News from the Mathematics Department—Carol Desoe, Department Chair
On April 13, 1970, James Lovell, Jr., Commander of the Apollo 13 flight, told Houston, “We’ve had a problem here.” The immediate response from NASA officials at Mission Control was to pull out slide rules to determine whether the mission could be completed or whether it had to be aborted. During the past forty years since that famous event, the enormous advances in technology have not only impacted space travel but have also revolutionized the way mathematics is taught in the classroom.
The Scarsdale High School Mathematics Department continues to be in the forefront of math education by providing instruction that incorporates the most current advances in technology into a deep, rich curriculum that prepares students to meet the demands of the 21st century. Teachers are using a variety of programs, including Algebra-in-Motion, Calculus-in-Motion, Geometer Sketchpad, Winplot, Applets, Math Type, and Excel spreadsheets, to help students visualize sophisticated mathematical concepts, while maintaining the rigors of “doing the math.” Students have scientific and graphing calculators available for individual use, and teachers are integrating calculator computations and graphs into the daily lessons to enrich understanding.
Aside from the sophisticated mathematical software being used by students and teachers, a variety of state-of-the-art equipment is used to present material. Math classrooms are outfitted with Smartboards, box lights, and computers while Schoolwires and other assorted Web links help teachers, students, and parents access information about specific math courses. The Mathematics Department prides itself on keeping current with modern technology and continues to stay well informed through ongoing professional development.
The High School Art Department 2008-09
Eve Eisenstadt, Department Chair
This has been an exciting year in the high school art department. There is a plethora of interdisciplinary work going on at many levels. Beth Colleary, Dina Hofstetter, Lisa Yokana, Lisa Scavelli, and I worked with over 20 teachers in other departments on interdisciplinary projects this year. In some cases, an art teacher would work with another subject teacher to create an art history lecture for that class. For example, all the Spanish teachers had the art teacher speak on Spanish artists and then accompany them on a field trip to the Hispanic Society. Another teacher worked on images of race in art with an English teacher for his course on race. We had teachers in classrooms speaking about Islamic art, East Asian art (linked with the study of the Ramayana and the Indonesian initiative), Impressionism, images that reflect ideas in literature, and many other subjects. This is a very exciting development and supports the concept that students must be flexible and creative thinkers to succeed in the future.
In addition, art teachers worked closely with the Civ Ed teams. In one case, the class focused on architecture and when students went to the city for their annual trip, the art teacher went as part of the Civ Ed team. The students also had a photography project to work on during the field trip which linked to their history and English assignments. In another case, the Civ Ed teacher worked with the art teacher to create a shadow puppet play of the Odyssey. The students put the play to contemporary language and music, and it was a rousing success of interdisciplinary thought and creativity. The real reward came when a group of ninth-grade students reflected upon the experience. Several of them stated that it was through this project that they finally understood the culture as well as historical and artistic merit of the Odyssey and were now ready to seek out the Iliad.
Interdisciplinary work is also happening between the various classes in the department. Video classes made movies of shadow puppet performances from another art class. Drawings and paintings from one class were digitally animated by another. The teachers of media have worked closely with the traditional studio teachers to expand how we think about art and visual culture. Media is a very important area for the future, and I am pleased that we are integrating it into our arts curriculum.
This year there was also a closer to home suburban/ urban experience. Hunter High School students from New York City were joined by Scarsdale students on an art history/ cultural trip to Italy. The students bonded well over their joint interest in art and realized how important it was to see art and architecture through the culture that produced those works. They obtained a fuller understanding of the politics as well as the aesthetics of art. It was a short but intense art and culture immersion, and we are in the process of signing students up for an all Scarsdale trip to Italy next year.
Both the AT art history and AT studio courses continue to flourish. This year the AT studio program was visited by Angie To from Alfred University’s studio foundation department. Many excellent suggestions were made and our AT curriculum impressed Ms. To. One of the ideas she told us about was how the foundation program can be taught by more than one professor, each exposing the students to a particular expertise. We spoke as a department about this concept and decided that we would try it with our ninth-grade curriculum. Next year we will team teachers and give all ninth- grade students the same foundation experience. The areas of art we will explore are 2D, 3D, and media. After the ninth-grade experience, students will have a better idea of which areas of art they are interested in pursuing. In this way, the Advanced Topics review has also helped us rethink parts of our curriculum that are not AT.
