Traditionally, Notre Dame celebrates its Feast Day in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes, the parish where our school began in New York City. This year's celebration on February 18th will be a Zoom tribute; and our Anne's Leaders peer mentorship group has been hard at work all month in preparation, along with hands-on help from School President
Sr. Virginia and Music Director Nicole Wakabayashi.
ND juniors are responsible for presenting the story of Anne de Xainctonge's life, beginning with her early days in France, where she was privileged to be educated by her parents. Drama shifts to her driving desire to provide the kind of schools available to boys to girls, as well and to her rejection of marriage options (usually hilariously portrayed by our students as desperate Xavier, LaSalle, and St. Peter's students). Final scenes show Anne founding the Sisters of St. Ursula, who in turn founded Notre Dame. This year younger Anne will be played by Natalie Nguyen and adult Anne by Maya Perez. In keeping with tradition, the show will feature popular music with fresh lyrics to tell the story of this influential woman.
In addition to this familiar narrative, Notre Dame students will also be sharing, via video interviews and presentations, some of the exciting project-based learning they have been engaged with this past semester. Ninth grade English students, with the guidance of their teacher, Ms. Kane, have written creatively about and depicted visually the struggles and the power of marginalized communities. You can see a sample of their work below.
Ms. Davenport's tenth grade studio art class members created activist art relief prints on topics of their choice. They will showcase their causes and creations in the video to be shown on February 18th.
Seniors in Mr. Vasey's Global Inequalities class read Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond and were asked to explore any component of housing inequality that interested them during the unit and create a custom QR code that takes viewers to a self-produced video when scanned with a smartphone. You can view one of those videos below!
Putting together this special day has meant many meetings and lots of effort on the part of Anne's Leaders, especially group leaders Veronica Hunt '22 and Susan Salgado '22. Our school's Broadcast Club has also pitched in to assist with video production. We'll share the results of their efforts on our YouTube channel after the event--please stay tuned!
