ACT & College News

written by Teresa Hichens-Olson, College Accessibility

The ACT will be held at Great River on April 24th. Students should be here and ready to test at 8:30 sharp, having had a good breakfast. They should bring a working calculator with them! Quiet snacks and a water bottle are also encouraged. GRS covers all costs of this ACT test but donations are welcome to continue this free service. All Juniors will be dismissed early on the 24th after the ACT is completed.

GRS will also be offering an ACT study sessions on April 17th from 1-2:30pm in the UA commons. All 11th graders are encouraged to attend. Note that 11th graders will be taking the tests on paper & not electronically so your student should practice with paper tests. These tests are available at your local library & GRS counseling office. Feel free to contact Teresa with any questions that you may have at thichensolson@greatriverschool.org

Poetry Out Loud 2019

Poetry Out Loud encourages students to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation. This program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about literary history and contemporary life. Great River sent two students, Ryland Kranz & Briar Weston, to the regionals competition to recite with other students from around the Metro area. Briar went on to recite at the state competition, reciting with students from all around Minnesota!

iRace 2019 Summit

The eighth annual iRace summit was a successful community effort! iRace students, beginning in October 2018, planned, organized, and put on the all-day conference, bringing in outside community experts, activists, & artists to lead student workshops focused on this year’s theme - Raising Awareness: Intersectionality & Language. Our first ever student keynote speakers, Feneti Mohamed & Isaiah Randle spoke to both the lower & upper adolescent student bodies on their experiences being students of color at the majority white Great River School and how to move forward with grace & solidarity. A big thank you to all the parents and community members who dropped off food for our community potluck!

Pi Day 2019

Pi Day is a Great River tradition - recite ten digits of Pi on 3/14 and get a slice of pie!

This year, ninth grader Briar Weston recited 1,900 digits of Pi from memory, earning themselves a spot as one of the top reciters in the world! The feat took just over twenty minutes and the entire lower adolescent community sat in anticipation & awe of Briar’s memorization skills! To see pictures of everyone who recited Pi in front of the community, click here.

The celebration wasn’t just in the lower adolescent community - upper elementary students got in on the fun too. Classrooms baked pies and did circle exercises, learning more about the wondrous number that is Pi.

Reptiles in St. Croix

written by Liv May Anderson & Syris McBride

It was fun to have snakes in St. Croix classroom. I think that everyone liked touching the snakes. The species of snakes included a cornsnake, milksnake, boa constrictor, hognose snake, and bullsnake. It took five kids to hold the boa constrictor. I hope they come back soon.

Shingobee Spring Update

written by Shingobee guide, Amanda O’Dowd

After a long hard winter, spring is finally here! In Shingobee we have done some spring cleaning and we rearranged our classroom. We have also been studying plants, trees, and herbs. We have had some special guests that have come to talk to us about their work in farming, herbology, and maple sugaring.  

Miles Rosenthal's mother, Courtney Tchida, visited our classroom to help us plant spring seeds that will be planted in our school garden and used in our cooking at the end of the school year. Her father, Dale Tchida will be joining our class to discuss how to make maple syrup. Hadley Musselman shared her knowledge of herbs with us, too: she helped us make tinctures and salves. Finally, a group of our students went to the Como Conservatory to observe the plants and visit the rainforest area.

All of our studies around plants have led to further investigation of lavender, chamomile, elderberry, valerian, and many other fun herbs! We are excited to watch the leaves return to the trees, the grass turn green, the flowers to come up and to grow our own food!

CAS Magic

written by Sarah Hansen, CAS Magic coordinator

This month, twenty-four 10th graders are leading CAS experiences for 7/8 graders as a part of the CAS Magic Program Leadership training program. CAS Magic prepares students to lead programming for younger students through an intense training process based on scripted activities aimed at cultivating mentor relationships and group bonding. All 10th graders led a one week session with 7/8 graders last fall and then planned four week sessions based on their own ideas this spring. Some examples of current CAS Magic Programming: Fort-building, Outdoor Games, Sharks and Aquatic Life, Podcasts and Crafts, Music: The CAS, Premier Pro and Acrobat Effects, and Ice Skating.

CAS Magic leaders have enjoyed getting to know the younger students and learning how to support following the norms in group settings. They have also appreciated learning how to design their own program and are more confident to lead their own CAS experiences in Upper Adolescent. 7th and 8th graders report that they have fun playing outside with the older students and they feel a stronger sense of community across the levels. They enjoyed learning new instruments and having a structured activity without adults around.

