School news
Students visit the Hall Art Foundation
On Friday, November 18, twenty-two students and three art teachers visited the exhibitions at the Hall Art Foundation in Reading, Vermont.
Students in Ms. Gravel’s AP Art History class, Ms. Jimerson’s AP Art class and Ms. Piana’s Painting class toured the exhibits and participated in Visual Thinking Strategies with Mrs. Kaija and Ms. Piccoli who are both docents at the foundation. Charlotte Nunan, an AP Art History student also works at the Hall Art Foundation as a gallery attendant on the weekends, led the discussion about Lois Dodd’s painting May in Vermont, 2007.
In presentations before the visit and while on-site, students learned about Dodd as an observational painter and made connections to landscape painters like Thomas Cole and Paul Cezzane and the inspiration Golub got from Ancient Greek and Roman sculpture and his multi-step process that included applying pigment to the canvas and scraping it off. Ariana Winawer-Stein, a student in AP Art, commented that she “… found the range of styles and mediums thought provoking as each artist utilized different techniques to guide the viewer’s eyes and make us think deeply about the meaning of their paintings.”
Annie Hauze, a student in AP Art, commented on the longevity of the artists’ careers by stating, “Something I found inspirational about the exhibits was how both Leon Golub and Lois Dodd made art their life's work. Dodd is still a working artist at 95, and Golub kept going with his art until his death at 87. You can see the passion for their work in both artists' most recent pieces, and the contrast between their earliest and latest works is fascinating. I love to watch growth through art, and to be witness to a lifetime of an artist's work was an incredible experience.”
PALS students propagate houseplants
PALS Classroom Students have been propagating many houseplants from Arnie's Greenhouse this semester. Recently, the students held an event at the Thompson Senior Center to give away the houseplants to local seniors. They talked about the benefits of having plants in your house and gave tips on how to care for each type of plant.
9th graders study nutrient cycling
Ninth graders have transitioned from a study of biodiversity to nutrient cycling. In quarter 1, students analyzed the biodiversity of real world ecosystems by studying plots of trees in our school’s forest and aquatic macroinvertebrates (small water insects) in the Ottauquechee River.
Students did an amazing job with the collection of macroinvertebrates over a few days and identified the organisms. Their incredible attention to detail and hard work is incredibly valuable because their data is contributing to long-term monitoring of the river. We now have 3 years of macroinvertebrate data and it can help us to analyze the health of the river. If we find macroinvertebrates that are sensitive to pollution then we know that the river is likely to be healthy.
Then students moved on to studying the nitrogen cycle in fish tanks. Students have designed and set up their own microcosms - aquatic ecosystems with plants, small organisms, snails, frogs and fish. They are testing the nitrogen levels daily to see how they change over time. Hopefully they still look this great after 4-6 weeks!
NHS induction ceremony
Twenty new members were inducted into the Ottauquechee Chapter of the National Honor Society. These juniors and seniors have been selected for their commitment to the four pillars of NHS: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, and Character. They will serve as peers tutors and complete 30 hours of community service annually to make their community a better place.
Congratulations to: Catherine Austin, Jaedon Beardsley, Lila Beckwith, Skye Cully, Phoebe Goldberg, Hannah Gubbins, Brooke Hecker, Logan Knox, Leah Kuhnert, Chloe Masillo, Declan McCullough, Tori McNamara, Margaret Mello, Grace Modarai, Delia Morgan, Mikayla Myers, Sophia Nisimblat, Clara Shortle, Ella Stainton and Farren Stainton.
Safe School Ambassadors attend retreat and training
The Safe School Ambassadors in grades 8-12 just completed an all day retreat and training. These students were selected from survey results where their peers identified them as admired and trustworthy.
Since students can have a powerful influence on each other, this training focuses on how the students themselves can recognize acts of unkindness, and learn the intervention skills they themselves can safely implement.
This year's training event was a particularly powerful experience since the returning members entered the day with an explicit intention to be honest and open with each other.
Thank you to the 11th and 12th grade SSAs who planned and presented many of the day's activities, and then showed by example the incredible power of personal vulnerability and responsibility.