What Award-Winning Art Looks Like

A glimpse at Jenny Rosenberg’s photo class

Once again, I’m blown away by the talent of our scholar artists—and the judges at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the National K-12 Ceramic Exhibition Foundation, Nikon, and other contests felt the same way. This year, dozens of our hard-working students have received recognition from these prestigious organizations. We are so proud of them and their accomplishments.

View their work below (and in-person at our Night of the Arts on Thursday May 9),  and read what their teachers (Katharine Boyd, Anne Maurice, and Jenny Rosenberg) have to say.

Elena Janney ’14, Scholastic Art Regional Gold Key Award

Elena Janney ’14, Scholastic Art Regional Gold Key Award

“Elena is driven and prolific. She is a quiet worker who produces the most striking of images using strong contrast. Last summer, she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.” —Katharine Boyd

Sophie Smith ’14, Scholastic Art Regional Gold Key Award

“Sophie is the risk taker always trying out different mediums and approaches. Her portrait was inspired by American artist Robert Rauschenberg.” —Katharine Boyd

Hannah Wilton ’13, Scholastic Art National Gold Key Award

“Hannah is an intense observer of light shadow and detail. She works tirelessly observing and creating drawings from her own imagination and photography.” —Katharine Boyd

Paige Woolman ’13, Scholastic Art Regional Gold Key Award (from a photo taken by Miranda Roehrick ’13)

“Paige is a worker bee. She is a magic realist. Her portrait was completed after summer trip to Africa in Daraja Academy. She is a meticulous artist who takes on challenging projects to inspire herself to become a better artist.” —Katharine Boyd

Anna Dawson ’14, Scholastic Art Regional Gold Key Award

“Anna’s photographic style is distinctly beautiful and always calls on viewers to look closely to glean deeper meaning. This image was created for the word project. Each student picked a word out of a hat and then used that word as a prompt to create a photographic image. Anna’s word was ‘intriguing,’ and in response, she made this gorgeous photograph. Her use of shallow depth of field, slow shutter speed, and her decision to frame the subject through an open door capture a fleeting moment that evokes more questions than it answers.” —Jenny Rosenberg

Sofie Werthan ’14, Scholastic Art Regional Gold Key Award

“Sofie is an incredibly talented and dedicated photographer. This image was created for a project that challenged students to use the zone system of exposure to achieve excellent negative quality, while devising a concept that could fit the theme of being out of context.  Sofie’s creativity, originality, high level of technical skill, and strong eye for compositions are all on display in this wonderful photograph.” —Jenny Rosenberg

Sydney Block ’14, National K-12 Ceramic Exhibition Foundation

“Sydney has an amazing imagination and always has a clear vision of how she wants her beautifully dynamic forms to evolve. For her Confrontational Ceramic piece, ‘Toxic Waters,’ Sydney developed a striking piece exposing the constant flow of environmental pollution in our oceans.” —Anne Maurice

Callan Coghlan ’13, National K-12 Ceramic Exhibition Foundation

“Callan has a wonderful artistic spirit and a strong work ethic. She continually creates designs that are visually compelling and structurally challenging. Her piece, ‘The Sinking of Education?,’ is a commentary on the dire straights our educational system is facing.” —Anne Maurice

Alberto Flores ’13, National K-12 Ceramic Exhibition Foundation

“Alberto finds pure joy in the act of creating and loves to challenge himself artistically and technically. This piece, ‘Economic Disparity,’ showcases the scale of exorbitant excess and wealth in our society while exacting only a small portion for the impoverished.” —Anne Maurice

Colin Giannini ’14, National K-12 Ceramic Exhibition Foundation

“Colin is an enthusiastic, curious, and inventive ceramicist. He created this dynamic sculptural box form of a piano entitled ‘A Little Sheet Music.’ His piece shows a wonderful sense of playfulness, movement, and excellent craftsmanship. —Anne Maurice

NoahLani Litwinsella ’14, National K-12 Ceramic Exhibition Foundation

“NoahLani is a prolific artist who is always pushing creative boundaries. He is the first to experiment with new construction techniques and interesting surface treatments. He is known for developing and executing elaborate designs quickly and efficiently. Self- motivated, he creates additional abstract pieces, such as ‘Rising,’ which establishes a swelling upward surge of movement bubbling to the top.” —Anne Maurice