We are also adding a museum experience to the ninth grade. This year all classes went to DIA Beacon. We chose DIA Beacon because it is a different kind of museum located in an old converted factory with huge open spaces for large sculpture. Students are immediately struck by the space, and we can discuss how physical space affects art and perception. In addition, the work is large and much of it can be experienced physically, a very positive experience for ninth-graders. The art at DIA Beacon is contemporary, cutting edge, provocative, and often edgy. When students first encounter the art, they are often confused, but we have worked closely with the docents at DIA Beacon, and by the time we leave the museum, students have gained new ways of thinking about art. The museum visit is much more than an aesthetic experience; it becomes a critical thinking exercise, challenges preconceived notions, and guides students towards broader interdisciplinary concepts.
Dr. Carol Ockman from Williams College came to help us with the AT art history curriculum. She was also impressed with the course and made excellent suggestions such as starting the course with John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. This important work will now begin this accelerated class with a discussion of art, perception, and culture. Dr. Ockman also offered good suggestions about broadening the course from an exclusive focus on New York City collections as well as suggesting other readings to integrate with images.
There are many clubs sponsored by department members. However, this year we added a new opportunity for our students, the Art Honors Society. This is thanks to Maria DeAngelis, who took the time and had the energy to make this club possible.
Nadine Gordon is developing an art program with Adam Singer’ s special education class. Students from the Comprehensive Skills Program work with their mainstreamed peers in the art room twice a week. These meetings include unique collaborations, foster social skills development, increase self awareness, modify behavior, help with language development, and develop visual thinking skills. The students from the special class and the students from the Spectrum of Friends club have developed respect and friendship for one another.
This year we also joined with the music department to create an arts festival to run during the time period that the spring concerts occur. For two weeks, an exhibit displayed student art work from grades 9 through 12. This is the first time that there has been an exhibit of this scale in the commons. We were pleased to connect this exhibition with the music department concerts. Our students received many positive comments on their art work from parent, friends, and faculty. Much of this effort was made possible with support from the Friends of Music and Art.
The department has also been featured in the Scarsdale Inquirer several times this year. Our artist of the month has been featured throughout the year. There was also an article about the Italy trip and the Comprehensives Skills class. In addition, we mounted a group show of student work in the village at Scarsdale at the Scarsdale Art and Frame shop, yet another wonderful venue for our students’ art work to be seen.
It has been a busy and exhilarating first year for me as chair of the art department, and Scarsdale’s support for the arts is just one of many reasons that I look forward to the exciting opportunities next fall.
The 2008-2009 school year included the change in designation from Advanced Placement to Advanced Topic in Music Theory. While much of the same knowledge- base is necessary and required for any in-depth study of music theory and composition, the tools used and the expansion of that circle of theoretical practice are now different. The AT curriculum better meets the needs of our talented music students at present but also prepares them for future musical endeavors. The AT course outline is in perfect alignment with the district’s goal of “preparing our students for the 21st century world.”
The course remains congruent with AP goals regarding the basic mechanics of music theory and its writing. This skill development which occurs in the earlier part of the school year cannot be overemphasized. Both the AP and AT courses mandate a working mastery of keys, scales, intervals, chord construction and the circle of fifths, the “periodic table” of all harmonic functions. Thus, for the first block of the school year there is a direct parallel and similarity in curriculum and teaching strategy as before.
Once students begin writing in four-part chorale style, however, the circle of knowledge expands greatly in the AT format. As we are now in the early stages of the second semester, the study of music history and the stylistic characteristics and techniques of the major composers provide the examples for what students are trying to emulate in their own work. The inclusion of historical applications and the study of the past masters were simply not possible under the guise of the AP course. The higher order thinking skills and concepts of analysis, evaluation, synthesis and creativity to which we all subscribe are now not only possible, but have become commonplace in this course.
While students are now making connections with that which came before them, they will soon be using the tools of the future. Every composer longs to hear original works performed. In the public school setting this is often difficult. Where possible, we attempt to put together the personnel to perform students’ work. When that is not an option, technology now offers a viable alternative. Computers can “perform” as a string quartet, a piano concerto, a symphony orchestra or a jazz combo. “Hearing” their work provides the opportunity for all the variations in performance discussed earlier. It has come to pass that even the most respected contemporary composers now submit their work to publishers on a disc composed on computer software. It is rare for hand-written manuscripts to be found any longer. My fear is that the lobby of Carnegie Hall will soon have a display case of flash drives! The point is that anyone currently studying theory and composition must the have a technological facility. This is now a reality under the principle of learning found in Advanced Topic in Music Theory.
This course allows our most serious musicians to experience the totality of music in one setting. They receive an interdisciplinary approach to music education through an historical and future application of music theory. It is now possible to explore Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as well as computer-based compositions in the same class. We are excited to be providing such a cohesive and extensive experience for our students, and all indications are that they are rising to the challenge – and enjoying it.
