Fall 2015 FALL 2015 in This Issue in the Halls
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LabLifethe magazine for alumni, parents, and friends of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools Fall 2015 FALL 2015 in this issue In the Halls FEATURES DEPARTMENTS 22 Play by Design 03 In the Halls 28 These are Some of 04 The Bookshelf Branching Their Stories 09 Sports Highlights 30 In With the New 15 In the World LabLife 36 On the Map 19 Behind the Scenes 20 Lab in Pictures out 38 Throwback 39 Alumni Notes Nursery students notice nature, 46 Alumni in Action make art FROM DIRECTOR ROBIN APPLEBY “Our work today builds on more Renewal than a century of creativity, commitment, and engagement with the Lab community." Renewal is a word you will year with the charter schools of well informed of progress and and with our alumni, but we’ve hear from me often this the Urban Education Institute. temporary changes on campus added some new departments year as so much of what > Lab professionals have as we complete the project, and and freshened the look and we do at Lab is translating worked with great effort and we look forward to sharing news readability of the publication. and renewing founder John care to complete the self-study and images about the outcome And of course we are excitedly The Lim Family Library at Dewey’s philosophies into portion of the reaccreditation of the project with you in future preparing for the opening Earl Shapiro Hall overlooks contemporary practice. Our process with the Independent LabLife stories. of Gordon Parks Arts Hall! Jackson Park, where many work today builds on more Schools Association of the > Summer Lab continues to This beautiful space will students spend hours a than a century of creativity, Central States. bring together a wonderful mix These periodic become not only a locus of week playing. Mr. Goulding commitment, and engagement of campers, older students, self-studies allow us to pause Lab’s arts curriculum but a took interested students in with the Lab community. Our young alumni, and adults. Sarah Abella, ’93, wants her After a winter snowstorm, and reflect on ways we can The central gathering space to pairs to the library, where shared commitment to meeting continue to provide one of numbers tell an impressive story: better connect members of our Nursery 4 students to pay Mr. Goulding realized that the mission of this school is they sat and drew the trees attention to the details. What the bare branches presented the nation’s best educational A dozen young alumni, 53 community to one another. they knew so well with a deep, and I am excited by the experiences. In November, we current Lab students, and about do you actually see? Using the an opportunity to show the To that end, I invite Lab newfound attention to detail. opportunities that are before us, will host a visiting team, which 66 current Lab teachers worked nearby parks and campus as students how these familiar trees alumni, families, faculty, and all of which in some way build will work with us to produce a with 1,000+ campers who an extension of the classroom, look different throughout the staff to gather on Saturday, on our strengths and ensure our final report generating strategic hail from eight countries and her students have been keeping year. He proposed an optional October 3, for a Celebration of continuing success: recommendations for the future. seven states. Simultaneously, we nature journals since the project—to draw the trees in Gordon Parks Arts Hall. More > Our partnership with the have increased our support for their seasonal states—and more > The final phases of our information and an invitation beginning of the year as a way University continues to bring Chicago’s High Jump program, Historic Campus renovation will be sent shortly, but please to focus on the world around than half the class joined in. unparalleled resources and enabling over 120 of this city’s and restoration are well save the date for this all-family, them. “You can’t just draw a “It was the first time many of experiences to our students. brightest middle school students Drawings with two or three underway in Judd Hall, daytime event. I look forward to circle and say, ‘I drew a leaf!’” them had been encouraged to Just this month we have to spend the summer studying panels exemplify the process Belfield Tower, and U-High. seeing you there! says Ms. Abella. not just make their drawing as of noticing that Ms. Abella students traveling to the This culminating stage has on our campus. As part of this effort to pretty as they’d like,” says Mr. University’s Marine Biological and Mr. Goulding teach. been carefully planned and > Even LabLife has gone Warm regards, teach the children how to Goulding, “but to dig further Laboratory in Woods Hole for The first drawing shows the