Academic Year Winds Down with High Energy Events

 

Sixth graders brought their study of the World of Water to a close with two events. During their annual Water Walk on May 17, they filled and carried gallon jugs of water around Waterman Field, allowing them to experience first-hand the challenge that children in underdeveloped countries face in order to supply their families with water each day. Then on May 26, they presented the individual water advocacy projects they had worked on during the spring trimester to parents and classmates in Haffenreffer Gymnasium.

 

The seventh graders had shared a Humanities project in late April by entertaining family, faculty, and classmates with original stories based on personal experience or family “folklore.”  Alternately humorous and touching—and leaving a few parents cringing as their own childhood exploits were recounted—the students provided a unique glimpse into their lives away from Rivers. On a more lighthearted note, they spent their last day on campus literally crafting crafts—pond-worthy cardboard-and-duct tape vessels that they put to the test on Nonesuch Pond. 

 

Serving as their rite of passage from the Middle School was the eighth graders’ Portfolio Night on May 26, during which students displayed various elements from their Rivers experience—from athletic gear to musical instruments to artwork—that they felt best represented them. They also shared with the audience full of faculty, friends, and family a moment from their Middle School careers that had a significant impact on them as learners.

 

Sprinkled in among these major grade activities, but no less significant to their participants, were events large and small, including the Middle School play, the Middle School Arts Night, an array of Upper School concerts and recitals, the Middle School French Café, a “Night of Short Plays” by the Upper School playwriting class, and a chess championship tournament.

 

Last, but not least, were the Senior Projects, representing the final major requirement of the graduating class—three weeks devoted to a project of their choice, focused on community service at an approved non-profit organization, an internship with a professional organization, or an independent study with a Rivers faculty member.

 

The range of projects—and interests of the seniors—at the Senior Project presentations on Friday, June 3 was impressive. Students had held internships at a local radio station, a pastry shop, an investment company, a golf course, and a World War II museum. They had volunteered at learning centers and nursery schools, a respite care center and a medical center. They were creative—painting, photographing, writing poetry, arranging music, making furniture. They designed a quadcoptor drone, a four-man ping-pong table, and not one, but two electronic longboards. They studied astronomy, math, financial investments, and concussions.

 

It was exciting to see so much engagement with the outside world on display, and clearly a readiness on the part of the seniors to get out there and begin to “do something” with their lives. It will be just as exciting to see the impact these senior projects have on the post-Rivers careers of the Class of 2016.