Last weekend, squeezed in somehow between camping trip preparation meetings, Spring Sing, and the last coffee house of the year, I managed to grab a few hours, a Suburban, and seven eager sophomores for a quick trip to Los Angeles to take in some culture. Our destination: my friend, Thacher classmate, and advisee’s father Johannes […]
As the U.S. Supreme Court convenes this week to hear oral arguments on a number of important issues, the History Department launched a new elective course titled “Decisive Moments in United States History.” The course is modeled after the popular Science and Society course offered in the Winter Trimester. It is being team taught by […]
. We are only two weeks into the spring athletic term, but students in the Advanced Climbing Program have been hard at work accruing vertical mileage on the rocks and, you may be surprised, cleaning our local boulders for the climbing season. To say “cleaning” is to be somewhat poetic, since the pruning and sawing of fast-growing […]
Armed with warm clothes, skis, snowboards and a cardboard box overflowing with burritos and fried chicken for the 7 hour drive, 55 students and faculty clamored aboard a bus last Friday after classes for a weekend ski trip to Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada. Rain and snow fell steadily throughout the drive, bringing 8 […]
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 […]
Dr. Delvecchio and I just finished day #2 with our new freshmen historians. We’re also on day #2 of a bit of an experiment this year. Instead of following the well-worn path of the traditional European history survey, we’re revamping the curriculum by creating thematic units that invite students to connect a “moment” in European […]
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 […]
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 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, […]
I’ve been spending most afternoons this fall with Thacher’s team of Percheron work horses, Pancho and Pedro, who have performed nobly since they moved here from Meredith Bressie’s (CdeP 1994) ranch in Montana six years ago. In the fall and winter terms since then, small groups of Thacher students have learned to harness, hitch, and […]