Brought Together Through Music and Lang Lang
Lang Lang walked into the room, dressed in a snappy red t-shirt with a black front pocket and black border trim, and a black jacket, high-fiving the wide-eyed students who had been waiting for him. His entrance was rock star-like—not the way I think of a classical...
Back at School Again
After two years in full-time academia, I am back in a school. It feels right. Labor Day and the ritual of children returning to school are, once again, part of my daily world. I am the newly appointed Executive Director of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship (The...
Design Comes Alive
During the last week of the school year, thanks to the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and TERC, we were able to select three artist-engineers to work with our 9th grade Engineering classes for "Design Comes Alive." The projects culminated in...
Celebration of Fernadina Chan
On Saturday, June 23, we celebrated a remarkable woman and educator as she retired from BAA: Fernadina Chan. I have the privilege of working with some of the most amazing teachers at Boston Arts Academy, and it was an honor to celebrate Fern at The Boston Conservatory...
Intervention into Personalization
One of the ten common principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools is personalization. This is explained as: “Teaching and learning should be personalized to the maximum feasible extent… the goal is that no teacher has direct responsibility for more than 80...
Alvin Ailey
Saturday's Boston Globe ran an article on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (they performed at the Citi Wang Theatre Thursday through Sunday last week.) Many may not have known that two Alvin Ailey dancers (Kirven Boyd and Belen Estrada) are graduates of Boston...
Boston Marathon
Boston Arts Academy is now in our second year of a three-year relationship with the Boston Athletic Association as an official charity of the Boston Marathon... We have a dynamic team of 15 running the marathon on Monday, April 16- they have already raised over...
OLA Workshop at BAA’s Center for Arts in Education
Last week, BAA’s Center for Arts in Education hosted Darcy Rogers for a full-day workshop on her Organic Language Acquisition (OLA) technique. I first met Darcy at her school, Crater Renaissance Academy in Oregon, and then I ran into her again at the Coalition of...
Occupy the DOE
I have just returned from Washington, DC, and the Occupy the DOE rally. Cassie Wallace, our second-year math teacher, was my impetus to go. She posted on our Teaching/Learning email conference back in February: In case anyone is interested in protesting in DC with me...
Twelfth Night
Last week was a big one for our theatre department, and for the school! Not only did theatre students make it to the semifinals at the state drama festival (the first time we’ve ever participated), but we had an amazing collaboration with Actors' Shakespeare Project...