On Tuesday 19 April, Honors English 10 students attended the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of The Merchant of Venice. In class, the students read and performed The Merchant of Venice, as part of our ongoing work on dehumanization and the ways people choose to engage in or rebel against society’s treatment of outsiders. The story is a complex and problematic one that deals openly with antisemitism. This most recent version focuses on Shylock as a tragic hero, with both he and his daughter judged and mistreated because of their ethnicity. Shakespeare Theatre Company also cast African American characters in these roles. Meanwhile, ninth graders in Mr. Baum and Ms. Alston’s classes just finished a unit on sonnets and eighth graders in Ms. Haywood and Ms. Breitman’s classes are reading Much Ado About Nothing and writing sonnets and scripts.

Last week seniors in Honors English visited the Harriet Tubman National Museum on the Eastern Shore. This field trip proved critical in better understanding the enslaved people of the area and the experiences of Ms. Tubman, both during her childhood and as an adult, leading others to freedom. The museum is part of Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park in Church Creek Maryland. They saw the beautiful bronze sculpture of Tubman and learned about her service in the Union Army. 

This year several sixth graders participated in the Montgomery County Science Fair because Washington D.C. did not host a STEM Fair. While some of our qualifying middle schoolers chose not to participate due to vacation plans or other obstacles, 4 groups (6 students) participated. Francisco Blanco earned 3rd place overall in the engineering category, and won second place for both his project and video, along with the SAE International DC/Va section award for excellence in Mobility Engineering. The partnership of Cooper Lothamer, Will Hocine, and Sebastian Risso earned third place from the Federal Water Quality Association- Federal Water Quality Association first place in the science fair for the project, and second place for the video. Jack O’Rourke earned first place for both his project and his video, and Noah Ratzman scored a third place for his video.

This weekend, see 8th grader Reva Kelly on the 40th Annual Washington Informer Citywide Spelling Be, which airs Sunday April 10 at 3pm on DKN. This will air on channel 99 if you have Comcast, 18 on RCN, and 12 on Verizon Fios. Or you can watch the DKN livestream at  http://video.oct.dc.gov/DKN/jw.html. Watch Reva vie with other students in a tight race with a dramatic finish. 

Sixth graders in Ms. Dobler’s science class are now Watershed Finalists in the region’s contest researching and protecting the waterways. This means our students were among the top 10 projects in the entire Chesapeake Bay region! This is the first Latin group to make it to the top 10 finalists since 2018. The students are Eden Claire, Campbell Hall, Mia Jancachagua Espinoza, Emma Fitzpatrick, Mila Applebaum, and Lydia Tiersky. Since the finals are virtual this year, there are two next steps. The first step is the students will be presenting live in Zoom to the 4-5 judges in late April and attending the Virtual Summit in May.