Before Matt Ryan’s Ascent, a Quiet Grounding in the Quaker Way

PHILADELPHIA — In a spacious meeting room with broad, cathedral-like windows and a vaulted ceiling, 450 high school students and their teachers sat side by side on long wooden benches in sustained and still quiet for 40 minutes. The silence was interrupted only by the occasional cough or gently cleared throat.

The group — the student body, faculty and staff of William Penn Charter School — gathers once a week for this noiseless period of reflection called “meeting for worship,” a Quaker practice that William Penn would recognize from 1689, when he founded the school here.