Ami Berger
Ami Berger
Totems created by students with Artist-in-Residence Deb LeAir in the Goodrich Living room.
Citron Fine Arts Fund brings artists-in-residence to the Lower School During the 2010-11 school year, the Lower School hosted five artists-in-residence who worked with students on special projects in drama, music, sculpture, ceramics, and mixed media. The artist-in-residence program was made possible by the Ellie Citron Fine Arts Fund, which supports special programming in the arts at SPA. Clay artists Deb LeAir and Aldo Moroni led students in both individual sculpture projects and cooperative sculptures, many of which are now installed on the Goodrich campus. Theater and music educator Sarah Richardson worked with fifth-graders on dramatizing a series of fables which they performed in December. Composer Jay Broeker worked with students on a choral piece with Orff instrument accompaniment, and musician Roger Sams was commissioned for a special piece for first- and secondgraders to learn and perform. “These residencies enriched our curriculum and the breadth of artistic experience available to our students, and also enriched our arts faculty as educators,” says Lower School assistant principal and music teacher Beth Nelson. “It was an amazing opportunity for our students, thanks to the generosity of the Citron Fund, which allowed us to hire high-quality artists for a significant period of time this year.”
Middle School math team takes first place in Math League, dominates season SPA’s Middle School math team, coached by Middle School math teacher Jan Hartman, took first place in its most recent Math League competition on January 10, 2011. The first-place finish caps off a very successful season for the team, which “dominated” the season, says Hartman. In addition to the team’s first-place team finish, four students were awarded medals in the individual competition: Neerja Thakkar (grade 8) took the first-place medal; Sandhya Ramachandran (grade 8) took second; Brian Heilig (grade 8) took fifth; and Milo Wittenberg (grade 7) took eighth. The Math League’s competitions are based on standard math curricula through eighthgrade algebra. The individual competition requires students to successfully complete five problems in 10 minutes, and the team round requires teams of six to successfully solve 10 problems in 20 minutes; the SPA team earned a perfect score on its team round in the January 10 competition.
Actor and teaching artist Jimonn Cole (left) discusses the finer points of Romeo and Juliet with students in Emily Meisler’s English class.
Shakespearean actor brings Romeo and Juliet to life for juniors and seniors In January 2011, SPA partnered with The Acting Company, a New York theater education group, to bring a working Shakespearean actor into the junior/ senior Shakespeare elective’s study of Romeo and Juliet. Jimonn Cole (pictured above at left), an actor and teaching artist with The Acting Company, spent a week with students in Randall Findlay’s and Emily Meisler’s Shakespeare classes. Cole led the classes in analyzing the tragedy from an actor’s point of view, with specific focus on Act I, Scene I. Findlay notes that the process of physically preparing the scene—and reading it more than a dozen times— was instrumental in deepening the students’ understanding of the play as a whole. “By the time Jimonn was done, the students knew the scene and could discuss it inside and out,” Findlay says. “This gave students the tools to deeply explore any scene in the play, and get a richer sense of the possibilities of the language and character and ideas by trying them out in a format that’s more immediate than academic discussion.” At the conclusion of Cole’s work with the students, both classes visited the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis to attend its production of Romeo and Juliet. spring 2011 | SPA
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