Tapestry Making - GRS Student of Color Affinity Group

written by Jenny Kordosky, coordinator of race & gender student programming

Hello, hello. Greetings from mid-school year!

As you know, this year Great River School is trying out holding monthly events for the student of color affinity groups. This month, we hosted regional artist Shoua Yang. Shoua is a print-maker with family ties to the Twin Cities. He is a Hmong-American artist who focuses on making keeping Hmong culture accessible and vibrant. Working with Shoua was fantastic - he really enjoys working with students and is so talented and passionate about his craft. He hopes to come back and work with Great River soon! Look for him potentially as a Great Gathering guest or teaching a summer camp!

Shoua worked with 9-12th grade students on a tapestry over two days. Students designed and cut their designs into linoleum on the theme of how they feel their identity is connected to Minnesota. Students left with three prints of their own plus their linoleum cut. Additionally, students make three print on fabric which Shoua will sew into a tapestry for us to display at school.

6-8th grade students had a shorter workshop with Shoua, learning about the history of printmaking, checking out a variety of different kinds of printmaking techniques, and then selecting a design of Shoua’s to print for themselves.

Check out the great images made and mostly designed by students below!

Check out the beautiful design that Shoua made for us celebrating our school with our mascot, the Great Blue Heron!

Check out Shoua’s website.

Take care!

Jenny

Bright Star at Great River School

In the spring of 2012, Great River put on its very first musical, Bye Bye Birdie. What a long way we've come since then! A tiny pit band of 3 has become one with 11 talented musicians, a performance space has gone from a shadowy warehouse to a blackbox theatre, and for the first time ever, we'll have two weekends of shows for audiences to enjoy.

The cast of this year's musical, Bright Star, has been hard at work since the middle of January, rehearsing daily after school some Saturday mornings, and even a long day on President's Day! Today we ran the second act for the first time. Our actors have blocked every scene and are working tirelessly to learn lines, songs, and dances. The pit band is doing their part too as they master some challenging bluegrass music. A saxophonist has become an autoharp connoisseur, our percussionist has added spoons to his list of instruments, and Zack Scott is both running pit band rehearsals and also playing a mean banjo. 

We've all fallen in love with this beautiful score and script written by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. Bright Star is set in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. Moving seamlessly back and forth between 1923 and 1945, it tells the story of two young couples in love, an unexpected baby, and two writers seeking the chance to tell their stories and let others be witnesses to their truths. 

Tickets will go on sale next week. We hope you'll come and join us March 15-16 and March 22-23 in the GRS Performance Space. Details will be coming in the announcement blog!

Minnehaha Creek Visits the Bike Shop

GRS Montessori Model United Nations Trip to New York

By: Keira McNiff, Maia Oberg, Hayden Shay, Sofie Stumme-Hanson, Harper O’Dowd, Alex Jacobsen, Willa Taylor, Clara Thompson, Emmett Goss, Tamarack Brohaugh, James Williams, Vivian Turbak, Sahara Peters and Beena Reiter

Last week our group of 25 5th and 6th-year students went to New York City to participate Montessori Model United Nations. We spent most of this year preparing for this trip. We had to research and write positions papers on our topics and prepare speeches to give to our committee groups. The topics that we had to learn about were real-world problems that we had to find solutions for.

GRS represented Croatia, The State of Kuwait, and the Russian Federation. We were joined by students from other countries and had to work together to write a draft resolution and then vote to make it a final resolution. We went to committee six hours each day. On our last day we got to go to the real United Nations and sit in the general assembly hall where the real UN delegates sit! Four GRS students were chosen to speak at the UN. This was an amazing experience!

While the work was hard, we had a lot of fun. We ate New York street food, we got to do the Macarena to Wavin’ Flag with Alexander Star, listened to 13 year old DJs Amira and Kayla and danced the night away!  We went to Central Park and played tag. We got to stay in a huge hotel called the Marriot Marquis in Times Square that had 45 floors and was next to the Hamilton theater! We had an amazing time and it was a life changing experience!

J-Term Preparations

written by Phoebe Kirchner, Front of House Manager

Hello all,

With all the cold we’ve had this week, and our performances moved forward a week, the 7/8 has been using this extra day to finish up task projects, polish up lines and blocking, and tie up loose ends.

On Monday we’ll be starting to tech our shows, and we’re all getting back into the J-Term mindset so that we can show off our shows next weekend!