The tension in the air was thick with anticipation. The background din, the sound of whirring gears, the cacophony of shouted instructions formed the backdrop as competitors prepared for their match. Last minute adjustments were made and strategies planned. Is the program working? Are the batteries ready? The other teams look tough! Finally, the time approached. The signal sounded, and the robots moved forward.
And so, Scarsdale High School’s newly formed Science Olympiad Team participated in its first competition this past winter. Fifteen motivated students founded the team along with science teachers Ms. Jennifer Wagner and Mr. Jim Williams as their coaches. Imagine their excitement when they placed high enough in the regional competition to participate in the New York State competition at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. This year, seventeen students are preparing for the team’s next competition. The tasks will include rigorous academic content challenges, laboratory events in biology, chemistry, and physics, and substantial building challenges including a weight-bearing bridge, two remote controlled robots, an electric vehicle, and a trajectory projectile shooter. This competition tests scientific background, understanding of specific disciplines, and utilizes a wealth of creativity and problem-solving. These interesting and interested students bring an enthusiasm to their meetings that creates its own sustainable source of energy.
Our Robotics Club members are robot specialists. Their goal is to build the mechanical system and sensors for a robot that can maneuver through a six room maze and detect heat and smoke. When the robot senses it is in a room with a flame, it must extinguish the flame, and then continue to navigate the maze. The robotics students are exploring the idea of artificial intelligence in their non-remote controlled robot design. The SHS robotics club, advised by Mr. Robert Draper, will compete against other robotics enthusiasts at Trinity College.
The environmentalists have a strong presence in the high school as well. Our Go Green
Club spearheads some of the student led initiatives regarding environmental and ecological awareness. From providing recycled school supplies as an option for their classmates, to reducing our carbon emission, these students recognize the need to expand and apply their expertise to the complex study of sustainability at the high school and the community.
The Outdoors Club members are environmentalists working with a faculty member at Fox Meadow school to organize an outdoor education program for elementary students. Additionally, some of these students are working on a variety of conservation projects at the Weinberg Nature Preserve.
Asking questions about real world problems is the essence of science. Energy and the environment are important issues for our country and the world. By involving themselves in these club activities, Scarsdale’s students are participating in meaningful learning while also having fun. We are proud of these student initiatives and invite your students to join their peers in the extra-curricular science clubs and teams.
Gestation, creation and now implementation: In September, the department of English introduced the Advanced Topics course that has taken the place of the Advanced Placement course we used to teach. The AT course retains many of the best aspects of the AP course and folds them into an exciting and highly relevant program designed specifically to meet the needs of our students.
The College Board states that the Advanced Placement course in literature is “designed to engage students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students can deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers.” Our students will continue to practice the close reading of texts: classics from twenty-four centuries of Western literature that are written in a variety of modes and that represent many different philosophical perspectives. The study of poetry will continue to be a major focus of the course, sometimes for weeks at a stretch. Students will also continue to practice and develop their ability to write both timed and untimed critical essays about the works they have read.
That said, we have long felt that the AP course in literature requires that we leave far too much outside the study door— that the exploration of texts can be enhanced by studying them from a range of perspectives broader than the New Critical approach in which the AP course is rooted and by attempting forms of writing other than the critical essay that is often the default and recurrent mode that results from the College Board’s exclusive focus on imaginative literature. Therefore, in the AT course, we are using a range of contextualizing historical and critical perspectives to situate literature in a variety of contexts; we are giving more time to the teaching of rhetoric and the essayist’s artistry at the very time that students are composing and polishing their early decision college essays; we will take a number of approaches to making students more comfortable and familiar with challenging material, perhaps by studying an author or literary form in depth; and some teachers will design and pilot interdisciplinary, humanities-based units that will make connections across media and art forms.
As the course moves toward completion next spring, we will assess students’ mastery of this wider range of skills and materials with a wider range of assessment tools than does the three-hour AP exam, which asks students to respond to approximately 50 multiple choice questions and to write three essays, all of which test, by and large, a single, fairly narrow set of reading and writing skills. In the AT course, each student will write a self-directed, poetry-based research paper; each will write a timed essay in class on an assigned piece of short literature; each will plan, prepare and teach a lesson to the class, either individually or as the member of a group.
We are excited and enthusiastic about the Advanced Topics course, and all indications suggest that it is off to a great start. It is the culminating experience in four years of study that we have designed and sequenced to offer our students challenges and to teach them skills that, unit to unit and year to year, help their first, uncertain, freshmen steps evolve into the confident strides that will take them into the world.