As you walk through the SCH halls and look at the plaques, you may discover one of your teacher’s or coach’s name. You might then think about how that teacher experienced the same fun on Blue and Blue Blue and Gold Days that you do. They may have even taken the same quizzes and tests.

There are currently nineteen alumni working and helping out the SCH community, and all have the same goal of making every student of the community a better person.

Julian McFadden ’06 is a learning support specialist, sixth grade dean, and Upper School varsity basketball head coach who has been a part of the SCH community for twenty-three years. Mr. McFadden stated that the preparation SCH gave him for his college career made him want to return and help: “I thought this was a place that helped me immensely as a student when I got to college,” he shared. “College was pretty easy, so I’ve kind of learned that immediately and that was when I decided this was a place that I wanted to send my kids,” he said.

Mr. McFadden had a historic career as a basketball player at SCH and attended Chestnut Hill College where he continued his basketball career. He was one of the many 1000 point scorers at SCH and Chestnut Hill College, which is an outstanding achievement. After his college career he immediately joined the Chestnut Hill basketball program and became a recruiter for them. During that time, he said, “I really wanted to come back here to make the basketball program good.” He also shared that “[the basketball team] was pretty bad for a lot of years in a row,” and he felt that it was important for him to come back and help and “make it look like what it looks like today.”

He revealed that scoring his 1000th point is one of his core memories. “I was playing for Coach Ed Aversa, who’s one of my mentors. My whole family is there, my mom’s there, playing against Wayne and Garald Ellington who played in the NBA for a long time.”

Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership teacher Edward Glassman’03 has been a part of SCH for over twenty years. This includes his time as a teacher for eleven years and his time as a student from kindergarten to twelfth grade.

“I have a great love and affection for everything that was done at Springside, especially around science and STEM and technology, and their sort of innovative mindset as a school,” said Glassman.

Mr. Glassman started his teaching career in Chicago doing education and technology startup work, but he really wanted to come back to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia he met up with then Head of School Priscilla Sands, and she had this idea for a Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. He was inspired by this idea because the CEL experience is different from what most people expect from high school. He shared that it helped, “classes and disciplines that involved making and problem solving and fabrication, thinking like an entrepreneur, bringing ideas to life.” Once the program became popular, he was asked to come on full time, and he hasn’t looked back since.

Mr Glassman shared that he has many core memories as a teacher, but one project that stands out to him is Ayana Banks’s tenth grade capstone project which launched a nonprofit called the Sweet Dreams project. “The idea behind the nonprofit is that when Ayana was a child in the hospital, sometimes she’d be in the hospital for 180 days at a time,” and also “her mom would come in and she would decorate the hospital to make it look nice like what a girl who is in kindergarten would want her room to look like.”

Glassman added, “I just love when students have this idea in their mind, and they don’t give up, and they’re relentless, and eventually they’re able to bring that idea to life” and “ make a positive impact on their community, whether that’s like, locally, nationally, internationally,” said Glassman

“I think I’ve got the best job in the world because I get to stand up in front of students of all ages and say, ‘Hey, my job is to find out more about you as a person and what you’re interested in and what you’re passionate about, and over the course of multiple years at school, help you get to a place where you can bring that idea to life.’”

Joseph Aversa‘07 is long term sub for his dad Edward Aversa who was the Athletics Department Assistant and Equipment Manager for many years. His father played a huge role in his life and also in the lives of many others in the SCH community, like Mr. McFadden. Joe started in seventh grade but has been around the community since fourth grade when Coach Ed got a coaching job.

Aversa mentioned that he was coaching youth football and the wrestling team needed an assistant. He shared, “It kind of worked out in perfect timing because I was already coaching” and “that was in 2019 and I’ve been here ever since.”

Aversa saw the impact Coach Ed made on people daily. “I’ve also got to see how many other people’s lives he’s impacted just by being the coach and person that he is.” He continued, “ He has relationships with every kid that walks through these halls, and that’s something that I kind of aspire to do the same thing,” he shared.

While he could not isolate one core memory, he shared: “There’s just a lot of alumni that come back, and that shows me that this is a special place.”