Untold Stories of DDS: Issue 7

FEB 2024

ISSUE N.7

PG 1

DAVIDSON DAY UPPER SCHOOL

UNTOLD STORIES OF DDS THE FINAL BOW

BY ADA BROWN

Being an actor is hard. It’s filled with rigorous rehearsal schedules, high expectations, and many more demands. But the rewarding feeling that comes after putting together and performing a complicated theater production makes it all worth it.

Acting is definitely not meant for everybody, but for Davidson Day 12th grader Taylor Shiley, acting is life.

Shiley performed for the first time in 1st grade at JV Washam Elementary School – located in Cornelius, North Carolina – as a polar bear in a winter performance. As a child, Shiley was a huge fan of Jonathan Groff -- a famous actor with a wide spectrum of career roles. Shiley remarked, “I think I was first introduced to him when he was in Hamilton as King George, and I’ve kind of looked up to him ever since.” Shiley started taking acting seriously in 7th grade, when he joined his school musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Jr. at Bailey Middle School. Since then, Shiley’s love for theater has continued to grow; he is always staying busy with a new show, and continuously improving. Shiley said that he has always had a strong love of music, which inspired him to pursue musical theater. He said, “I have always been a very artsy kid since I was younger, and when I tried out for my first musical, it just kind of clicked.”

Shiley started performing at Davidson Day School in his sophomore year. He came to DDS as a freshman, but was unable to participate in a school performance because the Covid 19 pandemic shut down all school activities. His first show at DDS was the musical Mamma Mia in spring of 2022, in which he performed the role of Sam – the male lead.

Shiley excelled in this role, so much so that he was nominated for the Best Actor award at the Blumenthal Performing Arts High School Musical

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Taylor Shiley, Class of 2024 as “Damian” in Davidson Day Theater’s 2023 Spring Musical Mean Girls Photo by Laura Woods

Theater Awards, otherwise known as “The Blumeys” – a program that recognizes and rewards the talent of high school actors and actresses in the Charlotte Area of North Carolina.

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FEB 2024

ISSUE N.7

PG 2

DAVIDSON DAY UPPER SCHOOL

CONTINUED FINAL BOW This program selects schools and students from over fifty high schools, so getting nominated for an award, especially the best actor and actress award, is a major honor and great achievement that further confirms Shiley’s talent.

Since performing in Mamma Mia, Shiley has performed in several other shows at DDS, including his role as Professor Plum in Clue in the fall of 2022 – his favorite show here at DDS. “It’s just such a fun play to put on, and it was different to play more animated characters in a murder mystery.” Shiley also acted in last year's musical, Mean Girls, as Damian. This turned out to be one of Shiley’s favorite roles, as evidenced by his enthusiasm in each performance. Mean Girls received a nomination for best show at the Blumeys, along with Shiley being nominated for the second time for the Best Actor award. Although he didn’t win the awards, being nominated twice was a huge honor. Shiley said, “Being able to go to the Blumeys and perform was such a special experience.

Even though I didn’t win the Best Actor award, I’m still really grateful to have gone through that whole process.”

In J.V. Washam Elementary’s holiday performance. Photo by Kim Wayne

Portraying complex characters in theater can be difficult, especially when the character is completely opposite of the actor’s personality. It takes a lot of dedication to not just learn and memorize, but to become the character. Shiley has faced this challenge in a few shows, including Mamma Mia. “I think playing Sam in Mamma Mia was hard because I had to be a middle-aged dad, which is definitely not what I am.” Playing Paul San Marco in A Chorus Line, a show that Taylor performed in with the programs LADSpace and Davidson Community Players this January, turned out to be one of his favorite roles ever. “I play a character who has gone through a lot and his story is really deep, so it’s been a challenge to figure that out and be able to portray him well.”

While Shiley’s college plans remain unclear, he intends to either major or minor in Drama. “I’d like to continue doing theater for as long as I can, if not professionally, then in the community, because I’ve found that community theater is just as much fun as doing it in school.”

Theater has proven to be a safe haven for Shiley, allowing him to grow into his own person and find his community. “What I love about acting,” he said, “is that you can be so many different people and leave your own baggage at the door when you go onstage or into rehearsal.”

After Clue, Davidson Day Theater’s Fall 2022 show. Photo by Kim Wayne

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Shiley has already significantly grown as an actor and a person, with so much yet to come.

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FEB 2024

ISSUE N.7

PG 3

DAVIDSON DAY UPPER SCHOOL

THE AMERICAN DREAM

BY SONIA SURDULESCU

During the spring break of 2023, I had the opportunity to intern at Charlotte Immigration Law Firm. In the ensuing weeks, I dreaded going there for the internship. I honestly only applied because it would look good on my college application.

