Volume: 1 Issue: 2 September 2019 ......................... SHS Home  |  Alumni Page  |  SHS Reunions
A Place to Belong  is   a periodic e-newsletter for SHS alumni that supplements the print magazine. It is brought to you by Shady Hill’s Communications Office in collaboration with the Alumni Board. These articles make evident that the School of today is vibrant and innovative while continuing to embrace the mission and traditions you hold so dear.
 
Happy reading!

The Communications Office and the Alumni Board

Shady Hill School is sad to share news of two recent deaths of beloved members of the school community:

Retired teacher Bill Bellows , who taught seventh grade from 1964-85, coached basketball, and was renowned for his love of history and his extensive necktie collection, passed away on July 4 at the age of 96. His full obituary is online here . 
 
Senior administrator Cassie Firenze , the school's Director of Admission and Financial Aid since 2005, passed away August 28 at the age of 45 after a courageous two-year battle with cancer. Her obituary is online here. 
Teachers Use the Art Show as a Powerful Learning Experience

Art inspires. Taking advantage of this past spring’s Alumni Art Show and its treasure trove of creative expression, many teachers brought their classes to the show and asked their students to move beyond just looking. For example,
  • Kindergarteners and third-graders sketched a work of art that particularly interested them.
  • Sixth-graders filled out sticky-notes with responses to prompts such as “What was the most surprising artwork you saw?” and “If you could ask the artist a question, what would it be?”
  • Several classes used the artwork as a jumping-off point for writing poetry. For one class, students wrote poems that incorporated poetic devices they were studying, such as alliteration, rhyme, simile, metaphor, personification, and imagery.
  • Many classes wrote and posted Haikus. For example: Flowers everywhere / Colors popping out at you / A mix of rainbows, City of Paper / Cars and imagination / Many Ways to see it, Underwater life / A safe house under the wave / A world of peace

Using sticky-notes, students posted messages about what inspired them about a particular work, such as:

  • I liked the way you could take a personal moment and inspire viewers to recall their own memories.
  • I love the layers and dimensions of your piece and the many different ways and angles you can look at it.
  • What is amazing about this work is how the fabrics' textures and colors blend into a picture. The piece is alive and vivid.
  • I find this piece very interesting. You don't know what it is, but that's what I like about it.
Kindergartners’ Video Celebrates “Upstanders”

“Upstanders are people who stand up for others when they see someone being teased, bullied, or left out,” explained Kindergarten Gradehead Sarina Tcherpinn. “This year, our classes made a video to explain and examine this concept.” “We explore the idea of upstanders all year,” Kindergarten Gradehead Kate Hudson explained, The theme of the Kindergarten year is ‘All About Us.’ We look at the many ways we are all the same and all different. From Day 1, we talk about what it means to be kind and respectful. We talk about doing what is right, even when it is not easy.”
 
“In terms of the process,” said Gradehead Anthony Amoroso, “we started by reading books about various upstanders and lea rning about their lives and ideas. We also watched videos of up standers’ speeches, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s  I Have a Dream  speech and Malala Yousafzai’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Then, as a class, we thought about how WE can practice being upstanders in our own lives. Finally, the children collaborated to illustrate their ideas and create portraits of the upstanders we had studied.”

“Learning is based on trust, kindness, respect, and becoming aware,” said Gradehead Betsy Anderson TTC ‘86. “These qualities are foundational to becoming ethical citizens and are the core values of the School. In our classrooms, the work of being an upstander continues all year and connects to curriculum throughout the School.”
  
Leila Eshghi '13
Katie Friis '13
Maya Venkatraman '13
Three Young Shady Hill Alumni Land Coveted Google Summer Internships

This summer not one, not two, but three members of Shady Hill’s class of 2013 secured prestigious Google internships. Google internships are notoriously competitive; each year out of around 40,000 applicants only 1,500 (3.75%) are accepted (Business Insider, June 3, 2018). That three Shady Hill graduates landed these internships in one year is quite a point of pride for Shady Hill.

After completing their sophomore years at Columbia, Brown and Smith respectively, Maya Venkatraman ’13, Katie Friis ’13, and Leila Eshghi ’13, spread out to Google Offices across the country. Each worked on a single software engineering project from start to finish, experiencing each stage of its development from design to implementation.

In New York City, Maya wrote a feature for Google’s Ad Manager, a product that publishers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal use to display ads in their online edition. In Pittsburgh, Leila worked on an internal dashboard tool to streamline on-call workflow. In Irvine, California, Katie worked on a tool that automatically cleans up code.
So how did our young engineering and computer science majors secure these prestigious internships? Both Katie and Leila have taught STEM skills, experience, which they said, seemed to carry weight in Google’s application process. This past fall Katie worked as a teacher’s assistant for Brown’s Intro to Computer Science course and Leila interned at the MIT Museum, teaching children to use 3D printers. Recently, Leila also returned to campus to volunteer with Ms. Bratzel in the Makerspace.

