Sharing Our Passions

I echo Bert's enthusiasm about our class-determined, first term theme: ANTHROPOLOGY! Waaahooo!! In an effort to model a love of learning as we shared our individual pursuits of our individual interests, Bert, Darin and I each took some time yesterday to present our passions. Bert spoke enthusiastically about his love of sustainable building materials - specifically straw and cob construction. The girls were wowed by photos of projects that he has both seen and executed. Darin talked about her love of gardening, informed by her quest to know both the origin and the journey of the food she enjoys on her table each day. Our girls recalled their shared adventures in gardening by viewing Darin's photos from their sixth grade garden. I shared my passion for my father's amazing World War II story - an odyssey that I've been working on for the past thirty plus years with hopes of seeing his story in print sometime soon! Rather than trying to hook you here, ask your 8th grader for a fuller explanation. Based on their impressive attentiveness and appreciative responses, I suspect they'll have much to relay! On a related note, feel free to talk with your 8th grader about YOUR passions...our shared goal being to ignite a lifelong pursuit of learning about those things that truly matter.

Realizing a VISION in Art: an update from Trina!

It has been an exciting beginning of the year in art. The girls have been working in their personal sketchbooks, met five local artists, and visited seven galleries and my studio in Pioneer Square.
The weekly assignments in the sketchbooks to this point have been a means of getting the girls thinking about art on a broad scope. It has allowed them a space to reflect on the work that we have seen and what possibilities are out there. It feel that it is important to fill ones brain with as many possibilities and approaches as possible so that many directions can be accessed and exercised. Upon reading through the sketchbooks this week I am excited and impressed with the brilliant connections and insights that the girls have made. I can barely sit still with the wonderful suspense of seeing where the girls go as they process through realizing their own visions.
Over the last two weeks we welcomed several visiting artists. It was awesome for the girls to gain direct exposure with a variety of artist who have a range of focuses and processes. There were two painters (each of whom have extremely different styles), a singer/songwriter, a videograper, and a photographer/filmmaker. All of the artists showed elements of their process and their struggles along side of their successes and refined finished products. All of them were truly inspiring. Many girls, in their sketchbook reflections, expressed surprise at the extensive nature of what is put into each piece. In reality there is nothing easy or graceful for anyone to make good work, no matter how experienced you are. Making art is hard, a struggle, and some pieces are bad and you have to start over or take what you learned and apply it to the next piece, and on and on. Often times the public only sees finished works and this limited perspective can make the idea of making finished works overwhelming. I hope that by de-mystifying the process the girls will have a greater confidence to really go for it and work outside of their comfort zones.
It was wonderful to take the girls to Pioneer Square and view many many artists’ works. From sculpture, to photography, to painting, to mixed media, to conceptual work, to literal work, we saw it all. The Tashiro Kaplan building is a fantastic block with multiple galleries. We primarily stayed on this block. We then went further into Pioneer Square and had lunch and then visited my shared studio in the 619 Western building. It was really fun to have the girls into my working studio and show them my current series and process.
It is so very exciting to go through this journey with the 8th grade class. The girls should be working every week in their sketchbooks and maintaining engagement with their ideas and interests. As one of my favorite college professors used to say, talent doesn’t get you anywhere if you don’t do the work. I can’t wait to keep going and see where it all leads.

Trina

We have a Theme!

We are very excited to report that the 8th grade class has chosen a fantastic theme to engage with for the remainder of the first term: Anthropology. More importantly, they did a remarkable job sticking with a challenging and intense selection process to get to a theme that had class consensus. We commended them for the work they did in preserving class unity throughout this process and we'd also like to share with all of you at home how we got our final selection.

You may recall that the girls did an exercise in their Curiosità journals a few weeks ago in which they wrote down 100 questions in a single sitting. We teachers have also been participating in the Curiosità work and this is an exercise I'd recommend to everyone - your results might surprise you. Each girl was then asked to review her 100 questions and choose her 10 "burning questions" and turn those in. You would be amazed to hear what your daughters' core questions are right now.

We compiled a class list of all of the "burning questions" (minus the ones that were very personal) and distributed it to the class. Everyone was asked to read this list of over 200 questions and seek out patterns that they noticed within the questions. They then shared their observations in small groups who reported back to the whole. We compiled a master list of patterns as a starting place for theme ideas while noticing connections and offshoots within each. We finished our theme brainstorming by opening the field wide-open to theme possibilities that may have been sparked by these or other acivites so far this year. In all we generated a list of about 60 possibilties.

We started our retreat last week with this list and asked the girls to do some personal reflection on which of the themes spoke most to them and to be prepared to connect with others who were also interested and advocate for this theme in the whole group. On Thursday afternoon, we had a modified "Open Space" session where the girls stated their interests, met in small groups about 11 possible topics, and brainstormed a myriad of different subtopics and project possibilities for each. These topics included such things as world religions, measurements of happiness, and fears. On Friday morning, each group presented their proposed topic and ideas to the whole class.

Then came the really hard work of narrowing down amongst what were all really great ideas for topics. We went through a series of discussions and votes to accomplish this. Through it all, the girls did an excellent job of checking in with one another and conducting their deliberations in a way that was respectful of everyone's ideas and passions. By the end of Friday, we had narrowed our list to 5 possible topics. In the same way on Monday the list was narrowed to 4, to 3 on Tuesday, and to our final topic first thing this morning. While the process was certainly longer than we originally thought, and perhaps laborious and cumbersome at times, it was an excellent introduction to the real work of consensus building with a large group. It will without a doubt serve us well not only the next time we choose a theme or do the Production in the Spring, but in all of our work together this year.

More Warm Beach Moments....

Greetings from Warm Beach

What's this??? A moment to write a blog entry? Unheard of!! So far we've enjoyed an action-packed, meaningful retreat with our 8th graders and one another! It occurred to me that you might like to share in some of the exciting activity. As I write this, half of our girls are off experiencing the high ropes course while the other half are reflecting in their Curiosità journals about some of the theme development activities we presented this morning. We continue to be amazed by the ability of this year's class to "go there" - that is, to make connections, use ideas as springboards into realms of higher level thinking, and express controversial opinions in a way that others can best hear, absorb and understand, if not agree. In addition, we've been having a fair amount of fun - both planned and spontaneous. We began our shared experience with several field games, geared to build cooperation and community and led by Fleur (Larsen - our SGS Sports and Activities Director and 8th grade friend!) and J - this year's Adventure and Wellness Director and beloved 6th grade teacher. Last night after dinner and before our camp fire, we shared a modified "Tashlik" ceremony, inspired by the fact that many of us had just returned from Rosh Hashanah celebrations. As we look ahead to our 8th grade year and seek to craft it in a form and fashion that will best serve us, we wrote aspects of our way of being that we'd like to leave behind or "cast off" (a truer definition of the Hebrew word "tashlik".) Then when we gathered around the impressive bon fire built by our own J - we quietly cast our papers into the flames. To round out the nod to various faith traditions, we learned the Gregorian chant Dona nobis pacem - Give us peace - with its three part harmony. Tonight we may well try to sing it as a round as well!

This afternoon will be devoted to more theme-building activities, with an eye to settling on a first term theme by the time we roll away tomorrow at one! Should the weather cooperate, we'll swim after lunch. We've also got a mind to watching the vice-presidential debates after dinner, as we deem it an historic moment for sure!

That's about it for the moment...more as it happens!