Head of School May 27, 2022

After a three-year hiatus, this week brought the long-awaited return of the Experiential Learning May Terms, a signature year-end experience for students in grades nine through 11.

Funded five years ago by the E.E. Ford Foundation, this week-long immersion experience allows students to explore, with like-minded peers, some areas of personal interest. After a long and demanding academic year, the May Terms allow students to get off campus, explore new interests, and spend time with some schoolmates with whom they might not have interacted in the course of the academic year.

Many May Term courses focus on student interests. In Digital Storytelling, students write and record stories and bring them to life with sound effects and music. Sound City gives students the chance to write and record their own track in a professional studio. In Furniture Building, they design and build a full-scale piece of furniture using appropriate tools and joinery techniques. In Reality and Ray Guns, sci-fi aficionados explore science fiction in literature, film, television, and radio and produce videos to be shared with the community while in Game Design, students learn the steps involved in creating an engaging gaming experience: from conceptualization, to prototyping, to play testing, iterative design, and marketing.

Other May Terms guide students in exploring the resources of this city. Cincinnati Treasures includes walking tours of downtown landmarks: Smale Park, Washington Park, Findlay Market, City Hall, and several museums (CAC, Taft, Union Terminal). Parks and Recreation focuses on the Hamilton County Parks system. By hiking, biking, and canoeing as well as doing some service work, students explore fast-disappearing habitats and tour archaeological treasures. In The Writing Is on the Wall, students view some of the fabulous murals that festoon buildings around Cincinnati and then, guided by a professional muralist, create their own here at school. Animal Behavior takes students to the Cincinnati Zoo, the Newport Aquarium, and an animal rescue to learn about potential career paths in animal welfare and veterinary science.

Many seminars focus on valuable life skills. Life Hacking teaches sewing and clothing repair, tax preparation and personal finance, job interview and relationship skills, and stress management. You Are What You Eat and Porch to Plate focus on gardening and nutrition as well as basic and advanced cooking skills. In Intro to Engineering, students explore careers in engineering by meeting with professional engineers, working on drafting skills, and visiting a job site. Don’t Worry, Be Happy focuses on adolescent mental health issues. By talking with mental health professionals and visiting a treatment center, students learn how to promote good mental health through art therapy, yoga, mindfulness, aromatherapy nutrition, exercise, etc.

Finally, two very popular May Terms explore issues of social justice. Guilty Until Proven Innocent studies wrongful convictions in the American justice system and engages students in examining how the system could be made more just. They visit a jail, the Hamilton County crime lab, the federal courthouse, and the Ohio Innocence Project. They also meet with exonerees, who served decades in prison for crimes they did not commit. Civil Rights through Landmarks explores the civil rights struggles of the 1960s by visiting Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery, Alabama to tour landmarks, museums, and college campuses at the epicenter of the civil rights movement.

This ambitious program requires a great deal of energy not only from our students but from their teachers, who design and sponsor these valuable activities. Many thanks to Director of Experiential Learning Nick Francis and to the entire Upper School faculty, for providing this enriching experience for our students.

Thanks, all, for another great year!!

Christopher P. Garten
Head of School

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