Students and faculty members have been sharing some of their personal beliefs at The Williston Northampton School’s weekly assemblies. Based on the series of the same name that is a weekly feature on National Public Radio, “This I Believe” invites individuals to reflect on what is important to them.

Williston chaplain and teacher Daphne Burt developed the series in 2010 by inviting SA Fogleman ’10 and Maike Blakely ’10 to speak. Language Department Head Nat Simpson kicked off the 2010-11 series when he spoke on his belief that the study of language can change one’s life.

Now, Pastor Burt says, “students have really seen how cool it is,” and they have begun volunteering to speak as part of the series. This winter and spring the Williston community will hear presentations by Chad Adams ’12, Walter McLaughlin ’12, Marisa Roth ’11, and David King ’11.

Videos of several of the speeches can be found at www.williston.com/video.

Noted violinist Erin Keefe ’98, who in 2008 had a day named after her by the City of Northampton, recently appeared on PBS as part of the Live from Lincoln Center series. As a member of the prestigious Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she performed in String Sextet by Brahms. Now in its 35th season, Live From Lincoln Center makes performances by Lincoln Center’s great artists accessible to home viewers across the United States.

A graduate of The Williston Northampton School, The Curtis Institute, and The Juilliard School, Erin has been hailed by The New York Times as “an impressive violin soloist.” Winner of the 2006 Avery Fisher Career Grant, she is quickly establishing a reputation and earning praise as a compelling artist who is “among the top violinists of her generation” (The Albuquerque Journal).

Erin will return to her home turf of Northampton, MA, to perform Brahms’ Double Concerto in A minor and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor with the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra on May 21, 2011, at the Academy of Music. She also has upcoming performances in Sarasota Springs, Boston, Minneapolis, and elsewhere. Read more at her website.

One of the tasks of the History and Social Sciences Department at The Williston Northampton School, according to history teacher and Dean of Faculty Peter Valine, is to encourage students to develop an “understanding of history as a perspective on events.” As Valine points out, newspapers accurately describe events but also have bias, so in order to explore issues of historical and political perspective, students enrolled in World Civilizations are divided into groups to work on a newspaper project.

Dean of Faculty Peter Valine

The assignment requires students to create their own newspaper, focusing on a certain point of view. This teaches students to research and write from different perspectives on the same situations and historical events. Every student paper is required to have the elements of a newspaper, such as a masthead; several journalistic articles on politics, culture, and political figures; editorials; and reviews and political cartoons. Working in groups of 2 or 3, students divide the assignments and proofread one another’s work. They can also get creative by adding their own elements such as horoscopes, photography, arts and entertainment reviews, and sports reporting. See examples.

Typically the newspaper project is assigned as part of the course unit that studies Southwest Asia and students write from either an Israeli or a Palestinian point of view. However, this year’s class had a different culminating experience connected to reading Three Cups of Tea prior to Greg Mortenson’s campus visit. The students will be creating their newspapers this spring as part of the unit on the history, culture, and geography of Africa.

The newspaper project was developed by Valine and other members of the History and Social Sciences Department over 10 years ago, and continues to be a relevant tool today, refined by the collaborative efforts of World Civilizations teachers David Koritkoski, Sarah Klumpp, Jason Sport, and Andrew Syfu. It is one element of the World Civilizations curriculum, a year-long required course for ninth and tenth graders at Williston, which aims for students to develop a variety of skills including note taking, researching, essay writing, oral presentation, and analyzing primary source documents.

That last goal is increasingly important now that, as Valine underscores to his students, finding information is no longer a question of searching through microfiche. Now that students have countless sources of information available through every Internet search, evaluation is even more important. Just as newspapers have evolved due to the Internet age, so have our faculty and our curricula. The department provides students with a rubric for examining source documents and the school as a whole is working to increase media literacy for both faculty and students.

The following seniors at The Williston Northampton School were inducted into the Cum Laude Society on Tuesday, February 1, 2011, at an assembly in the Phillips Stevens Chapel on campus:

• Jose “Tony” Alvarez of Chicago, IL
• Dongyang “Don” Cheng of Houston, TX
• Derek Dombrowski of Holyoke, MA
• Ross Ewing of Keene, NH
• Sarah Fay of South Hadley, MA
• Byung Hee “Brian” Ko of Republic of Korea
• Becca Macdonald of Topsfield, MA
• Kyung Jun “Charlie” Park of Republic of Korea
• Rae Underberg of Douglaston, NY
• Garrett Welson of Northampton, MA

Williston teacher Robert Blanchette P’92, ’94 was the event’s distinguished speaker. The president of Williston’s Cum Laude Society since 2001, Bob has been at Williston since 1972 in a variety of roles including French teacher, math teacher, summer school director, golf coach, Language Department head, and director of admission. In his address, Bob related stories about his first teaching and coaching job, which inspired his life-long dedication to educating and nurturing young people. Watch the video.

The event was webcast and viewers logged on from around the country and the world to watch. Students and their parents also attended a reception following the assembly at the home of Head of School Robert W. Hill III and Kathryn Hill P’15.

The Cum Laude Society recognizes academic achievement by students in secondary schools for the purpose of promoting excellence (Areté), justice (Diké), and honor (Timé). Founded in 1906, the society modeled Cum Laude after Phi Beta Kappa and in the years since its founding, Cum Laude has grown to 350 chapters around the world. Williston Academy became a member of the society in 1921, Northampton School for Girls received its charter in 1951, and in 1971 a new charter was created for The Williston Northampton School.