Week in Review: Moratorium Edition

Another week has zipped right along over here in the library. We’re going to blame the warmer weather. Isn’t it delightful? We think so. We also had a boatload (a real, scientific measurement, just ask any of the science teachers) of activity going on within your favorite glass-box-full-of-books on campus.

On Tuesday we had our Teen Read Week Raffle Winner lunch for Keerti and her three pals. They enjoyed a quiche, salad, and some ginormous brownies.

We also had a Spanish poetry contest in the library. High School students (and some Lower School students!) read poems in Spanish to the delight of all. They even had a special guest judge—a reporter from Univision! We were slightly relieved that she did not bring a camera with her (we’re still recovering from our minute of fame during Polyglot “Cat in the Hat”).

On Thursday we had chaos the Sophomore Moratorium. Sophomores piled into the library and worked hard researching and taking notes for their Sophomore Projects. Ms. J and Ms. Fels doled out quesadillas during lunch, which were much needed to carb up for the remainder of the school day.

Friday Ms. Burns brought in her 7th Grade Science class to research plants for the annual Renaissance Faire. We love these books in particular because they…well…they have pretty covers. Can ya blame us?

And at the end of the day on Friday, Glass Knife staffers worked hard to set up for the ~*nighttime*~ Speakeasy. Your narrator would post photos of this, but it has not happened yet and she lost the keys to the Tardis (typical), so instead here is a photo of a few of the staff members caught prepping for the evening of poetry:

Your Week in Review: Worldly Edition

While nothing may top the excitement we all had for Polyglot “Cat in the Hat” on Tuesday, it’s been a pretty fun week here in the library!

Wednesday we had a Leadership Lunch, where Jenny, America, Akilan, and Manson told us about teaching for Breakthrough over the summer. They shared their experiences and offered advice for other students that might want to apply to the program. Adolfo and Ying even made guest appearances to support their staff (shout out to Ying, especially, for stopping by before leaving us to go on maternity leave!).

And on Thursday, Ms. Melinson’s lovely and lively advisory took part in the Passport Lunch with Rice Around the World! Each advisee brought in a unique rice dish to share with “passport holders” during lunch. Ms. Melinson donned her fancy apron (Mollie did, too!) and made a yummy fried rice before the festivities so it would be piping hot and fresh. We’re pretty sure that everyone was feeling a bit of food coma after their worldly food tours.

U.S. President George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Harper Lee, author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” in the East Room of the White House in Washington on November 5, 2007. (UPI Photo/Roger L. Wollenberg)

And lastly, we received the sad news that Harper Lee passed away. Any of our High School students and many of our alumni who attended our Middle School had the distinct pleasure of learning about Ms. Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird from our own Lauren LaMay. Ms. LaMay’s favorite quote from the book is the same as Ms. Melinson’s: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Harper Lee taught us all so much about life, love, courage, and justice. For that we will be forever grateful to her.

If you’d like to read more about Harper Lee, feel free to stop by the library; in addition to copies of To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, we also have a book about her life written by one of Mollie’s friends/professors from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Kerry Madden, called Harper Lee: A Twentieth-Century Life.

Polyglot Cat in the Hat

 

On Tuesday we were pleased to host our annual Polyglot reading of Cat in the Hat. Organized by Ms. Batarseh, our Polyglot event goes along with our celebration of World Cultures Week. We had around 50 High School students and faculty members read stanzas of the classic book in 27 different languages! In addition to languages such as French, German, Arabic, and Japanese, we were also delighted by Mr. Mangold’s reading in ASCII code, and Ms. Fels’s contribution in diagrammed sentences! Pretty cool, eh? We think so. We also had SCDS alum Chris Springer read a passage to us via video in Estonian, and Ms. Batarseh’s daughter Skyped her passage in Arabic all the way from Bethlehem!

This year we did something a little different—we invited the Second Grade class to be spectators. Here’s a great photo that Ms. Covey snapped of one of our HS readers, Saachi, with one of our adorable Second Grade pals. While Saachi read her passage in Hindi, Ms. Melinson and Ms. Covey caught a glimpse of the little gal just absolutely thrilled to see someone speaking a language she recognized and probably didn’t expect to hear at school! We’re pretty sure that Saachi has now reached rock star status.

