the campus tour, you are faced with the next task: completing each school’s admission application process. Not to worry - here at Episcopal, admission staff members are only a phone call or email away and stand ready to walk alongside you throughout the application process. Each year prospective parents ask a myriad of questions related to their child’s consideration for admission. Primarily questions relate to their child’s school visit to the school: what can we expect and what should we do to prepare our child? Regardless of the age or grade of your child, there is a shared purpose of his or her admission visit: this on-campus experience is intended to help us get to better know your child while giving you and your child the opportunity to get to know us better. Below you will find specific details related to the Episcopal campus visit along with general admission visit tips. To help your child prepare for his or her time on campus, we invite you to share as much - or as little - of the information as you see fit. You know your child best, so follow your parental instinct as you help prepare your child for the visit.  A few general tips for your child’s school admission visit:
What can your child expect during his or her Episcopal admission visit? See below our summary of the applicant visit process for prospective students:PreK-3, PreK-4 and Kindergarten Screenings
1st through 5th Grade Screenings
Admission Testing Grades 6-12
Shadow Day Grades 6-12
Student Interview Grades 9-12
 Amanda GraceAmanda joined the Episcopal team in 2014 and currently serves as the Associate Head of School for Enrollment & External Affairs. Prior to relocating back home to Baton Rouge, she served as Director of Admission at St. Mark’s Episcopal School in Houston, Texas. Amanda earned a BA in Mass Communication from LSU where she later spent five years working to support the University’s scholarship and recruitment efforts. As the Associate Head of School, Amanda leads all facets of enrollment management and oversees the school's marketing and communication.  Episcopal truly is a community uKnighted. After finding out that fellow Cross Country team member Louie Ballard’s mother Donna Britt had been diagnosed with ALS, Todd McInnis, David Whitehurst and Austin Broussard felt they had to do something to help. As Cross Country runners, what better way than to organize a fun run to raise money to fight the disease?! The Episcopal community responded big, and students from all three divisions hit the track. Everyone from the smallest Lower School students to members of the Middle and Upper School basketball and football teams hit the lanes. Teachers, coaches and parents also got into the action. It was a proud day to be a Knight. Go Knights!  There is much more to theater than learning lines, hitting your mark and knowing your cues. One of the most meaningful parts of theater is something of which the actors, support staff and audience members are not even aware. Something a spotlight cannot reveal. Empathy. “Empathy is the root. When we stop working to understand each other, that’s when we cave in,” says Paige Gagliano, or “Mrs. G.” as the students refer to her. Paige, Episcopal’s Director of Performing Arts, says the ability to create connections and establish understanding among different people makes the arts so important for the human experience. She points to one of her favorites – “Ragtime” – as an example. She says the piece helps the audience understand the “un-understandable” or the “un-comprehensible”, as the audience is introduced to three groups struggling with their circumstances in early 20th century America. “We’re scared to look at this,” says Paige. She says we struggle to imagine that we could feel the same or act the same in a similar setting.
The magic of theater is that the actor is tasked with becoming another person. Paige says to do this they must first discover two things – What does this person want? What will they do to get it? As the actor embarks on this journey of understanding, they learn the why behind the actions and understand more about the person’s behavior and how something so unimaginable could occur. Part of this journey to understand the other’s perspective is learning more about your own. In a recent Theater and Religion class, Paige asked students to think about the positive and negative people in their lives. Students reflected on the traits of these people and determined which traits they value most. From this reflection, students were then asked to write a personal creed. Such a personal, vulnerable assignment could only be completed in a safe, trusting environment. Paige creates that for her students. She advises them that there is no judgement or need for fear. In her theater there is acceptance and understanding. Often she even tells students that nine out of ten times what they try might “really stink”. However, it’s on that tenth try that they will soar.
Such insight and personal understanding creates new opportunities and unexpected bonds. For example, as the actors learn more about why their characters say or do things, they understand and relate better with their cast mates. Students who may not have been friends otherwise, connect. Common ground is found among students who previously overlooked or misunderstood each other. Paige says her goal in teaching theater is to develop empathetic people who can take a risk and fail. Developing empathy for others will serve students well in all aspects of their life, for all of their life. She says it helps students have better control of their own emotions and a better understanding of the emotions of others. Empathy helps students be better prepared to diffuse problems and more willing to take responsibility for their own actions. Her teaching approach is working. There are 150 students currently involved in the Peter Pan Jr. production and more than 100 interested in this spring’s run of Evangeline!  The Middle School production of Peter Pan Jr. runs November 13th – 17th. It’s Mrs. G’s hope that when the lights go up, the actors will have been transformed by the journey and will find themselves more open and connected with the world around them. We invite you to be a part of that experience. Get your tickets now.
