Rivers Students on the Road and on the Job

8/14/2017

Rivers students haven’t let the summer months keep them from chasing new experiences both here and abroad. What’s added to the fun is their use of a new social media channel— Medium.com—for sharing their adventures with family and friends. Check out the photos and posts about Rivers’ two language immersion programs in France and Spain, as well as Rivers’ ongoing summer science internships, where eight students have been toiling away on their own road to discovery.

Rivers En Provence

With the ink barely dry on their final exams, nine Upper School students set out for Aix-en-Provence for two weeks as the second leg of Rivers’ biannual French exchange program. Twelve French students and their chaperone had spent a week in April at Rivers, staying at their student hosts’ homes, attending classes, taking in the sights of Boston, and participating in a service learning project at Cradles to Crayons.

In return, those French students hosted their Rivers counterparts, who attended classes with them and worked with a "French as a Second Language" teacher at The Lycée Georges Duby in Luynes, a school with an active international exchange program and a particular interest in English-speaking countries. The Rivers students participated in the lycée’s bilingual French-English program, which conducts half of their classes in French and half in English.

The students—Nora Brown ’19, Maren Durant ’19, Theo Haviland ’19, Phie Jacobs ’18, Ryan Johnsen ’20, Estelle Luong ’19, Aidan McAnena ’18, Adam Naddaff-Slocum ’18, and Sara Stephenson ’18—were accompanied by language teachers Elisa Goldsmith and Andrea Villagran. They experienced French culture and cuisine in their hosts’ homes, and toured the Mediterranean cities of Marseilles and Cassis with its callanques (fjords). They also visited Les Baux de Provence with its nearby windmill made famous by the author, Alphonse Daudet, and medieval fortress complete with ancient weaponry.

They particularly enjoyed "les Carrières de Lumières,” a former quarry in Les Baux that hosts a multimedia art display where pictures come to life in an almost psychedelic fashion as visitors move around the quarry. The artists on display during their visit were Bosch, Brueghel and Arcimboldo, accompanied by Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”

They also spent time in the Luberon region, visiting the villages of Gordes and Roussillon, stopping by the lavender fields at the Abbeye de Sénanque, and hiking in the local national park on the Ochre Trail, named for its famous red clay used in making paints. Weekends were spent “en famille,” joining their hosts for swimming, scuba-diving, and other more typical family activities.

“The opportunity to live with a family in a different culture fosters an emotional connection to the country, its people, and its traditions in ways that tourist travel does not,” commented Ms. Goldsmith. “My greatest wish for my students is that the friendships they built this past spring and summer will grow into lifelong relationships and a love for France, in the same way that my own high school exchange did for me. There is nothing like immersion in a culture to make one appreciate both the differences and the similarities between people.”

Summer in Spain

Arriving in Cádiz, Spain around the same time were fourteen Upper School students who spent two weeks in Rivers’ Summer in Spain program, an opportunity for motivated students to immerse themselves in the language and life of Spain by living with Spanish families and studying both in and outside of the traditional classroom setting. While in Cádiz students attended classes each morning taught by native Spanish-speaking teachers, and then traveled to sites directly connected to their classes both at Rivers and in Cádiz, exploring the history, religion, architecture, and art of the region and its influence on present day culture and life. Upon their return to the United States, the students had to complete a final project for the Interdisciplinary Studies course that accompanies this program “Cádiz: At the Intersection of History and Contemporary Spain.”

The participants, accompanied by Language teachers Feryal Sacristán Muñoz and Mary Lane Brown were: Sophie Abrams '18, Sarah Bargamian '18, Witt Cadwalader '19, Cam Cobey '18, Maddie Cornetta '19, Anna Donlan '19, Noah Harrison '18, Khloe Katende '18, Thando Khumalo '19, Caleb Leeming ’19, Charlie Leslie '18, Maddy Olton '18, Leslie Schwartz '19, and Isabel Teixeira '18. In preparation for the trip, students met weekly throughout the spring, and many of them took the trimester elective “Medieval Spain: An Age of Exchange among Jews, Christians, and Muslims,” in order to maximize their experiences in Cádiz.

While in Cádiz, either during their morning classes or during their afternoon fieldtrips, students would tour nearby historical sites, meet with Spanish students for an “intercambio cultural”—taking turns conversing in each other’s native language—and sample the local fare. They had a scavenger hunt through the oldest neighborhood in Cádiz—El Pópulo, visited Phoenician and Roman ruins located in the center of the old city, stopped at el Consultorio de Felipe Neri, where the first Spanish Constitution was written and signed, made paella from scratch, visited the bull ring in El Puerto de Santa María where they met with an aspiring matador, learned a typical Andalusian dance called Sevillanas, and tried their luck at surfing at la Cortadura beach.

Trips farther afield took them to the town of Bolonia, in Tarifa, one of the world's most popular destinations for wind sports, where the students visited the ruins of the Roman city Baelo Claudia, a fishing community of 2000 inhabitants which was constructed in 1 B.C. After learning about the ancient city and Roman city planning, students spent the rest of day on Bolonia’s beach, a Spanish heritage site and the closest area of Europe to Africa, which can be clearly seen from the shore. They also spent a weekend in Granada, visiting the Alhambra, Generalife and Capilla Real, where the remains of the Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand are located, and stopping often to taste their famed tapas. On the final afternoon of the trip, the students also visited Gibraltar, a British territory on the Iberian Peninsula.

Science and Business Internships

Perhaps a little less glamourous, but no less rewarding have been the experiences of eight seniors who have been sharing blogs about their internships at some of Massachusetts’ leaders in science, technology, and medicine: Charlie Bondhus ’18 at Brigham & Women’s Robotic Surgery Lab, Emma Chowdhury ’18 at Bruker Daltronics, Alexa Cornetta ’18 at Medical Associates of Greater Boston with Dr. Deborah Riester, Michaela Francesconi ’18 at Freight Farms, Charlie Leslie ’18 at Amazon Robotics, Aidan McAnena ’18 at Mass General Hospital Pediatric Critical Care, Emily Shen ’18 at Harvard Medical School MEDscience, and Julia Slayne ’18 at Children’s Hospital Simulation Lab. Click on their names to read about their experiences.

Most of these institutions have been hosting Rivers students for a number of years, and continue to do so because of the creativity, competence, and dedication they witness in Rivers’ interns. New this year was the addition of Amazon Robotics to the roster of sponsors.

“For my first week, I spent almost all of my time dedicated to testing robotic arms,” said Charlie Leslie in his blog about his time at Amazon. “I learned so much from this experience, including some basic coding which is something I never dreamed of knowing. To test the arm, I scanned in trays full of miscellaneous objects that simulated real Amazon orders, then typed in the code to activate the robot. The robot then proceeded to pick up items and move to a new location. The main purpose of my testing was to record when the robot had a failure, such as dropping an object. Though there was a bit of a learning curve, in just two short weeks I have learned so much more than I could have expected. I have learned about robotics but also all about what it is like to work in a business environment.”

In addition to the science internships, four seniors— Noah Harrison ’18, Theo Haviland ’18, Alex Klein ’18, and MacKenzie Larkin ’18—have had internships with Fidelity Investments in their Boston office. Through an initiative designed to allow students with strong backgrounds in the arts to experience and perhaps become interested in careers in financial management, the interns were assigned to managers based upon the students’ interests and strengths. They in turn are expected to bring a different perspective and skill set to the company than the typical summer business intern.

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