They may be plain and simple, but Jennifer will tell you that notecards are a mighty tool for students as they advance from chronological to conceptual understandings of history. In her Humanities class, 6th graders use the notecard method to create research essays using a thesis statement and body paragraphs. Before writing begins, students use notecards to build the structure of their essays: they capture research, organize ideas, and analyze historical concepts to prove their thesis statements. “The coolest thing with this approach is that it’s so tangible,” says Jennifer. “They can take their facts and…

Students in the “School of Rock” Panorama are amped up – literally. Every day they head to rehearsal (at Prue’s House) to set up, plug in, and get to work on the timeless and complex process of co-creation and collaboration known as the rock-n-roll jam session. The philosophy of this panorama is simple: Everyone has what it takes to rock. Meeting students where they are, we invited seasoned musicians and beginners alike to come learn the fundamentals of rock instruments: drums, piano, vocals, bass, and guitar. This 3-week immersive course launched from the core question “what…

Winter: Wellness and Wilderness What are Panoramas? At the end of each semester, we break from our standard schedule for Panoramas, 3-week immersive and cross disciplinary courses. Panoramas present students with a diverse set of learning enviornments where they can explore, investigate, and evaluate different topics and themes with teachers, classmates, community partners, and experts through seminars, hands-on labs, travel, service, and critical work. Students input is integral to the process of creating these offerings so that we can include student interests and goals in our planning and final itineraries. Dispatch #1: Last week’s epic snowstorm…

Art with Kate begins and ends with a question. The first question is directed at students: “what is a portrait?” Their answers, says Kate, “are always highly contested, which I love!” The question launches a process that challenges student thinking, requires them to articulate that thinking (written and verbal), and invites them to assert their voices as artists. The portrait project also invited students to see that “concept is more important than end product, which is” says Kate, “really important when you’re working with visual metaphor.”  After debating the founding question and researching different portrait artists,…

Separation from family members, caring for siblings, food shortages, pets, school closures, depression, loss of employment – these are just some of the issues that surfaced in the fictional COVID diaries written by 7th graders. As Global Ed teacher, Deborah knew that COVID presents a “very tangible way for students to learn about interconnected global systems because they can draw on their own life experiences.” She chose the format of personal diaries so that students could “reach into personal knowledge about what it was like to have their own lives completed disrupted by this pandemic, and…

By JOHN BAKER, HYLA ALUMNUS. “Lose not yourself in a far off time, seize the moment that is thine.” — Friedrich Schiller. Christina Goessman was a beloved former student at Hyla who tragically passed away on April 25th, 2021 at the age of twenty-four due to a brain aneurysm. As someone who knew her rather well during our time at this school, I wanted to write something about my dear friend so that parents, teachers, alumni, and current students alike could learn more about this incredible woman who meant so much to so many people. Christina…

7TH GRADE SCIENCE: “Chemistry is everywhere!” says middle school science teacher Alex with her bright-eyed enthusiasm. “Even when it’s not observable, chemical reactions happen all around us.” One of her favorite parts about teaching chemistry is that she gets to show students that “there is a lot going on in our world that’s invisible to us unless we run experiments to see results.” Case in point: the Taj Mahal. Having used molecular models to investigate how atoms of starting substances rearrange to form new substances when a chemical reaction occurs, Alex asked students a question from…

High School American History: “Navigating our way through vast amounts of information to arrive at a new understanding is an essential skill,” says teacher KNA, “and it is one we’ll be practicing a lot in our social studies classes.” Beginning the year with Indigenous America, students returned to familiar ground. “Like many topics, this is one where students bring a wide range of background and knowledge and varying levels of expertise,” KNA shares. But by returning to familiar ground with new skills, students discover just how much is unfamiliar, just how much of history is untold. As they…

8th Grade HyLab: “What would our cities look like if human health and well-being were at the very center of all decisions about how we live together?” This question launched the 8th grade HyLab unit on Global Health that culminates in the Future City Expo. As students worked in teams to design a city centered on specific health priorities, they worked their way through mini-projects that require them to seek input from peers, refine their own thinking, articulate their design rationale, and even persuade others – through collaborative group work, discussion, video proposals, posters, written assignments,…

9th Grade English Class: “To examine the Hero’s Journey, I chose a book that’s as resistant as possible to analyzing that framework,” Gardner explains. “The House on Mango Street is not a traditional hero’s journey – it’s really more a series of vignettes. And while it’s not an unusual book to read in high school English, we are taking an usual approach to it. I wanted to see what students could extract from the text. And they’re loving it.”  Alongside the individual journey of the main character, students discover the hero’s journey as a universal structure…