Happy Groundhog Day! It may be rainy and grey today, but that big ol’ rodent predicts we’ll be enjoying the sunshine soon enough. The past few weeks here in the Matthews have certainly kept us on our toes.
Ms. Melinson provided tea and cookies for students on the rainiest and dreariest days we saw.
On Monday, January 8th, we hosted a Queer Joy Panel moderated by Mr. Hinojosa. Queer students, faculty, and staff spoke up about their experiences of joy. Mr. Hinojosa has organized a similar event for several years now in conjunction with the culmination of his Senior English class unit on The Laramie Project. Each year, he opens the event up to the community at large, and each year more of the the community attends. This year saw a positively packed audience. Next year might be standing room only!
The Room of Requirement saw quite a bit of club action these past few weeks. The high school restarted the Among Us club and immediately got to business sussing out the imposter. We promise it wasn’t us; in fact, we definitely saw red vent by electrical. Model UN has continued to convene as well. These *model* students sure do impress us! The Glass Knife Staff are ramping up their efforts to complete the school’s literary magazine in time for the Seniors’ last day here at Country Day.
During Finals week, the library pendulum swung between chaos and crickets faster than we could say “good luck!” to those on their way to examinations. Congratulations to the entire upper school for making it through the first semester!
Ms. Perla led several C-Day meetings to help prepare our Juniors for the ever-encroaching college application and high school graduation process. At one such meeting, she asked the students to literally visualize themselves at college through a drawing exercise. How incredible is it that the students have such a helpful guide through this grueling process?
We hosted the Sophomores for another moratorium related to the Sophomore Project. With their research papers in the rearview mirror, they are now embarking on the exciting journey to turn these papers into presentations. Students who did well on their presentations last year stopped by to offer a few tricks of the trade, including Grace who gave presenting tips from Mock Trial. In order to prepare for making the best presentations they could, Ms. Leavy had the students prepare precisely the inverse. These purposefully-horrendous projects gave everyone a good laugh.
The Leadership Lunch series continued on Wednesday, January 31st. Katie and Ishaan conducted an interview with Jenny about her semester spent at Oxbow art school.
Ms. Melinson’s advisory broke from their donut tradition; they had all kinds of other sweet treats. On February 1st, Dr. Pam attended to discuss microagressions and how to respond to them with the group.
Ms. Frandrup’s 6th grade science classes have begun their science careers research projects. They came in on several days to learn how to perform research using databases, websites, and books from Ms. Melinson and Ms. Z-S. They made sure to emphasize proper citation in their research, so these students should be well prepared for academic integrity moving forward. They also got to listen to a real life biology professor from Sac State present to them about the life of a science researcher and professor.
Next week, we’ll have three different authors visiting, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Stay tuned for updates on all our adventures here at the Matthews Library. Cheers and happy Friday! We hope you find some good dogs to pet, beautiful art to enjoy, and a cozy book to read soon 🙂
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