November 2, 2007 (Day 53)

Reflections
In Morning Meeting, Mr. Longanecker gave us an overview of his time spent in Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia.  He worked at the College of Micronesia for five years, and we used Google Earth to get a sense of Pohnpei’s position in the Pacific Ocean and its distance from Charleston.  We explored a number of the islands, and Mr. Longanecker recounted several stories of his family’s time there.  This led to our exploring latitude and longitude in Math class, and we learned about their use in ascertaining position.  We then shifted into an analysis of the differences in properties and positive/negative numbers.  In Spanish, we made “papel picados” (punched paper) for Day of the Dead.

In Humanities, we took an assessment on poetry and Of Mice and Men.  For the remainder of the class, we made progress on our individual Depression-era narratives.  During lunch, we watched a film version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1960).  It was interesting to see how the filmmakers used poetic license to create a backstory for this short but riveting piece of writing.  It involved a love triangle, and hurt feelings led to foul deeds.  The style and story of the movie were obvious odes to the work of Alfred Hitchcock (esp. Rear Window) and other earlier works in this genre.  The consensus view was that the film was fairly suspenseful and engaging.  We also made strong comparisons between the character of Edgar Marsh in the film and the character of Lenny in Of Mice and Men.  Their awkward social skills and their unrequited love for another woman were the strongest parallels.  After lunch, we cleaned up and prepared for movie night.  In Science, we watched the “Fresh Water” episode of the BBC production of Planet Earth, and we made links between it and what we have already learned this year.

The evening brought movie night, and we enjoyed Edward Scissorhands with some friends and mentors.

Assignments
Leadership & Life Skills
– none

Math
– assessment on Monday (properties, order of operations, numbers)
– page 123, #s 11-30 due on Tuesday, November 6

Spanish
– Mrs. Rowland emails

Humanities
– none for Monday
– keep working on Depression summaries & reading Of Mice and Men

Science
– none

November 1, 2007 (Day 52)

Reflections
In Morning Meeting, we watched CNN Student news.  The main story looked at the verdicts handed down in the Madrid train bombings from 2004, an awful event that many call Spain’s 9/11.  Several of the guilty received sentences of thousands of years in jail for mass murder, but others were acquitted of the most serious charges.  We were amazed by the differences between Spain and America because we learned that the maximum time one can spend in jail is forty (40) years, so they may all be free some day.  The length of the punishments in many ways is part of the legal process and part of the need for justice that victims’ families seek.  We stopped the video and had a discussion about the differences in crime and punishment among the countries of the world and even within the United States.  For example, all member countries, and Spain is a member, of the European Union must ban the death penalty.  On the other hand, America has state and federal criminal justice systems.  For example, the federal government tried and executed Timothy McVeigh for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.  The case could have also been handled in state court, but the federal government prosecuted it because FBI agents were killed and the federal government has more resources to undertake the expense and logistics of the case.  For major crimes prosecuted by state governments in America, the outcome can be very different.  As set forth in the Constitution, our federal government allows for separation of powers between federal and local governments, and this leads to states with different punishments for the same crime.  Thirty-seven American states officially sanction the use of the death penalty.  Therefore, it is possible to serve twenty years in jail in one state and be executed in another for the same crime.  This is an interesting and thought-provoking aspect of our federal system.  The Post and Courier had a story today (“Tagging the king of butterflies”) about Billy McCord, the S.C. Department of Natural Resources ranger who specializes in tagging and understanding Monarch butterflies, and we watched the companion video piece from the paper’s website because we are spending the day with him at his Fort Johnson facility next Wednesday.  In Math, we examined word problems and properties, and then we worked through some order of operations questions.  In Spanish, we talked about Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos), a holiday observed in Mexico and among Mexican communities in other countries on November 1 (All Saints’ Day) and November 2 (All Souls’ Day).  Mrs. Rowland also showed us how to make paper flowers, and then we made our own.  We also started a “papel picado,” and these are cut paper banners created for Day of the Dead.  In Humanities, we went over our homework notes and talked about the Elizabethan Age.  In Science, we used Google Earth to compare the solid surface areas in cities versus non-urban areas.  We also practiced our water cycle loops.

Assignments
Leadership & Life Skills
– none

Math
– problems from the board (order of operations)

Spanish
– read from the internet site (dayofthedeadblog.com) and visit the photo gallery
– write a summary in two-paragraphs

Humanities
– Friday brings a chance to earn points on Of Mice and Men & poetry
– be sure to have your oral history printouts in class

Science
– none

October 31, 2007 (Day 51)

Reflections
Halloween was a great day at University School.  Our original Learning Outside the Classroom day of service was scuttled. We were going to operate Hibben’s Pumpkin Patch, but they sold all of their pumpkins last night. Nevertheless, we fashioned a great day of service and learning.  We watched CNN Student news, and the stories included an update on the space shuttle (facing a tear in the solar panels) and two updates on Iraq.  The first described how deaths are down among civilians and U.S. soldiers since late-spring, and the second detailed the heavy burden U.S. families are facing from multiple and lengthened deployments.  We then worked from 8:30 until 10:45 cleaning up the pumpkin patch. We swept up and bagged the hay, stacked the remaining pallets, and picked up litter from the front lawn.  We then headed inside and cleaned up.  Mr. Kreutner  read us “Erlkonig” (The Elf King) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one of Germany’s greatest writers (working in the late-18th and early-19th centuries).  Although he read the poem in German, we were able to follow and to understand the story because of his gestures, tone of voice, and the similarities in some words between English and German.  We then headed to Gilligan’s for lunch.  After lunch, we stopped at Mount Pleasant Fire Station #1 (974 McCants Drive – about one mile from USL).

