School news
Art students observe and take landscape photographs at the Hall Art Foundation
Students with Back of a Snowman, 2001 by Gary Hume
On December 1, art students took a field trip to the Hall Art Foundation in Reading, Vermont to see exhibits of Joel Sternfeld's photography and Gladys Nilsson's paintings. This trip was inspired by a lesson on the Hudson River School that Ms. Piccoli taught to Ms. Jimerson's painting classes, which led us to the exhibit of American photographer Joel Sternfeld's photos from his American Prospects and Highline series.
Sternfeld was influenced by Hudson River School painters like Thomas Cole. As Molly Fielder ‘29 pointed out, his photograph The Abandoned Uranium Refinery, 1982 on Navajo lands is very similar to Cole's painting The Oxbow, 1836 in how he captures dark storm clouds moving in on one side and the sun breaking through on the other, creating a contrast between dark and light in the sky. Adelle Danilchick ‘27 described the paintings of the Hudson River School and this photograph by Sternfeld as "sublime."
Addison Blanchard ‘28 is doing an independent study in art and she works as a gallery attendant at the Hall Art Foundation on the weekends. After Ms. Piccoli engaged the students in a Visual Thinking Strategies exercise with Sternfeld’s photo titled McLean Virginia, 1978, Addison did the debrief with the students explaining the “artist is like an author” and the photographer “frames the image you are seeing.”
While students were going through the exhibits, the AP Photography class was also working on a photography assignment. Max van der Schoot ‘26 stated about her landscape photograph taken on the grounds of the Hall Art Foundation that, “These footsteps show that winter (the season) makes the natural world change. I remember that Sternfeld wanted to show the seasons and that he felt he was sometimes “chasing” them. I wanted to capture the season, winter, in one of mine and show how the footsteps are chasing after it.”
Thank you very much to the Hall Art Foundation for making this trip possible through their free educational programming and their generous bus transportation reimbursement program.
Molly Fielder ‘29 holds Thomas Cole's The Oxbow (1836) in front of Joel Sternfeld's photograph Abandoned Uranium Refinery, 1982
Addison Blanchard ‘28 doing the debrief of McLean, Virginia, December 1978 by Joel Sternfeld.
Following in Someone’s Footsteps, December 2025 by Max van der Schoot ‘26
Spanish classes explore art and cultural heritage at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts
AP Spanish Language and Culture
AP Spanish Language and Culture students visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where they studied a fresco that once decorated the apse of a small church in Santa Maria de Mur, Lleida, Cataluña, Spain. Dating to 1117, the fresco was removed in 1919 and sold to the MFA to pay for a new roof for the church. It's considered the finest example of Catalán Romanesque apse outside of Barcelona, and its removal prompted Spain to enact laws prohibiting artifacts important to national heritage from leaving the country.
Advanced Topics in Spanish
Advanced Topics in Spanish students are working on a display that we hope to share with the school community soon. They were asked to consider how to use objects or visuals to tell a story with minimal text, how objects and spaces are arranged and organized, and how decisions about what to include are made. Students are seen here examining ancient Greek coins.
Juniors experience lawmaking in class and with State Representative
Juniors in U.S. Government and Politics learned firsthand about the lawmaking process from Representative Charlie Kimbell on December 9. Students asked questions on topics including education, taxes, health care, and phone calls from voters.
Earlier in the year, the same students formed a Senate and House to pass the Balanced Medicare Act of 2025. Senior and former Government student Dominic Palazzo returned as president to sign the bill into law. Other government classes also worked through the legislative process: one class passed a health care law, another bill was vetoed, and a fourth never made it out of Congress.
CRAFT students and teachers present at the Vermont Pollinator Working Group Conference
The Vermont Pollinator Working Group invited the CRAFT (Community and Climate Resilience through Agriculture, Forestry, and Technology) Program to present about native plant and pollinator work as part of the education track at their annual conference. The Working Group is a collaboration of nonprofits, farmers, gardeners, and policy makers working to tackle threats to pollinators in Vermont and the Northeast and is looking to expand its education initiatives.
On Friday morning, Students Maya Sluka and Schuyler Hagge along with teachers Abbie Castriotta and Samantha DeCuollo traveled to the conference at UVM where they listened to lightning talks and connected with folks doing pollinator work around the state. The CRAFT program kicked off the education presentations in the afternoon. They described the importance of pollinators and native plants in public education, how the work fits into the curriculum across many subjects and grade levels, their participation in real-world community science projects, and the joy that this place-based work brings to students. After listening to the other presentations, the group participated in a discussion on how the Working Group may be able to support pollinator education initiatives across the state. Conference attendees were inspired by the CRAFT students' work and ideas.
Schuyler Hagge and Maya Sluka
English students learn how to save seeds
Ms. Perkins's 10th grade English class is reading The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson as part of their ongoing study of indigenous peoples in American Literature. The publisher's note states, "Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors."
On October 2, Abbie Castriotta invited Sylvia Davatz to speak with the students in the library. Abbie stated, "Sylvia is an expert seed keeper, co-founder of Solstice Seeds, and specializes in growing heritage and rare varieties of grains that are hardy to our New England climate." During her talk, Sylvia encouraged students to "...listen to the things they [plants] are telling you about the conditions they are growing in." She also shared stories of exchanging seeds with people from around the world and she displayed some of the seeds she has collected. In addition to reading The Seed Keeper and attending this talk, students visited the greenhouse with Abbie to learn the basics of seed saving.
Libby, Annasophia, Ruth and Sylvia with some of her plants and see