Maya attributes her success landing the position to the applicable course work she’s taken in college. Looking farther back, she credits one of her Shady Hill teachers, Ms. McDermott, for sparking her excitement about science. Similarly, Leila recalls “a general idea at Shady Hill that learning was meant to be enjoyable and extend beyond the classroom.” Leila's Grade IV and V math teacher, Mr. Spezzano, dedicated time during recess and after school to supply brainteaser math games for Leila and a friend. Leila shares, “Shady Hill teachers took time out of their day to challenge me.” In another example, Leila recalls a favorite Shady Hill science project: designing a paper structure that would hold the most weight possible. The project pulled Leila into the science building outside of regular class, where “I’d always find dedicated teachers, no matter the time.”

In mid-July, the three Shady Hill grads reunited at the Google Women Engineers Summit on the West Coast where they all stayed in the same hotel and caught up over lunch. The conference provided them the opportunity to network and learn from accomplished women in the field of engineering. Clearly, Katie, Leila, and Maya are on track to joining those ranks.
Sixth-graders Hear About 16-Year-Old Sentenced to Life Without Parole  
 
Fred Clay spent 38 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Despite overwhelming evidence to absolve him, he was wrongfully convicted for the murder of a cab driver. He visited Shady Hill, along with parent and lawyer Lisa Kavanaugh, who directs the  Innocence Program  at the Massachusetts Public Defender's Office and who took up Fred’s case. They spoke to the sixth grade about the successful five-year effort to exonerate Fred. Sixth-graders also learned what Fred’s case reveals about the justice system, how cases move forward despite glaring improprieties, and how unreliable evidence can be. “I suppose that the good news,” Lisa said, “is that the legal landscape has gotten better since Fred’s conviction. But there is still much work to be done.” 
 
After hearing Fred’s riveting story, students asked questions, such as:
  • How did you feel about the people involved in falsely convicting you?
  • Why did you turn down the plea bargain that would have gotten you a lighter sentence?
  • What is something you want people to learn from your story?

Lifting the Veil—Artistry, Symbolism, Ritual
 
Rites of Passage  is a core theme in sixth-graders’ Central Subject study of Africa. One of their major Wood Shop projects, directed by John Segar, is to design and carve a mask. Students draw on their study of symbolism and imagery to create a mask that reflect essential aspects of who they are.
‘Round the World in an Afternoon—Shady Hill's International Fair Is a Huge Success 

Without ever leaving the gym, International Fair visitors played tourist to over 30 countries. The displays that families created to celebrate their heritage were a delight to the senses—a wide variety of tastes, smells, colors, sounds, textures, and beautifully crafted items.
 
At the displays, food was a frequent point of entry, with everything from sweet and savory to steamed and fried. In the center of the gym was an international smorgasbord where one could fill a plate with delicacies from nearly every continent. (Sorry, Antarctica.) From the stage, performers sang, drummed, danced, performed martial arts, and paraded. The performances, together with the festive table displays, games, music, costumes, arts, and crafts, gave the Gym a vibrant, carnival atmosphere.
 
While it was certainly a delight to be an I-Fair visitor, one table host put her finger on a more subtle delight that many volunteers and organizers were also feeling. “I really appreciated the chance to talk about our family’s culture with my son and daughter. It also made me happy to be sharing some of my favorite traditions with them.”
Beginners Create Their Own Stories

Beginners have been working hard on their  Build a Story  project, becoming authors and illustrators of their very own picture books! The creation of these stories takes place over several weeks and includes fabricating 3D characters and settings, drawing illustrations, and publishing bound books. 
 
The first step was to guide students in the creation of their stories' main characters. The only rule was that they could not use a character from an existing book, TV show, or movie. Some students drew inspiration from their family, friends, or stuffed animals, and others followed their imaginations. To help students develop their characters more fully, gradeheads posed questions about characters’ physical appearance, friends, home, favorite activities, special powers, and more. Next, Beginners built their characters using recycled, found, and art materials. The children had had a lot of fun playing with their creations and sharing them with friends and family! 
Here’s What’s Open

Class Correspondent Vacancies
1945, 1946, 1949, 1953, 1956, 1960, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1983, 1992, 1993, 1996, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2019, 2019

Class Agent Vacancies
1945–1949, 1951, 1952, 1955, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1962,–1964, 1966–1978, 1980–1983, 1990, 1993, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2003–2011, 2013–2019
SHS Students Improve Their AI Literacy

If you have “smart assistants” at home—Google Home, Alexa, “intelligent” toys, conversational agents, and the like, what is the impact on your child?
 
That’s a question Shady Hill parent Dr. Cynthia Breazeal is interested in. An expert on Artificial Intelligence (AI), autonomous robotics, human-robot interaction, and robot learning, Cynthia founded and directs the MIT Media Lab’s  Personal Robots Group . She connected one of her grad students, Stefania Druga, with Shady Hill.
 
Stefania was looking for students to help her test  Cognimates , an open-source platform she developed to improve children’s AI literacy. Among other things, Cognimates lets children create and train their own AI models, create a room that responds to their commands, and build a game that “learns” how to get better at playing Rock-Paper-Scissors.
 
In  her recent article , Stefania wrote, “I believe it’s important to introduce young people to the concepts of AI and machine learning through hands-on projects so they can make more informed and critical use of these technologies. Children quickly understand how a machine learns when the actions are embodied by a character, story, or game.”