Trail Mix Spring 2018

TRAIL MIX ISSUE NO. 2

STUDENT NEWSPAPER

SPRING 2018

FEATURES: "The Truth About Music"

by Geoffrey Gee A summary of TOK for future IB students

Artist of the Month Student photography, Creative Writing by the student body, Rants and Raves and more!

IB art students at their final art show at the Southern Vermont Art Center

April Artist: Regina Marchese Regina Marchese, a senior this year, has been attending Long Trail for seven years. In her time here, she has worked in many genres of visual arts, and has worked in many mediums (she even says she has begun woodworking). Some of her work could be called “abstract," like her piece titled “What Are Patterns?” (or “Leap for Life”); however, she is truly exceptional in the category of realism.

“Virginia”, an oil painting of Regina’s grandmother, could easily be found above the fireplace of a millionaire. Similarly, “Under the Sea”, a painting of a jellyfish, visibly flows with the waves of the ocean.

Regina envisions a future in math and forensic science, which we wish her all the best in! Still, we hope that she will continue to create beautiful works like the ones that have hung on these walls.

IB Artists at Work!

Politcal Cartoon BY

Langston Quail

Student PhotographyÂ

By Ryan Wang and Zhaoxin Liu

Our Climate Action Plan Scott, Lang, Zach, Sam, Emily and Lily represented LTS at the 2017 AYCP conference in New York. During this conference, they developed a Climate Action Plan for LTS. But what is this plan? Get ready to find out...

Our first goal was to improve our recycling efficiency.

We thus added clear labels on each of the recycling bins. We also went on a trip to the Casella waste center to increase awareness about the importance of recycling in addition to various other events.

Here are some photos from our trip:

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Theory of Knowledge (TOK) What is TOK? IB's take on it: "TOK is a course about critical thinking and inquiring

The Theory of Knowledge class allows

into the process of knowing, rather than about

students to dive deeply into the various

learning a specific body of knowledge. It is a core

aspects of knowing. They learn about Areas of

element which all Diploma Programme students

Knowledge, which include the Arts, Ethics,

undertake.... TOK and the Diploma Programme

History, the Human Sciences, Indigenous

subjects should support each other in the sense that

Knowledge Systems, Mathematics, the Natural

they reference each other and share some common

Sciences, and Religious Knowledge Systems.

goals. The TOK course examines how we know what

They also discuss the Ways of Knowing:

we claim to know. It does this by encouraging

language, sense perception, emotion, reason,

studentsto analyse knowledge claims and explore

imagination, faith, intuition and memory.

knowledge questions. A knowledge claim is the assertion that“I/we know X” or “I/we know how to

The class is a central part of the IB Diploma, as

Y”, or a statement about knowledge; a knowledge

as students can use what they learn in their IB

question is an open question about knowledge."

classes in order to think about how knowledge is arrived at. Essentially, the class is about

"TOK plays a special role in the Diploma Programme by providing an opportunity for students to reflect on the nature of knowledge.

The task of TOK is to emphasize connections between areas of knowledge and link them to

knowing about knowing.

TOK students write an essay about a prescribed prompt chosen from a list, and will also have the opportunity to present on a topic of their choice.

the knower in such a way that the knower can become aware of his or her own perspectives and those of the various groups whose knowledge he or she shares. TOK, therefore, explores both the personal and shared aspects of knowledge and investigates the relationships between them."

Feel free to talk to Kelly or Hakan, our TOK teachers, and any junior or senior IB Diploma candidate if you have any questions!

THE TRUTH ABOUT MUSIC Written by Geoffrey Gee

There are many truths about music, some complicated and some very simple. Here’s one: music works by repetition. What differentiates music from noise is a pattern. A pattern is created by repetition.

Think about how you perceive through your senses. The first time you sense any stimulus, your brain can’t make meaning from it. But if the stimulus repeats itself either exactly or partially, your brain can then begin to recognize a pattern.

This truth applies at all levels, from the formation of a single pitch in a split second to the shape of an entire symphonic composition lasting 30 minutes or more.

Let’s take two sound waves:

.

The vertical axis represents momentary air pressure as it touches your ear drum and makes it move. The horizontal axis represents time. In this example, each window lasts about of 1/25th of a second. The first image is perceived as static noise, while the second, with its regular repetitions, is perceived as a pitch.