fortunately can be executed through a bit of a renewal. regard nature in finer detail, and notice the things you didn’t student’s initial impression— the first time, and, thanks to with less disruption to teaching Now in its ninth year, this assistant teacher Patrick notice at first.” a generous gift to support our usually how they imagine and learning than earlier phases magazine will continue to Goulding, who runs the art University and community trees to look. Latter of the campus overhaul. Our bring you stories about what’s Robin Appleby studio in Ms. Abella’s class, has drawings show more precise partnerships, we will be campus community will be kept happening in our classrooms launching new programs this been spotlighting trees. Last fall, depictions, after the student interested students drew trees. is instructed to draw what he The class also took a field trip to or she actually sees. LabLife, published three Editor Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93 Photography University of Chicago Volume 9, Number 1 times a year, is written for the Morton Arboretum, where Catherine Braendel, ’81 Ingrid Gonçalves, AB’08 Chris Kirzeder Laboratory Schools © 2015 by the University of the University of Chicago Contributors Kay Kirkpatrick, MAT’72 Kaiwen Luan, ’13 1362 E. 59th Street Laboratory Schools’ Heather Preston Chicago, IL 60637 Chicago Laboratory Schools they learned about the resident community of alumni, parents, Amy Braverman Puma Maureen Searcy Lab Notes Correspondents www.ucls.uchicago.edu Reproduction in whole or trees and “helicopter” seeds. faculty, and staff. Laura Adamczyk Claire Zulkey Dozens of diligent alumni part, without permission of agents Please send comments or Director Sean Carr, AB'90 Design updated contact information to the publisher, is prohibited. Robin Appleby Jeanie Chung Janice Clark [email protected], Megan E. Doherty, AM'05, or call 773-702-0578. PhD'10 02 LabLife Fall 2015 LabLife Fall 2015 03 THE BOOKSHELF In the Halls Recommended Lab leadership reading U-High math teacher Farukh Khan recommends Really Big Numbers, by Richard Evan Schwartz nfinity is a long way are content to leave it at that, joined hands, they waould The largest Scott Fech Sandy Bixby Frances Spaltro Ken Garcia-Gonzales off. And much of but children often aren’t. They form a human chain extending Director of educational Middle School principal Acting associate High School Coordinator for diversity, equity, what lies between insist on seeing, and touching from Providence to Chicago; a known prime programs principal and inclusion the “small numbers,” and feeling; they are not so trillion is the number of grains familiar to most of us, easily satisfied by a wave of the of fine sand needed to bury a number is and infinity, is a vast hand and an appeal to vague man and his surfboard. The wilderness of incomprehensibly abstractions. book ascends steadily from the over 17 million large numbers. Here is an Richard Evan Schwartz’s familiar to ever-bigger numbers, example: The largest known Really Big Numbers is a richly until we realize that to get to digits long. prime number (that is, a whole illustrated travel guide for all really big numbers we must number whose only factors intrepid souls—but children, resort to exponentiation. Written out, are one and the number itself; in particular—who would set Now the going gets heavy, like 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and so on) off to explore that mysterious and the would-be explorer it would is over 17 million digits long. and shadowy region of really must stop to work things Written out, it would fill about big numbers that lies beyond out with paper and fill about six six volumes, each the size of the small circle of light cast by pencil. But those who Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The school mathematics and human persevere are well volumes. number itself represents a experience. Mr. Schwartz, rewarded in the end. magnitude unthinkably larger professor of mathematics at The book, with pictures than the number of atoms in Brown University, has a gift for in vivid colors and the observable universe. To helping us visualize numbers. playful examples, is contemplate such a number One hundred thousand, we clearly aimed at is beyond human intuition, are told, is approximately children. Though as Scott Fech becomes Lab’s A Middle School science World Language teacher Ken Garcia-Gonzales joins Lab and requires the full force the number of hairs on a for that, the audience director of educational teacher since 2007, Sandy Frances Spaltro, PhD ’11, as the Schools’ first full-time of the language of abstract monkey’s head; if the million is anyone with a programs providing broad, all- Bixby becomes the new Middle becomes acting associate coordinator for diversity, equity, mathematics.