Today during Morning Meeting, faculty members briefly described their visions for this year’s mini-term explorations. Yes, mini-term is a month away! This is the first time we’ve had mini-term this early in the school year; however, we are excited to start Tuesday afternoon, December 16th, 2014. Students will be in specific groups all day Wednesday and Thursday. We will reassemble on Friday to share our findings and share a meal, celebrating culture, before our noon dismissal for winter break.

For those new to the Hyla community, each year we break from the normal academic routine to look at a variety of topics in a more intense way. Our three-year cycle includes an examination of social justice, the environment, and culture. This December, our focus will be on culture. As you would expect, our faculty has created amazing innovative ways to approach this investigation of culture. You can read more in the descriptions below.

______________________________________________________________________________

The Culture of Buddhism – The Basics for Beginners Laura Jones & Kimberley Gorman-Trick

“Buddhism is a commonsense and practical philosophy as well as a religion, and it can be practiced by anyone.” Diana Winston

For over twenty-five centuries, Buddhism has influenced humanity in many parts of the world. In fact, approximately 350 million people around the world call themselves Buddhist. It is the world’s fourth largest religion. Drawing on the teachings of Diana Winston, author of Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens and Director of UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, we hope to learn more about the culture of Buddhism and bring more insight and compassion to our lives.

Our examination of the major schools of Buddhism begins in Seattle. We will visit the Sakya Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism and the Buddha Jewel Monastery. We will engage in “mindful eating” at an Indian restaurant in the city. We will also explore Buddhism on the island. We will visit with Senji Kanaeda and Brother Gilberto Perez at the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Temple and spend time at the prayer wheel and new labyrinth located in the Blakely Harbor area. We also hope to spend time at the Dayaalu Center. In each place, we will develop our appreciation for meditation and its benefits. We are also excited about working together to strengthen our Hyla culture through compassionate actions such as creating a labyrinth, mandala, or prayer wheels.

The United States Military
Mike Fosmark & Joyce Mycka-Stettler
We will explore the culture of our military through the lens of our own family experience. Family culture varies widely, even within extended family groups. We are interested in exploring how life in the military shapes family culture. We are honored to welcome speakers who are currently serving, and have served in the past, in the US military. We hope to gain a window into military life, and increase our understanding of what it is like to serve our country in the armed forces. We will get a first hand glimpse of military life by visiting a military base.

Join us for an exploration into a way of life that so many of our friends, relatives and neighbors embrace.

The Culture of Consumerism – A Photojournalism Exploration Kris Van Gieson & Colleen Carroll

Sometimes the hardest culture to look at is your own. We live in a consumerist society, consumerist country, and, increasingly, a consumerist world. During mini-term, we will become photojournalists, turning the lens on ourselves and documenting our culture of consumerism as we see it at the personal and local scale.

We will visit, photograph, and investigate sites of consumerism and its after-effects. We will also explore counter-cultures of consumerism. Through our investigation we will look at the harm of wasteful consumption, but we’ll also question whether consumerism is always such a bad thing. We will also examine what drives us to consume on a psychological, neurological, and social level.

While photography will be our main means of documenting the consumer element of our culture, we will also conduct interviews and learn from community members who bring diverse perspectives on consumerism and what it means for our society today.

Music and Culture
Cindy Schacht & Andrew Lovejoy

Music is a part of every culture in the world, both modern and traditional, and the relationship between music and culture is deep and complex. Music is influenced by the culture in which it is created, and in turn has a hand in shaping that culture. Today, we have unprecedented access to music from other cultures; no previous generation has been able to so easily listen to music from all over the world. Still, local and regional musical styles are alive and well, and the music of different regions continues to reflect and influence the cultures of those areas.

In this mini-term, we’ll explore some facets of the Seattle-area music scene, and use that exploration to help us consider some questions about the role of music in our own culture: how does a culture shape the music that comes out of it?; what role do musicians have in influencing their own culture?; how does the music we listen to as individuals affect our identity and our relationship to our culture?; does music have its own culture?

In the process of our exploration we’ll meet some local musicians, get a tour of a prominent local record company, hear a lot of music, and learn about what makes Pacific Northwest music unique. By the end, we will probably find we’re thinking about and listening to music in a whole new way!

Ukrainian Culture
Melissa Dempsey, Cami Holtmeier & Zeya Korytko

We will explore the Ukrainian culture through dance, music, visual arts, food, and a bit of history. Ukraine, one the largest nations in Eastern Europe, lost its independence after WWII and became part of the Soviet Union. At this time many refugees fled their homes to Canada and the U.S. Most never returned to live in their homeland, even though Ukraine regained its independence in 1991.

Throughout this past year, Ukraine has, once again, been in an ongoing struggle for independence, as Russia, its neighboring country, makes unwelcome intrusions on to Ukrainian soil. We will learn a bit about this current military invasion. Our interest in studying Ukraine comes from family connections. Zeya’s grandparents fled Ukraine during WWII and we’d like to share their dramatic experiences and the love for their culture.

We will be off campus one day to look at food as an expression of cultural identity by cooking some traditional Ukrainian foods, such as Varenyky (cheese and potato “dumplings”). We will also learn the art of pysanky, or how to make Ukrainian Easter eggs. This traditional method uses beeswax to write designs on eggs along with vivid dyes to create detailed and colorful art on the surface of an egg. Another traditional art form in Ukraine is cross-stitch. We will learn some of the history of these art forms, the different methods for making intricate designs on eggs and cloth, and the symbolism of the patterns and colors used. On another field trip, we hope to visit an Ukrainian Dance troupe in Bellevue one evening and watch their middle school aged dancers in a dress rehearsal for a performance. During this field trip, we will also stop by a Ukrainian church in Seattle to look at Ukrainian architecture.

Native American Culture: Suquamish and the Salish Cultures of the Puget Sound Jeff Steele and Jennifer Haase

We will be exploring the culture, language, and worldview of the Salish peoples, specifically the Suquamish tribe. Whether we are conscious of it or not, our lives are shaped by the languages we share, from own thoughts to the conversations we have with others. Language contributes to our identity and our shared sense of culture. A world-view is a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world. Living in the United States, we can develop the misconception that our worldview is shared by all humans. Join us in this mini-term exploration as we look at how the Suquamish tribe’s world-view is distinct from our own. You may find that through understanding another culture’s worldview, you will see your own in a clearer light. We will travel to the Burke Museum on the University of Washington Campus on Wednesday then visit the Suquamish Museum on Thursday.