Amelia Howard ’14, Best of College and High School Photography Contest sponsored by Nikon

“Amelia has an incredible eye for detail and a contagious passion for photography. She took this photo while traveling last summer. Her stunning combination of textures, colors, bird’s eye perspective, and dramatic sense of scale resulted in this dreamy representation of a perfect summer day.” —Jenny Rosenberg

Miranda Roehrick ’13, Best of College and High School Photography Contest sponsored by Nikon

“Miranda’s photographs capture things or moments that are intrinsically beautiful yet often overlooked. At the beginning of the school year, she casually told me that she had taken many photos during the Daraja trip, including a portrait that she thought was good. I asked Miranda to show me the portrait. This is it, and it is so much more than good. The honesty in this image can only happen when the subject feels connected and respected.”
—Jenny Rosenberg

Scholastic Art Regional Silver Key Awards
Audrey Bell ’14 (drawing/painting)
Anna Dawson ’14 (photography)
Ari Goldstein ’14 (photography)
Tai Hallstein ’13 (photography)
Hwei-Shin Harriman ’15 (drawing/painting)
Amelia Howard ’14 (photography)
Elena Janney ’14 (drawing/painting)
Chase Porter ’13 (photography)
Keli Sherwood ’13 (drawing/painting)
Michael Spielberg ’13 (photography)
Sofie Werthan ’14 (photography)
Paige Woolman ’14 (drawing/painting)

Scholastic Art Regional Honorable Mention
Livia Chesley ’14 (drawing/painting)
Jessie Colin ’16 (drawing/painting)
Ella Cooke ’13 (ceramics)
Kelly Donahoe ’13 (drawing/painting)
Jack Ferguson ’13 (photography)
Tai Hallstein ’13 (photography)
Hwei-Shin Harriman ’15 (drawing/painting)
Amelia Howard ’14 (photography)
Elena Janney ’14 (drawing/painting)
Chase Porter ’13 (photography)
Keli Sherwood ’13 (drawing/painting)
Ella Storey ’13 (photography)
Daisy Williamson ’13 (drawing/painting)

The Marin Society of Artists Annual High School Art Show
Morgan Welsh ’15 (Honorable Mention)
Paige Woolman ’14 (Best of Show Drawing)

Marin County Fair Prestigious Portfolio Award
Tiffany Chang ’12

Why choose our school? Hear it from our parents!

Welcome Class of 2017!

I am thrilled that we have offered positions in the Class of 2017 to a fantastic group of eighth graders. They are bright, talented, and full of curiosity and a desire to join our community.  We are confident that they will contribute to our school and go on to do great things. Application letters went out last Thursday, and students have until today at noon to make their decisions. We are very eager to hear back!

Parents in the beginning of the admissions cycle often ask, “Why Marin Academy?” Some of the biggest selling points of our school are our small classes, our outstanding faculty, our incredible arts programs, our great athletic teams, and our beautiful campus, among other things. But many independent schools—especially in the Bay Area—can also make these claims.

Current freshmen welcome the Class of 2017

When I think about Marin Academy in relation to our peer schools, one important distinction comes to mind: we allow our students wiggle room.

Wiggle room, or “room to maneuver; flexibility, especially in one’s options or interpretations” is one of my favorite expressions. It recognizes that things aren’t always black and white—and that we sometimes need room to grow and change.

At MA, the progress of our curriculum allows students to come in as they are and then allows for individual growth. Our students come from dozens of middle schools and have had very different experiences in English classes, for example. Our 9^th grade English classes are designed to get a diverse group focused, involved in discussions, and interested in the course material. What happens is that students learn how to use their own voice and how to listen to their peers.

The admissions team (Sue, Dan, and Connie) welcome the Class of 2017

While we have a core curriculum, it is not rigid. It’s rigorous, but not without options. Students are allowed to choose topics for projects, focus on their interests, and, later in their careers at MA, select electives that excite them.

