Sixth grade civics teacher Mr. Staten invited John Cattaneo, a Latin parent of two children, to help him stage a Revolutionary War reenactment in class. Cattaneo, who has visited the class each year since 2013 when his oldest daughter was a sixth grader, dressed in full Revolutionary War gear, and told students about soldier garb, footwear, and muskets. Student volunteers got to participate in activities related to the Battle of Valley Forge and try out some of the clothing and accessories. Our history department uses reenactment as much as possible to help students imagine the lives and experiences of the figures they study.
Eighth grade history students are taking part in recitations of historical speeches as part of a class assignment. Students may choose to recite these famous words for their class or for high school classes. They were given several different options including speeches made by General Robert E. Lee, civil rights activist Sojourner Truth, President Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The activity helps students with public speaking skills and also asks them to commit to memory and engage with the words of great men and women to better understand the conflicts from the historical era in which they lived.
Sophomore Shelby Griffith won first place in Wednesday’s Poetry Out Loud Competition. The upper school competition requires students to recite a poem of their choosing. Students have been practicing their recitation skills in English classes. Griffith will compete in the citywide performance against students in other DC-area high schools and will have to memorize and recite three different poems. The first runner up was freshman Dakota Turnage and the second runner up was freshman Nora Butler.
Ninth grader Mary-Kate Wilson has been honored by the Scholastic poetry contest for the second year in a row. She submitted two poetry collections to the competition, garnering a silver and gold key award. She will participate in March at the Gala Theatre for the DC Metro Region Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Ceremony. This year’s keynote speaker will be poet, literary activist, and Howard University alum E. Ethelbert Miller. More information and a complete list of winners for this competition can be found here. Wilson also writes for the school newspaper.
Eighth grader Steve Mirabello was once again victorious in the school Geography Bee and has taken a test to qualify for the next round of the District-wide Bee. Last year Mirabello also competed against other citywide middle school students to show his knowledge of world geography. After the citywide bee is the national competition in May, which will be held at the National Geographic Society. In our school wide competition, seventh grader Henry Cohen also made it to the championship round. Other grade representatives in the competition include fifth graders Tommy Portilla-Marchiori and Elias Baldwin, sixth graders Meerabela Kempf and Gavin Neubauer, and eighth grader Mihir Patel.