PEG Meeting Recap & Volunteer Opportunities

(written by PEG ambassadors Rachel Damiani & Jessica Knight)

It has been a pleasure to get to know many of you at the Parent Engagement Group (PEG) meetings and work with you as volunteers. Thank you to everyone who has donated their time and energy so far this year!

This last PEG meeting was a great success! Donna and Ricardo described the goal of making GRS a zero-waste school! We're still far from that goal, but one important step is educating students and the GRS community about proper waste stream management. The school is being equipped with waste stations that include bins for compost, recycling, and landfill, and at the end of the day, students bring waste from those bins out to sort into the appropriate dumpsters. Donna and Ricardo have been supervising that process (with some heroic dumpster diving antics to entertain and educate students) and will looking for some parent volunteers to lend a hand with both end-of-day and lunchtime waste stream management going forward.

New school chef Leah Korger and School Nutritionist Jenny Breen answered questions about the new school lunch program and offered a tour of the gorgeous new kitchen, including food prep, cooking, and warming stations, as well as the walk-in refrigeration units. Sourcing, recipes and menus, and serving logistics are being finalized, and the new program will be rolled out gradually starting next month.

As we head into the second half of the school year, we'll be reaching out even more to make sure families feel welcomed, connected and engaged in our community. We also encourage you to reach out to your PEG classroom or level ambassador or email peg@greatriverschool.org anytime! 

Blue Heron Bash March 23rd!
Great River’s biggest friendraiser of the year, the Blue Heron Bash, is coming up on March 23.  This is a great time to meet other families & check out the new building all while raising money for exciting projects at school.  Check out our webpage for more information. Blue Heron Bash — Great River School 

Cook or Donate for the GRS Staff of Color affinity group
Please help the Parent Engagement Group support GRS’s staff of color affinity group by providing delicious food for their monthly meetings! We are looking for donations of main dishes, side dishes, beverages, and dessert on the first Tuesday of every month. Cooking not your thing? Cash donations and gift cards are also welcome! SignUp Genius coming soon, or contact Karen Solas at ksolas@gmail.com.

Be a Volunteer Judge for History Day Competition
Sarah Garton, our intrepid UA Social Studies guide, is seeking volunteers to judge our tenth grade History Day competition on Tuesday, Feb 12th from 8-11am. This year's theme is Triumph and Tragedy. Students are working on their exhibits, websites, research papers, documentaries and performances on a wide range of topics, and we'd love your help giving them critical feedback. Judges would need to arrive around 8am for orientation and will judge at least five different entries with 1-2 other judges between 8:45-10:30. Debriefing and conferring for who to recommend to regional competition should take until 11am. If you know anyone else in the community who might be interested, please pass this along + thanks for your support! Questions? Email Sarah Garton: sgarton@greatriverschool.org

Volunteers Needed For GRS Green Initiatives
The school is seeking volunteers to help with various green initiatives on campus including: help with sorting trash, compost and recycling during adolescent advisories, supervise sorting at lunchtime, research plastic bag recycling, write grant for recycling and plastic occupations, design and build 3 compartment stations for waste stream stations. Email peg@greatriverschool.org to get started!

Take the Bike/Walk to School Survey
The Parent Engagement Group (PEG) would like to know your thoughts about biking and walking to school! Even if your kids already bike or walk to/from school or if you would never consider it - we want to hear from everybody! Fill out this short survey and be entered to win a $25 gift card for Now Bikes & Fitness: https://tinyurl.com/GRSbikewalk

Find a Carpool Buddy!
Wouldn’t it be great to have a shorter drop off/pick up line, not have to drive to school every day, AND reduce the amount of carbon being emitted into the air? You can do all of this - and get to know more people - by carpooling! If you are interested in receiving a link to the ‘GRS family map’ to find other families who live near you and set up a carpool, email Laurie Sovell at -lasovell@yahoo.com

Elementary Book Fair Success!
The elementary classrooms have been enjoying their newly expanded libraries, thanks to the generosity of the GRS community. So far this year, families have gifted almost $1700 worth of books from elementary teachers' wish lists, and have earned another $1400 in free books from Usborne Books purchases. Our next in-person book fair will take place during spring conferences. 

