This was a short week, but it was packed full of a completely wild and random excitement. The big thing was all of the human development and drug abuse education classes, which the class was so excited and not at all uncomfortable about (complete sarcasm). In all honesty, however, the class did great at having mature and challenging conversations about topics that are vitally important, even if it was mixed with a bit of uncomfortable laughter. The other big excitement during the week was definitely Field Day today. It was a blast for me to work with the younger students as well as see the class moving and playing everything from Water Balloon fights to relay races to wheelbarrow races. This is always a fun time and it was a delight sharing it with the class. We’ve got two days left, so please make sure your child is practicing for the program and ready to end the year in style!

CONGRATS TO OUR GRADS!!!! It was a wonderful honor to share graduation with our 8th graders on Thursday night. The speeches were incredible, the honor guard was awesome, and the slideshows were HILARIOUS. It is always such a delight to see everyone dressed up and celebrating what it means to be a Plato Scholar. Great job everyone, from the grads to the classmates to the parents!

This week we also had a paper airplane competition that several students got deeply invested in. We had multiple people following tutorials, hosting multiple rounds of trials, even a little industrial espionage. In the end, Christos won for our classroom round and competed today against the winners from the rest of the school. In the finals, he did well, getting second place overall behind an absolutely STUNNING performance by Leo T. in Ms. Beth’s class. This is our second year and the designs just keep getting better.

As a final note, I wanted to let everyone know that I will not be returning to Plato next year. I am planning on returning to grad school myself with the ultimate goal of becoming a professor of education and possibly stepping into school leadership. I am still going to be a part of the Plato family by joining the school board, but I will obviously be around a lot less. While this was a really hard decision, I know that I am leaving behind a wonderful classroom that will rise to any challenge. Thank you for a wonderful school year!

We’re back and we had a wonderful time! I hope you enjoyed our updates and checked out the full photo album from our Springfield trip. There were a few incredible highlights, like visiting the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. The Museum was full of incredible exhibits, historical documents, and thought-provoking history. I heard so many discussions about the material and how to think about it. It was great seeing them apply what they already knew to this museum.

The other huge highlight of the trip was visiting the Capitol. The class was stunned by the grandeur and history of the building. We discussed the art we saw and the symbolism of various pieces. Even better, we were able to meet with Senator Murphy and Representative Moylan, both of whom discussed what their job was like. The class asked a number of insightful questions and learned so much. It was especially neat to see politicians discussing the new Bears stadium in the halls, which helped the class learn a lot about how politics works. This was an eye-opening experience and I hope it inspired a few kids to think about how they can be involved in government at various levels.

The final piece I want to discuss about our trip isn’t the trip itself, but how the class returned. Today they went around and shared what they learned with the entire school, and it was wonderful to see. They took it so seriously, curating photos, looking up informational sources, and divying up parts. This is where Plato really shines; they know it isn’t enough to do great things, they need to be able to share them with others. There were so many students looking up to them, excited to hear more and looking forward to their own trips. I could not be more proud of our ambassadors and scholars. Great job everyone!

What a stellar week! One of the highlights was certainly making our Mother’s day gifts, as it prompted a lot of conversations about what we love in our moms and how cute our baby pictures were. More seriously, this was part of our continuing project work, which has the class spray painting, building sprawling museums, and using gallons of paint. This was a busy week in the classroom and I loved hearing the hum of activity all week.

Another big part of the week (continuing on the theme of projects) was taking part in the Greektown sculpture. This is a Plato tradition and it was great seeing it come together in the lobby. It has a little bit from everyone in the school, from the smallest preschooler to our middle schoolers. Many thanks to Ms Giselle for helping with the painting and planning of the piece, it looks great! As part of this, the class studied Kandinsky, both his use of color and the broader history of abstract art. This is something that inspired many people to create complex, challenging pieces that we were also able to display down in the lobby.

Finally, I want to take a second to celebrate our Law Day winners. It was an absolute honor seeing our students participate and read their essays (especially as it helped the other schools appreciate the deep research and thought put into the essays). Everyone did a great job reading and I received multiple compliments from the judges and the Hellenic Bar members. Congrats to our winners and best of luck to everyone next year!

