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 The Museum was full of incredible exhibits, historical documents, and thought-provoking history.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!