1 Sparhawk School | Amesbury, MA 01913 | www.SparhawkSchool.com

Sparhawk School Young Playwrights’ Get Professional Actors’ Nod

Sparhawk English and theater teacher Bob DeLibero teaches playwriting during the first semester each year. For the past two years the students have been entering their plays into the Massachusetts Young Playwrights' Project (MYPP) which gives local high school students the chance to learn playwriting from professional mentors and have their plays acted out on stage by professional actors.

This year, two Sparhawk student plays were chosen to be performed by professional actors, at Boston University's Boston Playwrights Theater, directed by Steven Barkhimer.

Sparhawk Sophomore, Lola Getz’s one-act 10-minute comedy titled "A Little Game of Life and Death," was chosen. "Dear Macie" by Sparhawk sophomore Ella Faria, about a husband who is contemplating getting a divorce and the wife who is thinking about how much she loves him, was also chosen.

Sparhawk senior Jordan Michel's piece titled, "A Bright Future" was given a staged reading followed by a critique. Sparhawk students beat out other works from students from Lexington High School, Reading Memorial High School, Concord Academy, Westford Academy,

Newton North High School, Weston High School, Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School, Boston Latin High School, Hamilton-Wenham High School and the Waring School among others.

“This was a wonderful experience for our students,” says DeLibero, “the Director and actors did a wonderful job in breathing life into the students’ work. It was a treat to see them come to life.”

Our young playwrights continue their playwriting, and look forward to submitting next year as well.

Students from Sparhawk School in Amesbury, Massachusetts pose in front of the Boston Playwrights' Theatre.  Left to right students: Mitchell Smith, Andrew Regan, Jordan Michel, Lola Getz, Miky Foley, Tovah Lockwood, Kat Reidl, Ella Faria, Wendy Xie.

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2 Sparhawk School | Amesbury, MA 01913 | www.SparhawkSchool.com

Students’ Peace Poetry Wins Big At Sparhawk Elementary School, each Friday morning

begins with a motivating community meeting. Eric Getz, a 4th & 5th grade teacher, often reads inspiring poetry to children during this special gathering.  Paula Torrisi, a 2nd & 3rd grade teacher remarks, “Listening to Eric’s reading of Sara Teasedale’s February Twilight poem impassioned my second and third graders.” 

By chance, the teachers found that Riggschoir also sang this beautiful poem on YouTube, and shared it with the students. Listening to the choir’s rich and glorious voices 

moved inspired the students to create magnificent poems about peace. 

Consequently, Northern Essex Community College was hosting their annual Peace Poetry Contest. Though the contest draws thousands of entries yearly, seven Sparhawk student submissions were chosen as winners, with their work published in a chapbook titled 2015-2016 NECC Peace Poetry.

The seven students, Zuri Silver, Sonja Aspeslagh, Finn Stinson, Eli Paullis, Maddie Tolman, Anna Tessmer and Ava Arsenault will be reading their poems on May 6th, 2016 at the NECC campus in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

Going GreenElementary Students Learn Gardening At Arrowhead Farms

Each Spring the Sparhawk Elementary grades 4 & 5 students volunteer their time at Arrowhead Farms in Newburyport as part of their extended learning experience. The “second classroom” of Arrowhead reinforces our teachings of responsibility, sustainability and individual growth.

Sparhawk students help in the greenhouses, volunteering in many different capacities at the farm. In addition, students plant their own crop to sell at the Sparhawk School Annual Farmers Market in late May / early June. Proceeds of this sale fund their end of year trip.

Many elementary students continue their experience at Arrowhead Farms into their high school years at Sparhawk with internships.

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“Our students love this experience and it reinforces all of the qualities we are instilling in our community.”Eric Getz, Sparhawk 4th & 5th Grade Teacher

Peace Poetry Winners Left to right: Maddie Tolman, Eli Paullis, Anna Tessmer, Finn Stinson, Zuri Silver, Ava Arselault, Sonja Aspeslagh

3 Sparhawk School | Amesbury, MA 01913 | www.SparhawkSchool.com

FIRST ROBOTICS TEAMLaunched at Sparhawk School

Carriagetown Robotics competed at two regional FIRST Robotics Competitions this year. The FIRST Robotics Competition is a team challenge where students design, build and program a robot to play a floor game against other teams. The parameters of the competition call for limited resources, strict rules and the assistance of volunteer mentors.

Students have just six weeks to build the robot, raise funds, design a team “brand” and hone their teamwork skills before competing against a field of other students.

Carriagetown Robotics is in its second year as a team, but only it’s first year as a partnership between Amesbury High and Sparhawk School. Max Luf, a Sophomore at Sparhawk

High School, articulated the collaboration, “It’s been amazing to see our two schools come together. We not only created a cohesive team but we formed a micro culture as well. That can be really hard when you bring strangers together, but we did it really well.” Students were eager to give credit to their mentors, Jennifer Esty (Sparhawk) and Mark Obremski (MIT), who volunteer countless hours helping these students achieve their goals. Remarking on the support from the community, Jennifer Esty says, “I am very thankful to work in a community that sees the value in FIRST Robotics. Amesbury’s Mayor Ken Gray and State Representative James Kelcourse are staunch supporters of this program. Participation in a FIRST Robotics team opens the door to 25+ million dollars in scholarship money that has been earmarked for FIRST Robotics participants.

