Running Out Of Ideas...

Part of the reason I'm so bad at keeping up on this blog is that I'm training for the Los Angeles Marathon and I feel like all I do is work and run. For evidence, I offer you this picture which shows what I will be doing this Sunday morning.

High Stakes Academics?

Last Saturday, a senior student at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California committed suicide. This is the third suicide at Gunn High School this year and the ninth since 2009. An academic powerhouse in the shadow of Stanford University, many have attributed the cause for at least some of these suicides on the extreme pressure students feel to succeed academically. While the parents of this weekend's victim released a statement saying their son suffered from depression and that his suicide was not related to academic pressures, it hasn't stopped the community from taking a step back to truly assess whether or not they are driving their students beyond the brink.

I find this discussion timely as we had a faculty meeting earlier this week where we discussed the culture of Sage Hill School. I've been to Gunn High School many times in my former career as a college admissions officer and I can tell you that our two schools are not that different from one another. As we move forward in our discussions about what kind of school we want to be, I believe keeping the struggles that the Gunn High School community has faced should be at the forefront of our thinking. Ivy League admissions and AP test scores are certainly not worth a student's life. We all need to do better.

If you would like to read more about this week's school board meeting where many Gunn students came forward to defend their high school, click here. There is also a link here to the audio of a conversation of Gunn community members recently conducted by the local public radio station. Finally, here is a link to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for anyone who is ever feeling like they have no where to turn.

Sitcom Feminism

Today in class we are wrapping up our discussion of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. At the end of one class, the kids were literally standing up in excitement, debating one another as to whether or not Kate is truly tamed by Petruchio. I don't know that I will ever lose the joy of seeing kids actually excited by literature.

As I thought about the complexities of Petruchio and Kate's relationship as well as feminism in general, I found these two clips which I plan to show kids in our next class. The first is from The Honeymooners, a great example of two people that love to hate and hate to love each other. The second is a classic Claire Huxtable "feminism" moment from The Cosby Show.

Miscast

This week, I'm supposed to be blogging everyday starting this past Sunday. Clearly, I'm behind. So I'll spend the next couple of days blogging twice a day just to catch up. That being said, I have a good excuse for not having had time to blog on Sunday night. This was because I spent the evening watching my friend Richard perform in a show in North Hollywood called Miscast. The idea behind the show is that performers would sing songs from Broadway musicals in roles they would never be cast in. Boys sang girl songs, girls sang boy songs, character actors played the parts of ingenues, etc.

While some performances were more successful than others, it seemed to me that the ones that worked best were where the artist really had to create a new character to inhabit the song and still make it work, oftentimes to comedic ends. This got me thinking that this could be a great exercise for my friends who teach in the theater arts. Oftentimes even student performers get stuck in their "type" and don't think beyond those roles. It would be great to see a high school production of this kind of show where students had to really seek out roles that do not match who they are and then work to make themselves "work" in the role.

If you are in the LA area and interested in seeing this show, it goes up every couple of months. You can find more info here.