December 14, 2022
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Austin, All-Division and more Orchestra performs in state capitol, all-division concert By Bennett Trubey | Arts & Life Editor
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DAISY STEM Each issue, The Fourcast highlights a student who has accomplished something in the STEM world or a special event that is STEM-related. By Caroline Petrikas | Managing Editor
Mabry Dawson and Bennett Trubey bag their shark during dissection. Orchestra students perform in the Texas State Capitol Rotunda.
Photos provided by Sally Hudspeth
The orchestra performs during an assembly for Upper School. School Orchestra Program, and Chérine Chlone, a Middle and Upper School French teacher. Chlone served as a liaison with the National Arab Orchestra – Dallas Chapter, which played in the concert as well. “The remainder of the school year is very busy for the orchestra,” Griffiths said. She said students will have more performances to look forward to with the North Park Center performance and Winter Concert still to come.
Assembling for change Affinity Council discussion gives students a voice By Shreya Vijay | Staff Writer Students grasp the microphone tightly as they speak on a topic very personal to them, to an audience filled with their fellow Upper School students . On Nov. 14, the Affinity Council hosted an assembly to highlight students’ personal experiences as members of minority groups at Hockaday. Tiffani Kocsis, assistant head of Upper School, moderated the conversation. “At 12, I was used to being associated with ISIS,” said sophomore K Irfan, one of many students who spoke at the assembly. As the Muslim Student Association vice president, her goal was to convey the impact words can have on others. “It felt a bit frustrating that we had to sit up there and explain why microaggressions are harmful, when it felt obvious to me,” Irfan said. Before the assembly, Irfan discussed it with the MSA leadership team and volunteered to speak about her experiences as a Muslim student. The idea for the assembly came from conversations with students during which Kocsis heard about microaggressions. The students and Kocsis had the joint idea to create the assembly. Kocsis then approached Affinity Council members, Student Diversity Board Members and students who attended the Student Leaders for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity conference in Los Angeles last summer to promote diversity in schools. The students, along with Kocsis, Upper School Registrar Katy Lake, College Counselors Micah Lyles and Elizabeth Jones and history teacher Aisha Ashraf agreed to a panel format. Panelists signed up to answer questions and met with Kocsis to check that responses stayed on topic.
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Photo by Brandi Finnazzo
pper School Orchestra traveled to Austin on Nov. 15 to perform at the Texas State Capitol. The students played their new program, “Stars at Night,” in the rotunda. The program features music inspired by the state of Texas, such as “Baile de Lila.” “While we have done many social impact performances in the past, we have not traveled outside of Dallas while I have been the orchestra director at Hockaday,” Charlsie Griffiths ‘98, the US director of orchestral music, said. The students began preparing for the event at the beginning of the school year, practicing their “Stars at Night” and “The Carnival of the Animals” programs. Orchestra previewed both programs during the US assembly on Nov. 8 and plans to continue performing the music as part of their Social Impact project. Griffiths said when curating new programs, she typically listens to a large variety of music and then decides on a theme, idea or specific piece to center the selection around. The environment of the rotunda was unlike any place the students had played in, with balconies full of people and many passersby listening to and watching the performance. “A lot of people came up to us saying how much they enjoyed it,” senior violinist Riley Yuan said. She shared that a spectator even found them afterwards and took a selfie with the group. Angela Fan, a junior cellist, said that the majority of the students were nervous leading up to the performance, but that they were more excited than anything. “We were a little concerned just because it was a different setting than we normally play in,” she said. As a whole, the trip served as a great opportunity for the orchestra to get to know one another better than they can in class. “I enjoyed the camaraderie of the orchestra members and having time to spend with one another without many other distractions or stresses,” Griffiths said. “It was a great team building experience.” The three-hour bus ride also allowed members to create many fun memories together on the way to and back from Austin. The group played games, chatted and even made a stop at Buc-ee’s on the way back. “We have a bunch of different grades in orchestra, so it was nice to be on the bus and have a team bonding experience,” Fan said. Orchestra also performed in the All-Division Concert on Dec. 8. The concert included performances by the Lower School, Middle School and Upper School orchestras. “This is our first all-division concert for orchestra,” Griffiths said, “but we have played multi-division concerts in the past. For example, Middle School and Upper School performed together in 2018 and 2019 and traditionally, in the spring, the Lower School performs with the Middle School in a concert.” Griffiths has worked alongside the lead organizer of the concert, Yung-Fang Hu Ludford, the director of the Middle
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Photo by Shreya Vijay
Affinity Council members and other students speak about their experiences in an assembly addressing microaggressions and the power of words.
“We made sure to make edits that would keep the assembly feeling like a ‘call in’ to a conversation rather than a ‘call out’ on anyone,” Kocsis said. Her goal as a facilitator in the assembly was to ensure the student body could hear about others’ experiences and understand how words can have lasting effects. She said she hopes students and faculty members will develop empathy, compassion and perspective for the experiences of others. “Any time you hear someone tell a story about the ways they are hurting, it’s difficult,” Kocsis said. “We all have space for growth and the ability to do better, and being gifted with such personal stories should encourage us all to do so.”
Centered on the function and structure of human and animal body systems, the Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy course emphasizes hands-on learning through its sheep, shark and pig dissections. In the semester biology class, students explore evolutionary adaptations for all the vertebrate classes, starting with the aquatic origins of life and continuing through terrestrial organisms, including mammals. “While students are learning human anatomy and physiology, they’re learning about themselves as mammals,” Upper School science teacher Brandi Finazzo said. “Then, they dissect fish to see, feel and understand the differences and similarities of aquatic and terrestrial beings.” Finazzo said she decided to teach the course because of her passion for anatomy and physiological biology. Since then, she has shaped it to reflect her passions, talents and clinical background. “When I took over the class, it was a more traditional course where students would do three dissections and then compare them,” Finazzo said. “While dissection was the only hands-on way students learned then, I have tried to incorporate minilabs and demos in with the dissection series to make the course more engaging and to cover more material.” At the beginning of the semester, the class concentrated on anatomy basics and terminology but then transitioned to full-time dissections. “We spent a long time nailing down anatomy basics and definitions, but once we got that out of the way, every class has dissections,” senior Jordan Hanna said. “Now, the second we get to class, we get to immediately put on lab coats, resume our dissections and continue examining the organs.” The course’s emphasis on dissection allows students to compare different creatures from a hands-on perspective and understand different organs’ roles in keeping an organism alive and in homeostasis. “When you can feel the shape and texture of a shark’s stomach, you can then infer the texture and feel of a human stomach without actually holding it,” Finazzo said. “ It gives us an opportunity in the moment to really compare the two.” Currently, students are focusing on the dogfish shark and studying the different cavities in the shark, their functions, and their similarities to human anatomy. “It was fascinating to dissect the dogfish sharks because we cut open their stomachs and we could see what their last meals were,” Hanna said. “We got to see one that had a giant school of fish and another that had an eel in it.” The dissections and comparisons are some students’ favorite parts. “Being able to notice and compare the same systems and organs in different organisms has been really interesting,” junior Mabry Dawson said.