Leadership Middle-School Style

As we were sitting around waiting for the Capen Room to fill up with students and faculty in preparation for the Day of Awareness opening session, Rebecca Peterson and I were talking about leadership styles. Rebecca, who had been nominally in charge of organizing the event along with the student-faculty diversity group known as Community Alliance, confided that she really hates to be placed in a leadership role and sees herself as much more of a facilitator. "But that is a legitimate leadership style," I commented, adding "It's also a style that is perhaps uniquely suited to a girls school." My thoughts turned to last week's MOCA meeting.

Continue reading at http://sbsmiddleschool.wordpress.com/

These past two Fridays, MOCA has been concentrating on discussing and rehearsing their Color Wars skit. One of their requests was green, and as this request was granted, their skit had to celebrate this color. Most of the first meeting was taken up brainstorming and assigning green characters, from Kermit the Frog to Frankenstein to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Plankton and more. Three students volunteered to write the script, and did an excellent job. The skit promises to be memorable. Next week, we will return to our longer-term projects.

The health class has recently seen presentations from three groups on topics covering organization, decision making, and public speaking. Students in the public speaking group each gave a short speech showing one faux-pas of public speaking, such as going too fast, using "likes" and "ums", or being too quiet. In other areas of class, we have been working on reflecting on our best intended plans of the past year that failed, and why they failed. After that, we will look at aspects of our personal, academic, family, and social life that we want to address, culminating with creating a contract to sign before spring break.

The Humanities 7 class agreed on "People learning to appreciate differences through turmoil" as a theme for their one-act plays, and students have been hard at work in groups of three working on scripts. Each script will last approximately 10-12 minutes, and is built around the three characters the group members originally created but may expand to include other characters as well. The scripts are developing nicely, and should be ready for a first reading and subsequent revisions by the end of next week. These scripts will be performed in late May by the Theatre 7 class.

Laura Kelley '88, an organic farmer and healthy foods activist, came to speak to the 7th graders on Wednesday. She discussed a variety of topics with the students, from flowers and their unique characteristics to organic foods to Colony Collapse Disorder which is threatening bees (which would have a radical effect on our food supply). The students were moved to ask if their next student-designed unit could revolve around some of the issues and activities Laura had discussed, and began working on a plan to develop an integrated science-humanities unit for April or May. As always, their energy, idealism, and ability to integrate practical goals (e.g. how to acquire writing skills for comparison-contrast and/or literary analysis essays in the unit) helped them work effectively together to come up with a solid initial plan.

In 8th grade the students have been very busy with a variety of work. In science, we transitioned to the introduction of physics and are currently studying motion. In groups of threes, the girls have designed projects and collected data to analyze and present to the class. They are completing their work and will present their projects and findings to the class. Meanwhile, in algebra, the students are strengthening their problem-solving skills by working with algebraic ratio and proportion problems. It is a busy time and the girls are making great progress every day.

The 7-8 Vocal Music class performed well on Thursday night, February 18, before a good-sized and enthusiastic audience. In just three short months, they worked on genres from classical to country to Broadway, singing well in unison and in harmony, working with and without microphones, and incorporating dance elements into their performance. They sounded wonderful and looked poised, and deserved to be proud of their work. Congratulations to the class and to Cyndee Meese for her excellent work preparing them for this concert.

Eighth graders Ashley and May also performed at this concert. Ashley played bass along with her teacher Greg Snedeker, trading improv lines on Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon." May performed an ambitious violin work, "Concerto in B minor Op. 35" by O. Rieding, accompanied by her teacher Robyn Stone. Both students did a wonderful job. Congratulations to them as well!

Watch these performances on YouTube: Ashley  |  May Pt.1 Pt.2  |    7-8 Vocal Music

The School maintains an online calendar of events for use by parents, students, and other members of our community. You may access this calendar at

http://www.sbschool.org/home/calendar.asp

You may also access a copy of the academic calendar through the parent portal, signing in at:

http://www.sbschool.org/home/content.asp?section=parents

If you ever have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you!