This week marked the official opening of our beautiful new performing arts center, the WallyPAC. Our community celebrated the occasion with a special “play-in-a-day” performance featuring current North Country School students along with North Country School and Camp Treetops alumni.
We welcomed extended members of the NCS/CTT community to campus to participate in special programming while quickly learning lines and building sets for the Saturday night performance. It was a weekend full of making new connections and reconnecting with old friends, and highlighted the NCS/CTT tenet that “many hands make light work”. The final performance, an original NCS play written in 1978, was joyful celebration of the rich history of our institution.
To learn more about our “play-in-a-day” performance, see the Arts section of the blog below.
ACADEMICS
In Selden’s 7th grade history class, students have been learning about our region’s native tribes. Students including Sonya and Alejandro selected tribes to research and created posters they will present to their peers later in the week.
In Kayla’s Algebra 1 class, 8th and 9th graders have been learning about simplifying expressions with real numbers. As part of their unit, the class split into teams for a game of math Jeopardy. Teagan scored some winning points for her team by writing an equation about consecutive integers.
Our Town Meeting assembly this week honored Indigenous Peoples’ Day, connecting back to the themes in our 7th grade history classes. The school community gathered together on Wednesday morning to learn about this region’s indigenous group, the Haudenosaunee. Teacher Melissa led an activity centered around the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, which is said as a daily prayer and invocation. The address recognizes and gives thanks for many different elements of the natural world including the sun, the plants, the wind, and water. Our community broke up into groups and read sections of the address, discussing how we can be thankful for all that is around us, before creating an illustrated poster for each concept.
ARTS
This week in Wearable Art class, students continued constructing the homemade bags and clothing they’ve been working on this term. The group, including students Summer, Amon, Olivia, and Ezra, headed out to the Children’s Garden to enjoy some lovely fall weather while they knitted hats with yarn sourced from local and school-raised sheep.
This weekend was the first performance in our new WallyPAC performing arts center, and our extended community joined together to celebrate this event with a “play-in-a-day” performance of Good Queen Bess—a comedic take on the history of Queen Elizabeth I. The play, written by former NCS faculty members Jerry Marchildon and Don Rand, was originally performed by NCS students in 1978, and we were excited to have two of the original roles reprised by current NCS teachers Noni Eldridge and Katie Weaver. A group current NCS students, along with several NCS/Camp Treetops alumni including professional actor Kyra Miller and professional lighting technician Anthony Fernandez, gathered together on Friday night to begin rehearsing lines, building the set, and designing the lighting for the show, all under the guidance of theater teacher Courtney Allen and theater tech teacher Larry Robjent.
The Saturday night performance was full of laughter and nostalgia and perfectly highlighted the NCS tenet that “many hands make light work.” Current students took their bows alongside recent graduates and alumni who attended Camp and School over the past 40 years in a fitting celebration of our institution’s teaching and practices and the lifelong connections made here.
The weekend culminated with workshops and panel discussions on Sunday conducted by NCS/CTT alumni, in which our current students were given the opportunity to learn more about acting, directing, and theater tech from the professionals who once stood in their spot. We look forward to many years of performances and programming that will take place in the new WallyPAC, and we are grateful to the many hands that made this special weekend possible.
OUTDOORS
This past week saw our students exploring the greater High Peaks region, as well as enjoying our own campus trails as the Adirondack autumn continues to bring a rainbow of color to the surrounding mountainscape. A group of students including Justin, Kentaro, Evie, and Inyene hiked at nearby Giant Mountain, exploring Giant Washbowl (and seeing the impact of some recent fire damage there) before taking in the sprawling vista from the Nubble—a viewpoint on the shoulder of the towering four-thousand foot peak. Back on campus, photography teacher Sierra brought groups of students out of the classroom to explore the campus trail system for some forest games as well as a photo walk.
This past weekend our soccer team traveled to Vermontville, New York for the first official game of the season. Student Tsinat worked hard both on the field and off, acting both as a player and a coach for his peers, while student Nate scored two goals for the team. North Country School played an energetic game against a talented opposing team and took the win with a final score of 3-2.
FARM AND GARDEN
Students at North Country School are given the opportunity to learn about farming, cooking, and local food systems in our Edible Schoolyard class, and this week several different Edible Schoolyard class sections worked together to make syrups and jellies using ingredients harvested from our campus.
Our 4th-6th grade class made juice by cooking down and straining the crab apples, rosehips, chokecherries, apples, and rhubarb they’d picked earlier in the term. They also put some apples through a food mill, making applesauce. The group sampled each of the juices and made a “fruit cocktail” by mixing juices of their choosing. They drank their creative concoctions alongside a snack of applesauce to end class. Our 7th grade Edible Schoolyard class then used those fruit juices to make fruit syrups and jellies that will be used during the remainder of the fall term and served at our annual Edible Schoolyard Thanksgiving dinner.
Check back next week to see what we’re up to on our mountain campus.
For more information about the #This Week At NCS blog, contact Becca Miller at .
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