For the lower school faculty, the second half of the October 7 faculty in-service day was spent in the Dining Hall, working together to create edible experiments with locally-sourced food. Part team-building exercise and part laboratory experiment to test how using food and cooking might be further woven into our...
Kicking off this year’s Commons Speaker Series was none other than the community-oriented, artistically-gifted, show-up-and-make-things-happen spokesperson, Shawn Dunwoody. Shawn has connections to Harley that go as far back as working on the Bridges project with Chris Hartman and Horizons graduates and Harley Upper School students (building boats and understanding), as...
We are delighted to welcome three new teachers to the Commons this year: Chris Becker, Kevin Boyd, and Lars Kuelling. These three teachers are weaving their way into the established fabric of the building and the learning opportunities therein, as well as working closely with veteran Commons educators. Chris Becker...
Embarking on our third full academic year in the Commons means the addition of new classes and evolved approaches. Seth O’Bryan, co-teacher of the new Sustainable Systems course (co-taught with Chris Hartman) offered this introduction and scope for the course. “What does sustainability mean? Can it be used as a...
The Rochester Youth Climate Leaders had a strong presence at the Brighton EcoFair on June 6th. Their latest efforts revolve around pursuing a fee or ban on single-use plastic bags, and part of the their work at the EcoFair was to educate people about why reducing plastic bags is good...
In true design thinking fashion, the Design and Innovation Lab students worked at the end of spring to create and build wooden benches and a table for small group meetings on the third floor of the Commons, by the elevator. They first asked people what they needed from the space,...
In Mrs. Rivers’ seventh grade science class, the students took their study of human anatomy to the macro level! To apply their learning about how the bones, muscles and tendons all work together in human hands, the three different classes worked to create three larger-than-life, fully operational left hands. The...
Become What Thou Art–by Larry Frye This trimester, the 9th grade Rights and Responsibilities class worked with the community organizer and artist, Shawn Dunwoody. The passionate and energetic artist was recently in the news for his mural project at the Rochester Public Library. With Shawn, the class designed two musical...
At the end of May, we were honored to have Harley alum Karin Deutsch Karlekar (’89) on campus as our final Commons Speaker Series presenter. Karin is the Director of Free Expression Programs at PEN America, and she worked previously at Freedom House; both organizations used her to address free...
As part of the Lower School Focus Week on “Everything Underground”, the Upper School Design and Innovation Lab students were engaged to help build a two-story “mine” in the Project Space. Using old wooden pallets, some wood screws and plywood, the productive students constructed the mine in less than three...
