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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…)
I Go Back to Limón Because of Love
By Sam Lauten, VI Form
I Go Back to Limón Because of Love
“Reading is just not a part of the culture here.” I blinked at the man standing before me, not quite sure how to respond. Five years, thousands of dollars, and dozens of hours on planes, buses, and on foot had been poured into building the “Learning Center” we now stood in. I had spent days drafting and rewriting my application to multiple grants, citing so many hopes and plans of how we were going to change so many lives bringing books and computers to the underprivileged children of Limón, Costa Rica. Now, there I was, standing in the embodiment of all of those dreams, being told that everything I had done was in vain. (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…)
Rebel Without a Cause and Juvenile Delinquency Hysteria
By Harry Kuperstein, VI Form
Rebel Without a Cause and Juvenile Delinquency Hysteria
Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean, was released in 1955, which was around the peak of the hysteria surrounding juvenile delinquency. Chapter 4 of Gilbert’s A Cycle of Outrage states that from 1953 to 1958, there was a spike in articles about delinquency. The Senate also heard cases of delinquency in 1953, some of which lasted over a decade. And, it soon became evident that movies about teenagers turning towards delinquency, likely propped up by famous icons like James Dean, became wildly popular. Over sixty films centered on the idea of juvenile delinquency were released in the 1950s (Gilbert 85). (more…)
Drawing on Our Brains: How Neuroscience and Art Can Teach Us About Learning
By Gabe Brower, VI Form
Drawing on Our Brains: How Neuroscience and Art Can Teach Us About Learning
I have yet to meet a single student at Saint Mark’s that has never crammed for an exam. They fill up their brain temporarily with information for an upcoming test in a vain attempt to not fall flat on their face the next day during their test. To be honest, it sometimes “works”, as defined by a good score, and I can speak from experience in this area. However, that doesn’t mean cramming is effective. It is the result of disengaged students and ineffective teaching methods that culminates in temporary information retention, and over the long run the crammed information isn’t retained. Therefore, no valuable learning takes place. (more…)
Race in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God: an Infographic
By Haley Dion, IV Form
Race in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God: an Infographic
We were given a project that instructed us to create an infographic on a key theme from
Their Eyes Were Watching God. My infographic focuses on the theme of race in the novel. It discusses the characters’ connections to race, the relationship between race with other themes in the book, and the presence of race throughout the chapters. I enjoyed creating this infographic because I got to look at the importance of a modern day issue in the 1920s/1930s time setting of the novel. The elements of the infographic are below or you can access the full infographic by clicking here. (more…)
Global Connections of Media and Skin
By June Seong, IV Form
Global Connections of Media and Skin
Amidst the chaos that is my life – including the future I must decide upon, the necessity to be “special,” and my attempt to make this post somewhat grammatically correct – I am struck by my simultaneous privilege and ignorance. This privilege and ignorance is exhibited through myriad ways at this very moment: 1) this dull MacBook Air that I am communicating through and that was probably configured by an underpaid or unpaid laborer; 2) the whizzing air conditioning that is breathing on my neck so that I might not die from heatstroke whilst the world scales up a few sweltering Centigrades; 3) the immensity of the world that is within computer click’s reach via Facebook. (more…)
Make Deep Work Your Superpower: Deep Work and School (Part 1)
By Dr. Colleen Worrell, Director of the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning
Make Deep Work Your Superpower: Deep Work and School (Part 1)
Want to learn complicated things quickly, be more productive, and generate higher quality work? Make Deep Work your superpower.
“Deep work” is a term coined by Georgetown University professor Cal Newport to refer to the ability to “focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task” (“Cal Newport on Deep Work”). In his newest book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2016), Professor Newport argues persuasively that the ability to do deep work is the superpower of the 21st century. By training your ability to focus and by actively carving out time “for real intense focused work,” Newport argues that we can train our brains and cultivate habits that build a (more…)
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