But don’t just take it from me—read about what some of our parents have to say. These are three of several dozen quotes collected for the annual faculty/staff appreciation luncheon put on by the Marin Academy Parents Association (MAPA). This year, the words were displayed on the tables while we feasted:

We are so moved and inspired by the incredible ambition and vision that drives MA’s programs. Lit Fest? Outings? Conference on Democracy? Quiz Bowl? My husband and I have given up hiding our naked envy from our daughter. We often wonder how different our own life’s trajectory would have been had we had the privilege and opportunity of learning, day in and day out, in an environment as rich, challenging, visionary, and meaningful as MA’s. I hope that every member of our administration and faculty goes to sleep at night knowing that they are part of something magical.

I have watched every one of you “turn on the light” for my son in ways that stretch well beyond the stated curriculum. Thank you for feeding his knowledge with grace and compassion!

Thank you for making my son feel challenged and competent at the same time; for inviting him to share his thoughts and opinions and waiting for him to respond; for holding him to a higher standard by insisting that he think a little harder and deeper.

The MA Wildcat welcomes the Class of 2017

Although we have a quarter of the school year left, we are already focused on the potential of the Class of 2017. We look forward to seeing them on a daily basis in August at the corner of Cottage and Mission.

Why Going to School Matters

“Emerging Listeners”

Liz and I hit another parent milestone last week: we attended our first school conference for our sons. Granted, our boys are three, so there wasn’t any talk of grade point averages or course recommendations. Nonetheless, it was instrumental for us, especially since Liz and I have often represented the teacher side of these meetings.

One of the things we learned is that both of our boys have “emerging listening skills.” As someone who understands teacher-speak, this means that sometimes, our sons just don’t listen in school. This isn’t surprising, given their age and the fact that they don’t always listen at home either. But it did make me think about the role that schools play in developing non-content-based skills, such as patience, resilience, collaboration, and, of course, listening.

DIY chicken coops

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Andrea Saveri, a foresight and strategy developer based in the Bay Area. She started her talk by describing how, as a child in San Francisco, she desperately wanted chickens and how her mother helped her research and build a coop. Saveri was ahead of her time—today, background chicken coops are a pretty common occurrence. (For example, we get our eggs from Mike Joyce’s daughters’ chickens.) DIY culture is nothing new—but now it’s become ubiquitous and easier to accomplish. You can Google almost anything and find how-to guides, instructional videos, and blogs about others’ experiences. As Saveri argued, there really is no excuse for not knowing how to do something.

iPads in the classroom

Teachers also experience this new reality in the classroom: with mobile devices, Wikipedia, and YouTube, students always have answers at their fingertips. It has become difficult to argue that students should remember important dates when they will likely always have resources literally in their hands.

So if that’s the case, why do we still need schools?

Saveri spoke about moving from an educational bureaucracy to a learning adhocracy. Borrowing from the term first popularized in the 1970s by Alvin Toffler, Robert Waterman defined adhocracy as “any form of organization that cuts across normal bureaucratic lines to capture opportunities, solve problems, and get results.”

Math teacher Doreen Clark with calculus students

This concept is reflected in independent schools like Marin Academy. Even our school slogan, “think, question, create” seems to capture this sentiment. An adhocracy connotes that learning can happen anywhere, at anytime. It is predicated upon collaboration and sharing. Something like design thinking, which I love blogging about, fits this definition very well.

I’d like to take this concept a bit further. Even in our technical and Internet revolution, I do believe that there is a place for physical schools. I believe that great schools provide a consistent and coherent community. The consistency is having our students and teachers here on campus every day, interacting and learning. The coherence is that we share the same values. Students and teachers are here for a reason, and our specialized curriculum is constructed for a reason. We believe in individual voice—and also a commitment to community. Those human relationships allow for caring adults to shape, intervene, direct, and support our students.

Science teacher John Hicks with chemistry students

Schools also provide an opportunity for students to live in a world beyond themselves. If all of their learning were self-directed, students wouldn’t necessarily be able to test their limits, be held accountable, and work with others.

Which brings me back to my sons and their “emerging listening skills.” “Emerging” is a nice way to say that they have some ground yet to cover in this skill base, and they need to keep working on it. In some ways, we’re all emerging. And we know from research of the adolescent brain, teenagers are really emerging people. We’re here to help them learn how to think, not what to think.

A Record-Breaking LitFest 2013

LItFest in the black box theater

I’m still coming down from the excitement of last week’s Literary Festival, and wanted to share some of highlights.

