All That Jazz!

The first day of All That Jazz we discussed when jazz emerged. Then went on to discussing and listening to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. We began to compare both of the musicians; how Ellington is classy and traditional with his music. Armstrong is a showman and, with his smile, he could make anyone happy. We started talking about how jazz style is changing; for example, Ellington had a drum in his orchestra for the first time. Swing music was one of the largest effects on the style change in jazz. Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw were both clarinetists that influenced swing music. Today is also Mardi Gras so to celebrate we discussed the music played most commonly in New Orleans.

Amalia ’14

Girls Can Be Superheroes

Today in Girls Can Be Superheroes we made a list of qualities that one would find in a heroine.  Many qualities, such as smart, accepting, and strong fell into this category.  We decided to make a list of movies with female characters that did or did not model these traits, and then watch the movies and study these characters.  We chose movies like The Avengers, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, or Ghostbusters, and even TV shows like Xena: The Warrior Princess.

Today in class we watched The Avengers.  The Avengers had one strong female role in it, played by Scarlett Johanson, called Black Widow.  After watching the movie we concluded that Black Widow was overly suggestive, manipulative, and dependent on the men around her.  We decided that Black Widow was not the type of heroine that any of us would want to become.  We then watched Xena, and decided that although the show was pretty out of date, that Xena was a strong, independent character.  After this we watched most of The Hunger Games.  We found Katniss Everdeen to be independent and cunning, despite her quiet exterior.  We will continue to watch and analyze movies like these for the rest of class, and then we will create our own heroine based on the heroic qualities we like the most.

Wintermission ’13 Creating New Connections

Welcome to the Foxcroft Wintermission Term blog! As many of you know, this is the second year of a new process oriented one-week term to shake things up and give students an opportunity to learn in a different context outside the structures of academic disciplines and the usual seven-sector day. Students will be involved in lots of hands-on endeavors like writing, directing, and producing a film; designing a fitness component for our Cross Country Course; experiencing total immersion yoga at Yogaville near Charlottesville, and learning the chemistry of candy- why is fudge different from taffy? These are just examples from the extensive menu of possibilities that tempted students to sign up. We are hoping for our girls to develop new tastes for learning and to realize their own capacity to incorporate formerly unknown flavors. There are innumerable options during this week for students to embrace a new idea or intellectual realm that will help them show their versatility and mastery to prospective colleges or to serve as a personal and powerful theme for a college application essay.

Since we are all moving in different directions: to Washington for the National Gallery, to the historic Jefferson Theatre in Charlottesville for a concert by The Punch Brothers, to Burke Lake Park in Fairfax to experience a fully operational fitness course, and to Huntsville, Alabama to experience the weightlessness of Space Camp, we have launched this blog and have invited each class to share what’s happening throughout the week. We expect this to be a lively and quickly changing feast of discoveries, new points picked up, passions, and the occasional frustration. We invite you to follow us on our journey, and to post your comments as part of the narrative of Wintermission 2013 as it evolves during the week.

Wintermission Blasts into the Blogosphere!

What a great journey in words and images we’ve created in our Wintermission blog.   Everyone was busy traveling to New York for an encounter with Broadway and a chance meeting with Donald Trump, or to  D.C., or to a local farm,  or a National Historic Site, or a South American Restaurant, and, of course, to museums that give in depth coverage to The News, American Indians, the Holocaust, and the broad sweep of art history.  Each day, on campus, our Generation Bake Shops produced delectable cakes and goodies, all of which had important family connections,  our Forgotten Foxcroft class made amazing discoveries like finding out that the front door of Brick House was actually the back door when it was the manor house of  Locust Lawn, and realizing why we dream and what might be revealed by what we dream.  This process and experienced-based learning can be fun, but it is also sometimes stressful, sometimes frustrating, and often reveals knowledge and methods that weren’t even imagined  when the “edu-train” left the station.  Far more of our learning as we grow and mature happens outside of the four walls of a traditional classroom than ever happens within it. To connect our rigorous academic curriculum with some time devoted to exploring and expanding our horizons can only enrich the total experience that a girl has as she builds her own plans and passions out of the ideas and inspirations that she gains from her total Foxcroft education.  This first Wintermission is over, but its influence on those who created and experienced it has just begun.  Now- the planning starts for Wintermission 2013  or  Take Two-  Bring it on and please share your ideas with us as our faculty/student committee constructs the next episode!

Becoming a Zuckerberg

On thursday the 16th, The How to Become A Zuckerberg class learned how to program a website with picutures and text. We Controlled every part of the website, down to how big the picutres were. Everyone in the class made their own version of the website, but Olivia was on a roll and had a lot of interesting and cool things on her website. We used pictures that we took during the SAS trip, and pictures we found off the internet. Cat found a lot of good pictures! We sat re-designing the website for the entire class period and had a lot of fun!

-Miranda McBride ’14

Welcome to our 1st Wintermission

We are only hours away from our first Wintermission Term! As many of you know, we have designed a totally new process-oriented one-week term  to shake things up and give students an opportunity to learn in a different context outside the traditional construct of academic disciplines and the seven-sector day.  Students will be involved in lots of hands-on endeavors like writing, directing and producing a film; working with SAS programming to launch a website; experiencing New York City as their classroom as they see Broadway plays and audition on a real New York stage; and experimenting and discovering how chemistry is the very essence of cooking as well as concocting  Harry Potter-type potions and then taking things learned to create teaching modules that they will use with elementary students.  These are just three chunks of our large learning iceberg (after all, it is WINTERmission) that is centered on students taking responsibility in shaping and creating their own opportunities to build knowledge.  We are hoping to not just float along, but to challenge old ideas and break the mold that students often tacitly accept that learning is confined to a classroom and is someone else’s job to make happen. There are innumerable options during this week for students to embrace a new idea, method or intellectual realm that will help them show their versatility and mastery to prospective colleges or serve as a personal and powerful theme for a college or internship application essay.

Since we are all moving in different directions: to Washington for the Holocaust Museum and the National Gallery, to Leesburg for a tour and a talk with the director of Morven Park,  to Chantilly to eat and learn about Latin American food from a Peruvian restaurant owner, and, of course, to Honduras to help in a school and learn about snorkeling/diving and dolphins, we have launched this blog and have invited each class to share what’s happening throughout the week.  We expect this to be a lively and quickly changing feast of discoveries, new points picked up and passions, and the occasional frustration.  We invite you to follow us on our inaugural journey, and post your comments to become a part of the community discussion and narrative of Wintermission 2012 as it evolves throughout the week.