Festival of Nations: Behind the Scenes

Festival of Nations is our school's spring open house. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the work that goes into creating a memorable event.

 

MSL Composting: Saving the Earth One "Dirt Bag" at a Time!

Our red wigglers have been working hard.  After a short unit on Marketing (we wrote and performed commercials advertising pieces of punctuation), our Writing Lab class measured out, packaged, and advertised the final product from our class composting project:  MSL Dirt Bags!  We sold them on Thursday night at our school's Festival of Nations event: quite a deal at three dollars for seven ounces.

I Spy an Alligator Surfacing on Lake Michigan

You don't have to see the whole staircase...

Advice from Chuck Close

I was reading artist Chuck Close's Face Book this morning and stumbled upon an interesting quote.  He says, "Inspiration is for amateurs.  Artists just show up and get to work.  Every idea occurs while you are working.  If you are sitting around waiting for inspiration, you could sit there forever."

Sounds like great advice for a gaggle of AP students working on Hamlet essays!

One of My Favorite Lines from "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

Curiosity

SNOW DAY!!!

Constantly Seeing and Re-Seeing

Many teachers will agree that we are constantly learning from our students, re-seeing topics, issues, and literature through the eyes of our students. 

Today was a glorious Monday off school, so I spent some time re-seeing the world through the eyes of my three year-old son.  We visited the Mitchell Park Domes and then went exploring along the edge of Lake Michigan.

Our Field Trip to See "How the World Began"

 

 

The Art of Conversation

"There is no conversation more boring than the one
where everybody agrees."  --Michel de Montaigne

www.larrydressler.com

Textbook Art

 


A great source of art comes to teachers and students through our textbooks.  Whenever I use our Brit. Lit. or American Lit. textbook to look at short stories or poems, I ask students why they think our textbook authors chose to pair a particular piece of artwork with the work of literature we're looking at. 

Brightening Up a Winter Monday

Today my Writing Lab class made a bulletin board filled with positive quotations.  We encouraged students and staff to pick a quote to keep with them in their pockets.  By the end of the day, the board was almost bare!  My favorite quote chosen by a student was by Joyce Meyer:  "A number two pencil and a dream can take you anywhere."

Beautiful Words

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; 

to me those have always been 

the two most beautiful words 

in the English language.”

 --Henry James

What do you think are the most beautiful words in the English language?

W. H. Auden

"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language."  --W. H. Auden 

Why We Explore

All of my AP students subscribed to National Geographic magazine over the summer.  This month's topic aligns perfectly with our theme of Seeing:  Why We Explore.  The students' assignment with the magazine is to post a  paragraph response to one of the articles or photographs in the magazine on our Piazza online discussion board and then respond to the posts of two other students.