This year’s festival was one of the most popular of the last 21 years. Sessions were almost overflowing with student participants—and we even had to move two sessions to the theater to accommodate the interest. As an English teacher and lover of the written word, nothing is more satisfying than seeing students cramming in our lecture halls for writing.

Students leading a session on the literature of the fantastic in France and Mexico

Five of our nineteen sessions were student-led, an all-time high for LitFest. Continuing their tradition, the student leaders of Echoes, MA’s literary journal, held a creative writing workshop for students. Stephen Baldwin and Carinne Lemaire’s language students lead a close reading analysis on Fantastique/Fantástico: Literature of the fantastic in France and Mexico. David Sinaiko’s theater students read from Hamlet, and Chris Alexander’s “Short Story” students showcased soundtrack stories.

In addition, Annie Elias’s theater students read from Joyce Carol Oates’s one-act play Dr. Magic before she led a workshop for students, and it was fantastic. But don’t take it from me—take it from Oates:

One of my highlights was meeting Joyce Carol Oates. This was LitFest’s 21st year, and I’ll tell you, Joyce Carol Oates has been on our dream list of presenters for probably that entire time. We are so lucky that she is teaching at Berkeley this semester and could join us on the other side of the bay.

Joyce Carol Oates listening to our students read “Dr. Magic”

To have one of the most respected and admired and accomplished authors work with our students was a real triumph. But even more than that, we were excited to have Joyce Carol Oates at Marin Academy is because she, in many ways, embodies what our LitFest is all about.

LitFest is a week-long celebration of the written word. We want students to learn the importance of writing beyond what is required in school—whether that is writing plays, spoken word, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, etc.—and to love writing. And in Joyce Carol Oates, we had a living, breathing example of someone who has been prolific across so many genres and disciplines and loves writing.

There is nothing that Joyce Carol Oates can’t write. My favorite example is her Twitter feed. Oates has more than 30,000 followers and writes about everything, from movies to restaurants to the Pope, and, of course writing and literature. She has mastered the 140 characters and elevated the medium—and she even wrote about us a few times:

And

We love bringing writers who are also educators to work with our students. Oates, Eugenie Chan, Luis Rodriguez, and Nina LaCour all work with young people. Our other guests—Laura Cogan ’99, Peter Bratt, Angie Chau, and Avery Monsen ‘02—are also very familiar and comfortable with sharing and teaching. Finally, our MA presenters, Annie Elias, Nicole Klaymoon, David Sinaiko, Stephen Baldwin, Carinne Lemaire, Derek Anderson, Trevor Calvert, and Chris Alexander, represented just how wonderful our faculty really is.

Liz Gottlieb and her sister, Mary

In addition, I wanted to give a special thank you to the faculty and staff who shared their personal stories as part of Derek’s storytelling session: Liz Gottlieb (and her sister, Mary), Tony Mekisich, Jenny Rosenberg, Dave Marshall, Michael Morris, and James Shipman. Your stories were captivating—and your telling of them superb.

I know from conversations with students that LitFest has already impacted them, and I look forward to seeing the festival’s influence on their future work.

Thank you to Trixie Sabundayo and Chris Alexander for organizing this year’s wonderful festival. As Trixie says, it takes a village of so many invested people—students, teachers, staff, and presenters—to make LitFest the amazing program it is. I am already looking forward to 2014!

If you missed LitFest or just want to get to know some of our presenters better, check out my interviews:

• 5 Questions about LitFest for English Department Chair Trixie Sabundayo
• 5 Questions for Laura Cogan ’99, Editor of ZYZZYVA
• 5 Questions for Playwright Eugenie Chan
• 5 Questions for Writer Angie Chau
• 5 Questions for Author, Illustrator, and Actor Avery Monsen ’02
• 5 Questions for Author Nina LaCour

David Sinaiko leading a session in the Black Box

Avery Monsen ’02 wowing our students with his incredible twin coughing snakes

See more photos from LitFest on the Marin Academy Facebook page.

Is sleep more important than studying?

Have you checked out MindShift, KQED’s blog on the future of education and learning? As an educator and a parent, I highly recommend it. One recent article has particularly made an impression on me, especially with its controversial—at least to teachers!—title: “Why Sleeping May Be More Important Than Studying.”

