Reading!

The Harlem Renaissance Gallery in the Nathan Hale Performing Arts Center

Did you know that silent reading has been part of the Nathan Hale daily schedule for ten years? Currently, students read for 30 minutes at the end of the day every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. This commitment to fostering reading is a key component of Nathan Hale's vision.

I try to read in a different classroom each silent reading period. Today, I read with Ms. Brown's 6th period students. Here's a sampling of their books:

• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• Die for Love by Elizabeth Peters
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Check out this link to the recently published NEA study on the decline of reading in the United States entitled To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence.

http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead.pdf

Here's a quote from the study:

All of the data suggest how powerfully reading transforms the lives of individuals—whatever their social circumstances. Regular reading not only boosts the likelihood of an individual’s academic and economic success—facts that are not especially surprising—but it also seems to awaken a person’s social and civic sense. Reading correlates with almost every measurement of positive personal and social behavior surveyed.

Reading is alive and well at Nathan Hale!

Just your average Tuesday . . .

There is a breathtaking variety to the events in a day at Nathan Hale. Today, after a long weekend and on the first day of a new semester, I saw:

• Students preparing to read Siddhartha by analyzing sentences from the first chapter to predict the trajectory of the story.


• Students learning to make a pinhole camera.


• Students playing basketball against Ingraham High School.


• Students performing in the now legendary totally student-produced Hale Fest Rawk (yes, that's rawk) concert.

Wednesday and Thursday, January 30th and 31st, are our first school tours for prospective students. Tours begin at 8:30 in the Performing Arts Center.

Mark your calendars for our production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, February 14th through the 16th.

And finally, congratulations to Nathan Hale's own Hoover Hopkins, who was named Division II Coach of the Year this weekend. Hoover will be coaching the all-star game in July. Hoover is committed to creating scholar athletes who know that they have a responsibility to be honorable, thinking, skillful citizens.

Mock trials and Monday, 1/28

Hello Nathan Hale Community!

It has been my great pleasure and honor to be a judge for a 10th grade Integrated Studies mock trial. I got to watch intrepid student lawyers and well-informed expert witnesses, including Charles Darwin, Ayn Rand, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jean Piaget testify in the case of the State of England Vs. Jack from Lord of the Flies. All of the students showed strong research, thinking, writing, and reasoning skills. It was very hard to render a verdict!

Many thanks to the Integrated Studies team and our volunteer lawyer/judges who helped to make this exhibition possible.

Please remember that there is no school on Monday! We will begin our new semester on Tuesday, January 29th. Tuesday is a late start day.

Welcome to the Nathan Hale Daily Blog

I've created this blog to help provide fast, flexible communication to our community. I'll try to update each day with information about events, projects, news, and excitement in and around our school.

Tomorrow (Wednesday, January 23rd) is the first day of first semester finals. Finals will continue through Friday, January 25th.

Tomorrow is also the first day of our 10th grade Integrated Studies mock trials, and tomorrow night our 9th graders are hosting a Science Museum and Socratic Seminars. Join us!

If you're in or around the school, please take a look at our Harlem Renaissance projects created by our 11th graders. They are displayed in the gallery in the Performing Arts Center.



This is a painting inspired by the artist William Johnson done by one of our 11th grade students.



You can also see work created by students in Drawing and Painting, Ceramics, and Photography classes displayed in the Performing Arts Center and on the second floor by the photography classroom.



Here are some paintings done in the style of Georgia O'Keefe.