The Tempest

The kids performed William Shakespeare's The Tempest three times, twice on the 11th and once more on the afternoon of the 12th.

The Tempest is an unusual show for Shakespeare in a number of senses. It was his final play and as such has a sweet poignancy, even melancholy. It is the only one of his plays to take place in real time. It is hard to classify: normally, it is lumped in with the comedies, but it has decided elements of history, tragedy (although no one dies), and the fantastical. It coincided with European settlement of the New World, a globally significant that is thought to have influenced Shakespeare’s portrait of a new, miniature society created in Europe’s image in a wild place. The 7-8 class also created a Storm Project presentation on Google Slides (click on the link, then 'Present' in the upper right, then 'Exit' after the 23 slides are done). It was projected on the wall downstairs at our staircase entrance.

There is charming air of transitions in The Tempest: Prospero to his former, beloved life; Miranda to adulthood, Ferdinand too; Alonso to absolution; Ariel to freedom. That being the case, I have to say that I wish every eighth grade class would learn and perform The Tempest. Their upcoming transition is a big one.

Here are a few of Mary Swain's photos of our own wild place, set in our 7-8 classroom and lit by a dozen floor lamps, switched on and off and on and off during the storm; left on for the duration of the play; and turned off one by one by Prospero at the end, as he gave his and Shakespeare's valedictory.

The Boatswain (Evan Rago) rages against the storm.

Prospero (Matthew Osterholzer) schools his daughter Miranda (Lindsay Barolo).

Prospero gives orders to his spirit-servant Ariel (Margaret Keillor).

Caliban (Kaeli Sikkenga) in a rage.

Ferdinand (Gabe Resnicow) is placed under Miranda's spell by Ariel.

Antonio (Marcellin Barbeau) and Sebastian (Karenna Collins-Thompson) hatch a dastardly and diabolical plot.

March First XI

Top Ten lists are an old saw in American culture, thanks to David Letterman and our love of round numbers. I prefer the soccer tradition of a First XI. (In the sport, it refers to the starting eleven players who take the field for a match.)

Here is a First XI for the busy March that awaits the 7-8s. 

The kids are also reading books, including selected stories from Kurt Vonnegut's 'Welcome to the Monkey House', and writing on them as well as participating in the University of Michigan's Place Out of Time historical simulation--check it out at http://poot.icsmich.org/.

1. March 4: the Music and Art Café at 6:30 pm.
2. March 8: Polis Project I due (group portraits of city-states from classical Greece).
3. March 10: Civic Projects assigned (explaining various city systems in Ann Arbor, such as power, transportation and justice).
4. March 10. Storm Project due (a look at storms from several disciplinary angles).
5. March 11 & 12. The Tempest. 1:00 and 7:00 on Friday; 7:00 on Saturday.
6. March 17. Summers-Knoll Science Fair at 7:00 pm.
7. March 18. Middle School Game Night at 6:00 pm.
8. March 22. Polis Project II due (group portraits of fictional city-states).
9. March 23. Diplomacy Day (on which the Polis II city-states interact).
10. March 25. Student-led family conferences should be completed by this date.
11. March 28-31. Happy Happy Fun Time Lone Star Spirit Happiness Week (comprising Character Day, Pajama Day, Culture Day and a Fun Run).

What We're Reading

Here are the read-alouds we've tackled this semester, or are about to begin.

• Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman. The author, a professor of physics and writing at MIT, imagines that, when Einstein realized he was reconceiving time, he had a series of dreams in which time took on all manner of bizarre characteristics.
• Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley. Vastly underrated novel in the Romantic tradition. Some consider it the first science fiction novel.
• Welcome to the Monkey House, Kurt Vonnegut. Stories of love, loss, and merry strangeness.

Here are the books I've assigned to the kids in small groups.

• Faster, James Gleick. The book's subtitle is The Acceleration of Just About Everything. 
• Esperanza Rising, Pamela Muñoz Ryan. A young girl emigrates with her family from Mexico to California during the Great Depression.
• Shebeen Tales, Chenjerai Hove. Life in the First, Third, and Fourth Worlds of Zimbabwe.
• Tortilla Flat, John Steinbeck. The Arthurian legends retold in a small port in postwar California.
• How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez. A Dominican immigrant family becomes American.
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. Race and coming of age in the Deep South.
• The White, Deborah Larsen. A young European immigrant lives amongst Native Americans in colonial times.

Calvinball

Calvinball is the most quintessentially Summers-Knoll physical education activity in the world.

(Here are the 'rules'.)

We have a PE bin in the coatroom upstairs, loaded with conventional equipment like basketballs, frisbees, air pumps, and soccer balls, as well as an unconventional collection of broomsticks, snowshoes, stomp rockets and the like.

When we play Calvinball, each student takes a few items from the bin. Then I put them in groups on the playground or in the park and tell them to invent a game. Then I stop those games and tell them to change all the rules. After that iteration has gone on for awhile, we rejigger the groups and they make a new game. Then they combine into larger groups and invent something new.

Here is the game that Ada, Lindsay, Matthew and Marcellin invented. It's called 'Calvinball'.

Here's the Calvinball link on YouTube.

SK 7-8s in the Civic News

We're in the news again, this time for our first step in understanding the myriad systems that comprise our more or less beloved city, Ann Arbor. Click on the link below and scroll all the way down to the bottom to read about our latest adventures and see some smiling SK faces in our additional classroom.

http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5673b5b6b8758d4fa1d551a3d&id=5f3ffd4377&e=8d037240d1

The Additional Classroom

Our view is that place-based education essentially means that we should not conceive learning as an event that occurs only at school. Here's how that looked for the 7-8s in the first three weeks of 2016.

We went to the Detroit Institute of Arts to view their outstanding 30 Americans exhibit.
http://www.dia.org/calendar/event.aspx?id=4998&iid=

We toured Ann Arbor with Mary Morgan, leader of Civ City, looking for systems (formal and informal, public and private). The kids filled up a butcher block sheet of paper with about three dozen civic systems. These will form the basis of the third round of Exhibitions.
http://www.civcity.org/

We went to Community High School to quiz faculty and students, including SK alumni, on the transition from middle school to high school.
http://www.a2schools.org/Domain/34 

In PE, we went to the Ann Arbor Ice Cube to skate and to Buhr Park to sled.

The Summers-Knoll bus has always been viewed as an additional classroom. We are giving that room plenty of love and exercise these days, but that's nothing out of the ordinary. More to come.

Gabe's Exhibition: Student-Athletes

Nik wrote a little account of Gabe's first SK Exhibition.

Gabe's Exhibition was about student-athletes. His goal was to determine how they view their identity as a “student athlete.” For example, do they see themselves as students first or athletes first? Gabe was very sure about the matter at hand and it was something that he cares deeply about. He did good research along the way. For a first Exhibition he did very well.

He made a presentation with graphs and charts about student-athletes and their daily routine. He also made it clear that being a student athlete was regarded as an extracurricular activity and that it can conflict with work.

This is a chart from Gabe's presentation about whether the people to whom he sent out his questionnaire consider themselves athletes or students first.

I haven't heard anything bad yet about Gabe’s Exhibition, and I don't think I will anytime soon.