Hi, my name is Brendan Hellweg and I am a student at Williston. I also am a writer and editor for The Willistonian, a theater techie, and, as of now, the writer of a student blog. I plan to talk about academics, student life, and general Williston-related news.

Sarah Sawyer helps a student

I figure a good way to start off this blog would be a little bit about one of my favorite parts of Williston: the Writing Center.  I’ve always enjoyed writing and the written word. Since an early age, reading was my go-to source of entertainment (at least until the computer cried its illustrious siren song…) and the idea of inventing whole new worlds of my own thrilled my young self.

The Writing Center is located just above the library. About fifteen inspirational quotes from famous authors hang from the ceiling. Inside the bright little room is usually a writing center aide who reviews and helps edit student work. Although mostly it is meant to be school work, from my understanding the writing center also welcomes extracurricular writing projects and is glad to give advice and helpful hints on basically anything you can type. The Writing Center is especially useful to my English class because the director of the writing center, Ms. Sawyer, is also my English teacher, and having an extra chance for your teacher to point out the same errors that normally you would be losing points for is very helpful.

Brendan Hellweg

So far I have used the center for a three-page essay on the British sci-fi show Doctor Who, a 16-page compilation of short pieces on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and a dystopian short story about the limits of control on the human mind. Every time I walk out I feel like I have just improved my piece tenfold and learned something new about how I can create a story cleanly and articulately. The Writing Center is like a strainer through which I can put a hastily written essay about everything and nothing, and the result is something worth being proud of. I can see myself going there a lot in the future.

Mathematics teacher Alan Lipp, who has taught at Williston since 1975 and was head of the Mathematics Department for nearly 20 years, has recently published The Play’s the Thing: Mathematical Games for the Classroom and Beyond, a book that presents 18 mathematical games and develops the concepts of game analysis and winning strategies.

The book’s inception goes back to Williston’s Intersession program in the 1980s. One of the courses Mr. Lipp offered was a course in math games. He invented several of the games, but many of them are well-known, including Tic-Tac-Toe and Connect-the-Dots. All of the games have an underlying math theme, even if it is not apparent at first. His previous two books, published in 2000 and 2001, were supplements to textbooks for AP calculus. The Play’s the Thing is more general and intended for classroom use in grades 8-12.

“Making math meaningful has been a theme throughout my career,” Mr. Lipp says. “Math should also be fun, interesting, and comprehensible.” He spent many years teaching seventh and eighth grade math in the Middle School, where he found that for students of that age, play was helpful and made topics more engaging. Even with the higher-level courses he teaches now (including AP Calculus and Discrete Mathematics), he will introduce topics in playful way, although eventually “we have to do a logical analysis in order to meet the challenge and mathematical import of what we’re looking at.”

Though the games in The Play’s the Thing can be played by students at all levels, the book challenges students to develop a winning strategy: an effective way to win every time. With some of the games, known solutions exist, but with others, none have yet been found. In the Introduction, Mr. Lipp writes, “In some cases the answers are not known, but the question is presented in the belief that the search for an answer is worthwhile.”

It is the playfulness of the search that has kept Mr. Lipp engaged in teaching math for more than 40 years. “You need to find something in the math that’s new and interesting, if you’re going to be teaching Algebra 1 twenty years in a row,” he says, “so I play math games all the time.”

He also credits Williston students with consistently inspiring his excellent teaching. “Every year I learn something new from my kids,” he says. “They’re creative, inventive, and inspiring.” He considers the students to be his best teachers, and since they have played his math games for years, he also feels that they indirectly helped write his book.

Art teachers at Williston are professionals in their field as well as dedicated teachers. The saying, “Those who can’t do, teach,” in no way applies to these creative individuals. One of them is Marcia Reed, who has taught art and design at Williston since 1978. She is best known for her small- and large-scale expressionist paintings that make vivid use of color and gesture in landscape. Her work is represented by galleries in New England, California, and London; her most recent showing was as part of a juried exhibition at the Broome Street Gallery in New York. She also teaches during the summer at various locations including Snow Farm: The New England Craft Program, Mispillion Art League in Milford, Delaware, and Le Petit Rousset in France.

A view of Water, an installation by Burns Maxey

In addition to our talented faculty, Williston staff members are creative as well. Burns Maxey, an associate in the Office of Communications, is a visual and conceptual artist whose work combines new and old technologies in order to study place. In 2009 she began a multi-year, inter-media project exploring the city of Easthampton through the lens of the four elements, two of which (Earth and Water) have been presented so far. Other recent projects of hers include Remnants, a five-hour performance incorporating materials from Earth and Water, and Reflections, a collaboration with artist Maggie Nowinski that featured maps, postcards, and video conversations about daily life in Easthampton.

