TCS Student News October 18, 2019
October 18, 2019
This week’s news broadcast from The Community School was researched, written, produced and anchored by students Salma Ruiz-Cruz and Olivia Yates.
This week’s news broadcast from The Community School was researched, written, produced and anchored by students Salma Ruiz-Cruz and Olivia Yates.
This morning we kicked off the first session of our Young Playwrights seminar series, sponsored by Baltimore Center Stage. The Young Playwrights Festival is a yearly event hosted by Center Stage in which hundreds of students grades K-12 write and submit a 10-minute play for review. Finalists whose plays are chosen get to revise their plays with a playwright mentor, and the plays are performed professionally. This year, the theme that the student plays must include is “Seize the Day”. The plays must also incorporate a ball, a wall, and a fall. These criteria may be incorporated literally or metaphorically into the story/props.
As participants in the Young Playwrights seminar, TCS students will be reading their scripts out loud at the end of the seminar series in addition to submitting their work to the competition. To prepare the TCS students to read and submit their original plays, our instructor Parker Matthews will lead 9 seminar sessions focusing on creative writing, self expression, and storytelling. Using a combination of acting exercises and lectures/brainstorming activities, Mr. Parker will teach the students about the elements of a good play to help them get started writing their own. Mr. Parker, originally from Oregon, is a teacher, actor, storyteller, and mime. His training is very physically engaged and he will be incorporating many physical activities into the seminar classes.
The class today started with a gesture game to learn names. The students went around a circle saying their name in combination with a gesture, and the rest of the students would copy the gesture and say the name. Then, they did an activity called “this is not”. The students passed around an object, like a tennis racket, and declared, “this is not a tennis racket, this is a ___” while acting out whatever object they pretended to have. Next, Mr. Parker reviewed the seminar guidelines- everyone has the right to be free from emotional and physical harm, everyone has the right to express their opinions, and everyone has a responsibility to participate. These guidelines are very in line with the TCS honor code, placing importance on participation and respect.
To start thinking about writing plays the students discussed what they think a play is and what makes up a play. The students threw out ideas including emotions, acting, story, live performance, script, sound, characters, costumes, props, and sets. They also discussed the differences between characters and story. At the end of class, they played a free-association word game in which they tossed a ball around the circle and said a word that came to mind based on the last word spoken. To wrap up, the students created a three sentence story from some of the words they thought of in their brainstorming session. The first session of this unique nine week seminar really started to get our creativity flowing, and we are very excited to hear the students’ original plays in December. Thank you so much, Mr. Parker and Baltimore Center Stage for making this opportunity possible!
The GreenMount School 2nd grade class visited The Community School today to ask our students questions about our school. They have been learning a unit about schools that are unique in some way. One example they gave of a unique school they learned about was a school located on a boat to allow classes to continue to run during monsoon season. The GreenMount students came prepared, each with a clipboard and a list of questions to ask the TCS students. Their questions included, Does TCS have art and music class? How many people are in the school? What makes the school different than other high schools? Why is school important?
After the Q&A session, the freshmen and sophomores split into two groups and led the young students on tours of the school. TCS students showed and explained the function of the pantry, the greenhouse, the video studio, the curriculum room and the science and back classrooms. The GreenMount students are looking forward to see themselves included on this week’s edition TCS Student News! We loved sharing what makes our school unique with the young students, and we’re grateful for our ongoing partnership with The GreenMount School.
Express yourself and get creative! The students had an opportunity to do just that this Friday, with an hour-long freeform art session. The session was inspired by a news segment the students saw at the beginning of the week about a shared art makerspace. Today we closed the week out by creating our own art makerspace right here at TCS! Acrylic and tempera paint, glitter, glue, popsicle sticks, beads, wire, colored pencils, and markers were just some of the materials the students got to work with today. The goal of the freeform art session was for students to create a piece, or series of pieces, that they connect with or represents them in some way.
After working on their creations, the students presented the pieces to the class. There were many different reactions to the activity. Some students found the process to be calming, and liked having a quiet time to focus. Other students felt stressed because they liked their idea, but didn’t feel that they had the time or skills to implement their ideas. At the end of the process, the students had many different types of creations to show. Some students made sculptural pieces, some made drawings and paintings, and some used a combination of mediums to incorporate 3D elements on a flat page. It was great to see how each individual expressed themselves in such different ways! View the gallery here to see each student’s project!
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!