Five for Friday, Issue 6!
Welcome back to TBA’s “Five for Friday” -- our biweekly update of things we’ve been doing, thinking about, listening to, and mulling over on 43 N. Lime Street.
We’re thinking about Life After High School. Our Assistant Head of School Abby Kirchner is offering a workshop series entitled “Life After High School" -- a step-by-step program built for all local students and families interested in digging deep into the complex college admissions process. If you're interested in any of the workshops -- if you're interested in knowing "Who You Are And What You're Doing"; if you're looking for a "Happy, Healthy, and Holistic" roadmap to real options for the future; if you just want to get in a room and grind on that college essay -- then be sure to click on this link to see workshop dates, times and availability.
And, we’ve been staring at a picture of a dancing octopus. In fact, at this entire collection of 2017’s Best Underwater Photography. And that got us back to this amazing video of a square mile in the Lembeh Straight which is known as “The Sea’s Strangest Square Mile” (the bizarrely homuncular Frog Fish shows up at 2:58). Stop working and check out both STAT.
And, we’ve been thinking about innovative approaches to education. Finland -- whose educational system routinely ranks among the top five in the world in both literacy and numeracy -- has made the decision to “scrap” all subject areas by the year 2020. As Marjo Kyllonen, Helsinki’s education manager says, “We really need a rethinking of education and a redesigning of our system, so it prepares our children for the future with the skills that are needed for today and tomorrow” . We couldn’t agree more.
And we hate to admit it, but: we’ve been making whale sounds. Yes, whale sounds. Whalesynth -- whalesynth!!! -- is a cool little webpage that lets you, you know, make whale sounds. Try it -- you may be surprised to learn how much you enjoy making whale sounds on a Friday afternoon.
And, we’ve been reading George Saunder's extraordinary new novel Lincoln in the Bardo. It’s a semi-historical novel about the days Abraham Lincoln spent mourning his son Willie. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking, and really weird, and features a hilarious chorus of, well, pretty irritable ghosts. For whatever reason, these two sentences on America resonated: “Across the sea, kings watched and were gleeful that something begun so well had now gone off the rails as down south similar kings watched. And if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit forever and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well it would be said, and said truly, well the rabble cannot manage itself.” Gorgeous stuff.
And, of course, we've been doing a lot of other things too. For example: Sam's most recent podcast is his best yet; and for example, we've built a little paypal portal where you may send us just a little support if you're so inclined; and we've made a brand new playlist on our spotify page; and -- big news, this -- we've settled on a new name for our school (but we aren't sharing it quite yet!).
We'd love to tell you about everything we've been up to. If you'd like to know more about our program, our curriculum, our faculty, or if you'd like to learn how to apply to TBA or just get to know us better, please don't hesitate to email us here or follow us on facebook.
We wish you the very best this weekend.