Bill's blog is now fed through the school's main blog at http://sbschoolorg.wordpress.com.

 

Articles published since the last middle school newsletter include:

"Getting Past Partisanship" about a recent political victory won by the middle school and upper school reaction.

"Facing the Truth" about a recent Humanities 7 class on racism and being our own best selves.

"Not Your Mother's Feminism" about a recent article in Harper's by Susan Faludi and the concept of "enlightened sexism" as it relates to SBS students.

"You've Come a Long Way Baby. Sort of." about a TIME article on the UConn women's basketball team and women's voices.

 "On the Importance of Making Misteaks / Mistakes" about how adult imperfections, handled properly, can benefit students.

"The Roots of Pride" about a defining moment for the 2010-2011 middle school.

The Humanities 7 class is now fully engaged in their theatre unit. The students have chosen "Love in different types of relationships" as a theme for the one-act plays they are writing now and that will be produced this spring in the Theatre 7 class. There will be three different plays, each written by a group of five students and based on the common theme. For each play, the authors will take the principal roles, one of the other two groups will take the secondary roles, and the remaining group will serve as the tech crew.

The students have watched and critiqued "Romeo and Juliet" and begun watching "Steel Magnolias." Meanwhile, they have chosen Sharon Draper's Out of My Mind for the next read-aloud book, and continue their superb work in independent writing.

The FLC class has completed their third unit in Spanish vocabulary, working with greetings and informal "getting to know you" conversations and learning words for different relatives. This unit required a deeper level of reading comprehension and more memorization than did previous units. The students are getting ready to begin a fourth unit on food and drink which will also introduce them to basic verb conjugations and the grammar concept of the partitive.

 

Meanwhile, the work on their textbook is progressing steadily, with many students having completed their first sections. For most students, the second section they write will focus on the culture related to one of the languages we are studying this year, for example Yiddish, Italian or Greek.

The two MOCA representatives to Student Council made a presentation at the first faculty meeting after winter break, presenting their case for granting the 7th graders the right to vote in all future elections for Student Council president. They did a wonderful job, as pointed out by several faculty members in the subsequent discussion. The faculty voted to make their recommendation on the issue to Student Council.

 

At housemeeting the following Tuesday, the StuCo President called up the two current MOCA representatives to Student Council as well as the two Fall representatives in front of the school to share in the announcement that 7th grade franchise had in fact been granted. This culminates almost three years of work by MOCA to have a middle school voice in StuCo meetings and elections. Thanks and congratulations to the many people who worked to make this happen.

We have redone our newsletter system and are in the process of rebuilding mailing lists. In the interim, the Middle School Newsletter, which normally goes out biweekly to parents, grandparents and other members of the middle school community, will be shared with upper school families and friends as well. Look for your regular copy of the "Snapshot" at the end of the week.

 

Take care,

Bill Ivey

Middle School Dean