The team did tremendously well at both competitions especially since they are such a green team competing against teams with 20+ years of experience. At their second competition they advanced to the quarterfinals and placed in 14th position overall. The team had their fair share of robotics challenges, which they overcame together. Mentor Mark Obremski points out, “Encountering challenges with the robots is imperative to the learning process- things will break, but it’s how you deal with those failings that makes you a stronger team and in the long run a better engineer.”

Sparhawk Creates Athletics ProgramBeginning in Fall 2016

Sparhawk School has eagerly accepted an official invitation to join the MIAA, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletics Association (MIAA). Beginning in the fall of 2016, Sparhawk High School students will have the opportunity to compete with other students in the town of Amesbury in competitive sports teams such as soccer, track & field, and cross country running.

The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association is a private, non-profit association organized by its member schools to govern, coordinate and promote education-based programs for high school students.

“Sparhawk has traditionally focused on our strong academics and arts programs, however we have a significant population of students who are passionate about competitive sports,” says Jennifer Esty, Sparhawk High School parent and teacher. Esty continues, “We are helping our students become good global citizens, and participating in competitive sports allows for our students to learn life lessons through the vehicle of

athletics.” MIAA highlights some of these life lessons on their website, such as helping students develop good sportsmanship, integrity, ethics and leadership. The development of these qualities can benefit a student throughout their scholastic career as well as their life beyond school.

Adding a new school to their program is also a benefit to the MIAA. Playing fields are always in high demand, and Sparhawk has a beautifully maintained field that can be utilized by the teams. In addition we have acres of additional land that can be developed in the future as the program grows.

Though we are beginning our competitive athletics program at the high school level, we hope to extend this to the middle school students as well. “We believe in need-based sustainable growth. We are beginning our competitive program where there is the greatest request and need,” says Sparhawk Upper School Director, Yvonne Domings.

This program is in addition to the vast extracurricular activities currently offered such as rock-climbing, skateboard club, drama, robotics and many more.

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4 Sparhawk School | Amesbury, MA 01913 | www.SparhawkSchool.com

3D Carver WinnersNational Competition

Sparhawk School has been chosen as the Massachusetts Winner of the Inventables contest to win a 3D Carver. The carver will be added to our Maker Space housed at the Upper School Campus, though students from both campuses will have access to it.

Inventables, a Chicago based digital invention company founded in 2002 by CEO Zach Kaplan, offers everything necessary to make 3D carving easy and inspiring. Inventables' contest is aimed at identifying schools committed to creating more opportunities for their students to design, prototype and build their ideas and prepare themselves for careers in

advanced manufacturing, industrial design, and engineering.

To win, Sparhawk School had to first submit an application, then create a lesson plan as to how the carver would be utilized within a class curriculum. In the third and final step, the Sparhawk students created a storyboard and video illustrating why they should win the carver.

Jennifer Esty, a science and engineering teacher at Sparhawk, spearheaded the submission and lesson plan process. Esty says, "The 3D carver will allow our students limitless possibilities to create precise three dimensional creations synthesizing their knowledge of mathematics, technology and the arts."

Experiential Middle SchoolBecoming the lesson

Middle school is truly the time when students are finding their individual voices, developing a sense of being and building their self esteem.  They are also at a crucial and pivotal place in both their academic and in their social and emotional development.  Their bodies and brains are developing rapidly and it's our job to help them reign it all in, all while keeping their love and excitement for learning.

How do you do that, right?  We have found that teaching our middle school students experientially is our best tool in the vast teacher toolbox.  We want our students to be themselves, and we want to hear their unique perspectives on the thematic subjects that they are studying.  We have found traditional education methods only get students part of the way there.  

Experiential education:• Keeps the excitement in learning!  

Who wants to be bored and have someone talk AT you all day?

• Allows students the movement that their active bodies require- counter intuitive to expect a growing body to sit in one place for eight hours a day.

• Builds critical and creative thinking skills necessary for 21st century minds- Who are you as a

student and how do you approach this problem.

• Helps students identify HOW they learn best - In many cases our students have at least eight more years of education ahead of them, they need to know who they are as a student so they can be successful!  

• Allows students to fail (often more than once!), rebuild, gain knowledge and find a solution- Life lesson, you are going to fail, if you don't fail, you don't know what to fix.

• Teaches students to work co-operatively and independently to problem solve- Building both skills sets will serve a student long past their educational career.

• Creates moments where students must advocate for both themselves and their classmates- This one is HUGE!  

 Our current theme in the middle school is Invent, Explore and Discover.  Here's some examples of our students becoming the thematic lesson. 

• Design prosthetic hands as part of the skeletal and muscular studies of the human body systems.

• Students created a system of windbags & used  Bernoulli's laws of atmospheric pressure to discover how an eight foot long windbag can be filled with one breath of air.

• Mixing music and math with MaKey MaKey. This is a device that turns ordinary objects into buttons for your computer by making an electric circuit. Students sketched "instruments" with pencil and paper that played music when connected to the MaKey MaKey (the graphite conducts the electrical impulses).

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Middle school student creates a prosthetic hand

Sparhawk High School students Ben Flynn & Sam Sharp show off a picture of the new 3D Carver to be added to the Maker Space.