TCS Student News October 11, 2019
October 11, 2019
This week’s news broadcast from The Community School was researched, written, produced and anchored by students Aidan McIntosh and Jayla Nickens-Gill.
This week’s news broadcast from The Community School was researched, written, produced and anchored by students Aidan McIntosh and Jayla Nickens-Gill.
Today the students took a trip to Center Stage theater for the student matinee showing of the musical “Miss You Like Hell”. This is the first stage show of several that the students will attend at Center Stage this year, to accompany a weekly acting workshop Center Stage is providing for TCS this fall. The show “Miss You Like Hell” brings the audience along on a cross country road trip with a mother, Beatriz, and a daughter, Olivia. What might typically be a fun bonding experience is complex in this production, as the mother and daughter have been separated for four years- the fallout of a tough custody battle. Olivia starts to feel connected to her mother again, until she learns that Beatriz had an ulterior motive- she needed Olivia to come on the trip to be a witness in a deportation hearing. The show touches on themes of family, conflict, identity, and parenting.
Stage productions like “Miss You Like Hell” are a great way for the students to be exposed to experiences and narratives that may not be common in American media. Plays and musicals are a unique form of storytelling that can be very personal. For Freshman Jayla, today’s show was the first play she has ever seen. Jayla reflected, “I really liked it. It was my first time seeing a play, so it was different, but it has a lot of emotion. At first I didn’t really understand what was going on. As it went on, I put myself in Olivia’s shoes because I’m adopted so I can kind of see myself in that situation. It was kind of difficult, but it was good.”
Salma, a Junior, connected with the show because of the immigration themes. “Personally, I could see myself as Olivia. When I see the mom too, I can see her as my mom. It was touching because if my mom was ever deported, I would have felt the same way. I also liked it because they used a lot of culture, like the food – they talked about tamales, and the dancing, and they spoke some Spanish,” Salma said.
The next play the students are scheduled to see at Center Stage is “Thoughts of a Colored Man”. We are grateful to Center Stage for giving us the opportunity to attend the play with special thanks to Center Stage staff Michael Ross, Adena Varner and Dani Turner. What an exciting way to hear different people’s stories and perspectives!
This week’s news broadcast from The Community School was researched, written, produced and anchored by students Tyleiah Trusty and Keith Cooke.
Blasting off to the moon! Space Lab is back for a second year of science and discovery here at TCS, and this time the theme is the Earth’s moon. This 10-week unit will meet every Thursday will be led by Elaine Lewis, a former NASA-Goddard educator. Ms. Elaine is returning for her second year as a TCS seminar teacher. This semester’s seminar is only for Juniors and Seniors, although we hope to arrange another unit in the spring for all students.
Kicking off the moon unit is the critically acclaimed movie First Man. The movie chronicles NASA’s early attempts to send men to the moon, culminating in the historic Apollo 11 flight. While showing the movie, periodically Ms. Elaine will pause to teach the students extra information and discuss. This section of the unit will last around 3-4 weeks. Thank you Ms. Elaine for returning for another semester!
The students took a first-hand look at the building blocks of life in today’s CSI lab for the Sophomore Intro Biology class. CSI, also known as the Community School Initiative, is a project led by Johns Hopkins University student volunteers courtesy of the JHU Center for Social Concern. The Intro Biology class has been learning about DNA, the material inside of our cells that determine how our body looks and functions. In this lab, CSI led the students in extracting DNA from strawberries and bananas, a surprisingly simple procedure. Using dish detergent to break up the fruits’ cell walls, they did an extraction with isopropyl alcohol. This allowed them to visualize the DNA.
Ms. Rebecca said, “laboratory scientists do experiments like this every day (although usually with animal cells instead of fruit). Once they isolate the DNA, they can sequence it to study differences in the DNA of different people.” Studying differences in DNA allows scientists to find the changes in DNA that lead to diseases, and ways to fight these diseases. This was CSI’s first lab of the year with the Intro Biology students, and we look forward to more as the year goes on.
This week’s news broadcast from The Community School was researched, written, produced and anchored by students Faith Coleman and Jacob Cougle.