Author Katrina Schwartz sites a study published in the journal Child Development in which researchers tracked more than 500 Los Angeles high school students over the course of a two-week period. UCLA psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences professor Andrew Fuligni, one of the researchers involved in the study, explains, “As other studies have found, our results indicated that extra time spent studying cuts into adolescents’ sleep on a daily basis, and it is this reduced sleep that accounts for the increase in academic problems that occurs after days of increased studying. Although these nights of extra studying may seem necessary, they can come at a cost.”

Sleepwalking

I guess that’s not shocking—we can all remember the effect of pulling all nighters in high school or college or beyond (parents of infants, anyone?). But with the increased demands on our young people—academic, social, athletic, extracurricular, etc.—these sleep-deprived evenings are becoming more and more common and can have an effect on the body. We all need REM sleep to solidify all that has happened during the day. “If you didn’t get a good night’s sleep,” explains Dr. Matt Carter, Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington,  “it’s really hard to learn new things because you didn’t clear out all the synaptic connections.” Imagine all that children and teens are experiencing and learning in one day: they may need sleep more than anyone!

It’s a difficult problem to solve. Do you start school later? Do you restrict the number of activities a student can participate in? Do you eliminate homework?

Dr. Michelle Primeau

We have thought about this a lot at MA. Some of the things we’ve done include eliminating final exams (in favor of end-of-year projects), studying the homework and activities of our student body, and encouraging balance in academic and extracurricular schedules. We have built in times during the day like tutorial and break so that students have more time to do their work and to ask questions. We have maintained longer breaks during the winter and spring for students (and teachers) to rest and rejuvenate.

Could we be doing more? That’s a good question. I’m excited that we will welcome Dr. Michelle Primeau to campus on February 19. Dr. Primeau is a psychiatrist and specialist from the Stanford Sleep Center. She will speak with students during the morning Wellness Assembly and parents during an evening MAPA Parent Ed presentation. I look forward to learning more about how we can support our students—and get a better night’s sleep!

5 Questions for Author Nina LaCour

Nina LaCour

Nina LaCour is an English teacher at Maybeck High School and the author of Hold Still (2009), and The Disenchantments (2012). She won the 2009 Northern California Book Award for Children’s Literature and was featured in Publishers Weekly as a Flying Starts Author. Nina is the co-founder of Write Teen, a series of YA writing classes. We are excited that Nina will hold a creative fiction writing workshop for students as part of LitFest on Friday, February 15.

1. How did you get involved in writing young adult fiction?

I entered the Mills College MFA program in Creative Writing with about eighty pages of a novel for adults, but while I was there I took a class on YA literature and fell in love with so many of the books we read. Then, when I started writing the first chapters of what would become my thesis and my first novel, Hold Still, I was struck by how right it felt to write about teen experiences. I was in my early twenties and I remembered clearly how it felt to be in high school, but had enough distance from the experience to really examine it. The teen years are such a rich time of personal growth and change and I’ve found that all the great questions and struggles of life—about love, family, friendships, responsibility, identity, etc.—can be explored through young narrators who find themselves on the cusp of adulthood.

2. Your books have fantastic illustrations in them. What lead to you include them, and how do they enhance the story?

Illustrations from Hold Still done by Mia Nolting

Mia Nolting, the illustrator of Hold Still, is a dear friend of mine who I met in high school. Completing my first book felt like a monumental task, and during that time Mia and I had been exchanging letters through the mail. She was in college, studying illustration and typography, and somehow the idea occurred to us that she should illustrate the journal entries that one of the characters writes in the book. We were so fortunate that my editor at Penguin was enthusiastic about including them in the published book, because I do think they help bring the character of Ingrid to life.

3. You have taught in a variety of places: high schools, colleges, juvenile halls, and through your organization Write Teen—how do these experiences differ, and what do you love about teaching writing?

All of these experiences have been so rewarding. I come from a family of teachers. Both of my parents are teachers, my grandmother was a teacher, and now my little brother is also a teacher! Though my various teaching positions have all been different from one another, I believe that some aspects of teaching writing and literature are universal: we are trying to learn how to express ourselves better and to understand the world more fully through the crafting and studying of language. So whether I’ve been working with adults on writing sophisticated analytical essays or with incarcerated girls on producing poems or high school students on analyzing Jane Eyre or Invisible Man, it’s all about discovering who we are and what our place in the world is and could be.

