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Tag Archives: Experiential Learning
World War I Primary Sources Collection at the Library
By Marion Donovan, Assistant Librarian
World War I Primary Sources Collection at the Library
As a librarian at St. Mark’s this fall, I have begun to “weed” through our history collection and have taken a deep dive into time travel. In the past, I was a history teacher myself, so the primary sources that bring the past to life call out to me. A particular section in the library especially rich in those sources covers World War I. Both of my grandfathers fought in WWI on the Allied side, one as a doctor and the other as an engineer, so I grew up with stories and artifacts of “The Great War,” as it was first known. When I applied to graduate school for history at the University of Chicago, I discovered that La Verne Noyes, an American inventor and manufacturer of agricultural equipment, book holders, and windmills, had left the bulk of his fortune to scholarships for Allied veterans of WWI and their direct descendants. These scholarships have now expanded to include 48 colleges. April 6, 2017 will be the one-hundredth anniversary of the United States’ entry into WWI. The European side of the war began in 1914, so many newspaper and magazine articles have already examined new and old perspectives on those events. More will be coming with April 6 in view. We at St. Mark’s are lucky to have an extensive collection of first-hand material (diaries, letters, memoirs, news reports, propaganda, art, photographs) from marshals and generals to privates and civilians on wide-ranging aspects of this war. (more…)
Competing in the FIRST Robotics Challenge
By Kate Sotir, VI Form
Competing in the FIRST Robotics Challenge
Working in the basement level of the STEM building, using lots of power tools, and occasionally throwing out words like “kickoff,” “drivetrain,” or “STEAMworks,” we are FIRST team 3566, also known as Gone Fishin’.
Gone Fishin’ competes in the FIRST Robotics Competition. FIRST stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” The robotics competition, open to any high school student, was created in order to promote the STEM fields and offer a competitive yet collaborative atmosphere for robotics. In the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), teams are given a challenge, in the form of a game, and then have six weeks to build a 120 pound, $10,000 robot to meet this challenge. After those six weeks are up, teams compete in various regional events. The ultimate goal is to go to the world championship, held in St. Louis, where around 800 teams gather to play the game. (more…)
America: A Country of Apple-Eaters (Salinger’s “Teddy”)
By Minjae (Izzy) Kim, V Form
America: A Country of Apple Eaters (Salinger’s “Teddy”)
A seven-year-old child is in a math class learning simple addition and subtraction of single digit numbers. To logically approach this mathematical concept, the instructor employs the analogy of cookies; she asks, “If your mom left four cookies on the table, but your sister took two of the cookies, how many cookies can you eat?” A smart and logical child raises his hand and says, “I can eat two cookies!” and the teacher rewards him with a lollipop for correctly answering the question. However, according to Salinger, that child does not deserve a lollipop because he only answered the question logically, not spiritually. Although logic is the primary approach people take to solve most problems, in “Teddy” from Nine Stories, Salinger highlights the conflict between spirituality and logic and uses this dichotomy to guide the readers in interpreting the enigmatic epigraph. To accomplish this, Salinger kills Teddy at the end of the story to verify Teddy’s esoteric wisdom of spirituality, condemn the American view on spirituality, and usher the readers to interpret things spiritually rather than logically. (more…)
Namaste from Karanjo
By Yusra Syed, V Form
Namaste from Karanjo
My trip to India this past summer was the best decision I have ever made in my teenage years. As a youth ambassador to several charities and organizations that are actively working in India, I heard about Ekal Vidyalaya and the wonderful work that they were doing in the rural tribal areas of India. Last summer, I visited urban areas of India with other organizations and traveled with my family; however, I had never seen remote areas of India and was curious about the work Ekal does for the people living there. Their presence in the the less targeted areas of India sparked my interest, as I understood some of the challenges that India faced as a country.
Some of the challenges that India faces include: 
- Lack of Education
- Urbanization
- Limited access to Healthcare
- Gender Roles
- Lack of Sanitation
- Water Scarcity
- Financial Transparency
1-Take Video: Lactase Persistence
By Cordelia (Cricket) Dotson, V Form
Editor’s Note: The students were charged with designing an experiment to determine if five individuals were or were not lactose tolerant. After designing and completing the experiment they were given instructions on publishing the results in a 1-take video (instructions at bottom of the article).
Please click here or on the image below to see Cricket’s video on lactase persistence:
Striving for a Cure at the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research
By Katie Hartigan, VI Form
Striving for a Cure at the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research
As my eyes scanned the people seated at the conference table around me, I admired each one of them immensely. To know that I was sitting in a lab meeting with the faces behind the statistic “93% remission rate for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia” was astonishing to me. I stared up at the projector screen taking in the jargon that I partially understood, trying to decipher each scientific discovery and hoping that one day my name too would follow some great breakthrough displayed on a similar projector screen.
In the spring of my junior year, I was selected to travel to Seattle that upcoming August to work at the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. (more…)
Voice in Guitar and in Literature…and in Me
By Shep Greene, VI Form
Voice in Guitar and in Literature…and in Me
The guitar is an integral part of who I am. As my skill has progressed, I’ve seen my appreciation and understanding of music progress as well. Over this past year, I began to delve into a more abstract form of music in improvisation. Within this form of my guitar playing, I began to find striking similarities between music and literature. Imagine every note as a letter and every note coming together to form a riff, with all of the respective letters coming together as one word. By the end of a piece, just as by the end of a novel, you’ll have a powerful message to send out to your listeners and readers. (more…)
A Presentation and Role Play in Chinese Classes
By Helen Huang and Amy Kim, III Form [Chinese II] & Soo Bin (Josh) Lee and Shep Greene, VI Form [Chinese IV]
Editor’s Note: from Rubo Fu, St. Mark’s faculty member–“In Chinese class, presentations and role plays require students to use vocabulary and grammar rules they have learned to create their own stories or give opinions. This allows them to develop creativity and have a better experience using the language.”
Click on Image below for “Directional Complements” slide show in Chinese II
Click on Image below for a role play video of dialogue (transcript below) in Chinese IV
LEO 