Immigration Law didn't seem that exciting to me because I already knew some of the ins and outs, as I had to grow up translating government documents for my parents and helping Romanian community members prepare for the citizenship exam.

I woke up on the first Monday of spring break at 6:00 AM. I wished I was on vacation in some tropical paradise like the rest of my friends. I did my morning routine, taking my time in the shower, and then made breakfast and talked to my mom.

The firm was about an hour away, not including the morning work traffic. It was in the heart of South Charlotte; dozens of cars were lined up to the brim at a standstill because of an accident; this happened almost every morning. I arrived at the plaza at 9:27 AM; I was late on my first day. The thought of leaving even earlier the next day made me want to cry.

Across the street from the office building stood the FBI building of Charlotte, and I dreamed of working there and helping solve crimes instead of just assisting people to study for an exam. But I was still committed to making my college application look competitive enough to gain admittance into a good college and to earn a scholarship.

The receptionist at the front told me to head over to the office in the back, where I would find the lead attorney – an old family friend of my grandparents whom I had never met before. As I sat on his couch, he told me about how my grandparents had been his first clients. At the time, he had just finished law school, and my mom was looking to bring her parents to the United States. She met with Mr. Muntean immediately and trusted him to get her parents to this country, which he did. My grandparents were the ones who mainly raised me, so in a way, I felt indebted to him for helping shape my entire childhood.

Although Mr. Muntean was a great attorney and guided me throughout the internship, I still felt bored. He gave me my office for the week, as one of his attorney partners had just quit to start his firm a month prior. He gave me the citizenship exam Continued on page 3 Sonia Surdulescu, Class of 2024

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FEB 2024

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PG 4

DAVIDSON DAY UPPER SCHOOL

CONTINUED AMERICAN DREAM questions and told me to study them, as I would meet with clients for practice sessions to quiz them on the material. I already knew these questions inside and out, though, so instead, I spent my time on my phone texting my friends, who were all vacationing in various tropical locations vacationing for spring break.

My perception began to change day after day when I was assigned a new responsibility: to sit in and take notes for attorney consults. One instance in particular stuck out to me. The tall young Haitian man who sat in front of me wore a bright smile on his face, which is not typically something I would’ve expected from someone in his situation. He pulled out his phone and dialed his brother, whose ecstatic voice came through the phone as he thanked the attorney for "Letting him live the American Dream." He then hung up the phone and turned to the attorney with an even brighter smile. "I trust you to guide me in gaining citizenship and living the American dream just like you did for my brother," he said.

PEACE, LOVE, TRANQUILITY, RESPECT: THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNEY OF CORINNE DANTZLER

BY STEVE MCGILL

“You can’t expect to be respected unless you respect other people.” –Corinne Dantzler

Being born in the United States, we often see the "American Dream" as a myth. But for others coming from another country and experiencing the positive change here compared to their home country, the American Dream is genuine. I used to question why my dad wanted to come to the US in the first place, but I realized he was also chasing the American Dream that we often take for granted. Even my grandparents – the attorney's first clients – were chasing their American dream: to be with their family.

After the consultation, I was tasked with filling out the man's N-400 application for citizenship. I studied his records very carefully, as any tiny mistake in the application could cause a delay. I also drove to the courthouse and doublechecked if there were any missing documents. To this day, I still don't know the fate of this man or if he received his citizenship or not, as citizenship applications sometimes take upwards of two years to process. But I hope he can live out his American dream, too, just as I will begin to live mine.

Corinne Dantzler, Class of 2025. Photo by Isabel Seifert

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FEB 2024

ISSUE N.7

PG 5

DAVIDSON DAY UPPER SCHOOL

CONTINUED PEACE, LOVE, TRANQUILITY, RESPECT Prior to enrolling at Davidson Day School as a ninth grader in the 2021-22 school year, DDS junior Corinne Dantzler attended nearby Woodlawn School for her middle school years. Prior to that, she spent her elementary school years attending Montessori schools – schools that allow for experiential, hands-on learning. For preschool she attended West End Montessori in Midlothian, VA. Then her family moved to North Carolina, so she attended Countryside Montessori School in Charlotte for kindergarten through third grade. When that school closed down, Dantzler transferred to Phoenix Montessori School in Huntersville for fourth and fifth grade. Dantzler, who is one of the highestachieving students at Davidson Day, is also one of the most naturally inquisitive and curious, in addition to being one of the most empathetic and kind. She credits much of her love of learning and her generosity of spirit to the teachings she received during her elementary school years.