Marcia Reed with one of her paintings

Marcia and Burns were both recently honored with an invitation to present their work at the Hillside Salon, a monthly event put on by the chancellor of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. On April 26, along with artists Ali Moshiri and Michael Tillyer, they presented their work in the pecha-kucha (pe-chak-cha) fashion: Each presenter is allowed 20 images that are shown for 20 seconds each, a total of 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. The presentations were followed by a roundtable discussion and time to answer audience questions. “They were very good visual observers,” Marcia says of the salon attendees. “People in the audience were genuinely interested in asking us personal questions about our work after the presentations.”

The Hillside Salon is organized by Sabine Holub, wife of UMass Chancellor Robert Holub, a passionate supporter of the arts. The monthly events are open to the public but preregistration is required. The Hillside Salon brings together artists of a wide variety of disciplines to share their work and exchange ideas and concepts.

At Williston, education doesn’t end with the conclusion of the class day. Amanda Rappold, physics teacher and dorm head of French House, has initiated a study group to help better prepare the girls in her dorm for life after Williston. They are reading The Curse of the Good Girl by Rachel Simmons, which addresses the challenge of being both successful and genuine, or, how to be a “real” girl and not just a “good” girl.

On her website, Rachel Simmons declares that “while the doors of opportunity are open to twenty-first-century American girls, many lack the confidence to walk through them.” Women earn less and are underrepresented in the upper levels of business. More girls than boys graduate from college, but, as Ms. Rappold describes it, “Once you get into the world where what you produce matters, achievement drops off.” This, according to the book, is the “curse of the good girl.”

Amanda Rappold at Senior Dinner

The idea of a reading group came to her after she and her colleagues attended a workshop by Rachel Simmons at Smith College. They all were motivated to bring the message of empowerment back to campus. Melissa Brousseau, Caitlin Church, and Allison Marsland gave a Diversity Conference workshop entitled “Good Girls Finish Last,” while Ms. Rappold decided to start the book discussion in her dorm.

French House is a small dorm housing eight girls, most of whom are senior honor students. They have met once a month during study hall since January to discuss assigned chapters from the book. “The book is about how you interact with the world,” Ms. Rappold says, so it’s perfect for seniors who are about to leave Williston and go on to college and a career. She gives the example of a chapter on body language and how many girls expect their peers to “read their minds.” This becomes a problem in the workplace if a woman expects that hard work alone will earn her a raise or promotion, instead of negotiating directly.

“The dorm is the place where these conversations happen,” Ms. Rappold says, and she has found that reading about these issues makes them easier to talk about. Girls can discuss the book without revealing too much personally. For a physics teacher (she has taught at Williston since 1999), book discussions are new territory, but she has found that the discussion flows naturally with some direction from her. “The girls have said specifically that they are glad to be reading the book and they have learned from it,” she says.

Assistant Athletic Director Melissa Brousseau, a fellow dorm parent and previous dorm head of Memorial East, calls the book discussions “a great initiative.” In French House, “It’s not just rules, study hall and checking in. There are definitely life lessons and communication skills being developed beyond the classroom. Beyond dorm bonding, our girls can take these lessons and use them long after they graduate from Williston.”

A show of original choreography will grace the stage of the Williston Theatre at 18 Payson Avenue on Friday, May 20, and Saturday, May 21, when the Dance Ensemble presents its spring concert, Beyond the Beat, at 7:30 p.m. General admission tickets are $5. Children 12 and under get in free, as do Williston students, faculty, and staff.

The concert will present of an array of 11 new dances choreographed by students, faculty, and guest artists. Guest artist and Smith College alumna Michelle Marroquin has set a new modern piece for the ensemble. Williston’s Costume Designer, Ilene Goldstein, has choreographed a new piece in the style of Scottish country dance, and Dance Program Director Laurel Raffeto has set a new modern/jazz fusion dance to an upbeat piece of music with swing era influences.

Student choreographers Mika Chmielewski, Brittany Collins, Pankti Dalal, Victoria Durocher, Dale McGraw, Anuska Sarkar, Bruna Tarraf, Madeline Wise, and Annie Zheng will present pieces set to musical choices ranging from Marilyn Manson to Justin Bieber to G.F. Handel. The show will also feature a special solo presentation by ninth grader Tory Kolbjornsen.

The ensemble members are: Davin Aberle, Mika Chmielewski, Brittany Collins, Pankti Dalal, Victoria Durocher, Emma Hing, Sarah Hubbard, Dale McGraw, Keely Quirk, Anuska Sarkar, Bruna Tarraf, Calvin Ticknor-Swanson, Victoria Vazquez, Madeline Wise, and Annie Zheng.