On May 2 the 8th grade class took their annual field trip to our state capitol to tour the State House, participate in a mock trial in the Supreme Court, and tour the Vermont Historical Society Museum exhibits. We were also able to see Addison Blanchard, 8th grade student from Woodstock who is serving as a Legislative Page during this final 6 weeks of the legislative session (photo below). Some of us were lucky enough to catch our 3 Windsor County Senators during a break in the Senate chamber where students had the opportunity to ask them questions. Before leaving the State House students were able to watch the House of Representatives begin their session from the galleries. The whole class was recognized from the House floor by Woodstock Representative Tesha Buss to a round of applause, before exiting for a class photo on the front steps and then boarding the buses to return home.
Earth Day 2024 was a perfect sunshiney day for students in grades 7-12 to connect with the earth and each other. For the last two hours of the day, students engaged in workshops that included: making reusable beeswax food wraps, crocheting a hanging plant hanger, doing bird painting with VINS, making art from fruits and veggies, making wildflower seed bombs, learning to grow and harvest microgreens, learning vegan cooking skills with Heather Wolfe, making their own eco-friendly cleaning products including a shoe deodorizer (hello spring athletes!), greening up campus, learning from Change the World Kids, and creating a new perennial pollinator hedgerow. Seventh graders hiked through the King Farm and a group of high school students helped five different classes at Woodstock Elementary School perform stewardship of their campus, Vail Field, and their outdoor classroom on Mount Peg. This was a tremendous effort where students and staff came together to create, pause, and practice stewardship. A huge thanks to everyone involved!
A hidden world, a sunken ship, an abandoned picnic, an immersive web and an abstract expression of moving water… These are just some of the ideas expressed at the Land Trust trail by 16 talented Eco-Art students.
The pieces created are a part of SculptureFest and the community and artists enjoyed an art reception on Sunday. This environmental exhibit is always open to the public, stop by anytime on the trail located between Prosper Rd and the King Farm to enjoy their installations.
An excerpt from Aleks Cirovic’s artist statement about her art piece Stability:
“I wished for this piece to represent a part of myself, a part that I have lost. One that has balance, respect, and curiosity surrounding the past. The surrounding space represents what surrounds me.”
Heather Wolfe, dietician and nutritionist at Dartmouth Hitchcock and author of the cookbook Sustainable Kitchen, returned this week to the school kitchen where she took her first cooking class and decided her career path. Heather joined this year’s middle school cooking class to share her passion for healthy, sustainable living, and some recipes from her book.
Students made hummus with her and were able to sample homemade kale chips, energy balls, aquafaba meringue cookies, and watermelon basil water. No leftovers! Here you see two photos of Heather in the WUHSMS teaching kitchen - one from 1997 (making homemade pasta) and the other with this year's ms class! (More connections - some people will remember Heather’s mother, Karen Hawkes who taught French at Woodstock for many years. Heather is married to Woodstock social studies teacher Nick Wolfe.)
On Tuesday, June 13th, the 9th grade team capped off an interdisciplinary unit about the Holocaust with a virtual presentation by Ms. Fay Malkin. Ms. Malkin is a Holocaust survivor and activist with connections in the local community. She shared her incredible story with the ninth graders, telling them about the two years she spent in hiding with her family in a hayloft in Sokal, Poland (now Ukraine). Ms. Malkin's incredible story helped to underscore the depravity of the Holocaust and the resiliency of those who survived it.
Ms. Malkin was joined on the Zoom call by her daughter, Debbi Schonberger-Pierce, who shared her own perception of how the Holocaust impacts generations of people, as survivors and their descendents search for normalcy in the wake of genocide.
Students were moved by the presentation, and when asked why survivor stories matter, Sophia Rosenbach shared that it is essential to learn from survivors so that we do not repeat mistakes of the past. Ms. Malkin also conveyed one more piece of advice to her young audience: "talk to your grandparents." After all, she said, everyone has a story worth sharing, and we should learn from each other while we still can.
