Marimba!

Here's a taste of what one of MLC's marimba bands sound like:

Update: Here's one from a few years ago:

Portfolios: So Much Better Than Finals

High school students at MLC don't take finals. (Yes, you read that right.) Instead, we complete culminating projects for each class. The piece can take almost any form imaginable--it could be a persuasive essay, a painting, a compilation of poems and photographs, a lab report, a math problem, a recipe book, or a video, to mention a few options. At the end of each year, we present three of those pieces--a writing piece, a problem solving piece, and a piece of our choice--to a panel of judges who score the presentation. Sophomores and seniors present to outside panelists--volunteers who may be parents, teachers' parents, or members of the larger community (for example, people who work at businesses nearby). Freshmen present to juniors, and juniors present to seniors.

This alternative method of proving what you have learned is, in my mind, a much more accurate and all-encompassing one. It lets the student explain what they learned, how they grew, and what they had difficulties with--it forces us to metacognate, and to really show all aspects of what we got out of a class, not just how well we take tests. It's yet one more thing that we love about MLC.

Hearts!

Look at the cool art some of the K x 3 family made for Valentines Day!  Aren't they beautiful?
These are still up in the hallway by Avril's room, near the main office, if you want to swing by and check them out in person.

Doug, the Douglas Fir

Doug is too big to fit in one picture. Here's the top of Doug.

John's class of first and second graders have been talking to Doug here. Doug is a Douglas Fir, and he's got a lot of fairy friends. They help him do what he can't...like write letters to his friends in John's class. They've been studying trees like him and his tree friends, and have been to visit Doug in his home forest at Forest Park. Doug watches over the hallways for us and loves to get letters back! 

Here's the bottom of Doug.

High School Plays

Every year, Bianca, the high school Art and Language Arts teacher, co-teaches a Theater class with an employee of Profile Theater. This year, they put on two plays by Terrence McNally. The first, Bad Habits, follows the inhabitants of a marriage counseling retreat called Ravenswood and a rehabilitation center called Dunelawn. The second play, It's Only A Play, follows actors in NYC as they impatiently wait for the opening night reviews of their play and what happens when they read them.

Here's an idea of what that looks like:

Murals: We Are All Connected

This mural is on the stairway going up to the high school hallway from the exit to the back parking lot. These photos offer two views of the same part of the mural: one directly facing it, and the lower photo as one would see it entering the school.

Fun Photos

In addition to creating this blog, Olivia and I had the privilege of being advisors for the MLC yearbook committee.  We've been able to get many of the awesome photos for this blog from our resources for creating the yearbook, which has been very helpful.  Here are some of the great photos that were submitted to the yearbook that we weren't able to publish.  Enjoy!