Cory explains the campaign encounter to Simon, Wilder, and the LARPers during Community Friday...  

For me, the beginning of a new school year always unfolds in slow-motion. With so many new people to meet and systems to launch, my brain seems to process the world in 120 frames per second. During these initial weeks, I am reminded to make sure I'm moving slowly with the band, introducing routines intentionally, and providing enough unstructured time for transitions, spontaneity, and thinking. As Rich likes to say: "Move slow because slow is smooth and smooth is fast."

Every year, more or less six weeks in, once the new year shine wears all the way off, when we start to get real comfortable with each other, the routines start to feel routine and time starts to viciously pick up its pace. Our calendar, which a month ago felt expansive and flexible, feels significantly less so, filled up with all the important layers of life at school: math, science, studios, affinity spaces, field trips, student government, morning check-ins, all-school cleans, and on and on...


Scale drawing of "Cavity Kaya" in progress...


During a band meeting last week, we looked at our calendar and calculated that we only had 24 hours of in-school time together to complete our Operation project. Over the past two weeks, we have made so many mission critical project decisions:

  • We've learned the Parts, Purposes, Complexities thinking routine and used it to annotate the original board game and figure out how it worked...

  • We've  watched Crash Course videos and explored 3D anatomy tools to help us narrow our focus and select the 7 organs we want to model in our final game...

  • We've decided to focus on "non-vital organs", like the gallbladder, kidney, spleen, and appendix, that our version of Cavity Sam can live without...  

  • We've sketched a scale drawing based on Kaya's height and proportions, and defined where all the cavities should be...

  • We've tinkered with MaKey MaKeys and microcontrollers, prototyped a controller out of kitchen utensils, and sketched out the features that we'll need to program: a heart monitor graphic and sound effect to give visual feedback, an anesthesia meter that tracks the amount of time before the patient wakes up, and defibrillator pads that can be placed on the patient's chest to restart the game.  

And yet...we have so much we still want to do and such dwindling time. Gulp.

How do you continue to move slowly when the pace of life makes it seem like slowness is impossible?

This is the big question that I'm grappling with as I reset on this long weekend. (Maybe you relate?) Next week, my mission is to model how to stay calm, steady, and groundeddespite looming deadline pressures and an ever-ticking clock.  

In other news:

SF Dance Film Festival and Doc Stories Field Trips are upcoming!
This Friday, we will be attending the SF Dance Film Festival. Next Monday, we'll visit SF MoMA for Doc Stories. Please use this form to let me know whether you're able to pick up your child from the venues at 3pm or if they'll need a ride back to Brightworks with another parent or with me via public transit. Thanks to Jessica, Patrick, Julie, and Colin for filling it out already!  


Charlie and Mar explore the Tabulae Anatomicae together...

Our Body Arc library has grown!
Our humble collection of body-related books has received a real glow-up thanks to loans from the libraries of Debolina, Jason, and Carolyn. We've really enjoyed paging through human anatomy and physiology textbooks, a medical illustration sourcebook, Gulp by Mary Roach, The Way We Work by David Macauley, and a reprint of the 17th c. copperplate engravings from Tabulae Anatomicae de Formato Foetu by Casserius.


Luigi prunes off the fat around the optic nerve during the dissection...

Luigi visited to help us dissect a cow eyeball!
Marcello's Dad borrowed a cow eyeball from his job at the Exploratorium and performed a dissection for us so we could learn about all the parts of the eye up-close. It was kinda gross, absolutely delightful, and sparked so many cool insights and questions about blindspots, the nature of color, and whether cows have enough muscles to roll their eyes...    

We wrapped up Look Both Ways (and have started a new novel, Deep Water!)
To close out our study of Look Both Ways, we've been working on creative responses. Everyone has chosen from one of three writing prompts and drafted a book review, fan fiction, or poem that grapples with the characters, themes, and figurative language in the novel. Some snippets from their work:

Ty and Bryson had been married for just under a year now, Ty had a job working for his favorite company in the world: Activision. He was one of their brightest designers, leading meetings on better weapon designs, and better storylines, working out the nuts and bolts of that weird NPC action. (Seriously what is wrong with those dudes?!?)
— Bea

I am on my way to go to school thinking about the pandavas
I see a tree that looks cool like a sharp pointed spire
I smell the dusty library book i'm reading
I hear the “rumble” of the wind against the car
This makes me think of the purring noise my cats make when they’re calm and comfortable*
— Yoshy

 After reading Look Both Ways, there is a certain feeling like you're finishing a puzzle. Some answers still remain unanswered, like a cliffhanger with no cliff. These stories can be tragic yet heartwarming at the same time. If you like dramatic stories, tender moments, laughs, edge-of-your-seat moments and middle school stories then I personally recommend Look Both Ways.
  — Leithan
  
While mildly enjoyable, the collection of ten stories mostly just seem to lie flat due to the overdeveloped characters. Most of the stories have a lot of character development but almost no payoff. Most of the stories could be compared to a paint-drying compilation.
  — Laz


Kaya, Will, Marcello, Bennett, Charlie, and Yoshy huddle around the Wavelength board...  

Mao, Wavelength, and Infinite Craft have taken over break times!
I love creating space for games and free play throughout the week and watching all the different micro-trends bubble up. Lately, Amethyst has been into playing Mao, a card game where the only rule is that you're not allowed to talk about the rules; Wavelength, a social guessing game that can elicit tremendous group joy, and Infinite Craft, an online toy where you can create an endless number of things by combining the four elements. 

Happy Indigenous People's Day,
Sam

Sam Phillips (he/him)