Odyssey Moments

I asked the middle school members of the Odyssey cast to write some favorite moments up on one of the whiteboards upstairs. Below is a their jumbled list. I have purposefully dropped them in here out of chronological order--I like the impressionistic nature it gives. It interests me that, without prompting, the kids included virtually every speaking part and scene in the play.

Telemachus, to Penelope: 

And now, Mother, go to your room.

Circe, to Polites et al:

I’m holding out for a hero.

Eurycleia dragging in Odysseus to reunite with Penelope.

Circe:

PIG PIG PIG.

Antiphus:

Give me back my flower!

Penelope, to the suitors:

Get out. Get out. GET OUT.

Odysseus, to Eurylochus:

Killer of hope.

Antinous, re Odysseus in disguise:

Did someone leave the gates of the graveyard open?

Antinous, Eurymachus, and Amphinomus die.

Eurycleia, to Penelope:

Ha!

Eurymachus, to Odysseus in disguise:

What--get out--I’m eating!

Antiphus, re Cyclops:

He likes us. He thinks we’re friends. Big dumb animal.

Circe, to Odysseus:

Are you sure it isn’t a WO-man you’re looking for?

The sadness of Land of the Dead: Anticleia walking in circles, Tiresias' still vision.

Telemachus, to Amphinomus:

Never as uncomfortable as now, I’ll bet.

Zeus, to the pantheon:

ZEUS HAS SPOKEN. All the gods shall agree.

Amphinomus, to Antinous:

You’re drunk. We don’t eat horse. Do we?

Halitherses, describing Odysseus in the shipwreck:

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

Odysseus, to Elpenos:

You'll do as I say, or you'll join it.

Elpenos, opening the bag of winds:

One last--GOT IT!

Eurybates, re Eurylochus and Helios' cattle:

He’s right. He’s so right.

Polyphemos, to Odysseus:

Gods! Ha! Cyclops toots in gods' faces.

Circe, to Odysseus:

You’ll tear my HEART out if you leave.

Eurylochus, re Circe:

She’s beautiful . . . . . so beautiful . . . . .

One of the kindergarten sheep, having failed to convince Polyphemos to eat one of Antiphus' bones, shrugs and starts gnawing on it herself.

How Math Is Working

The middle school math program at Summers-Knoll invites students to stretch their mathematical muscles with three different groups over the course of a given week, and with a consistent cast of mentors giving instruction and offering one-on-one support.

On Mondays and Thursdays, students in the middle school are divided into three small groups, loosely ability-based. These groups of approximately ten students apiece have a forty-five minute math lesson with Sam Hirschman, who orients each lesson toward the particular needs, goals, and interests of each of the three groups.

On Tuesdays and Fridays, all thirty MS students have math for an hour in the morning, under the supervision of Sam, Jason, and me. Generally speaking, Sam will teach a lesson and work with the students he feels need the most support--or the strongest challenge. Jason takes younger students for interactive work time in his room. Upstairs, I gather about a dozen students--the precise roster can change from week to week, depending on the kids' needs. In the project rooms, I convene and facilitate work with a few small groups of two to four students. Each group takes a few minutes to first articulate strengths and weaknesses in particular areas, and to set explicit goals for the day's work. The common area upstairs is designated a Silent Work Space. Some kids are assigned to this space for individual work; others request it.

Wednesdays find the seventh and eighth graders in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) with Jason and Sam, exploring scientific topics, often with a mathematical bent. The featured topic during the Identity theme has been genetics. While that class convenes, I take the fifth and sixth graders for close readings and activities in humanities, all based on the Identity coursepack. In the afternoons, we trade, so the older kids have humanities then, while the younger students have STEM time.

Thus each student has math every day, but with varying orientations, partners, and objectives. The program has enough variety to keep the days from getting stale, but enough consistency--in teacher support, space, and subject matter--to keep progress strong.

January Projects and Exhibitions

Throughout January, we will be working on the next round of projects, these built around the theme of Identity. The Exhibitions, scheduled for the last two weeks of the month, will feature these projects. Here is a sample of what our seventh and eighth graders are presently planning.

