ART CLASSES
Not every student has a pottery studio in their basement for Ceramics class, so art classes have been modified during virtual learning so everyone can complete their clay pots or elaborate portraits outside of the typical studio.
The art department held a supply pick-up for students to claim supplies they needed to complete projects for the semester. With the help of the supplied paint brushes and poster boards, students are able to create all of their projects from home. Art teacher Adam Finkelston has been trying to make accommodations for usual in-class projects, changing the directions so they’re possible to do at home without studio equipment.
“We’ve worked really hard to find things students can do at home,” Finkelston said. “Most students don’t have a dark room at home so we can’t do that, but we can still do analog [film] photography.”
In addition to at-home versions of projects, Finkelston has assigned his students with more academic work, involving readings about art history and art criticism.
While most of the projects and assignments in Finkelston’s class are similar to years past with minor adjustments, sophomore Livia Barbre misses the collaborative atmosphere of her Graphic Design class where she can gain project inspiration from her classmates.
“[With class] being online it’ll probably be hard to get ideas since you can’t really get energy from other people,” Barbre said.
Finkelston agrees with Barbre in that he also misses the community aspect of making artwork together.
“I do this job because I love hanging out with kids making artwork,” Finkelston said. “I love doing that. Like I said the noise, commotion, the music, conversations — I love that part, so I miss that.”
According to Finkelston, 98% of the art department’s teaching is working with students individually, making it challenging to give specific advice to students without working with them in person. But he still believes that the skills learned by students in their art classes this year will be just as valuable as those from years past if not more.
Finkelston considers the ability to create artwork without equipment to be a skill with more longevity that students will be able to take with them later in life.
GYM CLASSES
Typically, you would peer out at the East field to see a group of 20 kids playing ultimate frisbee or open the door to the weight room to find sweaty kids taking turns doing bench presses. Since gym classes weren’t created with the intent of being done through a computer screen, changes have been made to this year’s gym classes in order to adhere to social distancing protocol.
Instead of packing into the gym before the bell rings, the new daily meeting place for gym classes is Webex. This has forced coaches to adjust their touch football games to an at-home strength conditioning day involving push-ups and lunges.
Gym teacher and coach Shawn Hair constructed programs for his Team Games and Weights classes in order to ensure each student is able to achieve their fitness goals, regardless of whether or not they have access to a gym.
One app Hair has taken advantage of this year is “Rack”, which includes daily 30-minute bodyweight workouts for students while tracking them. Once students complete their workout, Hair is notified.
While senior Hudson Mosher has enjoyed having more free time to do his own fitness activities like tennis, he doesn’t think his gym classes will have the same intensity online as they would in person.
“[It’s] probably less beneficial because we don’t have a coach or someone there to push us,” Mosher said. “We just have to do it ourselves.”
Hair trusts that most kids will engage and take the workouts seriously, but is worried about students missing out on the social aspect of being at school and participating in sports.
“I think the biggest thing is we want to make sure that kids are mentally and physically doing okay,” Hair said. “I think when you don’t see a kid every day face-to-face, [and] you’re just seeing them through a computer screen, you don’t get a real good feel of how that kid is doing. We’ve tried to do some journaling, some writing and I’ve let the kids kind of express how they’re doing, how their mental fitness is, how their physical fitness is and how we can help them with it.”