So sound itself requires a pattern for us to make meaning. Music works the same way!

Each successive time you are exposed to a sound, a tone, a note, or a musical passage, it is easier to perceive. With that ease comes comfort. And with comfort, pleasure.

Of course if there were only repetition and no variation, we might get bored. But with the right combination of repetition and variation, the music is good.

Let’s look at the opening of Beethoven’s famous Fifth Symphony and see how many ways repetition is used:

Notice that the very second note is a repetition of the first. The third note is a repetition of the first two. And the first two whole measures are repeated in the second two measures, but at a different starting note.

Now look at the very next thing that happens: this pattern of three repeated notes followed by a long one is repeated in a cascading overlapping statement by different instruments in the orchestra. Repetition and variation!

The very next thing that happens is a repetition of the cascading pattern, but ending on a higher pitch:

So much repetition and not even 15 seconds have gone by. No wonder we like it. It’s already so familiar! By the end of the 8-minute movement, we are hooked for life.

The next time you fall in love with a piece of music, notice all the ways in which repetition and variation make it work for you. Stay tuned for more TRUTH ABOUT MUSIC.

- WRITTEN WORK Poems and other written work by the student body

Untitled~

By Gretchen Hammell Dying light warms us most, We sit in the dark of night, Waiting, Wanting, Hoping, It will return to us in the morn.

Early light is sweetest, The sun rises hot and red, Warming the earth, One corner at a time, Filling up an empty cup, Once more with its love.

The light of late evening, Nearly dusk, Is when magic is born, When wishes can come true It’s hope and understanding.

That a new day will come.

Morning light is quietest, A time when spirits, As well as the sun rise.

A time of peace, Where even the trees, might pause their whispers, To breath deeply and feel the sun.

Its warmth consuming you, Within the world you live, Dripping down every surface, You can almost taste it.

This is why we hold on, When the light disappears, Waiting, Wanting, Hoping, That it will come back to once again, And bathe you in its warm embrace, Making everything come to life, Reassuring you it is all okay.

- WRITTEN WORK Poems and other written work by the student body “Is something else on your mind, Silvia?”

Luminous didn’t even think as she asked the question, her mind too stuck on the subject to even think about how personal it might be.

“Well…” Silvia managed to hide the surprise on her face at the sudden question. She thought it over, only to realize that Luminous would probably not let go of it until she got a satisfying answer. “If you really want to know, the family I’m staying with isn’t exactly on the best terms with their daughter. She had a dream that was taken away from her, and then was brought out here to the countryside for some reason.”

Brought to the countryside? As in, they lived in a city beforehand?” Luminous asked, rather confused given the state of the world around her.

She didn’t hear anything else before feeling a scene start“ to play out in her mind. Luminous watched as three pegasi soared through the sky, being cheered on by a crowd in the stands she was sitting in. The moment that seemed to get her attention the most, and one that seemed to repeat multiple times in her memory, was when one broke formation. They flew high into the sky, Luminous’ vision being blocked by a light before the pegasus came back down. She could almost feel the crowd around her and hear them cheering as the pegasus flew down, a cone shaping around her body before—

Luminous?” Silvia’s face was inches away from hers, giving the pony a shock as she awoke from her daydreaming. “Is something wrong? You were staring off into space.”

“Oh, sorry,” Luminous apologized, realizing how suddenly her mind seem to move away from that moment.

“I got caught in my imagination. We can talk a bit about this pony you're so worried about when we get to the house I’ll be staying at.”

Silvia nodded and . the two started walking again, though the wolf was unaware of how confused Luminous was. Whatever that scene was that played in her mind was giving her the same feeling that she had after the memory gap that occurred when she met Arcane. The problem wasn’t that her mind was wandering, as it did all the time, but rather just how familiar the scene she had just felt was. She knew it was just her imagination, yet it was almost as if it was a memory from a time she didn’t remember. That couldn’t be true, though, as she recognized the thing blocking her vision from her visits to the Farplane, and it hadn’t existed in Equestria for over a thousand years.

By Tyler Cyr

- WRITTEN WORK Poems and other written work by the student body Isabel Blankenbaker After the shooting at Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, there’s been national outcry centering around guns. Youth-led events such as the #Enough walkouts that took place on March 14th, and more recently the March for Our Lives protests, have pushed forth student voices. In Washington D.C, a crowd of thousands gathered to hear students such as Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr, and eleven year old Naomi Wadler speak.

