Volume 8: Issue 1
    
Welcome!    
Welcome to the eighth year of Stoneleigh-Burnham Middle School! Every two weeks in this space, we will share news from the classrooms and beyond of what your daughters are doing. The students are off to a very strong start this year, with high spirits, strong energy, and a sense of caring and supportiveness that never fails to touch us. For this first issue, besides offering links to articles in the school's blog, we will take turns introducing ourselves so that you can get to know us better.
As always, if you have any comments, ideas, or questions, please let me know!
- Bill Ivey, Middle School Dean
SBS Blog    
The following articles related to the middle school have been posted in the school's blog since the opening of school:
 
Just Go: Lessons from the First Day, by Shawn Durrett. A lovely piece about dropping your children off at school.
 
Bookends: Volume 1, by Alex Bogel and Bill Ivey. An introduction to an ongoing dialogue about knowing what we know by the "IB Theory of Knowledge" and "Humanities 7" teachers.
 
Listening through the Wall: Middle School Select Chorus Auditions and the Spirit of our School, by Sara Gibbons. About what is heard and what is seen though unseen.
 
Love At, No, Before First Sight, by Bill Ivey. Newborns and newborn relationships.
 
Sara Tsou - Chinese I    
你好 (nǐ hǎo, means Hello) parents, my name is 鄒嘉容, Chia-Jung (Sara) Tsou. I teach Chinese I through V. I also assist coaching volleyball in fall and co-direct the winter play, and I am an on-campus houseparent on the junior/senior hallway, where I cook Chinese food and play fun games with girls during the weekend. I am also involved with multicultural club. The club introduces different countries and cultures to our community. Prior to SBS, I taught Chinese at the University of Pittsburgh, where I received my masters degree of foreign language education. I fly home, Taiwan, every summer, and spend almost three months with my family and friends. In my free time, I enjoy traveling. I went to Paris to visit my friend last spring break, and went to Beijing and Shanghai this summer. I am not a big fan of dessert, but I love the macarons in Paris. Food is always the best start to learn a new culture.
Ann Sorvino - Dance    
I teach the MS 7th and 8th grade dance groups and all the advanced upper school dance courses. I am a graduate of The Juilliard School and a former dancer with The Merce Cunningham Dance Company. I am an adjunct professor of dance at Greenfield Community College and the director of my own dance group, The Sorvino Dance Project. I also perform with Chaos Theory Dance, directed by Billbob Brown, chair of the UMASS dance department. Fun fact: This summer my daughter was married (Sofia is a graduate of SBS 2001and works in advertising) and my son performed the ceremony. He is not a minister, but a cameraman and film editor at MTV!
Brittany Gutermuth - Algebra 1, Life Science, Physical Science, Pre-Algebra, Advisor, Houseparent    
Hi, my name is Brittany and I am teaching 7th and 8th grade science and math!  I earned a BA from Alfred University and then went on to teach informal science education for 10 years at zoos, nature centers, the Boston Museum of Science, and a fish elevator (where we lift fish over a hydroelectric dam so they can continue their lifecycles).  I recently went back to school for my MAT at Smith College, and last year I  taught at a therapeutic boarding school for high school age students.  I am very excited to be teaching science and math to middle school girls at SBS, using my varied science background and love of nature to inspire our students to want to take care of our Earth.
Miriam Przybyla-Baum - French I    
My name is Miriam Przybyla-Baum and I teach French I, II, III, and IB.  I also advise Student Council.  This is my 12th year at SBS, where I have been a dorm parent at each of the grade levels.  You will often see me on campus with my husband and three daughters.  My degree is in French literature with a minor in translation from McGill University.  I live in Quebec in the summer, on a little lake in the Boreal forest, surrounded by loons and bears.  I am looking forward to traveling with SBS students to Quebec City in Februrary!
Bill Ivey - French II, Humanities 7, Middle and Upper School Rock Bands, Advisor, Community Service    
Bonjour! Je m'appelle Bill Ivey. I've been saying those words for 40-odd years now, as a middle and high school student and a French major at Middlebury College, in the M.A.T. program at UMass, and during the two years I lived in France. I teach French II here as well as the Middle and Upper School Rock Bands (I was a music minor) and the Humanities 7 course, where everything I know, love, and believe in about middle school teaching comes together. They say to be a good middle school teacher, you have to love living in their world, and I absolutely do. With their energy, creativity, honesty, spontaneity, earnestness, insightfulness, and great senses of humor, how could I not?!

