Summer Inspiration at My Studio in Korea
By Julia Seo, V Form
Art to me has always represented freedom: an escape from my daily life and a way to express myself. As an artist, I am very passionate about drawing food. It gives me happiness and joy. Plus, I really enjoy eating! It is interesting to look at food that we consume in daily life in my own unique perspective and express it through colorful drawings. When I draw or paint, I try to use as many colors as I can to make my creations vivid and lively. I am intrigued by the exploration of my own color combinations and style when composing.
Over the summer, our assignment as Advanced Studio artists was to make two mark-making drawings (the idea of showing the style of lines used to create the piece) by pencil or colored pencil and two other pieces for our (more…)
Iran’s Demographic Transition Gone Wrong
By Katie Fuller, VI Form
In order to understand trends in population growth, it helpful to understand the theory of demographic transition. It consists of five stages representing various population growth rates in a particular country. The first stage concerns a pre-industrial country. As you can see in Figure 1, both the birth and death rates are high, which causes the overall population growth to stay low. In Figure 1, each column correlates with a stage in the demographic transition. In stage 2, as the country develops, medical care improves so the death rate decreases. However, the birth rate remains high, causing major population growth, or a population explosion. In stages 3 and 4, the country continues to develop, education improves, women have careers, and urbanization occurs. A combination of these developments causes the birth rate to decrease and the population growth slows. (more…)
Interwoven Dynamics
By Torie Shakespeare, VI Form
Music achieves success in its ability to connect. People listen to music that they enjoy and select particular songs; those songs can unwrap feelings, replay memories, and attach to human’s lives. Music was prominent on this earth before language existed. It appeared as a primitive source of expression, and this simultaneous birth of musical expression and the human race is not a coincidence. It is a synchronicity, an event that cannot be explained by fate or concurrence, during which humans and music interwove with a significant connection. Due to their shared beginnings, people will always have a bond with melodies and song. When listening to my iPhone’s shuffle setting, synchronicity is found between each played song’s theme and how those themes relate to aspects of my life regarding my personal relationships, future, memories, individuality, and attitude toward change.
When I go to a dinner party or family reunion, the first question any adult asks me is if I have a boyfriend. For my whole life, the (more…)
Soon To Be On Late Night T.V.? An Infomercial for Peroxisome…
By Liz Swain, VI Form
An excerpt from the Advanced Biology assignment in the classes of Ms. Berndt and Ms. Lohwater: “Cells, Inc. has hired us to write and ‘produce’ infomercials to sell its organelles. As the holiday season is coming soon, the company wants to produce a number of commercials to sell their advanced line. They are hoping that many little cells will be asking Santa for one of their organelles this holiday season. They expect that we will be able to identify their audience (plant, animal, eukaryotic, prokaryotic) and that we will be able to come up with the major “selling points” for the specific organelle.” Click this link here for the Peroxisome Commercial! (more…)
Ebola Coverage: In the News, In Our Classroom
By Kimberly Berndt, Science Department Head
Do we have the time? It is the first, last, and interminable question educators ask when considering whether they should divert from their intended plans. This question came to mind immediately when Lindsey Lohwater and I considered pausing midway through our current Advanced Biology unit in order to focus entirely on the Ebola epidemic – not for one day, but for more than one week. But, to this (somewhat) rhetorical question, my mind, or perhaps my gut, immediately responded. No, we don’t have the time– but we can’t NOT do this.
There exists a palpable tension between meeting the expectations of an Advanced curriculum and providing students with unique, relevant, and dynamic learning opportunities. The expectation that our students will be prepared to perform well on pre-designed exams, such as many AP exams, that are devoid of current events often limits the opportunities that we (more…)
Why STEM? It Is All About Problems!
By Karen Bryant, Mathematics Faculty
I was in the Reagan National Airport waiting to fly home after an exciting and intense week at the Siemens STEM Institute. Wondering why my plane was not boarding when it was leaving in less than thirty minutes, I wandered over to the windows overlooking the tarmac. There was a person standing on the back of the small vehicle used to push the plane out of the gate looking up into an opening in the plane’s nose. There were approximately twenty people standing around watching, including people in business suits, people who looked like EMTs, and the grounds crew. I stood and watched for the next several minutes and also listened to the chatter of people around me. Soon, most of the people outside left except for a few who were gesturing as they tried to figure out how to get the vehicle out from under the plane. From listening to those around me, I discovered that somehow the small truck had gone out of control and driven under the nose of the plane and was entangled in the hose that was (more…)
My Felon and I Started at the Same Place
By Mame Kane, VI Form
Yo, ma, can you put some money on my account? I heard these words quite frequently while listening to inmate calls from Rikers Island. I started my internship in the District Attorney’s office assuming that all prisoners were awful people, but by the end of my six weeks, I learned that prisoners can be truly ordinary people. I listened to 206 calls and was able to profile my assigned inmate as a decent human being. My fellow interns thought that I was insane. After all, we were listening to prisoners who were affiliated members of three notorious Upper West Side Manhattan gangs. As interns, we were each assigned to a separate inmate who was a part of Manhattan’s largest drug bust, which occurred in early June 2014. 104 members of the three Manhattan gangs were arrested on 125th Street, central Harlem, a location I visit quite frequently. (more…)
Why 4,000 Mathematicians Came to Seoul
By Ryan Lee, VI Form
This summer, the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) was held in Seoul, Korea. Lasting ten days, ICM 2014 started on August 13th. Over four thousand mathematicians from around the world came to Seoul to share information on research studies on mathematics and congratulate the mathematicians getting the Fields Medal. (Fields Medal is an award for mathematicians that is similar to the prestige of the Nobel Prize; it is awarded to four people not over the age of forty.) The Seoul ICM consisted of hundreds of lectures as well as numerous booths. The lectures ranged from some well-known fields such as number theory, combinatorics, geometry, and algebra to less familiar topics such as lie theory and topology. Many famous academic publishers such as the (more…)
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