The Bishop's School (La Jolla)

The Bishop's School is an independent college preparatory Episcopalian day school located at 7607 La Jolla Boulevard in La Jolla, a community of San Diego. Bishop's offers courses for students in the sixth through twelfth grades and has a 9:1 student-teacher ratio.

History

Bishop's was founded in 1909 by the Right Reverend Joseph Horsfall Johnson, at that time Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, with gifts of land and money by notable La Jolla, California philanthropists Ellen Browning Scripps and Virginia Scripps, her half-sister. Originally it was a boarding school for girls only. The earliest parts of the campus were designed by architect Irving Gill, responsible for a multitude of buildings in downtown La Jolla. The current tower building was designed by Carleton Winslow as a replacement for the original Gill tower.

The Quad, Bentham Hall, St. Mary's Chapel, and the Tower

The school was led from 1921 to 1953 by Headmistress Caroline Cummins, who has an academic hall named after her on the campus. Upon the arrival of Headmaster Michael Teitelman in 1983, the School's reputation in academics, arts and athletics grew.

Bishop's became co-educational after merging with the San Miguel School of San Diego, California in 1971. In June 1983, the boarding department was closed. The school expanded to include sixth grade in the fall of 2009.

Campus

The Bishop's School's 11 acre campus is located in the heart of La Jolla, only one block away from the Pacific Ocean. At the center of the campus is the Quad, a grassy quadrangle that is an important part of school life at Bishop's. Tradition prohibits anyone from setting foot on the Quad before lunch on school days. Most of the school's buildings are situated around the Quad, including three of the school's most prominent buildings: Bentham Hall, St. Mary's Chapel, and the Tower. The school campus contains a total of 12 buildings, the oldest of which was built in 1898. Many of the historic buildings on campus were designed by architect Irving Gill, one of the pioneers of the modern movement in architecture.

The school has been designated a historical landmark by the city of San Diego. Bentham Hall (designed by Irving Gill) was listed as historic in 1994 and the remainder of the campus in 1998. Designated elements include Scripps Hall (Irving Gill, 1910–11), Gilman Hall (Irving Gill and Louis Gill, 1916), St. Mary's Chapel (Carleton Winslow, 1916), The Tower (Carleton Winslow, 1930), Wheeler J. Bailey Library (Carleton Winslow, 1935), and gardens.

Leadership

Aimeclaire Lambert Roche is the head of school. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, she earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a master's from Columbia University. She is the eleventh head of school in Bishop's 100-year history.

Rankings

In 2007, The Wall Street Journal recognized Bishop's for its high matriculation rate to eight selective American colleges.^[1]

The College Board Advanced Placement Program ranked the AP Biology program the strongest in the nation for two consecutive years (2004 & 2005), as Bishop's achieved the highest rate of achievement for medium-sized schools (300-799 students).^[2][3]

According to the 2016 Niche Rankings of Best Private High Schools in America, The Bishop's School ranked 26th in the United States, 10th in California, and 1st in San Diego Metro area. The full rankings are here. In 2015, the School earned a place as one of the top 50 private high schools on bestcolleges.com.

Student activities

Academic League

The Bishop's Academic League team participates in the Northern division of the City League. Recent results include winning the Northern Division championships in 2011 and 2013. The team also competes in NAQT tournaments throughout the year, finishing 2013 and 2014 with an invitation to the National Finals of NAQT.

Advanced Topics in Economics

In 2015, students in an advanced economics class experienced great success in numerous local, state and national competitions. In the Economics Challenge the teams finished with two of the top five spots. In the Southern California Economics Challenge in Los Angeles the teams placed first and third after a strong finish in the quiz bowl rounds. The team eventually advanced to place sixth in the National Semifinals. Additionally, members of the team traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts for the Harvard Precollegiate Economics Competition and a meeting with Eric Maskin, the 2007 Nobel Prize winner in the field of Economics. A research team within the class also authored a paper on consumer price index across income levels and was invited to present their research at the 9th Annual Undergraduate Conference, a part of the Economic Scholars Program hosted by the Dallas Federal Reserve.^[4]

Arts

The Bishop's Singers have performed in New York's Carnegie Hall and in Chicago's Symphony Hall, as well as on The Today Show. The school also has a strong visual arts program, featuring student exhibitions and engagement in art competitions.

Athletics

The school (known in competition as the "Knights") currently offers 40 varsity and junior varsity teams. Sixty percent of Bishop's students compete in one or more sport.

Bishop's is known throughout Southern California as a water polo power, winning the California Interscholastic Federation (C.I.F.) title in boys water polo in its district in 2002-2006, 2008, and 2010. The girls water polo team won in 2000-2002, 2004-2007, and 2011-2015.