Does that count as a fun fact? ;-)
Clare Perry - ESL Humanities    
Teaching ESL is fun because without traveling further than 20 minutes up 91 each morning, I get to talk, read, write and laugh with students from around the world. I am thrilled to be filling in for Minhee Kang for the Fall Term. I have been teaching at a variety of Pioneer Valley schools over the last 14 years - sometimes in permanent positions but more recently in temporary positions so that I can more easily juggle my other responsibilities.  Teaching Humanities and ESL are my two passions - I love helping students find connections between different disciplines, between each other, between stories and between cultures. I have traveled far from home myself  - - running a dorm at a summer program in Switzerland, trekking in Nepal, traveling in Japan, eco-touring in Costa Rica, taking high school kids to Kenya on a school service construction project, taking students for two weeks to study and live with familes in Beijing, studying Spanish and living with familes in Mexico and Guatemala, and living, studying and working as an au pair in France. I look forward to helping my students stretch through their own journeys but also to find a home away from home here in this most wonderful Pioneer Valley.
Hank Mixsell - Spanish 1, Advisor, Houseparent    
I'm Henry "Hank" Mixsell and I'm teaching Spanish 1 and 2 this year.  I'm also the Technology Coordinator, helping faculty to become knowledgeable and comfortable with technological tools and resources they can use to improve instruction.  I received my BA in Spanish from Thiel College and my MALS from Weslyan University.  I've been teaching Spanish and have been a technology "geek" in independent day and boarding schools since 1968, moving recently from Hamden Hall Country Day School in Connecticut, where I've taught for the last 21 years.  My focus in the classroom has been primarily beginning Spanish in middle school grades, but I've also taught all subjects in 5th & 6th grades In Labrador, Canada and 3rd and 4th grade Spanish at Hamden Hall.  Since 2000, I have organized and led a month-long immersion program in San Miguel de Allende, México for Hamden Hall students; I hope to be able to offer the same trip here at Stoneleigh-Burnham in the future.   I play the guitar and sing and have been a member of an interdenominational, interraciial gospel choir in New Haven, the Salt & Pepper Gospel Singers, for twenty-five years.  My wife Sally and I have two grown boys who live in Connecticut, and an English Springer Spaniel, Charlie, who lives with us in Coleman House here at SBS.  An interesting fact about me that not many people know is that I met Salvador Dalí, Ferrante & Teicher, Carol Channing, and Jimmy Darren while appearing on the Ed Sullivan show in January of 1961.
Kelly Griffin - Dance, Houseparent    
Hello, my name is Kelly Griffin and I am starting my third year at SBS.  I arrived at Stoneleigh-Burnham right after my time at Bates College where I was a History major with a double minor in Teacher Education and Dance.  I teach history in the upper school, but have had the privilege to be a houseparent on the middle school hallway these past few years.   I also teach beginning dance where I have another opportunity to interact with our wonderful middle school girls.  I'm pretty sure I have one of the coolest jobs in the world and I am so happy you are sharing your daughters with us this year!  When I'm not at SBS you can find me running around the streets of Greenfield training for my first half-marathon.
Kim Mancuso - Theatre    
I am thrilled to be moving into my fifth year as theatre teacher and director at Stoneleigh-Burnham. I love my engagement with the 8th grade on their fall production and the 7th grade in the spring, collaborating with them on the writing and production of their original plays. This year, the 8th grade is focusing on Antigone which dovetails nicely with their Humanities focus. I also direct the Winter Play in which Middle School students can participate.  I hold an M.A. from NYU and an M.F.A. from Yale.  I organize my life around teaching at both SBS and MIT in Cambridge and being a mom.  I am extremely proud that my daughter Zoë, who graduated from SBS after six years - with the class of 2011 - is happily attending Sarah Lawrence College.
Tony Lechner - Vocal Music, Select Chorus, Advisor    
Hello parents!  I'm so excited to be back at SBS full time this year!  Taking over halfway through last year was challenging, and I'm really enjoying being here from the beginning this year and getting to know everyone early.  I've got some cool music planned for our singing groups this year, and am even now in the midst of auditioning for the ever-popular Middle School Select vocal group.  I'm also excited about our 38-student middle school chorus!  We've only met a handful of times so far, but I'm already having a great time singing with them.  This year I'm inviting all middle school students to participate in the parents' weekend concert, so you will hear them if you are coming out that weekend.  My main goal is to make sure our students have fun making music together (and hopefully they'll learn a few things along the way!).
