Ten In Ten Playwright Festival

On March 26th, 2:00 PM at Theater Off Jackson, the 8th grade class is going to be performing ten plays, each of them ten minutes long, and all written and produced by us! Earlier this winter we were given the assignment to write a ten-paged play. We turned them in, and ten of those were chosen to be produced and performed at Theater Off Jackson for Seattle Girls' School "Ten In Ten" Festival. From hilarious disaster dates, to modern-day fairytales, these ten plays are all amazingly written and are currently being produced. We have been memorizing lines, reading scripts, gathering props and costumes, designing programs, and practicing makeup techniques. Our whole class has been working extremely hard to make the playwright festival as best as it can be! Below are the ten plays being performed on Saturday, March 26th.

Rejection. Equals. Death. (R.E.D.)- Directed by Lillian Hubbell, written by Mahogani Watson

The Highs and Lows of Teenage Life- Directed by Bailey Sheehan, written by Olivia Oplinger

Girls and Dolls- Directed by Lia Mclanahan, written by Gracie Rauen

Fake Love- Directed by Payton Curtis, written by Anna Konsmo

The Story- Directed by Evy Larsen, written by Greta Rainbow

The Safety Corner- Directed by Jade Chowning, written by Caroline Tremaine-Nelson

The Park Bench- Directed by Mahogani Watson, written by Lillian Hubbell

True As A Dream- Directed by Ruby Wood, written by Emily Soriano

The Date- Directed by Maggie Debrovner, written by Sophia Webb

On Nagging Little Voices- Directed by Emily Soriano, written by Jade Chowning

Ask your daughter what she is doing in the play festival! Lights? Acting? Directing? We hope to see you Saturday, March 26th at Theater Off Jackson, 2:00 PM. Ten plays, all ten minutes long, all produced and performed by students.

SJCU Gets Deeper

In Social Justice Cultural Understanding class (SJCU), we just finished working on our 8th grade presentations about institutional racism. We each chose sub-topics, and then annotated articles about the past and present of our issue. We then presented to the class what we learned after reading the articles.

The sub topics were:

Different treatment of historically black colleges

Institutional racism becoming internalized

Educational achievement gap

Racist ads

Racial health disparities

School segregation

Overrepresentation of blacks in the criminal justice system

Discrimination against minority farmers

Ethnic studies ban

Back on asian violence

White caricatures of racial stereotypes

Racial profiling

Black unemployment

Black or Biracial?

Many of us felt like we benefited from the assignment. Emily Soriano, a classmate had this to say,

"Everybody came prepared and they were all really good."

"I think everyone worked really hard, and was interested in their topics," said Greta Rainbow.

What we learned about institutional racism was intense, such as nooses being hung as a death threat to racial profiling, and our knowledge will continue to grow about cultural awareness.

Picasso at the SAM... a successful field trip from the art to the museum in general

Last Wednesday, the 8th grade class took the bus to an exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum... to see Picasso! Sixteen out of the twenty-nine girls in our class had never been to the exhibition before. Imani Apostal says, "It was really fun! I really liked all of the abstract paintings."

It was really engaging: Each group was lead by a museum docent. The docent imparted a plethora of background information about Picasso's paintings. Not only did we learn about his work, but we learned about Picasso himself. Before we visited the museum, we had a few different Picasso lessons and discussions in Spanish and Art class and it was great to see what we were learning .

Everyone found one piece they really admired. Evy Larsen says, "I love the Dora Maar picture where the woman figure is green and crying. It represents violence and sadness in the war. He made that painting to get him in the mood to make the Guernica picture." Anna Konsmo says of the artwork, "They made me think of art in a new form."

Everyone had a great time at the exhibition, and hopefully we will be able to go back to the SAM again! Payton Curtis says of the experience, "It was so unique!" The experience was so spectacular, the class is optimistic that we will be able to see the Nick Cave: Center of the Earth exhibition on textiles and art in the near future.

Ask your own daughter what her favorite works of art were, and what she thought of the museum!

From Hair and Nails, to Languages and Cities, Theme Takes On a Whole New Meaning!

This is the first week of individual theme. We're working hard to kick it off, and getting nervous. Ruby Wood, who is learning Italian for her theme, says that she is "worried about the stress level but excited to learn what I've always wanted to know." I think we're all excited to start working on our own. Last theme didn't go as smoothly as we hoped, which was probably because of working in a group so we couldn't all do what we really wanted. This theme things are looking hopeful as we begin with more experience and are driven to do something we are very passionate about.

Some of the theme ideas for this term are:

Photography

Gymnastics

Short films

Languages

Cities

Music

Nail art

Knitting

Using natural remedies on animals

Hair

Makeup

History of fashion

Talk to your daughter about what she's doing for her project over the next seven weeks!

Mentoring Girls... To Learn and Give Back

As some of you may know, the 8th graders are currently doing SJCU work: Social Justice Cultural Understanding. In SJCU, we learn about different cultures, biases, and how to overcome and differentiate myths and facts. Previously in SJCU, we read excerpts from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot. We read and annotated text, held class discussions, and did projects about Henrietta Lacks' story, and the racism involved.

On Wednesday, we started something new and exciting in SJCU! We are mentoring to 4th and 5th grade girls at Madrona K-8 school and Thurgood Marshall elementary school in areas of reading, writing and math. The goal of this is to empower these young girls, because this age is usually the time when girls start to not speak up in class, and teachers pay more attention to boys. Another goal, is for us to grow more culturally aware. The two schools are very culturally different rom us, and we'll learn from these girls about their own culture, as much as they will about us.

I think it will be a really great experience for us, as well as the girls. At Thurgood, we'll be doing more school work from all over, and at Madrona we will focus on writing and art. If you are a parent, ask your daughter what school she goes to!

Thanks for reading, and we will keep posting about how our experiences are going with empowering girls at these elementary schools. We will be continuing for the whole year, on every other Wednesday morning.

Thanks for reading!