The Second Graders weren’t our only special visitors. The folks over at KCRA came over to film it for a news segment! So maybe we all got a taste of rock star status yesterday! To continue World Cultures Week, we’re looking forward to the Passport Lunch tomorrow and an assembly on Friday. We hear there will be Brazilian dancing. We can’t wait!

Your Week in Review: Chocolate! Edition!

Who loves chocolate? We love chocolate! Is it true? We do! We do! (Sorry—we got a little excited about that one). On Monday we hosted our very first chocolate tasting. Not unlike a coffee cupping, our chocolate tasting offered folks a chance to try a variety of different chocolates and jot down the flavor notes for each. From single-origin craft chocolates to M&Ms, we had a lot of different choices! We offered many faculty favorites as well (shout out to Dr. Bell’s favorite kind: “the bitterer, the betterer!”), but in the end our tallies showed that students preferred the milk chocolate varietals over the darker chocolates. Is bitterer really betterer? Maybe we should have another chocolate tasting to find out…

…And with a large-scale chocolate-tasting comes leftovers! On Tuesday during lunch, we had a “coloring and chill” session featuring some of our finest (and sassiest) coloring books, offered up with a hearty side of chocolate!

Going right along with our very sweet-themed week, Glass Knife had their 857th annual Love/Hate Valentine’s Day bake sale. For the romantics, we had ooey-gooey cookies, and for the haters, we had “dirt and worms” and some black heart cookies. We’re not biased, though, we loved eating all of it!

The MOGAI Club sold handmade Valentine’s Day cards on Tuesday and Thursday outside the library, with proceeds going to the Sacramento LGBT Center. The cards were all made by members of the MOGAI club, and we especially loved the extra-sassy cards!

On Thursday we hosted the lunch for Lia K, our winner from the Teen Read Week/Banned Books Week raffle. Lia and 3 of her pals enjoyed a souptastic meal from Boudin, provided by Ms. Melinson:

Whew! And to send you all off on a lovely three-day weekend, we’d like to share with you pretty much one of the coolest videos we’ve ever seen. Click here. You’re welcome.

After that video blows your mind, head over to Wired to read all about the physics/science behind the video. Because, seriously. How did they do that?!

Week in Review: We Had a Baby (Shower)!

 

It’s been a pretty adorable week here in the library. We like to think that we maintain a certain level of cute/quirky/fun in the library, but this week we were off the charts. You may have noticed all the bright polka dots all over the library the last couple of days… but why? First, let’s go over some of the other fun stuff we had going on on this side of campus. Here’s your week in review!

At the beginning of the week we served up some delightful cups of tea (Ms. Nellis and her Minion were happy to share a cup). She also brought in her History 9 classes this week to do research for an ancient American culture project, where students compared and contrasted other ancient cultures that they’ve studied so far.

Wednesday we had our monthly book club, where we discussed a variety of genres and authors and a few exciting new titles we’ve added to the library collection. Oh yeah, and we had brownies and hot apple cider. Because that’s how we roll.

And finally…the reason the library was especially adorable this week: we hosted a celebratory baby shower for Ying, our Breakthrough Program Coordinator, as she and her husband Peter are adding a sweet little addition to their family. We polka-dotted the library and enjoyed a lot of ooo‘s and ahhh’s over the amazingly cute Cal Bears banner that Carol made. We want a thousand of them for future use. Just saying.

February Book Club

On Wednesday we had a nice crowd for our lovely lunch time book club, with brownies and hot apple cider to fuel the discussions.

Ms. Melinson was excited to share Bellweather Rhapsody, a book that she started reading over summer and didn’t really get into until recently—but she reached a point where the book was so compelling that she had to finish it immediately! She also mentioned our current display in the library featuring Book List Editor’s Choice winners for 2016. We have a considerable amount of these books in our collection, and more on the way!

We talked about a few of the new books we’ve added to the collection in the past few days, and one of them was recommended by our very own Josh F.: Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words. Josh appreciated the funny nature of this book, and everyone agreed that it was delightful in its whimsy and a fantastic resource for learning otherwise complicated science.

This month’s book club featured a variety of topics spanning across various genres, from the sci-fi/horror world of Welcome to Night Vale, to the beautiful scenic descriptions of the western US in The Whistling Season, to coming of age novels like She’s Come Undone. Amelia recommended Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the author of We Should All Be Feminists. Ms. Melinson mentioned an amazing TED Talk the author gave about writing about her own culture. Check out the talk below! And also check out our Goodreads page for a list of all titles recommended during book club.