SEVEN HILLS
November 26, 2012
The Buzz
A Brief Word from Chris Garten
Personal Challenge Sharing Day at Upper
Last weekend, our Middle School students, under the able direction of Stephanie Park, presented two oneact plays, Nicholas Nickleby: School Master and The Marvelous Playbill, based on a Cervantes story. Both were briskly plotted, engagingly acted, and enlivened by elaborate period costumes and imaginative staging. Both casts clearly enjoyed themselves, and the audiences—a huge crowd on Friday night—responded enthusiastically. Watching the obvious pride the cast and crew took in their endeavors got me thinking about how transformative performing can be for young people. Obviously, performing in a host of different ways helps foster self-confidence and “stage presence,” but it also brings the intangible benefits of a highly collaborative experience. By design, our arts teachers give students the lion’s share of the responsibility for making acting and staging “choices.” Engaging, participatory rehearsals can be more time consuming, but they result in performances in which the success of the whole enterprise depends on the active involvement of every student in the cast and crew. Our teachers excel at motivating each performer to bring his or her best to each individual role, but they truly distinguish themselves at forging active, working teams. This makes theater (or music or art) a “real world” experience. Chris Garten, Head of School
At far left, Gloria Garcia learned beekeeping and shared honey samples on Sharing Day; at left, Michael Conroy explained to Assistant Head of School Susan Marrs how he built a solar panel from scratch.
The Personal Challenge project is a culminating experience for every Upper School student. As a graduation requirement, students design and carry out original projects to expand their passions in uncharted areas or to learn a skill entirely new to them, stretching the students beyond their comfort zones.
Nov. 14 was one of two Personal Challenge Sharing Days this year, when students shared their projects with the school community: what they learned from the process and the growth in ability, sense of mastery, and confidence they experienced in completing their self-designed Personal Challenges.
Seven Hills launches Pre-Kindergarten for Two-Year-Olds Program Responding to widely-recognized studies indicating that the most rapid form of brain formation takes place in the earliest years of a child’s life, Seven Hills will expand its Early Childhood Learning Program to include a Pre-Kindergarten offering for two-year-old students beginning in 2013–2014 at the Doherty Campus. Continued page 2
Inside this Buzz Dr. Lisa Kuan on “Brain Development in Children” Big wins for fifth/sixth grade teams Upper School News Middle School News Lotspeich News Doherty News
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