And don't forget, you can purchase books any time via our Usborne representative's website, and 50% of sales will go to GRS through the end of the year! Just follow this link to browse and purchase: https://b6900.myubam.com/Event/1113756

Used Book Sale Volunteers Needed
PEG has heard some community interest in a used book sale. If you're interested in helping to organize these initiatives, contact us at peg@greatriverschool.org.

View our Sign Up Genius Page for additional opportunities!

Festivus (What is It?)

by Johan Hanson, class of 2019

If you’ve seen the 90s sitcom Seinfeld, you are probably familiar with Festivus. For those who don’t know, Festivus is a non-religious holiday that was created to avoid the pressures and commercialization of the holiday season. Adopted from Seinfeld, Festivus has become an annual event celebrated by the adolescent students at Great River.

It traditionally involves a slew of different activities but at the core of this GRS tradition is a potluck and an airing of grievances.

This year’s celebration also includes an improv off, a hackey sack off, and a faculty and student karaoke. The event is being planned by student leadership in coordination with school leadership.

Students will be asked to contribute to the communal potluck! In the morning, between 8:00 and 8:30, students can drop off their contributions to the Festivus potluck in the upper commons (room #277). We will have access to a refrigerator for storing food, but not a freezer. Also, since we do not have access to ovens, dishes that need to be kept warm should be brought in a crock pot or other electronic food warming device. The potluck assignments by advisory are as follows: 

• Abby – Main Dishes

• Anni  – Main Dishes

• Sheila – Beverages

• Zack – Allergen conducive alternatives (vegan, gluten free, peanut free)

• Caroline – Appetizers

• Lindsey  – Desserts

• Mike – Chips and Dip

• Sarah G  – Fruit

• Ocean  – Vegetables

Unfortunately, due to our polar-vortex mini winter break, Festivus needs to be rescheduled! (Administrative note: likely for February 28th, 2019) The student leadership team has been working hard to make this celebration happen, and their determination and planning will indeed be rewarded. Look for future communications from the school for more details.

Crow Wing Newsletter Articles: Construction & Physical Expressions

GRS Construction   
(by Willa Henkemeyer, fourth grade)

Recently, Great River School (GRS) has undergone construction. I mean a lot. For example, we have a new gym (see Vincent’s article), a new cafeteria, and a whole new wing of the school. All the construction has taken many months.  Some parts have taken much longer than anticipated.

Because GRS has been having construction on the cafeteria and kitchen, students have had to eat in other locations, which really doesn't matter except the fact that there has not been any hot lunch. But by the end of February all the students will have a hot lunch option!

When GRS was building a new gym, the students were having P.E. outside. Some of the students didn't  like to have P.E outside because we had it outside into winter. But now students are in the gym.  Many students feel warmer and happier to be in the gym for P.E.

Since GRS has added on the new part of the school, classrooms have been changed to different areas of the school, which has taken some getting used to. All the original parts of GRS are still there, but just with added construction. GRS has only recently finished painting the school.

It's been exciting watching the changes!

Physical Expressions
(By Vincent, fourth grade)

Recently Great River School (GRS) got a new gym. The gym was supposed to be used when we came back from winter break, but it was a little after that because the flooring took longer than anticipated.

I interviewed Seth the gym teacher and asked questions like “What's it like to be a gym teacher?” he answered “Challenging and rewarding at the same time.” He has enjoyed having Eric, his new co-teacher, around for teaching and if something goes wrong.  Right now, the elementary students have been learning Kali sticks, these are sticks where we follow a pattern and focus with our whole body.

Personally I like when we have PE in the gym because it's getting colder and I don't want to freeze. Ok, that was a little dramatic, but it is getting colder- and cold weather during gym for 45 minutes right after recess can be dreadful.

Big Work!

by Jenna Laffin (Minnesota River Guide)

Let’s build the biggest polygon we can!
Let’s use ALL the bead bars in our next problem!
Let’s do all the pin maps at once and build a map of the world!

Building the biggest polygon possible

Elementary children are particularly interested in discovering the “how” and “why” of the world around them. They ask big questions, and only by doing “big work” can they begin to answer these questions for themselves. That’s why statements like the ones above are so common in a Montessori classroom; after giving the children a key to understanding a concept it is almost a given that they will want to challenge themselves to the maximum extent. The children naturally want to explore, completing their work due to internal motivation and enthusiasm rather than to gain adult approval. They choose projects of greater difficulty and requiring more dedication and focus than we could create for them.

