AROUND CAMPUS
Tennis Center Complete Collegiate School’s Tennis Center features the following components: •
A 1,600-square-foot Tennis House
•
13 courts with four-coat acrylic finish
Walls and a seating bowl with a view of the Championship Court •
Learning Bridge
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Bart Thornton and a Learning Bridge friend get acquainted.
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Notes from the Dean of Faculty by Z. Bart Thornton
uring the school year, I serve as Upper School English Chair; as such, I get a front-row seat for the eclectic and dynamic teaching that occurs in the department. I’m fortunate to be able to observe my talented colleagues in action. Take it from me: few things are more compelling than watching Mil Norman-Risch zip around the classroom, declaiming Shakespeare; listening to Lewis “Bubba” Lawson riff on the intricacies of American grammar; or eavesdropping on Linda Rouse’s symbolic analysis of gunfights in the Wild West. Accustomed as I am to working with veteran teachers, I was eager to assume a new role last summer as Dean of Faculty in the Learning Bridge summer program. In this capacity, working alongside Cheryl Groce-Wright –the program’s talented director – I would mentor 12 beginning teachers (ranging in age from 17 to 23), who were charged with teaching middle schoolers from Richmond city schools. Our program has a dual focus: in addition to offering enrichment opportunities for inner-city youngsters, it also provides high school and college students thinking about a career in teaching with a valuable exposure to the profession. Cheryl and I were delighted that we could count three Collegiate alumni among our teaching faculty: Jack Bisceglia and Jack
Melson, both ’08, and Rawls Bolton ’09. (And, of course, Harrison Roday ’09 kept our computers humming.) Mil, Lewis, and Linda – and the rest of my Collegiate colleagues – would have been proud of our young instructors, who taught with imagination, energy, and verve. Hannah Curley, a Spanish teacher, played a vocabulary game which culminated in her students putting on dresses and big hats. (The boys looked especially fetching.) Meredith Graham, a history teacher, taught her students to sing a song that taught them all the dynastic rulers of Chinese history. And, in their afternoon elective, Alexa Williams and Jack Melson showed students how to grow impressive gardens using easy-to-obtain materials. One day a student proudly displayed the beautiful flower he had blooming in a twoliter Coke bottle. With a minimum of money – we were all impacted by the economic downturn – our teachers found impressive and creative ways to make their subjects come to life. They taught French using simulated criminal investigations; they taught legal theory by focusing on the Salem Witch Trials; and they taught geometry by looking at the architectural shapes on the Collegiate campus. Our middle school students were the primary beneficiaries of their meticulous preparation and indefatigable energies. But I know that I learned a great deal, as well; from now on, whenever I see a peony blooming in a bottle, I’ll think of Learning Bridge and the coolness that was the summer of 2009.
Spark