Hello, Creative Community,
I wish I could share what my eyes and ears have taken in around campus this week.
In the MSA classrooms, all kinds of creative juices were flowing with new projects, choreography, techniques, music, and narratives started. This afternoon, it was new relationships forming as sweet and bright-eyed applicants for next year dropped in for open studios to ask questions and get advice about MSA auditions and interviews next Saturday from current MSA student volunteers. The smiles and goodwill are contagious, and the mutual feeling of hopefulness is an antidote to stressors in our lives.
In all of our classrooms, we are proud to roll out our spring school-wide study skills monthly focus—setting an intention to understand and improve the ways we perform on challenging academic tasks. We are working on using data to goal set based on midyear formative assessments in class. We are also discussing how to stay both engaged and accountable to the learning environment—this often looks like annotating a text or taking notes—doing something active and maybe even creative with the content we learn in class. Looking for patterns. Noting dynamics. I saw it in English classes this week with poetry annotations and in Concert Band with sheet music notes. Anything to keep our young people from checking out when the going gets tough.
We invest in simple but powerful activities and techniques to bring out the best in ourselves and our community. In so doing, we try to equip our young people to handle difficult tasks and situations with skill and grace and presence. For now we savor the relative peace of sunny winter days and decisions about schoolwork and school program choices while we hope our friends, neighbors, and loved ones near and far stay safe and healthy and free while grappling with larger tensions and issues.
With so much love for all the ways we raise kind, smart, collaborative, and creative kids across our sweet community,
Michelle Cortez
MSA Director/ NHS Co-Principal
P.S. Families: we would love your skill, grace, perspective and presence in a variety of relatively peaceful and easy ways. Take two minutes to fill out the 26/27 Intent to Return Form – link here. Or a few more minutes to fill out the annual Family Survey – linked here. Got a little more time and grace? Consider joining us in planning Showcase.