We’re off to Springfield this week, let’s go!

I admit, I don’t know precisely what happens, but I can confirm that it was a great week for us. As part of our whole school read of Wish Tree, we hung up our class wishes out on the tree out front. It has been fun reading the same thing as the rest of the school, while also getting the opportunity to dive deeper with essays about the themes of the book. (It was also a nice change of pace from Ancient Greek Drama). We’re wrapping it up next week, which means we’re getting even closer to the end of the year!

Another noteworthy piece of our week was the class tackling trickier pieces of grammar and writing, like figurative language and prepositional phrases. It is always nice to integrate these as the summation of our year, as it allows us to reference the ways these have been used in the readings we’ve already done, making the learning relevant and useful. The class did great and I’m excited to continue developing these skills next week.

A final piece that I’m excited to highlight is the Museum of You that everyone is creating. This is a massive project, pushing the class to represent various concepts and information mastered this year. We really had people digging through their binders and notes to reference their favorite works. This not only helps the class reiterate their knowledge, it also helps develop their metacognition, thinking  about their own thinking and what they have learned.  These are heavy projects, but the class made some great maps and are well on their way as architects!

Hello everyone, excited to share a few updates from this week with you! The big news is rather obviously the winners of our Law Day Competition: Lily Garceau, Eliya Skonecke, Konstantina Vagias, and Marie Skonecke. Our visiting lawyer, Nickolas Pappas, had nothing but good things to say about the essays as a whole, and I am proud of the work the class did on them. Our winners will be going to a courtroom in the Daley Center in a few weeks to be honored and recite their essays, which is an incredible opportunity for them to show their excellence. Great job to everyone and good luck next year!

Another piece of the week I want to highlight is the way the class has embraced our end of the year preparations. Whether that is focusing during Greek Dance, practicing our songs together, planning our trips, or writing up speeches for the graduates, the entire class seems focused and determined this year. It can be hard to stay focused as the weather (hopefully) warms up, but I want to commend everyone on their work and say I hope we can keep it up. We have a lot of testing, performances, and trips coming up, so we need to keep pushing until the very end!

Finally, I want to shout out the incredible math work everyone has been doing. We’ve been doing a year review and wrap up, and I was impressed by their performance on the exam this Friday. The class average was over 80% on material pulled directly from the HSPT and we had a number of students score perfect or nearly perfect scores! I’m going to continue pulling students in small groups to make sure any remaining gaps are filled, and I encourage you to make sure your child is using their math and reading minutes effectively, just so they are able to be prepared. Great job everyone and let’s do even better next time!

What a wild week! The highlight was clearly going to the Hellenic Museum to read book 2 of the Odyssey. It was such a thrill to take part in the oration and have our students be recognized for their work and persistence. We were even interviewed for the Chicago Sun Times, which was also a treat. Great job to everyone and thanks to the Greek teachers for helping out on this project!

Another huge highlight of the week was our work on the Battle of the Books. This was the finale and it really was a nail-biter. It came down to less than 2 questions separating the top teams, a true testament to the close reading and hard work of our scholars. These projects are valuable not just for the content the students learn, but also the teamwork, strategic thinking, and persistence they gained along the way. I am deeply proud of all our competitors and congratulate our winners, Beauty and Brains!

Finally, I want to shout out all the students on the projects they are wrapping up and the large scale thinking I saw this week. We have people tackling movies, posters, dioramas, sprawling family trees, even board games to represent their thinking. I really pushed the class to swing for the fences on these projects and they have. We have another jam-packed week coming up, so I am excited to see them wrap up the projects and start on something even better!

Our write up in the Sun Times: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2023/4/21/23693095/greek-students-read-odyssey-national-hellenic-museum-greektown-chicago-homerathon-homer

Here’s the full videos of everyone reading their sections from the Hellenic Museum: https://photos.app.goo.gl/SqBnmuPbtRJNdz8Z8

I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend, even if the weather doesn’t know what it wants to do. In any case, the week was an absolute delight and I am excited to tell you about the Battle of the Books! This was the first round and all our teams did great! With 4 teams advancing to the finals, it is wild to think about how all the teams averaged over an 80%, a great showing from every team! It was wonderful to see the camaraderie, competition, and determination demonstrated by students across the entire second floor, so great job everyone!

