A Report From the Stanton School: Getting to Know the Eighth Graders

(This post is by Adriana Nocco, BMC class of 2016.)

STANTON SUCCESSES: Started to break the ice and get to know the students’ outside interests and talents. Tayjonna showed Anita and me pictures from the Black History Month Wax Museum they’d held earlier in the week. She played Josephine Baker. Azema sang for  Roz, Anita, and me under one condition: We had to cover our eyes. Hopefully Yassir and Itez will agree to sing for us next time. It’s a process.

We collectively were able to encourage eighth graders to fully engage their bodies in our work, especially in the context of our Six Picture Lear Stories. As Mark mentioned during our reflection time on Friday, that is a HUGE accomplishment!

STANTON CHALLENGES: We can’t compete with an NBA player’s presence. The students were somewhat distracted, but who could blame them?

FOR THE FUTURE: When we take the students on a tour of Bryn Mawr, we want to make sure we help them see college as more than just a series of gorgeous buildings. We want them to see it as a real future possibility.

LEAR WORK: We finished reading through all of King Lear as our characters (which was pretty cool). It’s weird knowing that Lear will soon be significantly cut so that each act is only ten minutes long as opposed to forty five. However, I’m excited to see the new piece that will formulate as a result of said cuts, and all the discoveries that we will make about the ecologically conscious world of the play and our God’s spy characters’ places within it.