Alumnae Help Children Fulfill Their Potential with Teach for America Poverty limits educational opportunities, but children facing the challenge of poverty are proving that – with education – they can achieve at the highest levels. Hockaday alumnae are working with Teach for America to close the achievement gap and bring superior education to all children. Continuing a long line of Hockaday alumnae joining Teach for America, the Class of 2007 has seven members who began their first stint teaching this fall in low-income school districts. Teach for America recruits a diverse group of leaders with a record of achievement who work to expand educational opportunity, starting by teaching for two years in a low-income community. Teach for America has the wonderful problem of an overwhelming number of applicants wanting to join the program as teachers, making the acceptance rate highly competitive. The Washington Post reported that the Teach for America 2011 acceptance rate was only 11 percent of the record 48,000 applicants for this fall. Hockaday is proud that so many of its alumnae have been accepted into Teach for America, where they are making a huge difference in the lives of children across the country. From the Hockaday Class of 2007, Teach for America invited the following recent college graduates to teach. Allison Hayes is now teaching middle school special education in Durham, NC, after graduating from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Duke Robertson Scholar. Katherine Novinski now teaches middle school science in Baltimore, MD, after graduating from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead-Cain Scholar. Maillil Acosta is teaching in Dallas after graduating from Southern Methodist University. Olivia Trevino now teaches first grade in Dallas after graduating from the University of Southern California. Blakely Hull is teaching in Los Angeles after graduating from the University of Southern California. Kat Morgan is teaching middle school math in Memphis, TN, after graduating from Rhodes College. And Bess Milner is teaching in Nashville, TN, after graduating from The University of Texas at Austin. Hockaday Web Enhancements You speak and we listen. Numerous requests pour in for enhancements to the website at www.hockaday.org. Here are just a few enhancements that have occurred this school year. • Group pages were introduced to all grades, Pre-K through Form IV. • Teacher pages were developed for all Lower School teachers. • Locations were added to away games for Athletics. • The mobile site (www.hockaday.org/mobile) was redesigned and now has sign-in functionality, allowing access to the directory while you are on the go. • Mobile numbers that were listed in the printed directory this year were also added to the online directory, for accessing numbers on the go. • The Hockaday Calendar can be synced to your smartphone or mobile device. • The Hockaday Parents’ Association introduced a new Facebook page (Hockaday Parents’ Association) and a Twitter feed (@HockadayParents). Stay tuned for continued enhancements. Thank you for your continued feedback and support.
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Fine Arts teacher Juliette McCullough’s Advanced Studio Art Class designed the mural now appearing on the exterior of Kent Rathbun’s Blue Plate Kitchen.
A Local Grown Mural: Students paint a mural at Chef Kent Rathbun’s restaurant To promote his flavorful concept of sustainable food production and consumption within an upscale comfort-food type of cuisine, Chef Kent Rathbun sought Hockaday Upper School Advanced Studio Art students, led by Fine Arts teacher Juliette McCullough, to design and paint the mural now appearing on the exterior of Kent Rahtbun’s Blue Plate Kitchen in Dallas. Mr. Rathbun says Blue Plate is serving food that his mom might make, but with a twist. The girls developed a basic design for the space. From February through May, they tested images that incorporated regional vegetables, a farmer and a representation of the state of Texas.The overall composition of the mural is a blending of designs proposed over several months and then executed by the entire class. Juliette McCullough was on site at Blue Plate overseeing the girls every day during the first week of summer holiday. “I think that one of the interesting challenges of the project was that we took on a professional assignment with a high school class,” Juliette said.“The demands of work in the restaurant world and the school timetable do not fit very well together: because of this we had many ups and downs that gave the girls a good real life experience of the vicissitudes of working with an actual client. At one point they all thought that it would never happen, but now, after successful completion, it has given them all a very positive and well earned feeling of accomplishment.” Blue Plate employed a professional mural painter, Craig Grimston of ‘Muralicious,’ who worked on it for about a week with several of the students helping him paint on two different days. Craig exhibited inclusiveness of our student artists, collaborating every step of the way. Juliette McCullough worked with her students on artistic direction and she, Mr. Rathbun and Mrs. Elizabeth Karahan, Visual Arts Volunteer Liaison and parent of current Form IV Hockaday student Olivia Karahan, were instrumental in making the mural a reality. Craig Grimston invited the students to come and work on the lower parts of the image. He said that he had been inspired as a teenager by his own high school art teacher and wanted the girls to be able to take some ownership of the final painting; in fact, he gave them a demonstration and instruction on how to work the large areas of color, which was especially difficult in the heat because the paint dried so fast. Ms. McCullough’s Advanced Studio Art Class included juniors and seniors: Jackie Carroll, Jean Chien, Hannah Cyr, Caitlin Garcia, Lily Grayson, Megan Gross, Alexandra Hamilton-Bovard, Serena Heydari, Olivia Karahan and Shay Southerland. Winter 2012 – hockaday magazine 23