After we kicked off the school year Tuesday with team building activities, we continued on to Wednesday and Thursday when we focused on experiencing the disciplines students will be immersed in this year. Another focus was for students to get to know the peers in their classes, as well as their teachers on a deeper level. Wednesday, students previewed the different seminar courses followed by choosing which seminars they would like to take during the first trimester. As seen in the photos, these seminars include movement, drama, music, visual art, creative writing, and engineering. Students then participated in their first Town Hall, where the whole school gathered to develop goals for of what our school community envisioned for our weekly town halls. We continued Thursday by giving students a snapshot into each of their academic classes through a 30 minute preview where they learned about their classmates and abstractly explored some of the concepts they will be diving into later on in the year..

Thursday afternoon students began a collaborative process with high school students called Maker Time. Each student was placed in a seminar area based on their interests where they got to explore and create within the discipline. The theme for today was connections, which each artform explored in a different way. Musicians worked in small groups to manipulate first names into a riff followed by a design challenge using household objects to extend this pattern. Dancers started a name and movement that was personal to themselves which slowly combined with other dancers movements to form short movement pieces. Each group was able to reflect on how we as students and as dancers, engineers, musicians, dramatists, artists, and so on find connections amongst each other when we allow ourselves to openly collaborate. The experience was eye opening in regards to what can happen when we connect students grades 6 through 8 and allow them to recognize their common interests. We are excited to see what the next three days of Maker Time will bring, as well as grow relationships amongst all students, grades 6 through 12, in our school communities.