We gave them some Halloween treats and thanked them for their service.  The firefighters were very appreciative and welcoming, and they gave us a tour of the station and their equipment.  After spending time with them, we returned to campus.  Mentors Zach Thames and Chris Marsh came and spent the afternoon with us.  The balance of the day was spent on independent work.

October 30, 2007 (Day 50)

Reflections
In Morning Meeting, we read and discussed an opinion piece from this weekend’s The New York Times (“The Outsourced Brain”).  We made the connections to the “Shift” video we saw earlier, and it is apparent how technology can make us more productive.  However, there is also the drawback of overreliance on innovations to the detriment of our mental ability and agility (cell phones maintaining numbers of friends/family, GPS-devices to find locations, etc.).  There was also a link to the internet with a mention of “recommendations” based on purchasing patterns.  We saw this when Mr. Kreutner visited Amazon.com using his login.  We could see how recommendations were made based on things he had bought earlier.  He then showed us how to clear the “cookie” in our browser, and he visited the site again with none of the earlier recommendations.  In Math, we explored expressions using variables and constants.  This entailed being posed a question (about recipes, measurements, etc.), and it involved crafting expressions for them using variables and constants.  In Spanish, we read an entire page written in Spanish, and we were able to understand it all because of the cognates.  We also played a team computer quiz game as a form of review for what we have learned over the past few months.  In Humanities, Mrs. Pamela Price wowed us with her multimedia presentation on music history and symphonic forms through the vehicle of Halloween and scary music.  We learned about the major eras of classical music since the 1300s, and we heard pieces set to film clips and cartoons.  Works included “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff, “Toccata and Fugue” by J.S. Bach, and other pieces by Camille Saint-Saëns, Modest Mussorgsky, and others.  In Flex Time, we continued to look at the power of music by looking at other video clips containing some of the pieces we heard during Mrs. Price’s presentation.  In Science, we looked at a PowerPoint about the human impact on the water cycle and at what points does this take place.  We had an ongoing seminar discussion as we explored this topic.

Assignments
Leadership & Life Skills
– none

Math
– variables & constants expressions problems from the board

Spanish
– read pages 30-32 and answer the questions on pages 31-32

Humanities
– for Thursday, chapters 35 & 36 due – open notes quiz likely
– for Friday, Depression-era narrative summaries due

Science
– none

October 29, 2007 (Day 49)

Reflections
In Morning Meeting, we watched CNN Student News.  The main story involved the forensics behind the California fires and how they are working to catch suspected arsonists.  The other stories examined the expansion of the International Space Station through the current shuttle mission and how the United States Naval Academy Class of 1995 honored their six fallen classmates by participating in the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. last weekend.  We also spent a considerable amount of time looking at the media in response to the tragic house fire that involved students from USC and Clemson this weekend.  We deliberated about where we would find the most thorough coverage, and this led us to the Myrtle Beach News after we decided to try geographic proximity to a major city.  We compared their reports to the papers from Charleston (which pulled its story from the Associated Press newswire).    Through the similarity in design of The (Columbia) State and The (Myrtle Beach) Sun News websites, we decided to examine ownership of the papers (as we had done weeks earlier in looking at the ownership of the The Post and Courier and the Charleston City Paper).  We discovered they are both owned by theMcClatchy Company, and this group is the third-largest owner of print media in America and is headquartered in California.  We began discussing the pros (sharing stories and money savings from shared costs) and cons (is priority serving the public or profit, out-of-state ownership) of this arrangement.  We then learned about the call signs of the local television stations, and this evolved into a lesson in ownership of the media for the four major television networks.  We explored a site operated by the Columbia Journalism Review that allowed us to see that Disney (ABC), GE (NBC), Viacom (CBS), and NewsCorp (FOX) own a lot of different forms of media and this leads to a similar set of pros and cons as we saw with the newspapers we examined.  In Math, we took our assessment on measurement and algebraic properties.  In Spanish, we reviewed and corrected last week’s test.  We also began our discussion of infinitives and conjugated verbs.   In Humanities, we worked on our oral history summaries (Federal Writers’ Project / Depression-era natives), and we also reviewed and corrected our Of Mice and Men tests.  Mentor Khailey Walsh also came and spent some time with us, and then she helped Mr. Kreutner with a software upgrade for our notebook computers.  In Science, we watched a webcast video on human effects on water.  We also collaboratively redesigned our seminar/lab room.  In Flex Time, mentor Zach Thames led us through an exercise in perspective.  This entailed finding and discussing some of the comments Doris Lessing (we have read some of her work this year) made about America and 9/11 in the wake of her winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.  This endeavor carried us through the end of the day.

Assignments
Leadership & Life Skills
– Letter to the Editor on-line submission due

Math
– order of operations worksheet

Spanish
–  study test
– read p. 34 and write a list of all the cognates

Humanities
– find/read article about Doris Lessing’s comments on 9/11
– work on your oral history summaries
– continue reading Of Mice and Men
– Mrs. Price will be here tomorrow for a music lesson

Science
– none