As Dantzler explained in an interview with the columnist, a Montessori school education differs from traditional elementary school education in several ways. Firstly, there is an emphasis on students learning at their own pace without the pressure of homework, tests, and quizzes. “And they’re really focused on hands-on learning, ”Dantzler said, “especially for the younger kids. You use physical materials to represent the things you’re doing. So, for math, we would use little JILLIAN.TOYA@DAVIDSONDAY.ORG SMCGILL@DAVIDSONDAY.ORG

2016 Core Value Award Winner, Countryside Montessori School

tiles that would represent different number values, and we’d use bead chains that would that would represent multiplying by a certain

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FEB 2024

ISSUE N.7

PG 6

CONTINUED THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNEY OF CORINNE DANTZLER number and adding all the numbers together. It was really helpful to be able to visualize what’s happening so that you could really understand the math that you were doing.”

As a result, students learned a lot about respecting their materials and their environment, and putting everything used back where they found it. At Countryside Montessori, the classroom would be split – half of it would be a tile floor and half of it would be carpet, and the half that was tile was the practical life area, and it was really focused on fine motor skills for younger kids. Said Dantzler: “We would grate soap with a cheese grater, or wash dishes, or polish pennies with lemon juice, or use eye droppers and little tiny suction cups.”

Instead of having due dates to complete assignments, students would receive a worksheet that would list everything they needed to accomplish for the week. The students would pace themselves as they saw fit, with the teachers’ guidance. “If I felt like doing all math one day,” Dantzler said, “and I didn’t feel like doing any history or English, I could do that.” And she could work on the other subjects on other days. This scenario was especially beneficial for Dantzler because “I tend to pick things up more quickly than some people might,” she said, “so I was able to move on once I was understanding things instead of waiting until everybody could fully understand it. Sometimes, the teachers would sit us down and do lessons when they were introducing a new concept, but then they let everybody work on it on their own.”

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Dantzler also benefited from the fact that Montessori schools didn’t grade their students in a traditional manner.

“They would give you, say, math problems, or sentence analysis to do,” she explained. “You would do it, and then you would bring it to the teacher, and they would tell you what you did wrong, and you would try again until you got it right. So it was really like trial and error and you’d figure it out yourself.

That was really helpful.” The lack of formal evaluation, which, on the surface, would seemingly lead to apathy or procrastination, actually had the opposite effect. Dantzler explains: “It helped me love learning instead of seeing it as something I had to do, and seeing it as something I was being graded on.”

A tradition of Montessori schools is that students in multiple shared same classroom. Preschool and kindergarten shared a classroom, while first, second, and third shared a classroom. Dantzler said that this setup allowed the older kids to help the younger kids learn, which also helped the older kids learn by explaining things to the younger kids.

“And that would be really helpful for both the older kids and the younger kids,” she said. “It helped me bond together with people my age and a little bit older. It made me more comfortable talking to more people. It was just a really cool experience.”

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FEB 2024

ISSUE N.7

PG 7

DAVIDSON DAY UPPER SCHOOL

CONTINUED THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNEY Transitioning to a more traditional form of education upon entering the 6th grade at Woodlawn proved to be a challenge for Dantzler, but one she was equipped to handle. Like the Montessori schools, Woodlawn was very small in regards to enrollment, but here she would have tests and quizzes for the first time, she would have real grades for the first time, and she wouldn’t be able to learn at her own pace for the first time. Even little things, like the setup of the classroom room, led to necessary adjustments.

“Sitting in the classroom with everybody learning everything at the same time was really odd,” she said. “And in Montessori school you sit on the floor a lot, so I still liked sitting on the floor, but I Corinne, age 9, at home in Concord, NC couldn’t sit on the floor during class. So it was just weird sitting at a table with everybody and doing exactly what the teacher was telling me to do all day long.”

Still, the lack of tests, quizzes, etc. in Montessori School did not mean she was not prepared academically in comparison to her classmates at Woodlawn. While she did feel a little bit behind in some subjects, she was more advanced in others. Once she found her grounding and adjusted to the new routine, she thrived in the classroom.

When her 9th grade year rolled around, Dantzler was planning to stay at Woodlawn through high school, but a tour of Davidson Day “just to check it out” changed her and her parents’ mind. She couldn’t come shadow during an actual school day because the Coronavirus pandemic meant that DDS was in full-on masking and social-distancing mode at the time. But her tour of the school captured her imagination. Unlike most students who first come here and note how small our building is, to Dantzler, coming from Woodlawn and Montessori schools before that, DDS was gigantic! It was the first school building she’d ever been in that was two stories, and where students went to a different classroom for each class.

