Both the middle and upper school communities met for assemblies on Thursday, featuring student and teacher speakers. In the middle school, the event was MCed by fifth grader Harper Woods, and featured sixth grade English teacher Ms. Reed as a speaker, discussing the topic of gratitude. Fifth grader Isa Khokhar also reflected on the topic, and eighth grader Kennedy Crawley read an original poem written by eighth grader Devyn Scott. In the upper school, Mr. Clausen spoke on behalf of the faculty, and 2017 graduate and Washington Latin alum Dmitri Yearby spoke as well. These events allow teachers and students to celebrate together, speak about shared values and honor teacher and student achievement through merit awards.

For the first time this year, the upper school will offer a class called “Performance Studies in Theater.” This one-credit semester-long course will include Aristotle’s Poetics as a jumping-off point, and will explore theater from page to stage as a live performing art. The class will focus on contemporary American Theater and explore topics including dramatic structure, the relationship between theater and society, theatrical representation, and the crafts of acting and playwriting. Students will rehearse and perform a variety of scenes, engage with live performances and video archives of past performances, and write their own short works for the stage.