4. How do you balance teaching with writing and promoting your books?

Cover of The Disenchantments

At first balancing teaching with writing seemed almost impossible. Both of them are jobs that require full commitment; both are consuming. When I started teaching high school full time, I crammed as much writing into school breaks and summer vacation as possible. As my writing career has developed, I’ve transitioned to part time teaching, which I love. I can give my one or two classes a lot of attention and still have plenty of time for writing. I have a new set of challenges coming up, though, as my wife and I have a baby due in June! Once again I will find myself striving for balance as I enter parenthood, but I’m sure it will be more than worth the effort.

5. What advice would you give—or do you give—to high school writers?

The advice I give to high school students is the same advice I give to adults who are emerging writers: Write from the heart, write for the love of it. Find a person or a small group of people with whom you can exchange work because writing can often be a lonely pursuit. Know that after the initial burst of inspiration, writing will feel like work. Take walks when you feel stuck. Finish your stories. Read.

5 Questions for Author, Illustrator, and Actor Avery Monsen ’02

Avery Monsen ’02

Avery Monsen is a writer, illustrator, and actor who lives in New York. He is the co-author and illustrator of several books, All My Friends Are Dead (a national bestseller), I Feel Relatively Neutral About New York, and K is For Knifeball. His writing and illustrations have been featured newspapers all over the country. Avery has acted on 30 Rock, Nick Jr., and in several national commercials. He performs sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York. We are thrilled to welcome Avery back to campus this week for LitFest. He will present a workshop called “Make Something Now” during on Friday, February 15.

1. You describe your books as “children’s books for adults.” How did you decide on that genre?

Avery Monsen and Jory John in a photo from the East Bay Express (http://bit.ly/WZkqHi)

When I wrote All My Friends Are Dead with my buddy Jory, I don’t think we were aiming for a specific genre. We just wrote what we thought was funny. We tried to make each other laugh. Only afterwards, when our editors asked us to write a product description and back cover copy, did we stop and think how on earth the book would be classified. Calling it a “children’s book for adults” seemed like the easiest way to make sure parents didn’t buy it for their 5-year-olds and scar them for life. We didn’t want that on our consciences.

2. You recently published K is For Knifeball, an alphabet of terrible advice. How was the process different, now that your earlier books are national bestsellers?

Honestly, I try not to think about sales stuff too much. It freaks me out. Obviously, there’s pressure to make each book better and funnier and more popular than the last, but you also just have to keep writing. You can’t be too precious about your work. That’s the tricky thing that nobody tells you about being a creative-type-person: you just have to keep on making stuff! For the rest of your life! You can’t ever stop hustling! So I just stay busy and have fun and keep making things that I’m proud of. Hopefully, people connect with them and maybe there will be another bestseller someday. Either way, I’m having fun.

Avery’s sketch comedy team, Beige, at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York

3. So you are a writer, illustrator, actor, sketch comedy team member, recorder player (the instrument), and, according to Twitter, my future friend. Which role is your favorite?

Your friend. Next question.

4. How did your experiences at Marin Academy influence your path as a writer, artist, and person?

MA was the best! Aside from the obvious (great teachers, beautiful campus), MA really fostered individuality. In my case, that meant it fostered weirdness and hooliganism. I’ll give you an example: I was a Spirit Captain (is that still a thing?). [Travs: Yes!] In one of our assemblies, we made two people from each grade stand in buckets of ice water for as long as they could. After about ten minutes, they all started shivering and crying and then a bunch of teachers rushed the stage and pulled them out of the buckets. It was total mayhem. (Now that I’ve typed this story, it seems like an example of terrible decision-making more than fun, kooky individualism. Oh well!)

5.  What advice would you give to a high school student interested in writing, illustration, acting, or all of the above?

Have fun! Stay busy! Don’t do it for the money, because the money’s not that good. If you have any questions about anything—career stuff, creative challenges, relationship advice, urgent medical questions—come ask me on February 15th, E Block. I don’t totally know what I’m going to talk about and it may be a total disaster, but it will definitely be interesting. Be there!