91̽��

Poor air quality, asbestos dumping, and lack of green spaces are just a few of the environmental issues that residents in lower-income city neighborhoods face on a daily basis. Twenty-two students from the Activism for Justice in a Digital World class and two sections of Science in the Modern Age went on the Toxic Tour of Dudley Square in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury to learn about environmental justice initiatives.

David Nolies, from Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE), a nonprofit based in the square, was their guide. “We are the voice for the people that don’t have a voice,” he told students. David grew up nearby in a government housing project and has been involved with ACE for 22 years, since he was 15 years old.

As he walked students around to different spots, he explained how Roxbury’s childhood asthma hospitalization rate is nearly six times higher than the state average; how developers would raze buildings and leave behind toxic debris; and how the neighborhood train to downtown Boston was replaced by an inefficient and polluting bus system, making access to jobs more difficult.

Strings players from 91̽��’s Chamber Orchestra watched members of A Far Cry, the Grammy-nominated string ensemble, play a few measures of a Haydn minuet before a pause in the action. One musician suggested a slight change to the speed of the melody while others nodded in agreement. Another chimed in with a reminder about the dynamics of a section. They started again, the adjustments made.

“The unique thing about A Far Cry is that they don’t use a conductor,” said 91̽��’s music department chair, Adrian Anantawan. “They’re a fully democratic orchestra and they make decisions as a group. The leadership is shared.”

For Yoshi Makishima ’11, animating a story is a way to put your stamp on every aspect of it. The animator is a director, writer, designer, and actor, making choices that affect everything from characters’ personalities to the overall tone of a film.

Yoshi’s short film, “Night,” was an official selection at this summer’s San Diego International Kids’ Film Festival. She submitted the four-minute piece after completing it for a class at the Harvard Extension School.

It’s National Punctuation Day, and this sentence is missing its marks:

I learned heed this warning future employees how bosses who are desperate to fill positions convince staff who have expressed no interest in those positions to do the job anyway

The sentence is part of a past sophomore English test, challenging 91̽�� students to insert the correct symbols that create the appropriate pauses and attribution in a long paragraph, without under- or over-punctuating. It’s deceptively simple, but those with a heavy hand may be surprised to learn that the sentence is missing just one comma and two em dashes: “I learned—heed this warning, future employees—how bosses who are desperate to fill positions convince staff who have expressed no interest in those positions to do the job anyway.”

Five students crowd around a table and take out their journals and origami works-in-progress, some simple and some more elaborate. This is Mathematics and Art, a new half course taught by math faculty member Anne Kaufman.

In this first unit of the semester, Ms. Kaufman is using Dr. Robert Lang’s website and TED talk on math and the magic of origami as a jumping-off point. “Figuring out the folding process allows students to do things they couldn’t imagine doing before. And seeing the bones of shapes has been an interesting exercise,” she says.

Students use Dr. Lang’s TreeMaker software as they progress to more sophisticated shapes. Today, each student chooses an animal from images of “taxidermy origami,” 3D images of animal heads folded out of one piece of paper. First, they must sketch out a stick figure of the base before figuring out the crease patterns.

When Benjamin Botvinick ’21 and Zack Ankner ’20 traveled to Montreal for McGill University’s McHacks hackathon last year, they knew their competition was strong.

“We went in knowing we wanted to come up with something good and be really competitive, but we were going up against students from MIT, Harvard, and these other great universities,” Zack says.

To their surprise, their project SurfChat, a Google extension that allows people to chat with other visitors using the same website in real time, earned them an Amazon award and the boys offers to intern at the commerce giant. They couldn’t accept the offer, though—they’re too young.

At the opening of Convocation, a formal School tradition marking the beginning of each academic year, Head of School Todd Bland welcomed everyone and encouraged students to “listen to your own voice to guide you in learning and in life.”

Messages from Upper School Principal David Ball and Class I co-head monitors, Olivia Wang and Beck Kendig, were other highlights of the ceremony. Mr. Ball spoke about finding moments of joy, humility and generosity in life. He also introduced new faculty members and presented Olivia and Beck with the James S. Willis Jr. Memorial Award.

Both Olivia and Beck offered specific, humorous, and poignant advice to new students as well as returning ones. Olivia referred each class to a summer pop song where the lyrics fit the feel of each year. Beck introduced the year’s theme as a simple encouragement for students to be welcoming to each other and “Just say hi.”

Rapper and singer Jidenna Mobisson ’03 returned to campus as part of an expanded Transition Program, serving as the keynote speaker for new students of color and international students, and as a panelist in a conversation with their parents. The events preceded programming throughout Labor Day weekend for all students new to 91̽��.

“It’s the first day. I know you feel a little bit nervous, but I want to say congratulations to each and every one of you,” he said. “I sat in the same seats you’re sitting in right now, with students who were just like you. Some of the people here that you don’t know yet will be your best friends for life.”