25 Classes or Bust: Wood Sculpture





"Hunter" Smith sharpens his blade



Notice the leather thumb guard

While in some high schools, a classroom full of adolescent boys wielding knives might incite a level of fear, at Gunston we call it “art class”.  A talented artist himself, Mr. Dize is the Chair of our Art Department, and one of our most popular offerings is his Wood Sculpture course.  This course is designed to teach the fundamentals of wood sculpture including low relief, 3-D carving, waterfowl, and other wildlife sculpture. Basic concepts such as aesthetic value, historical and cultural influences, critique methods, as well as the use of tools and sharpening, are part of the course.

A miniature project taking shape

During my visit, some students were practicing technique (by making a cylinder), and others were completing sculpture projects of various shapes and sizes.  It was one of the quieter classes I've visited at Gunston--funny how the presence of a sharp blade promotes focus!

25 Classes or Bust: Honors Physics

Mass, Newtons, Force, Acceleration, Friction, Joules, Units of Work, Power, Kilograms, Time, Rest, Gravity, Normal Force, Distance, Miles per Second, Kilowatts, Kinetic Energy, Momentum.  Such is the vocabulary in a forty-five minute class with Dr. Wilson and his brainy Honors Physics students. 

A grainy picture of Dr. Wilson!

As an English major by training and temperament, I had the humbling experience of sitting in a classroom of highly engaged Gunston students who clearly understood what Dr. Wilson was talking about while I struggled mightily to keep up!

Twenty Five Classes or Bust: AP Latin

During my visit with Mrs. Cunningham's AP Latin class, consisting of four elite Vergil-translating 12th grade scholars and their sage-like instructor, there was an extensive pre-exam review of literary terms, verb tenses, and translations. 

It was a joy to watch the four young men in the class--all of whom are some of Gunston's best athletes--compete with each other to identify the meanings of terms like metonymy, pleonasm, and polysyndeton.  Of course in AP Latin, the laws of Latin and the laws of Mrs. Cunningham are learned hand-in-hand.

Twenty Five Classes or Bust: Biology

My second stop was to Mr. Everdell's 9th grade Biology class.  Mr. Everdell occupies a spectacular classroom in which to teach Biology--there are windows on two walls that provide a 180-degree view of the natural splendor of the Gunston campus, and now that the leaves have fallen, you can see the river from his classroom.  On this particular day, there was a torrential downpour outside, with forty-five mph gusts of wind.  His classroom includes an aquarium, shelves and shelves of biology books, and nets and buckets for his Corsica River experiments.

The Aquarium

In the class I observed, Mr. Everdell was conducting a review of recently studied material, and he was using his projector and the online resources from the textbook to display an interactive jeopardy-type review game.  He broke the class into two (highly competitive) teams that battled over the categories of Cells, Membranes, Energizers, Product Production, and of course, Grab Bag.  The students engaged in an intense yet collaborative exercise to reinforce their understanding of terms and concepts.  At all times, Mr. Everdell was there to clarify questions and extend student understanding about cilia, flagella, cell walls, mitochondria, etc.

Twenty Five Classes or Bust: Chemistry

My first full-class stop was to the spacious Chemistry classroom on the first floor of AB, where I saw Mr. Rose teach his tenth grade Chemistry class.  He was preparing his students for an upcoming lab on determining the density/specific heat of a metal.  At first, he demonstrated the complex workings of a vernier caliper as a tool to measure thickness and the diameters of various beakers.  However, the magic of this particular lesson was the way Mr. Rose placed the students into the role of working scientists, and asking them to solve the logistical challenges of measuring the temperature of a solid (where a thermometer cannot actually be "stuck" inside the solid to measure the temperature.)  There were a number of creative and innovative guesses, and when Mr. Rose finally revealed the secret of measuring the specific heat--by taking the solid out of boiling water, depositing it into tepid water, and then measuring the rise in temperature of the water--there was a collective AHA! moment in the classroom.

Perhaps most significantly, during the lesson Mr. Rose destroyed my long-held and erroneous belief that adding salt to water makes it boil faster.  In fact, salt makes water boil at a higher temperature, which makes food cook faster.  Alas, for the last thirty years, I've been throwing salt into the water to make it boil faster--to no avail!

Twenty Five Classes or Bust!

Let me first acknowledge my personal friend and Headmaster of the Calvert School, Dr. Andrew Martire, for inspiring the "Twenty-Five Classes or Bust!" concept.  Over the next few weeks, my goal is to visit at least one class of every Gunston teacher, and report back from the front lines about the doings of our extraordinarily talented students and faculty. 

As a warm-up, my visitations began on Wednesday with a brief, twenty-minute stop in Mr. Robinson's AP European History course, where in his map-filled and history book-lined classroom, the students were highly engaged in a discussion focused on the reasons King Louis XVI of France lost his head.