In Minnesota River, a group of first- and second-year students had eagerly been working on pin maps early in the school year. At one point, one of them suggested that they collaborate and finish all of the pin maps at the same time and put them together to show every country, capital city, major land form, and waterway of the world. They were thrilled when they accomplished this task over the course of a few days, and gave their classmates a tour of what they had done. A few weeks later, the six boxes of pins from the different continents got hopelessly mixed together and were out of commission for a few days—separating hundreds of small flags seemed an onerous task. But when this same group of students discovered the problem, they joined together to separate out the pins in just a few hours as the names were now so familiar to them. We did not ask the children to fill out a worksheet listing all the countries in the world, or give them a test on capitals. We did not require them to sort by color or alphabetize the pins, activities that they chose on their own to make their sorting work easier. Instead, they learned all of these names through repetition in their work and commitment to each other to complete the big project they set for themselves.

Two students find the value of all the positive and negative bead bars from the Negative Snake Game

As Dr. Montessori wrote, “Our aim is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his inmost core. We do not want complacent pupils, but eager ones; we seek to sow life in the child rather than theories, to help him in his growth, mental and emotional as well as physical, and for that we must offer grand and lofty ideas to the human mind, which we find ever ready to receive them, demanding more and more.”

Completed map of the world!

Nutrition Program Update - January 2019

Changes have arrived in our school nutrition program! We have hired a new school chef and a new school nutritionist! Leah Korger (Chef) and Jenny Breen (Nutritionist) . Leah and Jenny each bring years of experience in local food and affordable, healthy ingredients to a revamped menu and food offering starting in February. Our commercial kitchen was finally completed in December and Donna Goodlaxson has been teaching our lower adolescent occupations students in the space - cooking and studying food systems.

So, you may be asking: When does the homemade hot lunch start!?

The wait is getting shorter and shorter until we’re producing delicious, sustainable meals inside our very own, newly licensed commercial kitchen! We’ve been excited to see community members utilizing our coffeeshop space more and more - please stop in for a student-made granola bar and warm beverage soon!

Chef Leah tells us, “We plan to be producing cold sandwiches and other ‘grab-n-go’ food items by the first week of February, moving onto hot lunch and salad bar offerings by February 18th.”

Planned menu items include:
-Taco Tuesday featuring local hot sauces and Minneapolis-made La Perla corn tortillas
-Curries and dals with whole grains
-Herb-roasted chicken and buttermilk mashed potatoes (made with affordably sourced organic potatoes)

…and more! Leah and Jenny tell us “As we settle in and develop efficient systems we will be increasing the variety of options and increasing organic/local purchasing. We’re excited to hear what feedback the school community has once we begin and will be using it to guide the program moving forward!” Jenny Breen will be taking the lead on wellness group meetings and planning family events to welcome us all into the school to eat together and experience good, whole cooking for every family.

Our previous team of Mary Hunn and Renee Havelka have moved on to other employment and we wish them well. Pleas join us in welcoming Leah & Jenny and the wide breadth of experience they both bring. Read their bios below and say hello the next time you’re in the building!

Biographies for Leah and Jenny:

---

Leah Korger (pronouns: they/them)
School Chef

Growing up, I was never a stranger to healthy food or how it grew. My grandparents owned a potato farm in Wisconsin and my parents cultivated towering blueberry bushes in our backyard. My interest in food and agriculture grew when I focused on a Human Biology - Nutrition degree from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. After college I have completed apprenticeships on organic farms, served a year connecting kids to healthy food with the FoodCorps, and most recently was managing the commissary kitchen for the Wedge and Linden Hills Coops. I am excited to bring some scratch cooking to a school setting and connect the school community to local farms!

Jenny Breen (pronouns: she/her)
School Nutritionist

Jenny Breen has been a professional chef and advocate for local food and healthy food systems since the mid 1980’s. She has been working in the field of education for over 25 years, and received a Master’s of Education and visual arts in 1993. After years of working in the food industry in Minneapolis,  she opened and co-ran a farm to table restaurant from 1996-2001, and a local foods catering company until 2009, when she received a Bush Leadership Fellowship to pursue an MPH in Nutrition at the U of Mn. Her vision is to build networks within health and food systems for greater access to food, support for sustainable farming, and to promote cooking as a health and community building strategy. She has worked in and collaborated with numerous food and farming non-profits, and now contracts as a culinary nutrition public health educator with local health departments, school districts, non-profit food and farming organizations and health care institutions as a partner with The Good Acre agricultural food hub. Jenny’s work makes food and cooking relevant to the bigger picture of health for people, communities and the planet. She shares a love of food, learning and well being, and brings a dynamic combination of skills, leadership, passion and experience to her work.

