Asynchronous Wednesdays may be filled with work assignments, but there is also a fair amount of time for playfulness and clubs. In Mr. Coleman’s Video Game club there are 12 members who meet regularly on Wednesday afternoons at 2:30 to play games like Fortnite, and NBA 2K21. In between playing, we talk about current events and what’s happening at home/school. Also on Wednesday, Mr. Staten’s Dungeons and Dragons club has 8 kids, with Harvey Craig serving as dungeon master. He helps everyone create their characters.
Students in the LatinX History Club with help from fifth grade math teacher Ms. Figueroa has worked together with students in the club to compile the Hispanic Heritage Month Facts of the Day for the Daily Bulletin. They also researched and highlighted some Indigenous leaders throughout Latin America for this week’s bulletin and discussed current events taking place in Latin America, such as Maduro’s regime in Venezuela. The club is also planning a discussion of the movie West Side Story. In previous years, the club has also taken field trips, including a 2018 trip to the Smithsonian Community Museum and a 2019 trip to the National Museum of the American Indian. Picture from previous year.
Seniors kept busy on their day off on Monday, working to prepare their college essays. Ms. Latham and Mr. O’Brien, the college counselors, set the day aside for students to work one-on-one in virtual conferences with the two of them, Ms. Foley, Mr. Day, Ms. Breitman, and Ms. Seid to receive feedback on their college essays and personal statements. Students signed up for half-hour shifts throughout the day. Along with Financial Aid Night, and evenings devoted to preparing Juniors and Seniors for the college search, these conferences have allowed students to continue to have the close attention of teachers, advisors, and college counselors as they work to plan their futures.
Ninth graders in Mr. Baum’s English class started Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart last week and are continuing their studies of Indigenous groups. The book covers life in Nigeria before colonialism and the arrival of the Europeans and religious missionaries. Over the summer the ninth graders also read books from the Binti series. This science fiction novella by Nnedi Okorafor tells the story of the intergalactic Himba ethnic group, based on the Himba people, an indigenous group for Namibia. As the grade will proceed with other books about societies and rebellion, they will evaluate classical Greek texts like Antigone and science fiction stories Fahrenheit 451. Evaluating common themes through different lenses in English class allows students to broaden their critical thinking skills and make cross-cultural connections to see how history repeats itself through various writings.
Students in AP Language and Communication with Mr. Day have turned their attention to politics in recent weeks. Students used the Presidential and Vice Presidential debate to evaluate various rhetorical skills used by each of the candidates to get their points across. Meanwhile, Mr. Day is also making modern day in his 10th grade English classes, drawing connections between the experiences of Penelope and Telemachus in the Odyssey to the experiences of citizens during the Covid-19 pandemic. By making these modern connections to classical concepts, he is showing students how their education in history and literature remains relevant in everyday current events.
