Upper
January 15, 2021
A Virtual Tour of Berlin
Upper School students in Eric O’Connor’s Nazi Germany and the Holocaust class took a live, virtual tour of Berlin in early January. O’Connor hired a guide through Amazon.com to walk the class, live, around Berlin. The guide, who interacted with the class and answered questions, connected with students via a conferencing app as he walked through the streets of Berlin to discuss sights related to the Nazi period. “Hiring the live guide was an experiment that worked out well. Tour guides looking for customers is one of the benefits of COVID-era teaching. I was pleased the technology mostly worked and that the guide, Martin, was tremendous. My students told me that they thought it was fascinating to view in real-time the places we’ve studied, such as the Reichstag and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,” said O’Connor. “Witnessing the memorials and historic buildings as they exist right now was a valuable window into how Germany lives every day with the memory of the Nazis and the Holocaust. The whole experience connected the past and the present in ways I’ve never been able to do in class before.”
Using Emerson as a Guide in American Literature Honors
Juniors in Tricia Hoar’s American Literature Honors class recently wrote found poems using Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance.” Hoar said her students worked in groups to create a piece in the fashion of Emerson’s essay. “I created and used this assignment for the first time this year, and it was a fun way to have students think about and discuss Emerson’s essay and to work collaboratively to arrange Emerson’s language to create a poem that simultaneously honors and emphasizes Emerson’s intentions,” said Hoar. “Each student had to contribute at least one line to their group’s poem.” At the end of each poem is the group’s description of their craft, which is always interesting. Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them by making changes in spacing and lines.
Composition of Functions
Students in Cassie Levesque’s Algebra 2 Honors class are discussing the composition of functions, which is substituting one function for another, as well as the decomposition of functions. Levesque said the study is a progression from previous math courses, in which students learned the basic operations of mathematics, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. “When students get to high school, they learn how to apply those operations to functions,” said Levesque. Levesque said her Algebra 2 Honors students are now preparing to learn how to decompose a function, or pull apart a composite function. “They will be able to determine the values for which a composite function exists,” said Levesque. “These concepts will be applied as we learn about new functions, such as logarithmic and exponential functions, as well as in future math courses.”
Delivering a little (Tasty) Joy!
Shortly after returning back to school from winter break, Upper School science teacher Bridget Ancalmo’s advisory group delivered dinner to 23 families housed by Bethany House at a local hotel. Seven Hills has a long history with Bethany House. In past years advisories and families have gone to their shelters and cooked breakfast for the families. “With COVID this is not possible so Dr. Horner, Mr. Drew, students Ric DeLyons, Graham DeWitt, John Mullin, Jack Good, the African American Awareness (AAA) Club, Dewey’s Pizza, and I all joined in together to provide dinner, which students helped deliver, for the Bethany House residents ,” said Ancalmo. Ancalmo said she hopes other advisories, clubs, classes, and families might consider doing the same this school year. Bethany House provides shelter for homeless mothers and their children and helps them find jobs and permanent housing. Ancalmo said Bethany House has been utilizing local hotels during the pandemic in order to keep families socially distanced and healthy.
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Five Stingers Sign to Play in College
Five Stingers from the Class of 2024 signed their letters of intent to continue their athletic careers in college.
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