Parkland survivor Emma Gonzales led the crowd in just under six and a half minutes of silence.

More locally, people flooded to marches organized in Montpelier and Rutland. At the Rutland march, organizer Victoria Quint proclaimed her and her peers' determination to fight for legislative action, stating to local news, “We want to show our legislator, or representatives that we are ready for better, common sense gun legislation, and we’re going to fight until those changes are made.”

Just within the first three months of this year, we have had “ three shootings at elementary, middle and high schools across the nation. The BBC claims “There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870…” (a mass shooting was defined as anytime a gunman shoots 4 or more people in the same time and place) and a chart from CNN shows that one third of mass shootings in the world from 1966-2012 took place in the United States. 90 out of the 292 cases of 4 or more people being killed took place in America. Comparatively the Philippines, with the second highest number of mass shootings, had just 18.

Statistics like these spurred students at Long Trail into action. Long Trail participated in the nationwide walkouts, alongside other local schools like Burlington High School and Middlebury Union, and promoted awareness of the March for Our Lives protests.

However, as a speaker at the Rutland March for Our Lives reminded the crowd, “...we must remember that behind each of these numbers is a person.”

That idea is what has really motivated students at Long Trail School. These events have begun to happen so regularly that it is easy to just let them blur into statistics and charts, forgetting how much damage they actually do. An article by The Atlantic details the physiological effects that Code Red drills have on students. It explains that in general these sorts of drills tend to make students paranoid and often rupture a sense of innocence. In classrooms where students are as young as 4-5, they are instructed to move to a place away from doors and windows and keep quiet, though more often these drills take place at middle and high schools. The effects of these drills and of growing up in an environment where having 372 mass shootings a year is normalized are real, and they are all around us.

A board has been put beside the 9th grade cubbies, where information is posted on events and opportunities for students to make their voices heard, and hopefully to help put a stop to these shootings. This is an issue that affects everyone in all schools across the country. The movement to end school shootings has begun; it must be kept going.

COLLEGE ACCEPTANCES "

"Why bother with an announcement when calling class? The second the phone beeps, people violently stampede out the door."

"Can't wait for the new greenhouse! It will be a great improvement!"

"Joan Rizio knows how to run a tight ship."

"Why have hats divided the school?"

"Good luck to seniors with IB exams. It's the craziest time of the year!"

"Props to Dana for owning up. We all make mistakes but it's those who take responsibility that show real character."

"WE ARE GETTING A FIELD HOUSE!!!"

"Are we all screenagers?"

-DISCLAIMERTrailMix reserves the right to omit and/or edit any submissions that are offensive, inappropriate, sensitive, or are in overall misalignment with the harmonious atmosphere of TrailMix, the Long Trail mission, or any policy outlined in the handbook. Any values expressed in this column are not a reflection of any message upheld by Trail Mix or Long Trail School. This column exists purely for entertainment.

Remember to send your submissions to trailmix@longtrailschool.org !

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College Destinations Congratulations to the Long Trail Class of 2018 on their college acceptances! We are so proud of hard work during your time all your

at LTS. Here ais where they are all headed. Good luck! We'll miss you!

Luc Carmel: Clarkson University Franco Casotti: Wake Forest .University Levin Coe: High Point University Nicholas DeMauro, Jr.: Purdue University Luca DiTursi: University of New England Hannah Griswold: University of Massachusetts Amherst Acadia Harding: Springfield College Sionann Harrington: University of Vermont Kristina Hilliard: Hobart & William Smith Colleges Zhaoxin Liu: Fordham University Emily Lucie: University of Maryland Regina Marchese: Sage College of Albany Peter Mathewson: Massachusetts College of Art and Design Will McCullough: The College of New Jersey

Makenzie McMullen: Point Park University (Honors Program) Nate Misasi: University of Vermont Markie Moore: Seton Hall University (Honors Program) Cole Norkon: James Madison University Anna Pace: University of Vermont Lilly Peckel: Green Mountain College Amelia Perkins: Allegheny College (Honors Program) Ryan Power: Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (Honors Program) Collin Racine: University of Maine Presque Isle Eli Sanderson: Wentworth Institute of Technology Evan Semet: Boston College Ashley Stork: George Mason University (Honors Program) Claire van Burken: Lehigh University Zhi "Jimmy" Tu: University of California San Diego