J-Term 2019 Preparation

Hello Great River Families, 

Our J-Term performances are quickly approaching! This year the 7th and 8th graders are working very hard to present to you three very different shows. They are:

• Deleted Scenes from Fairy Tales by: Briandaniel Oglesby

  Characters with attitude star in a series of fairy tales with modern adaptions.

• Shuddersome: Tales of Poe by: Lindsay Price

  This dark and haunting show brings to life three works of Edgar Allen Poe  

• The One Word Odyssey by: Dwayne Yancey

  This is an abridged version of the Odyssey of Homer, but every line is only one word long. (Chaos ensues.)

Each of the three shows will be performed on two different nights, and it will be possible to buy tickets either for a full night or for only one of the two shows on a given night.

Performances are: 

• Deleted Scenes and Shuddersome, Thursday, January 31 (evening), 

• Shuddersome and Odyssey, Friday, February 1 (evening),

• Deleted Scenes and Odyssey, Saturday, February 2 (matinee),

and will be held in Great River's new Performance Space!

Adult, Full Night: $15 
Student, Full Night: $10
Adult, Individual Show: $8
Student, Individual Show: $6

If buying tickets is a financial hardship for you, please let Holly Bell know at hbell@greatriverschool.org so that we can make sure you can attend.  We would appreciate hearing from you by noon on Thursday, January 18th. 

Children in laps do not need to buy tickets. Student prices include those 18 and under who do not attend Great River.

Thank you so much for your support!

Phoebe Kirchner 
Front of House Manager

Lower Elementary Library Adventures

written by Rachel Cupps, Minnehaha Creek Guide

Great River lower elementary students are able to have off campus days. We use these as an opportunity to extend our classroom environments. One of the wonderful places we have been able to go is the Hamline Midway Library.

The Saint Paul Public Library has wonderful programing that inspires a new love of books and reading. Minnehaha Creek has “rocked the library scavenger hunt”, heard new and silly stories, and found books to spark research as well as imagination.

Our library trips are also a time to encourage responsibility and independence. The local librarian worked to get each child their very own library card. With their own library card students learn the importance of caring for a borrowed material and returning it on time. Students also feel trustworthy checking out books in their own name. Being a library patron establishes the child as a member of a larger community of both the city and readers.  

Students also find joy in being able to choose books that interest them.  Children are able to find a wider variety of fiction and nonfiction texts at their level. This can spark or renew interest in topics. Library time is an active discovery for lower elementary students.

The intensive, exhausting and exciting process of the IB Extended Essay

From investigating Nigerian feminist fashion to American waste reduction, from the Mexican Revolution and peasant land-reform movements to nihilistic film, Great River senior IB Diploma candidates are curious people! 

IB Diploma candidates from the Class of 2019 finally completed their IB Extended Essays (4,000-word argumentative research essay on a topic of their choice with the support of a GRS mentor) on December 21, delivering the final essays to their mentors on a silver platter. 

Earlier in the autumn, faculty mentors and senior IB Diploma candidates shared tea and cookies as they talked through feedback on drafts of the essays. Alumni regularly report to us that the Extended Essay process prepared them for college writing. As a graduate from last year wrote, "The extended essay is the most valuable skill you will have going into college. I have already written similar style essays and knowing how to approach the writing process has been very helpful."

On January 9 IB Diploma candidates from the classes of 2019 and 2020 gathered to celebrate and share wisdom about the extended essay at the 75/25 party. (Senior IB Diploma candidates are 75% finished with their pursuit of the IB Diploma, while juniors are 25% completed.)

Read the draft questions from this year's seniors' Extended Essays:

• ISIS and social media: how terrorists use the internet to their advantage — To what extent does social media help groups with little influence to increase both their hard and soft power? 

• How effective is humanitarian intervention? 

• To what extent is there a correlation between agrarian revolution and capitalist modernization in 20th century Mexico? 

• How can Americans reduce their annual waste output? 

• To what extent has nihilistic film and television affected the film industry? 

• How does the depiction of the 'other' in narrative military propaganda film function as validation for both the motivation of the main character as well as the films central ideology? 

• What role do economic philanthropists play in the feminist fashion movement in Nigeria? 

• How and in what ways do underground subcultures of music influence mainstream music and music culture?