New School of Etiquette Teaches Manners and Much More

If you thought that an etiquette school was a quaint anachronism with no relevance to anyone except the privileged offspring of the uppah clahses, check out the 21st-century version just launched by South Orange resident Tatia Adams Fox.

At Fox’s New School of Etiquette, children ages 4 to 16 do learn old-fashioned social graces—table manners, saying please and thank you, which fork to use, and how to shake hands. But Fox’s definition of “etiquette” goes way beyond these basic rules of conduct; to her, knowing proper etiquette means having the skills to cope with a wide variety of social situations. Among the various courses offered by her school are “Fit & Fun,” which teaches the importance of a healthy lifestyle; “Mista & Mini-Travelista,” which is geared toward instilling the skills and proper attitudes required for traveling; and “New Kid on the Block,” appropriate for kids entering a new school or neighborhood as well as for those who are just plain shy.

The school is structured as a nine-month series of courses, with each course including four classes per month. Other options include “a la carte” classes and private instruction. Classes are separated among preschoolers (ages 4-5), grade schoolers (ages 6-9), and tweens and teens (ages 10-12 and 13-16). Fox describes her classes as “moderately priced” compared to other cultural enrichment options in the area.

She will be offering free trial classes on Monday, April 18 and Wednesday, April 20 at the Sparkhouse SuperGroovyPartyRoom, 21 Scotland Road, South Orange. The workshop times are 10–11:30 a.m. and 12–1:30 p.m. both days.

“This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for about the last seven years,” says Fox, whose professional background includes marketing, advertising, and brand management in the music and entertainment industries. “I’ve always volunteered, since I was a teenager, with pregnant teens, in school, in church, with the goal of encouraging and inspiring girls like myself. So now, having children myself, and wanting to instill core values of being a good person and treating people the way you want to be treated—it just came naturally.

“It’s so easy as a parent to say ‘sit down, say please, say thank you, don’t drop anything, wipe your mouth’—it’s sort of automatic,” she continues. “But there are other lessons that are there to teach, which as parents we don’t always think about—little things, such as, when you’re sitting down at a table, you exit from the right side. Why wait until the child is graduating from college, preparing for their first job interview, to actually teach these skills when we can teach them now? The earlier the better; good manners are not innate. You have to teach them, review and reinforce them, until they become part of the child’s habitual behavior.”

Fox’s strategy for getting children to permanently adopt these habits of proper social behavior is to make the learning process fun. Her classes are interactive, incorporating arts and crafts, role play, and dress-up. “In our dining class, ‘Pass the Peas Please,’ the kids pretend that they’re going to a fancy dinner; they get to pretend that they’re grown-ups,” says Fox. “The goal is for them to not even realize that they’re learning while they’re learning.”

Fox, a native of Savannah, Georgia, was a debutante and attended charm school. “But it was stuffy and rigid, not fun,” she says. “We did things because we were supposed to do them. I don’t want that experience for my or anybody else’s children. My school is not going to follow the model that most people associate with etiquette schools—namely conservative, not child-friendly, oriented toward the parents and not the children.” Fox is the primary instructor for many of the courses, along with Taia Rashid, a former master trainer who spent ten years instructing employees and executives of the Frito-Lay company.

Fox has derived much of the material for her courses from the methods and her husband, Mic, are using to raise their own two daughters, 6-year-old Thailer and 3-year-old Sumari. “I want to give them life skills that they’ll have forever, and I want to give them those skills now, so that they can use them in their interactions with other children and be confident and ready for many different situations.”

Besides the initial Sparkhouse location, The New School of Etiquette has already agreed to offer classes through various area institutions. Fox will bring some of the curriculum to the After School Program of Maplewood and South Orange, which provides after-care for elementary and middle school students. Zadie’s Nurturing Den, a child care center in Summit, has also signed on as a participating vendor. And the South Mountain YMCA will start offering New School of Etiquette classes this coming fall.

To sign up for the free classes at Sparkhouse on April 18 and 20, visit www.newschoolofetiquette.com and click on the orange box that says “Sign Up! Free Classes Apr. 18 & 20.” Please indicate in your message which day and time you'll attend. Space is limited, and students must be 4–12 years old. Each class will be divided into age-appropriate groups.