Good Shepherd’s fall soccer team won its second consecutive TAPS middle school championship on Oct. 17.

Congratulations are in order for the co-ed seventh and eighth grade soccer team at Good Shepherd Episcopal School. The team defeated St. John’s Episcopal School 2-1 to clinch the TAPS championship for the second year in a row.

The win was the culmination of an undefeated season for the Cougars, who are coached by Ralph Mestre and Alisha Paroo. Mestre called the team “one of the best in Good Shepherd’s history,” and Paroo said, “all 20 members should be proud of their effort, dedication, teamwork and, sportsmanship during this incredible season.”

With one Head of School retiring and another in line to take his place, change is in the air at Good Shepherd Episcopal School. Effective in June, headmaster Bob Kohler will leave his 16-year post at the helm of the middle and lower-school campus, and Maryland educator/administrator Marcy Cathey — hired after a lengthy, nationwide hunt — will arrive to fill his shoes.

In the meantime, the goodbyes have begun. And Kohler, who can talk a mile a minute about Good Shepherd’s overall spirit and state-of-the-art programs, is preparing for retirement “while there’s still just a little gas in the tank.”

Translation: the man’s got plans — fun ones — and his own learning process isn’t about to be curbed.

Read more in Friday’s issue of Preston Hollow People.

Scott Nady with his slumbering son Max, and Good Shepherd Episcopal P.E. teacher Andy Blount.

Scott Nady, coach of the state champion football program at Parish Episcopal School, has a modest goal for his 3-year-old son Max. One day, he’d like him to be able to walk a mile.

While this milestone comes easily for most, Max was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy shortly after birth. To raise money for his expensive physical therapy, the Nady family started Mile4Max. The group hosted its first event, a one-mile walk/run on Saturday. But before anyone had taken a step for Max, Good Shepherd athletes and coaches presented Nady with a check for $2,881 on Friday. The students raised money throughout the week with a bake sale and a “wishing well” that accepted donations. The student-athletes gave presentations about Max and Cerebral Palsy in every Physical Education class on Friday.

Seventh graders Jared Kengott and Parker Ciccarelli show off their baked goods.

Grace Elizabeth Goutcher, a 6-year-old primer student at Good Shepherd Episcopal School, died Friday while on vacation with her family in Fort Meyers, Florida. The preliminary cause of death is viral myocarditis, a spokeswoman from the school said.

Viewing and visitation will be held Wednesday at Sparkman Hillcrest Funeral Home from 1 to 4 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m. On Thursday, a memorial service celebrating Grace’s life will be held at 11 a.m. at Lovers Lane United Methodist Church.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Grace Elizabeth Goutcher Scholarship fund at Good Shepherd Episcopal School.

For more information, read Grace’s obituary in the Dallas Morning News.

Most elementary schools have Valentine’s Day parties, but students at Good Shepherd Episcopal took their message of love to the streets and brought treats and cards to area schools and businesses. Go to the jump for more photos and a press release with all the deets. Read More…

In the past few months, I’ve become keenly aware of my own shortcomings in shorthand. When I’m interviewing someone, I use a recorder and jot down key concepts and time stamps so I can quickly go back to the meatier parts of the conversation. But a digital recorder is no help whatsoever in addressing wedding invitations or writing thank-you notes.

It is some comfort, though, to know I am not alone in my penmanship plight. Good Shepherd Episcopal School is implementing, “Handwriting Without Tears,” this year to address the declining standards in handwriting. Mary Beth Jones, director of early childhood at Good Shepherd believes improved handwriting leads to improved grades and classroom performance, plus, it just looks pretty.

“It’s really an art form that still needs to be taught and learned,” Jones said.

Handwriting Without Tears founder Jan Olsen offered to help me improve my scrawl, and she even sang a song about the benefits of good handwriting to the tune of Mary Had A Little Lamb. I’m sold.

Pick up the Aug. 20 edition of Preston Hollow People for the full story on Good Shepherd’s handwriting curriculum.

Good Shepherd’s Center for Creative Learning

It wasn’t but two weeks ago that Ursuline unveiled their shiny new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded science complex, which was unveiled 13 days ago as the first LEED Gold school building in the Southwest, a claim that was later retracted when the school learned of a LEED Gold facility at a school in New Mexico. But that still made them the first in Texas, which isn’t to shabby.

Not to be outdone by the all-girls Catholic high school, Good Shepherd Episcopal School just announced it’s own LEED Gold building which, according to the press release just sent by the school, is a first for a Texas elementary school. GSES’s Center for Creative Learning, which has been around at least since I toured the school in September or so but just received the certification, boasts natural lighting, clean air processing, recycled building materials, and energy conservation measures.

Now, it could be mere coincidence that the schools happened to brandish their green building chops just two weeks apart, or that a green building zeitgeist has finally taken hold. Perhaps. Or maybe this is merely a continuation of the sectarian squabble started by King Henry VIII when he broke off from the Roman Catholic Church in 1538. This is shaping up to be significantly less bloody than other Catholic-Protestant conflicts like, say, the Thirty Years’ War, but just the same, this could just be the beginning of an arms race for environmental street cred. Will Jesuit install a sod roof? Will ESD respond with a greywater recycling system? Will Ursuline unveil a new line of 100-percent hemp uniforms?

I was on the scene last Friday as a group of first- and eight-graders from Good Shepherd Episcopal School presented a roughly $2,200 donation to the Dallas Zoo. It was a noble effort, and you can read all about it in the paper. But here, I want to discuss something else.

There was a handful of eighth-grade boys (none of whom are pictured here) who were giggly over their repeated utterances of “Hey Don.” They kept saying it in a particular way, that I’m not exactly sure how to express in print. They would draw out the “Hey” and emphasize the “Don.” Sort of like, “heeeyyy DON.”

They seemed to be looking in a certain direction, across the crowd, every time they said it. But I couldn’t tell if they were trying to torture a fellow student named “Don” or one of their chaperones. Anyone have a clue what that was about?