Student Voices: One Senior’s Perspective on Perspective. On June 10th, we hosted our first ever commencement ceremony to honor the first group of seniors to graduate from Hyla’s upper school program. Each senior had a role in the ceremony and used their voice to express appreciation, gratitude, pride, and wisdom for the future. Seniors recognized each other’s accomplishments as academics and athletes; they told stories about how they chose Hyla and the difference that choice made in their lives. They gathered teachers and fellow Hyla student musicians on stage to perform an inspiring version of “Come…

In the Classroom & In the Dirt: Hands-On Learning. Over the past few weeks, a familiar scene has unfolded in the back field: shovels, charts, brushes, and sieves – and lots and lots of dirt. Throughout the archaeology dig, students take on specific roles that replicate the different jobs of a true archaeological dig. Working as a team to excavate buried artifacts, they fill out an “Artifact Record Slip” where they note key data like the site, depth, and distance from the datum stake. They request help from “the lab,” which provides carbon dating and a…

Co-designing cross-disciplinary curriculum with students. By Brad Waugh, Hyla upper school teacher. Hyla’s upper school Aperture program provides students and teachers the space to co-design curriculum, investigate themes of common interest and build knowledge across disciplines collaboratively. The Green Tech Aperture does this by weaving together ideas from the humanities, science and engineering to address current environmental challenges, helping students build a powerful and versatile toolkit to address a wide range of real world problems. Aperture courses are semester-long and happen three times each week. The human-centered design thinking framework developed and championed by the Stanford Institute…

Hyla upper school teachers, Tom and Brad sent this dispatch from Grenada, Spain and their “Spain Unchained” Panorama course, a three-week immersive study in Spanish language, history and culture. Nestled in the foothills of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountain range of Andalucía, Grenada was once the capital of the Moorish empire in Southern Spain and remains to this day an important and renowned cultural heritage site and testament to Spain’s multicultural legacy. This Panorama course is an intense Spanish immersion with home stays, language classes with local professors, and expectations of ambassadorship. As students use their…

What does “ownership of learning” look like? We see it when students take initiative with self-direction; we see it when students are engaged and motivated with a sense of autonomy and choice in their work; we see it when students create original work that shows their learning and understanding. We see it when students take accountability as they articulate their own growth and progress. The most recent round of student-led conferences showcased student ownership with authenticity, vulnerability and creativity. For 8th graders, those conferences were a special chance to focus on a specific span of time within…

— 7th grade history “is all about how we structure stories of time,” says David. But the words written across the white board in the history classroom tell you that history class with David is about a lot more than structures. It’s also about “Care & Appreciation for those who continue to tell necessary stories of the past.” This respect is fundamental to David’s approach, as is a sense of urgency: he wants students to see that the past not only shapes the present, it can also provide answers and help us navigate the choices we’re…

Panorama Spotlight This Panorama course, “Winter: Wellness & Wilderness” was an investigation into the science, communication, group decision-making and logistics essential to safe winter recreation. Panoramas are multi-week, immersive and interdisciplinary courses that investigate a range of topics through hands-on labs, seminars, creative projects, travel, and critical work. Each Panorama focuses on a central theme and core goal to inspire students to discover something new about themselves and about the world. True expeditionary learning, Panoramas take students into new territory intellectually, geographically and interpersonally. Dispatches from the Field: December 8, 2022 The huge snowstorm that hit…

by KNA (Karen Natorp Anderson), upper school history teacher. A successful Socratic seminar is a thing of beauty – students sitting in a circle engaged in dialogue. There is so much going on in that moment: individuals asking discussion-worthy questions, a thread of ideas being carried and clarified by multiple people, participants calling attention to specific details to ponder and themes to examine, and a group of individuals working together to deepen their understanding. It is not a debate. It is not about winning points. A good discussion requires students to arrive prepared, stay engaged, and…

Last week we got a burst of spring during Electives, with sunshine, blue skies, and a lot of activity all around campus. Baseball bats cracked on the upper field, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” blasted around the Gaga pit, and wood shavings floated to the ground in the back field as student’s carved spoons and talked. Some students learned line dancing choreography, while another group watched tense scenes from the movie Apollo 13. Another group propagated plants, and another danced off some energy before diving into Spanish bingo while still another group learned how to tie life-saving knots.…

On Tuesday we gathered in the Community Hall to recognize the importance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s work and legacy. We invited upper school teacher Jeanne Stevens and students to share their recent experiences in the deep south visiting national historic monuments and museums that honor Dr. King, Coretta Scott King, and significant moments in civil rights history. Upper school students created a slideshow from their recent trip to Georgia and Alabama as part of their Panorama course that focused on social justice movements in the US. “They recently got back from their trip,” said…