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May Program Tiffani Caesar ’11 was selected to raise the flag at the historic Fort McHenry in Baltimore.
Outdoor Adventure embarks on a journey
For nearly 40 years, May Program has been a hallmark of an Oldfields education. Held at the end of May, May Program is a two-week session of experiential and interdisciplinary learning that complements the academic curriculum. Girls can choose from a wide-range of May Program offerings, including travel abroad, local and real world opportunities, and handson learning. May Program 2010, with nine programs, presented our students with a wide variety of options. A trip to Argentina provided our students with home stays, language immersion, and community service opportunities. Fourteen girls participated in this program where they had an amazing time working on a community farm and teaching English to local school children, while improving their Spanish speaking skills with their host families. In addition, the girls were introduced to some Argentinian culture through tango lessons!
Oldfields students volunteered to work on a farm during their trip to Argentina.
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Winter 2011
Habitat for Humanity
Seventeen girls fulfilled their community service requirement by traveling to New Orleans to work for Habitat for Humanity. The girls spent most of their days helping at the home sites doing all kinds of work such as putting up siding, building porches and stairs, raising roof trusses, installing windows, painting, and hanging shelves in closets. On their few free days the girls visited the French Quarter and the Garden District and toured the Ninth Ward with a resident who survived Hurricane Katrina. This was the third year that Oldfields girls traveled to New Orleans and it continues to be a life-changing experience. For those who wished to complete their community service closer to home, the program Dare to Teach placed 11 students into Sparks Elementary School as teacher’s assistants. Most of the girls assisted teachers in their classrooms while some worked with specialty teachers in
technology and music. The girls prepared themselves by learning about different teaching pedagogy and designing and teaching their own lesson plans. These three programs gave the Oldfields girls unique opportunities to learn about themselves while providing service to others. Meanwhile, two other May Program groups spent a significant amount of time traveling. I Love New York, a new program, provided girls with an opportunity to learn all about New York City during the first week, then to visit the sites they had studied during the second week. The girls prepped for the trip by doing research on one specific aspect of their trip and giving a presentation to the rest of the group. Highlights of the trip included: a visit to Central Park, a tour of the United Nations, a ferry ride to Ellis Island, a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, tickets to a Broadway show, a tour of Radio City Music Hall and, on their last day, a trip to Ground Zero. Freedom Ride, a very popular program over the years, traveled south once again to visit sites of the Civil Rights Movement. The group flew to Atlanta where they visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violence. From there they traveled to Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; Little Rock, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee. Highlights of this trip included tours of the National Voting Rights Museum, the Slavery/Civil War Museum in Selma, and the Rosa
Parks Museum and Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery. The group also visited the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the Medgar Evers Home Museum in Jackson, the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site and the National Civil Rights Museum and Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The students who participated in Outdoor Experience only spent one night off campus, but those who were on campus rarely saw them since they left early each morning and didn’t return until right before dinner. This group of 12 adventurous young women spent their May Program canoeing, hiking, caving, and learning about the flora and fauna of the Piedmont Plateau. One day was spent with an ornithologist doing hands-on research on the migratory bird population of this area. The highlight of this program every year is the overnight camping trip to Old Rag Mountain in the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia. Unfortunately, this year the weather did not cooperate, so the girls had to “camp” in a motel, but they did have clear skies for their hike to the top of Old Rag. For the animal lovers at the School, Mysterious Mammals was the program of choice. This group took a considerable amount of field trips and completed many on-campus activities. Highlights of this program were: trips to the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and National Zoos and the National Aquarium; training mice to navigate mazes the girls built; art
(L to R) Liz Wolfe ’10, Nicky Kyei ’10, Rachel Edwards ’10, and Lucy MacAlister ’10 all hoped to be on The Early Show while in New York City.
(L to R) Amanda Geary’11 and Kate Brennan’11 eat “big shrimp” in the Big Easy.
activities that included carving a polar bear out of soap, making a mammal flag, and doing a power point presentation on a mammal of their choice. Baltimoreans Who Dared offered girls the opportunity to explore Baltimore through the eyes of some of its more famous residents. Each girl chose a Baltimorean to research (including Edgar Allen Poe, John Waters, Barry Levinson, and Francis Scott Key) and then the group spent several days visiting sites in Baltimore related to these people. On their visit to Fort McHenry, some of the girls had the privilege of helping to raise the American Flag. After visiting the fort, the girls went to the Flag House where the original flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 was made. The girls also had a guided tour of the Walters Art Museum where they viewed the “Nature in Asian Art” exhibit and had the opportunity to create their own piece of Asian art. Another day was spent at the Baltimore Museum of Art where the group had a guided tour of the Cone Collection and spent some time in the Sculpture Garden. A trolley tour of the city gave many of the Baltimoreans in the group a new perspective on the city. The Digital Storytelling program spent every day on campus exploring the wonders of technology and creative writing. The girls spent half their time in the world of technology exploring: Photoshop, PowerPoint, Microsoft Photo Story 3, and Windows Movie Maker. The other half of the program was spent participat-
O l d f i e l d s
Editing photos in Digital Storytelling
The Freedom Ride May Program
ing in creative writing workshops where the girls practiced blogging, storyboarding, script writing, and poetry writing. Using the skills they learned, the girls created two projects, one imaginative and the other personal non-fiction. Some of the final projects were movies, animated children’s stories and visually interpreted songs. In only its second year, Digital Storytelling has become one of the more popular programs. As we look forward to this May, the students have already begun meeting and planning activities for May Program 2011. Educational trips to China, Costa Rica, and France have been designed. New, this year, are a variety of one-week programs, including the Underground Railroad, the History of Baseball, Working on an Organic Farm, and How Things Work. It promises to be a joyful May!
Oldfields Magazine
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