On Tuesday, May 24 our culminating events for our The Most Costly Journey took place in the library, classrooms and outdoors. The day began with The Villalobos Brothers visiting Maestra Megyesi's middle school Spanish class. The Villalobos Brothers told the students about their own journey from Mexico to the United States, how they studied music and the arts as kids and how those experiences shaped their careers as professional musicians today. Students asked them a lot of questions in Spanish about their instruments, their style of music and their favorite foods.
The next workshop middle school art students participated in was with Marek Bennett, cartoonist and one of the editors of The Most Costly Journey. Marek explained his process and taught the students in Ms. Jimerson and Ms. Piana's classes how to make their own comic books.
The main event was the concert by the Villalobos Brothers outside in the bowl behind the school. The brothers' exquisite musicianship, high-powered fiddling and moving vocals got the crowd clapping, dancing and singing along. In between songs, they engaged with the audience and shared that "This is the coolest high school auditorium we've ever played." The band also shared that they feel a strong connection to Vermont because of the similarities with their home state, Vera Cruz in Mexico.
After they finished performing, they opened it up to questions. Ruth Stallard, eighth grader, asked what their favorite thing about Vermont is and one of the brothers responded, "the people." Mimi Konda-Olmstead, ninth grader, asked where they get their inspiration from and one of the brothers said, "Travel. You should do it. You get fresh ideas and your imagination is reawakened." A number of Senora Bristow's fifth grade Hartford elementary Spanish students had the opportunity to ask the band questions and one student asked about their favorite musical collaborations. One of the brothers shared that he did a recent collaboration with Bruce Springsteen on a song called "Stones." One of the other brothers said the Chieftains and a third brother said his favorite collaboration was with "elder musicians from Mexico."
Their joy of performing and educating was evident throughout the concert. Hannah Gubbins, junior, described their music as “upbeat” and appreciated that “they taught us about what they were singing about.” After the concert concluded there were more classroom visits to Mr. Trudeau's high school band class and another cartooning workshop with students in Mrs. Hagge's high school English class.
Thanks so much to BarnArts, Pentangle and the Vermont Humanities Council for making this concert and programming possible. Thank you to the Villalobos Brothers and Marek Bennett for visiting our school. Thank you to everyone at WUHSMS who helped with this event. And, thank you to all of the teachers who incorporated The Most Costly Journey into their classes and to all of the students who read the book and participated in the Vermont Reads program.
As part of Earth Beat activities, students engaged in plant-forward cooking classes with Heather Wolfe (class of ‘99 and author of Sustainable Kitchen), as an important and delicious way to care for both personal and planetary health.
Thanks to a grant from the Woodstock Endowment Association that was received in 2020, Earth Beat successfully hosted over a dozen interactive workshops for the entire school to engage in hands-on environmentally based workshops in honor of Earth Week. Student leaders paired with staff to lead workshops to make reusable beeswax wraps, construct reusable bags out of t-shirts, make soap, cultivate micro-greens, learn about bee conservation, green up the school campus, write letters to the White House, create art, explore vegan cooking and more! A huge shout out to Earth Beat members and the staff who devoted their lunch and ARE times two days in a row to engage students in hopeful activities.
Mayor of Burlington Miro Weinberger, a 1988 WUHS graduate, spoke with about 40 students in AP Government & Politics on Friday, April 28. Students asked about issues related to the city budget, the University of Vermont, and approaches to policing. Mayor Weinberger spoke with junior Tori McNamara about housing in Burlington following the talk.
Last week the 8th Grade Class visited the Vermont Supreme Court, Vermont Historical Society Museum, and the State House in time to see 8th grader Nick Cellini on his last day of work as a Vermont Legislative Page.
Students were greeted in the Supreme Court by Woodstock graduate Justice Harold Eaton (Class of 1973) and they participated in a mock trial based on an actual case. They took a self-guided tour of the Vermont Historical Society Museum, and were able to see their town representatives in the House as they observed them in session during their tour of the State House. One group of students was greeted by a few of their legislators for lunch and had a chance to ask questions and have conversation. Interestingly, a student question that turned into a point of discussion was whether any money from the large federal infrastructure bill would trickle down to local school districts for school renovations or rebuilds.
This was our first field trip to Montpelier since Covid and we hope to resume making it an annual tradition for the 8th Grade Class!