Another highlight of the week was another visit from Ms. Emma with the History Center. This week we carved bas reliefs, a style of sculpture common in Greek art. This was a challenge, partly because the class hasn’t done much carving, but also because it was a struggle to pick which symbolic elements to represent. After studying some Classical examples, we had everything from suns to tridents to even a few apples. It was a challenging project, but, since they were carved out of soap, it had the benefit of leaving our classroom smelling very fresh and clean.

A final piece to highlight this week is our preparation for the Homerathon. This is also a reminder that your child should be practicing their section at home, it is on the Google classroom if they don’t have it. I am excited for the students to share their oration this week at the Hellenic Museum; it is wonderful to have so many opportunities for the class to demonstrate their abilities. We also had Law Day essays turned in this week, which I’m sure was a huge relief to the entire class. We’re continuing at a bit of sprint, so keep going everyone, we’ve got this!

We’re back and we’re working hard on a million projects! This week the class really dove into their Law Days and the effort is really paying dividends. Students are researching news articles, analyzing environmental data, and even reading through Supreme Court cases! The class is writing all about environmental legislation, and it is fascinating to see how the diversity of positions they are taking. This is always a challenging writing assignment, but I’m excited to see how it turns out.

This week we also spent a lot of time working through our Odyssey final projects. These projects will take multiple weeks, so we are still in planning and rough draft stages, but I could not be more excited about the ideas I’m seeing developed. We have a literal family TREE, we have armories, we have a board game, we even have some poetic odes being composed. This has been our largest and most sprawling exploration yet, so I can’t wait to share these completed projects with you! As part of this work, we also had Ms. Emma from the Des Plaines History Center come in to help us explore different parts of Ancient Greece. To help us understand their scientific work, the class built and examined an Archimedes’ Screw, as well as building their own variations on the Trojan Horse. While it was great to build these projects, at least for me personally it was also a delight to share our expertise with another adult and see how impressed they were (but that might have been my own vanity!). Great job on all these explorations folks!

A final piece I wanted to highlight is all the upcoming work we have. At home, please make sure that your child is practicing their part for the Homerathon, an event where we will be reciting the text of Book 2 of the Odyssey. We are working to not just read, but RECITE the piece, looking to build their enunciation and diction as well as their dramatic chops. We are also prepping for multiple other events, like our service projects, any upcoming trips, and even getting started on End of the Year planning. The class is also preparing for our second round of Battle of the Books. There are a lot of irons in the fire right now, so please help your child by reminding them to stay on top of their priority and get all the work done that they can! We’re in the final term, so let’s end it strong!

Hey everyone, what a wonderful week. The highlight was certainly the return of Leo and the celebration we had on Friday. It was great having him back in the classroom, as well as the ways the class rose to the challenge of running their service project. There was an incredible amount of laughter and joy from every class that visited us, and I am so proud of the way the class helped out. While I have a few pictures attached at the bottom, I suggest looking in the full album that was included in the email from the office, there are some great ones in there as well!

Another piece of the week that was wonderful  to see was the class making more progress on their ancient Greek pottery. This week they transitioned to making painted sketches, which really challenged their precision and attention to detail. While it is one thing to sketch a design with a pencil, painting it is even tougher, which is why it was a great preparation for their work on the pottery next week. This is going to be quite a challenge, but I can’t wait to see how they do!

A final piece of the week I wanted to draw attention to was the leadership day that some of our 6th graders attended. While the older students attended theirs a few weeks ago, the 6th graders had theirs on Thursday and I heard nothing but good reports. We had students that presented in front of a room of people, students that made friends from other schools, and they learned a lot from the speaker. It was a bit of a scary experience, but I proud of the students that attended and am thrilled that they were able to represent us there.

We’re closing in on Spring Break, folks, so make sure we’re finishing strong and you’ve signed up for conferences!