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FEB 2024

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CONTINUED CORINNE DANTZLER “So I was walking around here [during my tour],” she said, “and I was like, Whoa, this is like, a huge school. I remember sitting in the commons and listening to the descriptions of all the classes that were offered for upper school students, and I was like, Oh my gosh! I wanna go here! I wanna take those classes! I heard about forensics and zoology and about all the different history courses and all the different science courses, and I thought it was so cool.”

Two years later, Dantzler still feels the same way.

“I like that I can choose which classes I want to take. I like how they offer different levels of curriculum with the same class. Like with US History, there’s APush and there’s Honors US History and traditional US History. So we can all learn the same basic curriculum, but there are different levels. I like that. And I like that it’s a small school but to me it’s a big school. I like that I can have different classes with different people.

Also, on my first day, the bells were really cool, because I’d never gone to a school with bells before.”

Of all the qualities that Dantzler has brought with her to DDS, one that stands out to an extreme degree is her love of learning. That phrase has almost become cliche in today’s world, but in an academic environment like the one at DDS, where students are preparing to apply to highly competitive colleges and universities, love of learning is something that is easy to lose a grasp on. But because Dantzler’s academic life was rooted in a love of learning, she has retained that quality without effort, and her energy brightens JILLIAN.TOYA@DAVIDSONDAY.ORG SMCGILL@DAVIDSONDAY.ORG

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up every classroom she is in. In her Montessori years, she explained, “learning was fun. And we got to learn whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. And we could just move on whenever we understood something.

And I really really loved that. And I still really love learning. So I think that probably helps me with my classes, because I’m fascinated by a lot of things, and I find things really interesting.”

Another quality that Dantzler has brought with her to DDS is, to put it simply, her kindness – her respect for others, her ability to see life from others’ perspectives. That, too, is rooted in her Montessori days. Her teachers would “always emphasize ‘putting yourself in other’s shoes’ and practicing empathy, especially when you had a disagreement or argument of some kind. They drilled into us that there are always two sides to a story and you should try to understand the opposing side and always remember that just because you are right the other person is not necessarily wrong. I think that really helped me develop empathy, and I like to think that I’m still a very empathetic person, and I really try to practice empathy because that’s what I was always taught was right.”

One of the features of life at Countryside Montessori was what was known as the “peace circle.” Whenever Continued on page 9

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PG 9

CONTINUED DANTZLER kids would get into a squabble or conflict with their friends, the teacher would give them a little pink fake flower, and some cards with respectable phrases to use as sentence starters, and the students would go out in the hallway and sit in a circle. Whoever was holding the flower would get to speak so they wouldn’t speak over each other.

“And we would look at our little card that would be about ways we could talk about how we were feeling about whatever happened without placing the blame on somebody else,” Dantzler explained.

“So it would be like, ‘I felt really hurt when this happened,’ or, ‘I didn’t like it when this happened’ instead of ‘You hurt me when you said this.’ So it was a neutral way to talk about things and try to resolve the conflict instead of inflaming it. A lot of the stuff from Montessori school made me who I am when it comes to how I view things and look at things. And I’m not saying I don’t get upset, because I really do. But I definitely try to think about how to resolve a conflict instead of getting more upset about it.”

In kindergarten and first grade, a teacher would initiate the peace circle. If the teacher saw some children having an argument, she would approach them and suggest a peace circle. By second and third grade, Dantzler and her friends learned to initiate peace circles themselves. “My friends and I would get into a lot of little arguments, so we would argue and then we’d go up to our teacher and say, ‘We need a peace circle.’ We could do it ourselves by then. The teachers would teach us how to do it and then we would apply it when we felt we needed to.” Such lessons about respecting others were as

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significant to her education as the lessons about math, science, and reading. The golden rule – treat others as you would like to be treated – was a centerpiece of those early years of schooling. The idea, Dantzler said, is that “what you put out into the world is what you will receive. It’s like, if I want people to have respect for my boundaries and listen when I’m speaking, I should listen when they talk to me. Because, if I don’t make eye contact or I ignore somebody, I can’t expect them to care about what I say when I talk to them. It’s like, don’t be a hypocrite. Respect your peers and your elders. Don’t respect your elders just because they’re older than you, but because they’re people, and because you want to be respected. You can’t expect to be respected unless you respect other people. It’s a two-way street.”

This emphasis on respect extended to the natural world as well. Dantzler’s teachers taught their students to avoid actions such as stepping on flowers and picking leaves off of trees. At Phoenix Montessori, in fourth and fifth grade, students recited sayings and poems about Mother Earth. “Peace was a really big thing,” Dantzler recalled. “Tranquility was a really big thing. Don’t be aggressive; put out love and peace into the world.

And [the teachers] emphasized that with nature too. Don’t destroy nature. It’s there to benefit everyone.”

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