The Knights say farewell! May 21, 2021 The White Whale: Parting Advice From A Senior Reader By Eleanor Roth “Call me Ishmael.” Perhaps one of the most famous opening lines in literature, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is a rite of passage for the junior class at Altamont. Its length of 589 pages feels understandably overwhelming to tackle in a single semester. Thus, for so many faculty making difficult decisions to adjust curriculum, choosing to consolidate or even altogether drop previously covered works is a challenge. Figure 1: Owlcation: Moby Dick and the Brutality of Man The question becomes, when examining how to condense a course into a single semester, what changes? One tactic uses a holistic examination of the materials of a class, especially evident in survey courses, to create an image of the larger narrative. Another tactic involves picking fewer works and transferring teaching points into those chosen pieces. Though not an exhaustive and comprehensive list of the possible methods of curriculum, nor accounting for other factors, which may limit a curriculum’s development, the dichotomy of these two issues reflects a common debate in education: breadth or depth? In pandemic times and beyond, there is no simple answer to this question. However, by understanding the progression of one’s course, one can better utilize time and resources. Speaking as a senior who has been at Altamont since the fifth grade, I have accumulated a few tricks I would like to share with anyone still adjusting to changes in English classes. 1. Write short chapter summaries after you read. They do not need to be fancy nor proper, as long as they communicate the information you want to remember. 2. Don’t be afraid to ask for clarification after class! In a course that moves quickly, it can be very helpful to take a moment and ask about a character or theme you do not understand. The pandemic year has changed how every course is taught. It is a learning process for everyone. I implore you all to think about what you want to take away from your courses—whether a skill, your well-annotated copy of Moby Dick, or even an excitement for future classes—and carry that with you through the rest of this year. Student Thought A Look Inside the Lunchroom: An Expose By Margaret Schedler Throughout our time at The Altamont School, students learn the many ways that Altamont is different from other schools, with one unique aspect being the school lunch. The school lunch at Altamont is Figure 2 Left to right: Mrs. Grissom, (back) Mrs. Lawson, Mrs. James, Mr. Lane, Mr. Smith one of our proudest attributes aside from our emphasis on academics and intellect. But as we rush to pile buttery cavatappi on our paper plates, we usually overlook how the food actually got there. How do our favorite dishes even get to us, and what are the stories behind the stuffing? Let’s take a look inside the lunchroom. The lunchroom staff is made up of only five people who do the work of many more. Mrs. Jennifer Grissom credits the quality and quantity of the work to how closely knit the staff is to one another, even describing her colleagues as, “almost like a family”. Before Altamont even opens its doors for students and faculty, the lunchroom bustles with sluggish early morning activity. Mr. Brodrick Lane arrives at 6am to wake up the kitchen and start on the hard work for the day. Mrs. Grissom arrives soon after to get the coffee ready for the sleepy faculty and staff. Mrs. Grissom also works hard to plan meals for the school, carefully choosing lunch dishes from a list of 25 delicious meals, which is not an easy task with a school full of picky eaters! Mrs. Malinda James, Mr. Daniel Smith, and Mrs. Penny Lawson begin their day at Altamont from 7:30am to 8:30am. That’s when the cooking begins down in Altamont’s kitchen. As well as stocking and unpacking grocery deliveries, Mr. Smith also pushes the lunch contraptions upstairs with Mr. Lane, who both serve students lunch in the upstairs gallery. These jobs to get lunch on our plates aren’t always easy. Mrs. Grissom explains the unseen challenges that the staff experiences when preparing lunch, saying, “Depending on the day’s menu, just getting enough food cooked in time to start can also be a significant challenge, especially on days when lunch starts earlier than usual,” not to mention the frustration that everyone feels because school favorite foods, like tater tots, French fries, and ice-cream, can’t be served due to the difficulty transporting them from the kitchen. While it may seem that the staff is all business, they have fun too. It’s not a surprise at all that students’ and faculty’s favorite school lunches are nachos, chicken fingers, breakfast, and Indian butter chicken, but we bet you didn’t know what the lunchroom staff’s are! Mrs. Grissom loves the Indian butter chicken; Mrs. Lawson likes the turkey and dressing, especially around Thanksgiving (so do we!); and Mrs. James loves the May Day lunch, including the ribs that are barbecued to perfection all morning. Mr. Lane’s favorite lunch remains super burger bar, a meal missed by many students, and Mr. Smith always goes for the classic roast beef. And funny enough, the staff has least favorite school lunches too! Mrs. James dislikes the loaded baked potato soup; Mr. Lane doesn’t like anything simple, like hotdogs or corndogs; and the most shocking is that Mr. Smith HATES the Indian butter chicken! Just like the students and faculty of The Altamont School, the lunchroom staff lead important lives outside of the lunchroom. Mr. Smith and Mr. Lane have been best friends since they were little and now work together every day. Mr. Lane is married to Mrs. James’s daughter, Mrs. Lawson is Mr. Sammy Lawson’s sister, and Mrs. Lawson also recently became a great-grandmother! Mrs. Grissom’s husband is an alum of Altamont, class of ’86, and even serves on the alumni board. Mr. Lane and Mr. Smith love watching sports and spending time with their families. Mrs. Lawson spends her free time playing with her great-grandbaby, soaking up the sun, and being with her family. Mrs. James loves going to church, singing, and getting thrifty by going to yard sales (same!). Mrs. Grissom loves experimenting in the kitchen, reading, playing logic games even though no one in her family will play with her, and she’s addicted to Candy Crush! Planning and preparing the school’s lunch is no easy feat, so we are very lucky to have such a great team keeping us fed. As students and faculty rush to devour dishes at lunchtime, take a second to think about the people who are doing the unseen work. We may think of them as just faculty, but in keeping us nourished and always making time to speak to with us, they are so much more! A NewGen Peacebuilders Reflection By Manish Yalamanchili Recently, I decided to participate in the NewGen Peacebuilders program, and it was an amazing experience. The program expanded my mind to new ideas and perspectives that will always be valuable to me. NewGen peacebuilders is a peace education designed for youth from the ages of 14 to 25. The program utilizes best practices in peace and global education for Figure 3 Twitter youth. During this program, we completed a team peace project, where the focus was on decreasing recidivism rates on our community. Before we got into the peace project, we had to go through peace training by participating in virtual immersion workshops. There were four four-hour immersion workshops that introduced us to peacebuilding frameworks and tools. These workshops were very educational and opened my eyes to the world of peacebuilding. The most notable idea that I learned is the two types of peace: negative and positive peace. I came into this program thinking that peace meant lack of direct violence and fighting, but I learned that this is called negative peace. Positive peace is when conflict is managed in productive ways and conditions of well-being for all is sought out. Think of negative peace as a band aid but positive peace as an antibiotic. Negative peace manages the symptoms while positive peace helps to solve the root of the issue. This program taught us the skills needs to make positive peace within our community. I also learned about the importance of using your voice. The program gave us opportunities to use our voice and provide our perspective. What I liked is that I was able to share my perspective while also hearing about other’s perspectives. The program also gave us a chance to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to tell their story. This provided me with new perspectives that opened my mind even further. After the four workshops, we had a peace project planning workshop, which lasted seven hours. In this workshop, we worked through issues that we felt needed to be addressed in our community. We decided we wanted to work on issues with criminal justice system, specifically recidivism rates. We found out that many prisoners are not prepared for re-entry after being released, and recidivism often results from a lack of options due to being underprepared for life after prison. We used this workshop to plan out a prototype for our peace project; we decided to make a bilingual pamphlet of resources and a film on this issue.