Five for friday, Issue 7!
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 “Music Under The Stairs”. Next Friday from 4-6pm we’re kicking off a very informal series of “Analogue Friday” hangouts at 43 N. Lime Street -- we’re going to play a few vinyl recordsand talk and maybe make some art and definitely drink A Whole Lot Of Tea. To kick it off a few members of Ton-Taun are going to come over and play some music beneath our stairway and if all goes right we’ll record the audio and video and put it up on our burgeoning new website sort of the way NPR does with their awesome “Tiny Desk Concerts”. So clear your calendars next Friday afternoon, and turn off your iPads, and drop by (The School Formerly Known As) TBA for some tea, some music, and a little home-grown rock/roll!
And, we’re thinking about Professional Book Smelling. This is fun -- the Morgan Library & Museum in New York “are capturing the smell of its old books to reconstruct the building’s 1906 aroma” and to do it, they’ve hired...professional smellers? Turns out, a professional-book-smeller’s main tool, “in addition to their curious noses, is a small glass dome that can gently rest on a centuries-old book without damaging it, collecting its character with molecules on a wax needle.” Awesome!
Related -- digital fatigue is a very real thing, e-books sales are down, and print book sales are up. #analoguefriday.And, we’re thinking about doing some dancing. We’re very bad -- but very willing! -- dancers, and we’re excited for the Common Wheel’s annual “Winter Chill” next Saturday at the Lancaster Creative Factory. If you don’t know the Common Wheel, their mission is to “improve lives in Lancaster through the power of bikes” -- they do important work in our community and we’re so happy to support them. Click on this link to buy tickets and keep your eyes out for us on the dancefloor. Where we’ll be, you know, “dancing”.
And, we’ve been thinking about “sanctuary”. Spend some time this weekend listening to the story of Reverend John Fife, a Protestant minister who spearheaded a massive collaboration between thousands of Central American migrants and a network of 500+ faith-based organizations to form an early iteration of the Sanctuary Movement in the United States. It’s a powerful story, one which echoes the long tradition in America of providing “sanctuary” for those who seek it, one which feels particularly timely right now.
And, we’ve been thinking about grades. In particular the way that assessment as we know it doesn’t seem to reflect the mission of schools truly committed to curiosity, creativity, and innovation. We are so proud to tell you that we are the smallest school in the country invited to join “The Mastery Transcript Consortium”, a consortium of 80 amazing independent schools, schools like Andover and Malvern Prep and Hawken and Putney, each committed to re-thinking the way high school transcripts work, and how high school assessment works, and ultimately how the conversations between high schools and college admissions offices work. There's thrilling work ahead and we are proud to play a role in it.
Of course, we’ve been doing a few other things too. Like: we settled on a name! And you’ll be able to see our new name (and us too!) in the March issue of Fig Magazine. And, we were at the annual NAIS conference in Baltimore this past week, and Sam interviewed Bhutanese refugee Madap Sharma in the most recent episode of his podcast, and we hosted try-outs for The People’s Shakespeare Project last weekend, and spent a little time on Wednesday chasing away ghosts.
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 even how you may support us, please don't hesitate to email us here or follow us on facebook.
We wish you the very best this weekend,