• a totem pole, populated with figures who symbolize key values of Summers-Knoll, carved in consultation with area artists, and secured on SK property
• a pamphlet targeted to teens explaining online identity theft, researched with assistance from the Ann Arbor Police Department
• also in collaboration with the AAPD, a unit of lessons on criminal detection, to be taught to Elaine's first and second grade class
• a new statistical model accounting for regional differences when calculating the poverty line in the United States, developed with support from the U of M Economics department
• two illustrated children's books: the first, entitled Foggy Lenses, will examine the influence of concepts such as race and class upon our perceptions of people; the other will explore the concept of a fourth dimension, casting the shadows we call the third dimension
• a mural, to be painted in the stairwell leading up to the seventh and eighth grade space, showing the ways in which identities are manifested at SK and elsewhere
• a short film of interviews with Holocaust survivors in southeastern Michigan, supported with footage from the Holocaust Museum in Oakland County

While this is not an exhaustive list, and not all topics have yet been transformed into projects, these should give a sense of the degree to which our middle school projects are increasingly oriented toward partnerships with mentors in the community beyond Summers-Knoll. 

Identity Coursepack

The second coursepack of the year engages the second SK theme: Identity.

Where the Explorers coursepack was purposefully wide-ranging, this second text is more streamlined. The topic at hand is the definition of American.

The first half of the anthology provides readings on the intentions of this newfangled nation, and the narrative of how the decision was reached to break away from the most liberal-minded and humanitarian kingdom in human history (not to say the British Empire was atrocity-free). In the end we created a document called the Constitution, loyalty to which entitled one to full-fledged citizenship, regardless of background.

Discovery of America	Paul La Farge	1
New Colossus	Emma Lazarus	6
What Is an American?	Hector St Jean de Crevecoeur	7
Gettysburg Address	Abraham Lincoln	9
Four Freedoms	Franklin Delano Roosevelt	10
Wordy Shipmates	Sarah Vowell	11
Fifty Years	Larry Gonick	14
Ohio, 1754	Larry Gonick	16
Americans & Empire	Edmund Morgan	20
Oops!	Larry Gonick	27
Constitution	Larry Gonick	38

This wasn't actually true, of course. Most Americans weren't citizens in our earliest years, and most suffered deeply from this denial. Changes were required and still are. The greatest characteristic of the Constitution is that changes to it are built right in. This process began even before its ratification, with the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments. Since then, most of the Amendments have the effect of distributing the rights of American citizens more widely.

The second half of the coursepack explores this process.

Amendments	Congress	39
Literacy	Frederick Douglass	44
Douglass Meets Lincoln	Larry Gonick	47
How It Feels	Zora Neale Hurston	48
Creation Stories	Barbara Kingsolver	50
Phoenix, Arizona	Sherman Alexie	53
House on Mango Street	Sandra Cisneros	61
American Born Chinese	Gene Luen Yang	68
Undeterred by Reality	Molly Ivins	87

Explorers Exhibitions

Exhibitions were a little different this fall than they were last year, and the second round, slated for January, will be a further evolution of the concept.

This time around, the kids were required to teach two fifteen-minute lessons, as they were in 2012-2013. Topics were selected from the theme of Explorers. This was a little tricky, since the word 'exploration' and its relatives are so spongy. 'I'm going to explore how much I like to eat Kit Kats' or 'I want to explore how much I love my stuffed unicorn, Andy' proved tempting topics. These and their ilk were vetoed.

