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.
Freshman (First Year) Classes:
Science (Ryan Patin, Instructor)
Composition (Meilyn Woods, Instructor)
After introducing the class and doing icebreakers, the students made writing goals as well as goals for the summer. The students did two 10 minute writing sprints and we read our first short story, After the Divorce by Adam Peterson. Their HW is to read the story again on their own and take note of what they think is “working” and “not working”
Students were lectured on the basics of fiction writing and the difference between literary and genre writing. We also discussed what every short story needs in order to write an original work of their own. We used that to discuss the Adam Perterson story we read. The students were given another Adam Peterson story, How Clowns Die, so we can see how an author’s aesthetic is present in multiple works.
Opened class with a 15 min writing session. We discussed Frietag’s Pyramid and how stories are structured. Then we discussed How Clowns Die by Adam Peterson and then made a venn diagram of the two Adam Peterson stories to try and understand his aesthetic.
Freshmen Humanities (Chris Hebert, Instructor)
On Monday, I sat with the Freshmen and held introductions. I told them of my educational background and what I do during the normal school year. We discussed what grades they were advancing into and where they were from. I discussed with students my plan for the class—a three pronged approach to the large area that is “Humanities”: that we would discuss history (in particular of that of the Mediterranean world), philosophy (heavily focusing on Plato’s Republic), and literature (applying the concepts of “right and wrong” and “justice” to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar). Tuesday, we began with history and started with the different groups that immigrated to Greece, with focus on the Minoans and the Mycenaeans. We discussed how the myth of Theseus is now thought of as a metaphor for how Greece overthrew the Minoan civilization through the conflict between Theseus and the Minotaur. Students and I drew parallels to this myth and The Hunger Games series. We explored the topic of the Greek Dark Ages and the earliest writings of Greek Antiquity—those being the surviving epic poems of Homer. (We also discussed the real life Troy and how archaeology has found burnt ruins and rubble in modern day Turkey, which correlated with the area that was thought to be Troy.) Students then were assigned to investigate the idea of foundational myths and summarize it and share it with everyone else on Wednesday. For rest of the week, we continued looking into foundational myths of the various city-states of Greece and how these myths influenced their various outlooks on governance and took a crash course through the overall concept of Greek mythology, as it will be referenced more than once throughout various points in history, philosophy, and literature.
Senior (Third Year and others) Classes:
Science (Ryan Patin, Instructor)
Senior Composition (Meilyn Woods, Instructor)
After introducing the class and doing icebreakers, the students made writing goals as well as goals for the summer. We spent some time talking about our writing struggles as well. The students decided their primary genre and we ended the class with a ten minute writing sprint.
Students brainstormed what they wanted to write for their first weekly project, we discussed grading and expectations. We ended class with some in-class writing.
Students were lectured on a craft essay, Beginnings by Ann Hood. We talked about the 6 ways you can begin a story or poem. Then we took some time to try and write using one of the six beginnings. We read and discussed That One Dream by Dan Pinkerton.
Grad (Fourth Year) Classes:
Humanities (Jessica Markstrom, Instructor)
Psychology (Joshua Brown, Instructor)
We began the class by discussing what motivates young people in general, and them individually. Motivating young people is a challenge for anyone in an authoritative role (parent, teacher, manager). Throughout the summer we will be reading and discussing the ideas found in the recent work, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People: A Groundbreaking Approach to Leading the Next Generation―And Making Your Own Life Easier by David Yeager.
The basic idea that runs throughout this book is that our “common sense” approach to motivating young people is actually “common nonsense.” This book argues that young people are motivated most effectively by the concept of earned respect and that the most common ways of dealing with that age group (what the author terms as either an “enforcer mindset” or a “protector mindset”) do not provide paths for young people to earn the respect of the authority figures in their lives. The author introduces the concept of a “mentor mindset” – blending the high standards of the enforcer with the importance of providing support and resources that comes from the protector mindset.
The book spends the first section describing these midnsets and why (with scientifc evidence from experiments) the mentor mindset is optimal. It then presents practices to develop the mentor mindset and how to deploy them.