Throughout the summer we will be posting weekly reports from the classes. Please let us know if there’s anything else you’d like to see or if you have any questions for specific instructors. We will be posting the first issue of The Thinker (the student newspaper) as soon as the online version is ready.
We are also posting regularly on Facebook. You don’t have to join Facebook to see our posts. The link is: https://www.facebook.com/gpgcla/
Afternoon Classes:
Choir (Colette Tanner, Instructor)
We are working on songs that use “water” as an analogy for the “journey of life.” If you would like to see and hear the repertoire we have been working on, here is a link to the CHOIR BLOG: https://gpgcsings.blogspot.com/
Critical Thinking (Robert and Jessica Markstrom, Instructors)
This week the students played Risk so the instructors could discern the students’ personalities while playing games. On Friday we played several games: Get Bit, Tile Chess, and Twixt.
Debate (Robert and Jessica Markstrom, Instructors)
This week we introduced students to basic debate concepts and the speech side of forensics (individual events). Students started debate concepts by arguing whether a weapon existed or whether a person died after viewing a 20-second video of a video game. Later in the week, students learned about Aristotle’s 3 modes of persuasion and the 3 types of debate resolutions. For individual events, students were shown videos of national forensic finalists in college and high school speech and debate in Impromptu Speaking, Informative Speaking, and Humorous Interpretation. We also showed them a humorous spoken word poetry performance and a dramatic spoken word poetry performance.
P.E. (Ancil Delaney, Instructor)
The students played racquetball.
Storytelling Through Documentary (Julian Quebedeaux, Instructor)
This week we got to know each other a little by sharing some of our favorite videos. Next we began to discover how to be a good interviewer by using our body language to give off positive and curious vibes to whomever is telling the story. We finished off the week with some mock interviews!
Dorms (Kathy Barrios, Coordinator of Housing)
Week 1 was jam packed with a lot of informational meetings for the students. Throughout the week, they learned about different traditions at the program, our rules and expectations, and our student/staff government system.