In Mr. Lawrence Liu’s Upper School Government class, students are discussing the purpose of government and evaluating whether the most important role is keeping order or protecting individual rights. Students are reading excerpts from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and summaries of John Locke’s view of government. The discussion will help students work on asking questions, citing texts, and evaluating each other’s thoughts. This type of discussion helps build substantive knowledge of history and philosophy and the practical skills necessary to evaluate and think critically. Mr. Liu, who worked as a lawyer both in private practice and in a federal agency, uses his legal expertise and experience in the classroom to help deepen students’ understanding.
Students in various English classes are reflecting on summer reading through writing and projects. In Ms. Peale’s seventh grade class, students are writing essays about their summer choice books. In eighth grade, students are writing narrative poems to demonstrate the experience of the different narrators in the book Refugee. Students in Ms. Alston’s ninth grade class are making a timeline of the events in their summer reading book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, putting the story, which is in reverse chronological order, into the correct order and choosing the most significant events. Students in AP Language will be presenting to the class using emblematic images from history, art, or popular culture to help express ideas about the graphic novel of Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” talking about the relationship between words and image.
Last Friday Ms. Melissa Vercammen’s choir class took their music outdoors for a kinesthetic test of their music knowledge. Students lined up along the lines on the blacktop by the lunch tables and had to move their bodies in line with different slabs of pavement to name that note. Students cheered each other on as players were eliminated, testing to see their knowledge of notes using physical space to represent the different letters. Ms. Vercammen, who has been a member of our faculty for more than a decade, is the chair of the arts department and teaches choir, music and Jazz band for students in 8th through 12th grade.
Each year, Washington Latin faculty have the opportunity to apply for an Inspire Grant, professional development opportunities provided thanks to the donations of our community to the Faculty Fund. The grants are open to a wide range of travel and other activities. Grantees made use of the summer for mountain climbing, participating in workshops, visiting museums, creating new curriculum, and meditating. In the years since theInspire Grant program began, teachers have visited historical sites in New York, New Orleans, Puerto Rico, Israel, Rome, and other exotic locals. They studied classical literature, the Harlem Renaissance, Jazz Music, Geography, History, and Meditation. The purpose of the grants is to engage teachers in new and dynamic activities to help them recharge and reconceptualize their curricula and area of study, both to enrich teaching and learning and bolster teacher retention.
Class of 2021 graduate Zoe Edelman is continuing her journalistic career at Stanford University. Zoe served as the editor in chief of Latin’s paper Sumus Leones. During her freshman year at Stanford she worked as a beat reporter covering African American culture and student clubs for the Stanford Daily, and now will be returning to the newspaper as a Desk Editor this year.
Ms. Cook and Ms. Ables, both class of 2015 graduates, are excited to be teaching fifth grade together this year at Second Street. Ms. Cook previously worked as a Public Ally supporting individual students in Latin, and now will be teaching fifth grade Latin. Ms. Ables will be teaching Health. They join the indelible squad of alumni at Latin, which include Class of 2013 graduates Ms. Tucker, who is a social worker, and Ms. Griffith, who is a counselor in the middle school. The Cooper campus includes several alumni too, with Class of 2013 graduate Mr. Starnes teaching Civics, Class of 2013 graduate Ms. Smith directing athletics and 2012 graduate Ms. Osborne directing literacy. Class of 2016 graduate Ms. Gans will be teaching 5th English, and 2012 graduate Mr. Fisher is serving as a Dean.