Sara Gibbons - Art    
Here at SBS I was once known as Sara Brown, class of 1998.  Now the students know me as Sara Gibbons, a member of the Visual Arts faculty in addition to senior class dean, StuCo advisor, volleyball and lacrosse coach, and houseparent on 11th/12th hallway.  Between my time as an SBS student and an SBS teacher, I studied art (I have a passion for functional art) and religious studies at St. Lawrence University and taught elementary school at Greenfield Center School.  While I currently spend a good portion of my days with high school students, I am very excited to teach middle school art this year!   
Karen Suchenski - Humanities 8, Advisor, Houseparent, Community Service    
I am Karen Suchenski and one of my heroines is a little known nineteenth century woman pioneer in public education, Phebe W. Sudlow ( a teacher at 15 who became the first female principal and then the first woman city superintendant in the U.S. public school system).  When asked in tough job interviews where she had been educated, she would always reply: “All along the way.” (She had, by the way, earned several degrees on her way to become the first female English professor at the University of Iowa.)  My own “all along the way” has included time spent as an undergraduate at Amherst College (with a BA in English and American Studies) and at Yale University (with an MA in American Studies). But “along the way” has also found me reveling in my teaching role in classrooms with students at the college level to, most recently, elementary school age, and in museums from the Smithsonian to Amherst College Art Museum to local historical societies.
I am so glad that my “along the way” has eventually led me up a winding Greenfield, MA driveway to Stoneleigh-Burnham School. Like many of your daughters, I have just begun my “all girls” education at the Middle School and am a lifelong learner in two sections of Humanities 8 (for your daughters daily teach me so much!) for which I was hired to teach. I am also an advisor to seven middle school students and will have residential duties with them once a week in the Middle School dorm. I will share community service learning with your girls at Greenfield elementary schools and hope to help reinvigorate an SBS all-school newspaper.  My fun fact is that I currently have the privilege of daily connecting as a learner with my own daughter who is in the 8th grade at SBS.  What can I say but I am living the middle school life and relishing each new day--and sure hope my daughter will continue to do so, too. (Perhaps I’ll have more to share about this in future MS newsletters?!)
Andrea Tehan - Algebra 1, Learning Lab, Physical Science, Advisor, Houseparent, Coach    
Hi there! My name is Andrea Tehan and I am thrilled to be a new member of the Stoneleigh-Burnham Middle School Team!  I am the new Director of the Academic Center as well as a teacher of Physical Science and Algebra 1 to middle school students. I moved here from the hustle and bustle of the District of Columbia where I was a High School Public School teacher for 3 years. I am delighted to be at SBS where we are in the country and free to explore the natural world and make real connections with what we are learning every day in the classroom! I hope to use my experience as an environmental educator in the Peace Corps, a science and math teacher in suburban MD and as a volunteer zookeeper for most of my high school and adult life to make learning as hands on as possible and FUN! Thanks for reading, and stay tuned in future issues for more updates from my classroom!
Greg Snedeker - Instrumental Music, Big Band    

I am Greg Snedeker, and I teach instrumental music. Music is my passion and my career; how lucky! When I was in 5th grade, I knew I wanted to be a musician, and began composing my first pieces of music. I started piano when I was 5 years old, and then the cello when I was 9. I played in the orchestra and jazz ensemble in middle school and high school. I had a rock band in high school that was very successful in my home town of Grand Rapids, MI. We played at most of the high school dances around the city. In addition to music, I love to participate in various sports (water skiing, golf, tennis, running, mountain biking, basketball, etc.). I live in Gill, MA with my wife Kathy, daughter Mia, and cat Fred. I look forward to meeting you all and working with the students to make beautiful music.
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