ESA Beyond the Oaks

ESA finished 2019-2020 Beyond the Oaks, but we still connected and learned together. Thanks to our students, teachers, and parents for remaining flexible through the transition to online classes, for supporting each other, and for continuing to share a love of learning!

For over a decade, ESA has used Google Tools for Education, so we had the technology in place to quickly and smoothly make the transition to online learning. Teachers and students used Meet to connect face-to-face, and Docs, Slides, and Sheets to share information and creations. In middle and upper school, we have a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program, so each student has a laptop, Chromebook, or tablet to access resources and participate in online classes and advisory and club meetings. In third through fifth grades, each student has a Chromebook. All families connect through the myESA portal on our website. Here are just a few of the ways that ESA thrived Beyond the Oaks!

We love our Falcon Family. Enjoy our year-end message and have a great summer!

Thanks to STUCO and ESA students for this wonderful appreciation message for teachers, administrators, and staff! View an appreciation message from the ESA Board here. 

The doors are open for the 2020 Virtual ESA Senior Art Exhibition! View artwork and stories about their processes by members of the Class of 2020 here. 

In PK, learning happens through hands-on activities and play. Teacher Barbie Hedge inspired her students to continue creative learning by sending each of them a surprise package that included materials such as fabric scraps, string, jewels, buttons, washi tape, and other random items. Challenged to see what they could make, the students came up with many ideas, including a zip line, a puppet, and a doll!

Teacher Erica Ahern's kindergarten class had a costume party. Their writing theme for the week was "Just for Today." Each student pretended to be something or someone else and wrote a story about their pretend adventure. Ms. Erica shared a Skippijon Jones story because the main character is a Siamese Cat who pretends to be a sword fighting chihuahua while going on adventures in his closet. She and the students dressed in costumes for their pretend adventures!

One advantage of learning at home - lots of kitchen space for cooking! Some French students baked pain perdu after watching a French language cooking video, while others baked poisson d’avril cupcakes for le premier avril (April Fool's). Lower school students are using real-world math to measure ingredients for everything from waffles to pizza to St. Patrick's Day cookies.

Second graders, who have been learning about money, opened up “stores” in their homes to sell items to family members. Acting as store clerks, they practiced adding and subtracting money, as well as making change. 

Second grade students stepped into the personas of their favorite historical figures for virtual Biography Project presentations this week. The students created videos with details of their subjects' lives and their significant contributions to society. Famous figures included Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Drew Brees, Stan Lee (above), Babe Ruth, Jane Goodall, John F. Kennedy, Kate Middleton, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Julia Child, and Steve Jobs. More photos on our Facebook page. 

Teacher Deb Cochran asked her fifth grade students to draw, paint, or write everything they know about geometry on one sheet of paper. Now that she can see what they remember from previous years, she'll help them build on their knowledge. 

In social studies with teacher Claire Alvarado, fifth grade students finished their study of the American colonies by creating one-pagers to encourage new settlers to join their colonies. 

Teacher Missy Gates gave sixth grade Reading-Writing Workshop students a creative challenge to welcome them back from spring break. She asked them to visually depict the injuries the main character received from a bear in the novel Touching Spirit Bear. She wanted them to have a clear idea of how powerful the bear is and how profound the main character's injuries are so they can truly understand how hard he must fight to survive.

Seventh grade life science students celebrated DNA Day on April 25th with a choice of projects, including extracting DNA from fruit, a news report video on the history of DNA discoveries, an essay on DNA research, or DNA art with origami, household materials, or beads arranged in a bracelet to represent DNA of different organisms. 

In World Languages, Kahoot games are a favorite way to review vocabulary and skills, and the fun has continued online. Students and teachers are using Google Meet to challenge each other at a distance. 

Members of the ExLabs creative communications class, ESA's video production course, met to discuss and review assigned films, as well as critique the evolution of their own personal scripts. For a special treat, students spent the first hour of class with Lucas Ridley, a forestry major from Sewanee who turned professional animator and filmmaker after falling in love with the medium. He has worked on films such as Disney's Aladdin, Transformers: The Last Knight, Avengers: Infinity War, Lego films, and more. Lucas entertained ExLabs students with insights as a professional in the industry, and with how his journey has been a challenging and rewarding climb to success.

AP U.S. History teacher Jenny Melanson challenged students to think about how U.S. history flows thematically, not just chronologically. She asked them to consider the questions: Who are we? Is this progress? Where in the world are we? The catch - representations cannot be created on a computer or device. Possibilities include art, music, writing (by hand), mechanical representations, architecture, and more. Here's what Arden F., '21, created.

Science meets art! After studying artwork by David Bates and photography by C.C. Lockwood, environmental science students were asked to create their own art pieces to foster love and preservation of the marshes. Submissions included photography, paintings, drawings, and poems. Find a few on our Facebook page and Instagram. 

Dr. Tassin's AP Gov class welcomed NPR host Peter Sagal (bottom left corner), who has offered to meet with K-12 classes during the pandemic. Dr. Tassin invited other teachers to join the AP students and Mr. Sagal in discussing civil rights and civil liberties. The ESA crew was mentioned on Mr. Sagal's blog in Chicago Magazine. Earlier this month the AP Gov class held a scholar exchange hosted by the National Constitution Center with U.S. District Court Judge Karoline Mehalchick, who discussed First Amendment protections with the students. 

Upper school art teachers have given students a variety of prompts to keep them creating at a distance. Student artists have been drawing, painting, taking photographs, making videos, sewing, designing collages, and hand-building with clay to explore color, contrast, pattern, and more. They are keeping digital journals in Google Slides to document and process this new reality. Classmates and teachers meet online once a week to view each other's work and share creative ideas. 

Seniors in Environmental Science have created Earth Day messages - some of them in a world language they have studied, such as this one in French. 

Each week, lower school teachers are preparing chapels via video or slide shows as a virtual version of the daily chapels that are central to the Lafayette Campus. Cade Campus Chaplain Dr. Andrew Armond is preparing weekly chapels for middle and upper school students and teachers, and he is offering a noonday prayer on his Facebook page. 

The freshman class hosted a virtual field day every day for a week. They planned challenges for each day that matched the day's dress-up theme, with prizes for the winners, such as Madeleine (above), who took first in Tune Tuesday's costume competition. 

Community Service Club members led a project to create posters to honor the staff members who are keeping local hospitals running. The posters were received with much appreciation!

ESA Athletics celebrated our Falcon spring sports senior athletes with this video tribute.