… keeps going around. During the end-of-term portfolio project in our senior honors class, Turning Toward Home: Personal Narrative Writing, Ellie asked about the peer consult requirement. “Could I work with Jackson?” Jackson graduated last June and three months later traded small town Thacher for big city UMichigan. We’d worked together during much of his Thacher […]
Archives: Joy Sawyer Mulligan
Senior Moment
Fortuitous intersection: I discovered through my English IV Honors students that those of them in AP Psychology were studying Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory just as freshmen in English read the middle chapters of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. (In these pages, the young girl must find her way back to emotional and psychological wholeness after a brutal sexual assault.)
Local Fare
Our Bon Appetit baker Robin Riley has been at it again: Seven-Layer Bars. You could prefix that with “Killer” or “Epic” and not be charged with exaggeration. My New Year’s Resolution, made at least twice annually, is not to go there, or, if I must pass through the Strait of Desserts, it’s got to be […]
Biophilia & pass the marshmallows!
Snow and sand — lots of Thacher students and faculty sped off to mountains or seashore (or points slightly closer by) this past Friday and Saturday for a night or two away. Thanks to the efforts principally of Joe Bell, School Chair 2011-12, it was a rare no-homework weekend given over to the thing we […]
Maximum
“Hey, Ms. Mully. I have a question about Winter Alumni Weekend. Would you please call me back?” Stefanie–an advisee from what seems like about eight or nine years ago but isn’t–had left a message on our phone during the holiday break. Maybe it was the recording, but to my ears she sounded exactly like the […]
Getting out of the way
Last week and this, English IV Honors: Turning Toward Home met for Thursday’s class in my living room. We move here when I feel that the seminar table in Room C is too vast an ocean of oak, when I sense the students are not connecting across it as powerfully as I want for them–and […]
Seasonal
For most people, “skeletons in the closet” is purely metaphoric. Not in our house. I just pitched the last of the uncarved Halloween pumpkins into a cardboard box for pig fodder; earlier, I braved our basement to root around for the red-berry wreath that hangs out front at this time of year. Now, to the […]
Room C Serendipity
It was Tuesday night of Portfolio week for my seniors, and I was planted at the Room C table with my laptop and my tall cup of tea, ready to help any of my English IV students who wanted a little guidance on their essay revisions. Along towards 7:30–the start of Study Hall, which is […]
“The dog ate my homework”? Sooo last year.
The research our Head of School shared at Assembly last Friday–that multi-tasking actually and significantly reduces productivity and effectiveness–was clearly lost on this freshman. Still, he provided me with the best excuse I’ve ever had from a student, hands-down, for not having done the reading. Hello Ms. Mulligan! This may sound very strange and stupid, […]
Family Weekend: Advice to the Newbies
Before further discussion of Holden Caulfield’s “Sleep tight, ya morons!” goodbye to Pencey Prep, and to get my 9th graders fully into their English minds last period on Tuesday, I rattled them out of their seats and asked them trot around the room on imaginary horses. It was my way of defusing one student’s answer […]