Category Archives: Special Programs

Learn from Every Challenge Monopoli ’89 Tells Students

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2014 04 Rutherford Rich Monopoli 3“I need a volunteer,” Rich Monopoli ’89 said to the assembled Upper School students during a recent Wednesday morning. “I need a guy to play me in 1989.”

Once a student, Gabe Hohmann ’14, was seated on the stage, Mr. Monopoli turned to him from the podium.

“You will experience great success over the next 25 years,” he said to Mr. Hohmann. “And you will experience great challenges.”

As an alumnus with many ties to Williston—his sister, Paula Monopoli, is class of 1976 and his niece, Alexandra Lewis, is a current senior—Mr. Monopoli was on campus to speak to students about the lasting legacy of the Williston experience.

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Posted in: Special Programs, Upper School, Visiting Speakers

A Memorable Day in Spanish: The Field Trip to Queens

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radio station 9Editor’s Note: A dozen students from the advanced language courses Spanish Conversation and Cinema recently visited the Little Colombia neighborhood in New York City to learn about the community there. The following is Language Department Head Nat Simpson’s description of the trip.

The Spanish Conversation and Cinema class is a year-long course that covers a variety of topics. In this, their third trimester, students focused on immigration and Hispanic populations in the United States. As a culmination of their work, the class went to  to Jackson Heights in New York City on April 29 to learn more about Spanish-speaking immigrants in Queens.

radio station 3Our first stop was at La Nueva Radio Internacional, which is a Spanish-speaking radio station in the City that caters to the Colombians living there. Their programming is 60 percent from NYC and 40 percent from Colombia. They are an affiliate of Radio Caracol, which is a large radio company in Colombia. The Conversation students went to learn more about the radio station and its connection with the immigrant community. To our surprise, many of them spoke LIVE on the radio to several thousands of Spanish speakers! I couldn’t believe it—I was so proud of them! There are some photos here of Sideya Dill, Julie Lord, and others at the mike.

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Posted in: Special Programs, Upper School, Williston Northampton News

Naomi Darling on Sustainable (and Inspiring) Architecture

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IMG_1772To kick off her talk about sustainable design, Naomi Darling showed a slide of a place all Williston Northampton students would recognize.

“That’s where we are right now, right?” said Ms. Darling as a picture of Reed Campus Center appeared.

“Pretty much everything we see has been designed,” said Ms. Darling switching to a view of the Williston pond. “It’s all part of a built environment that very much shapes our lives.”

Ms. Darling, a Five College assistant professor of sustainable architecture, was visiting Natania Hume’s Contemporary Arts and Culture class to talk about historical architecture, best sustainable practices, and some of her recent projects. To give students a basis for comparison, she showed how the Williston campus integrated aspects of other designed spaces: English gardens, the University of Virginia, and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“Architecture embodies the aspiration and achievements of a society,” said Ms. Darling. “It is a realization of a culture, time, and place.”

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Posted in: Upper School, Visiting Speakers, Williston+

A Million Voices

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IMG_1497Dr. Felicia Barber couldn’t get over the sound in the Phillips Stevens Chapel.

“What a great hall!” she said to Joshua Harper, choral director at the Williston Northampton School. She gestured to the large, sunlit room. “What an awesome space!”

Behind her in the chapel nave, her accompanist, Scott Bailey, launched into a resonant tune on the organ.

Dr. Barber, a conductor at Westfield State University, had just finished leading her Chamber Chorale in a private concert for the Widdigers and Caterwaulers. Her group, some 20 college students dressed in formal black, performed a short program of new and known works, including pieces by Troy Robertson, Benjamin Britten, and Moses Hogan.

Mr. Harper said the idea behind the concert had been to give Williston students a chance to hear counterparts at the college level and talk to them about technique.

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Posted in: Arts, Visiting Speakers, Williston Northampton News

Seen, Read, Heard, Considered: Public Poetry on Campus

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Photo via ‏@MrJoshSeamon

This week, students and faculty were surprised to see poetry popping up around campus. The short poems appeared on stairwells and allowances, in the campus store and on cars.

The public poems were part of collaborative projects created by students in Modern American Poetry as part of their final assessment, said Jennifer Gross, who teaches the class.

“The challenge? How can we bring poetry more into prominence this week on campus?” she wrote in an email. “In small groups they devised projects for getting more poetry seen, read, heard, and considered.”

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Posted in: Special Programs, Williston Northampton News