Instead, we had the following collection (this is a complete list):

• Martian rovers
• minimalist music
• early French film
• the evolution of Antarctic transportation
• Ponce de Leon
• royalty in London
• the colonization of Australia
• photonic matter
• life on Mars
• touring Maastricht
• Annie Edson Taylor and Jessica Watson
• theatre in London
• the emergence of New York City
• Chinese exploration
• the European Age of Exploration
• early navigation
• early cartography
• traditional African housing
• comparing Diana Nyad and Michael Phelps
• Ponce de Leon
• the Silk Road
• missions to Mars
• a history of computers
• the palace of Knossos
• Eurycleia, Odysseus' maid

As always, students were expected to engage their attendees and provide activities that would enable us to process the material. The kids did this in a variety of ways befitting their variety of interests. Danny showed an early French film, providing annotations and answering questions throughout. Ryan played samples of minimalist music. Aristea created a game show on Minoan civilization. Mike asked his audience to use Pei Xiu's six principles of cartography to map out one of our project rooms. Lily walked us through an activity-filled six-stop tour of London.

Faculty came out in force, for which we're grateful: Josh, Monica, Joanna, Imogen, Val, Sam, Rachel, Karen, Mary and Fran all attended at least one Exhibition.

For the next round, engaging the theme of Identity, three changes will be implemented.

1. Instead of teaching two fifteen-minute lessons, students will teach one thirty-minute lesson.
2. Each student will have an adult mentor, identified via the topic selected.
3. A full round of rehearsals will be formally scheduled.

Once students have finished reading the Identity coursepack, the preparation and proposal of individual projects will get underway. Topics will be selected and mentors identified before the holiday break. Exhibitions will take place in the third week of January.

Further Adventures of the AAA

Our latest away game was at the Friends School in Detroit, where we toured their school--our kids loved their huge art room--before running a lap around the school and playing two games of their devising: Aerobic Bowling and Sinking Ships. Friends has a little quarter-sized gym space, and we chatted about how such spaces can be maximized. Our kids really hit it off with our Quaker brethren and sistren. Bryan and I made sure that every team had both SK and FSD students on it, and all two dozen of the kids dove right in. We look forward to hosting them in return, hopefully sooner rather than later.

What will we do when they come? Playground Parkour? Calvinball? Multi-Sphere Futbol?

The County Farm Park Mile Run, perhaps?

Northern Odyssey

It was an early trip for us, possibly a bellwether for future years. Before September was out we took off on a Wednesday afternoon, travelling straight up I-75 and over the Mackinac Bridge. We were fourteen in number, the extra seat on the bus crammed with sleeping bags, fishing gear, maps, and contraband snacks.


The first night was all about acclimation, camp set-up, cooking, and chatter. Tents were pitched all over the lakeside lawn of the property, with a view across the Straits of Mackinac, the bridge a soft creamy green to the southeast. We switched off cooking and cleaning, ending up with home-cooked meals of pancakes, bacon, pasties, pizzas, curry, braised fish, sandwiches, and plates piled high with leftovers. The kids frolicked on the rocky northern shore of Lake Michigan well into the late dusk. After dinner Rachel and I introduced the Our Whole Lives curriculum to the kids. Mike tended the fire and we all got to sleep at a decent hour, some indoors, some out.

The next morning we scarfed breakfast, packed lunches, and headed north to Tahquamenon Falls. A short rainy hike off the park entrance brought us to the Lower Falls. We rented three rowboats which traced routes across the river so circuitous they made Odysseus' trip look like the express train. Then we hiked the circumference of the island, wading under the falls on both the east and west branches of the river. Kids are oblivious to cold when they feel like it. This was doubly true at Whitefish Point, where we took off our shoes to walk on the Lake Superior beach, holding collection there amidst the whipping winds of the sweetwater sea.


We drove back to the Straits. We made dinner, held a delightful two-hour OWL session, held another collection under the stars. Then we watched O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen Brothers' Depression-era version of Odysseus' story, and hit the sack after midnight.

That wasn't the end. The next morning we spent three hours packing and cleaning, following a master list posted on the wall, writing fourteen thank-you notes. (I understand that both the list and the thank-you notes are still on display in the house.) There was one last trip to the lakeshore, a sandy beach at Michigan Dunes ten minutes west of the house, before we hit the bridge again, traversed the Lower Peninsula like the good Trolls we are*, and made it back to SK at 3:30 on the dot.

* The good people of the Upper Peninsula, also known as Yoopers, sometimes refer to residents of the Lower Peninsula as Trolls, because we live under the bridge.