The 1997 football team, led by future college All American and NFL safety Shane Walton, won the C.I.F. State Championship. The 2010 football team earned the school's second State Championship after finishing the season 14-0. The Knights defeated Brookside Christian (Stockton) 40-14 in the C.I.F. State Championship Division IV Bowl Game. The 2014 football team went 13-0 and won the C.I.F. San Diego Section Division IV championship.

Computer Science

The Bishop's Computer Science department is supported by a fully-fledged computer lab. Bishop's hosts an upper school Computer Club which has earned official sponsorship from Google. The Computer Science department leads the school in graphic design, programming, hardware engineering, 3D graphics, and virtual reality.

Mock Trial

The Bishop's Mock Trial team won the San Diego County championship five of the past six years 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015. The team participated in the California state tournament each year following its victory. In 2015 in Riverside, California the team went undefeated, finishing in third place out of thirty four schools, the highest placement in school history. The team is made up of AP US Government students who are completing a class project as first year players. Numerous graduates have continued to participate in mock trial at the collegiate level at schools such as Duke, University of Illinois, George Washington, Princeton and Tufts.

Model UN Team

The Bishop′s Model United Nations team has participated in regional and national Model UN conferences for over two decades. The Bishop's Model UN Team has won numerous awards, most recently at the UCSD Triton MUN conference and the USD MUN conference.

School Publications

The School publishes its magazine, "Bishop's," twice a year.

Speech and Debate Team

The Bishop's School Speech and Debate team competes in the San Diego Imperial Valley Speech League (SDIVSL), a division of the California High School Speech Association (CHSSA). The Bishop's School Speech and Debate team originally began in the 1980s, and earned a National Forensic League Charter in the 1990s.

Spirit Team

The Bishop's School does not have a cheerleading squad, but has a spirit team called "The Dungeon." The Dungeon is a co-educational spirit team that cheers at various "Knights" athletic events. The Dungeon is responsible for attending all of the athletic events and raising crowds of students to support their peers. Community and school spirit is a fundamental part of the curriculum, and The Dungeon serves as a co-educational spirit team to further student involvement in school life.

Student Publications

Bishop's has several student publications. Noteworthy publications include:

• "The Tower," Bishop's official student newspaper and magazine, published monthly. Visit The Tower's website at http://blogs.bishops.com/thetower/ to gain access to immediate school news, coverage of athletics, reviews of artistic performances, fun columns, and an archive of past print issues.
• The Daily Urinal, an independent daily newspaper which was founded in 2004 and is posted in boys' and girls' restrooms. Although originally intended to be solely a humorous publication, the "DU" has tackled both important and controversial issues at Bishop's. It is distributed each morning by hand and online via email, and has a daily circulation of over 300 readers. It also has a website.
• "Globe", a student-led magazine, is an annual publication with the purpose of sharing the global and cultural experiences of students and faculty through word and art.
• Reflections, the Upper School Literary Magazine, is an annual publication that accepts prose, poetry, and art of all kinds. In 2007, Reflections was one of four magazines to receive a Superior rating by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) program to Recognize Excellence in Student Literary Magazines.
• Dragonwings, the Middle School Literary Magazine.

Notable Alumni

• M.F.K. Fisher — 1927, epicurean, culinary historian, and memoirist, of whom W. H. Auden once said "I do not know of anyone in the United States who writes better prose."
• Eric Lax — 1962, editor, writer and author.
• Brett White — 1978, CEO of CB Richard Ellis.
• J. J. Isler — 1981, yachtswoman, 1992 Summer Olympics medalist and America's Cup competitor.
• Bonnie St. John — 1982, the first African-American woman to win a silver medal at the Paralympics.
• Melissa Winter — 1985, Deputy Chief of Staff for First Lady Michelle Obama.
• Gary Jules — 1987, singer-songwriter.
• Andrew Cunanan — 1988, American serial killer once on the FBI Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, killer of fashion designer Gianni Versace.
• Kevin Stadler — 1998, professional golfer.
• Shane Walton — 1998, NFL defensive back.
• Andrew Campbell — 2002, yachtsman, four time All-American and 2008 Summer Olympics competitor.
• Colin Walsh (baseball) — 2007, Major League Baseball player.
• Elliott Liu — 2008, chess player.
• Elise Trouw — 2016, Pop/Alternative/Rock Singer and Multi-Instrumentalist.

See also

• San Diego Historical Landmarks in La Jolla, California
• Primary and secondary schools in San Diego, California
• "The Bishop's School, 1909-2009," The Journal of San Diego History 54:4 (2009) by Molly McClain

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Bishop's School (La Jolla).

• The Bishop's School (official)
• The Bishop's Alumni Blog
• The Bishop's School Athletics

References