Eighth graders are busy starting the second semester with a unit on memoir and biographies in English. Students will be reading a memoir they have chosen by George Takei, Jackie Robinson, Megan Rapinoe, or Sonia Sotomayor. Meanwhile, in class students will be studying the poetry and life of Langston Hughes for a research essay about how his life affected his writing. The winter unit will include comparisons between the way that authors may craft an identity for themselves and how they see themselves in private.
On January 16, seventh graders Evan Kendall and J.D. Miller, participated in a Model United Nations conference hosted by Williamsburg Middle School in Arlington, Virginia. Seventh grade history teacher Mr. Wills is the school’s Model UN coach and advisor. The conference was the second of this school year, and was attended, via Zoom, by more than 50 students from DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Evan and J.D. chose to participate on a historical committee which debated the causes and effects of World War I. For this activity, each student was assigned a historical person to study and portray throughout the debate. J.D. played the role of Austrian General, Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf, while Evan portrayed the journalist and French statesman, George Clemenceau.
Congratulations to the students who moved on to the schoolwide spelling bee. They include Boaz Movit and Max Smudde in the fifth grade, sixth grader Gideon Chaffee, seventh graders Reva Kelly, Noa Smudde, and Eliza Lowenfish, and eighth graders Niamh O’Donovan and Michael Tichy. This year the schoolwide bee will also be online, opening January 22 and completing January 26th, allowing students to take a 50 word spelling assessment on the computer. The two top Washington Latin spellers will proceed to the Cluster Bee, against other nearby schools, and if they prevail, to the Citywide Bee. Both O’Donovan and Kelly participated in the citywide Bee last year.
Upper school history teacher Mr. Bhuva earned a grant from Teachers for Global Classrooms, a program focused on incorporating global perspectives into the classroom. Bhuva took a course in the Fall and a summer trip is planned to South Korea as a part of learning about the way international schools work, building connections, and learning about Korean culture. Bhuva has also been accepted by the TransAtlantic Outreach Program, which will send him on a study tour to Germany this summer to learn about German culture, education, and create lesson plans on modern day Germany for the US.
Washington Latin has always noted that Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a day of service, participating in various activities from making soup and sandwiches for the hungry, to writing cards for the sick, and visiting the elderly, cleaning up the community. Due to Covid, this year the school will continue to encourage students to participate in acts of service. Over the last few years, the Washington Latin community has participated in various initiatives on this day. School social worker Hope Foster encourages students to take part in various online activities to help our community, including submitting art, photos, poems, and prose to “A Wider Circle,” for its art showcase entitled “Work Together to End Poverty.” Students can submit on MLK day through February 9th, by contacting volunteer@awidercircle.org.The school also encourage students to drop off Smartrip cards, adult socks, and adult underwear items at Thrive DC on Tuesday at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church on 1525 Newton Street NW or call Rose Osburn at (202) 503-1533 ext. 533. Items can also be mailed to this address. Food donations can be made to the Capital Area Food Bank, https://www.capitalareafoodbank.org/and So Others Might Eat https://www.some.org/give/donate-goodsor Martha’s Table, https://marthastable.org/