 The Writing Center is a smaller community within Episcopal School of Baton Rouge with the goal of building the necessary skills and confidence that writing requires. As a community, we hope to foster a culture of writing and consequently nurture the students as a whole by teaching them creative ways to express themselves through writing. One unique way the Writing Center does this is by periodically hosting Waffle Workshops. As expected from their catchy title, Waffle Workshops combine the thrill of workshopping unique writing styles and techniques with enjoying delicious cinnamon roll waffles. Our favorite part about the Writing Center’s Waffle Workshops is that there are no thematic limits. In the past, we’ve held journalism workshops, humor writing workshops, and storytelling workshops. The goal of these specialized workshops is to better expose students to the Writing Center and the variety of services we offer as well as to give students a safe and nurturing place to express their creativity and discover new passions.
However, the importance of these Waffle Workshops extends beyond that of the lesson being taught or of the enticing waffles: we create and depend upon a community in these events. The workshops create a bond of trust between the students and writing fellows, which is very productive in later sessions when students visit with fellows for one-on-one help. During these workshops, we also depend on the other fellows in the Writing Center and the director, Dr. Newton, to help promote the event and make and distribute waffles. Events like the Waffle Workshops help bring our Writing Center community together while also connecting us to the rest of the student body. Waffle Workshops are not only challenging and rewarding for fellows, they are also creative outlets. As we brainstormed one night about ideas for the workshop, the topic of argumentative writing jumped out to us, so we set a date, researched the topic, and prepared a Prezi presentation and an outline of talking points. We had fun with the whole process. Though giving a presentation to a roomful of students that you may or may not know can be intimidating, the experience pushes fellows to connect with more of the student body and fulfill our mission of creating better writers.
 "I had been looking forward to doing the performance and teaching for a while, then I learned we were teaching to more than 300 kids. It was more than I had expected but the reward was greater. All in all this was an amazing experience and I’d love to do something like it again.” Mackenzie Bell, Episcopal 11th grader. The Episcopal Dance Ensemble recently performed Louisiana Strong for the entire student body of Park Forest Elementary School. The dance ensemble consists of 14 dancers. That’s 14 teen dancers for 300 elementary kids! Those numbers might intimidate most, but the dancers delivered a powerful performance that captivated even the youngest in the crowd.  Park Forest, like Episcopal, was significantly impacted by the 2016 flood. One year later, this common experience has led to a meaningful connection between the two schools, forged by a love of dance. Louisiana Strong was choreographed by Episcopal Dance Instructor Christine Chrest to evoke the sense of chaos that was felt during the flood and the positive sense of community that followed. Chrest says it was exciting to see students from both schools connect through the piece. “They were absolutely in awe of the beautiful choreography and costumes. The following week at school we were able to have discussions during dance class about how the dance made them feel, and how dance, like all art forms, can be used as a means of communicating ideas and emotions,” said Park Forest Dance Instructor Anna Schwab. In addition to performing for the elementary students, the Episcopal dancers also taught the students dance terminology and the moves to match. “Every grade had one or two terms to look for and every grade got their term correct. I know dancers who are sixteen and can’t recognize half of the terms the little kids did. They surpassed my own expectations for them,” said Lauren Reed. 
Don’t miss your opportunity to see the graceful movements of this group. We invite you to this year’s Fall Dance Concert, which is scheduled for November 30th at 7 pm in the VPAC.
 The Episcopal community offers a sincere thank you and much gratitude for the beautiful altar given to the Chapel by alumni Rachel ‘89 and David ‘89 Dansky. Mr. Dansky personally handcrafted the piece from unused sections of the Chapel’s existing altar rails, and the result is remarkable.
The altar will be officially blessed and dedicated by the Rt. Rev’d Morris King Thompson, Jr. We know that our students and community will enjoy this tremendous blessing as it is used during Eucharistic services. Thank you. Episcopal students are proving that they have academic and athletic ability. Recently, Episcopal student athletes have received impressive honors. Congratulations!  Senior defensive football player Cam Dumas was recently named the WBRZ Fan’s Choice Award winner. The recognition comes after the Port Allen game, where he had three interceptions, including a 95 yard touchdown return.  Senior Mary Brandon Harrell has been named to the 2017 LHSAA All Academic Composite Girls Cross Country Team. To be selected for this honor the student must be a senior, have played the sport for two years and achieved a six-semester cumulative GPA of at least 3.5. The Episcopal Boys Cross Country team is ranked number two nationally in All-Time State Championships and in All-Time Consecutive State Championships.   The 2016-2017 Episcopal Boys and Girls Soccer teams have both earned the United Soccer Coaches Team Academic Award for their performance in the classroom. Episcopal is one of 46 schools in the country and the only school in Louisiana to have both teams honored. The boys earned an average 3.56 GPA and the girls averaged a 3.71.
We are proud of our student athletes and wish them continued success in and out of the classroom. Go Knights!  Seniors
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