Palmer Trinity School

Bird's Eye View |Independent Learning| CITYterm Where can a girl from Miami, along with roommates from San Francisco and South Korea plus 27 other students from around the country, go to learn about New York City? The answer is a unique 16-week program, developed by David Dunbar, called CITYterm at the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. According to CITYterm's mission statement, the program is designed to help students "engage fully in learning and thinking for themselves, about themselves and about who and what is beyond themselves." Raul Gonzalez, Christina Ludovici, and Nik Nevin I attended school six days a week! And although that may not sound like fun, three of those days were in the city learning "hands on" about different aspects of New York. Some of the units we studied include: Harlem, the Brooklyn Bridge, Newtown Creek, Gender Studies, Housing, and Immigration. In every class we began by reading a book, then we visited the location in the city, and finally we prepared a project. Projects included: building a housing model and floor plans to be presented to a panel of architects, creating a lesson plan to teach middle school students about an oil spill, and being filmed discussing similarities and differences between different immigrant groups. Each student traveled into the city at dusk and delivered food directly to the homeless on the streets. We talked to them, listened to their life stories, and hopefully helped them with donated food and clothing. For an immigration project, my group spent the night in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with the Lubavitch Jews who were celebrating the first Shabbat after the High Holy Days. I don't believe I would have ever had such an interesting and eye-opening experience in Miami. Nowhere else can you take swing dancing lessons one week, and then go to Yehoodi, one of the best annual swing dancing parties in the Lower East Side, and still learn how and why it is relevant to our classroom learning. We saw Broadway shows and attended events such as the Dodge Poetry Festival. We read books by contemporary authors, like Christina Chui, Lee Stringer, Joseph O'Neill, and Mira Jacob, and then met them to discuss our ideas about their books. Aside from juggling our Urban Core course load, we took two additional courses in math, science or language. But where else can you go downstairs to talk to your math teacher at 9:30 p.m. to discuss rational functions? Six of our eight teachers lived with us, ate with us, and learned with us. Five of them were under 25 years old. We talked to them about everything, and at the same time we had 29 other teenagers in our dorm that had become friends. We were like one big family unit. This experience changed who I am as a person. If you want to learn outside the box, be challenged to stretch your thinking, and take control of your learning, I would highly recommend that you too consider a semester at CITYterm. By Christina Ludovici, Class of 2010 |Meditation Station| Wat Buddharangsi On Monday, November 10th, two Buddhism classes and the AP World History class visited Wat Buddharangsi, Miami's local Buddhist temple in Homestead.  Once there, we were introduced to four Thai Buddhist monks who promptly sat us down shoeless inside the temple.  The spacious, modern room is filled to the brim on one wall with silver and golden ornaments that surround a huge Buddhist image, the Phrabuddhadhammachinaraj.  The monks joined us on the floor and instructed us in the dharma, or the path to living a more enlightened life.  According to Carolina Barrios ('10), their dharma talk was "extremely pleasant and soothing;" they made her feel "as if all [her] tribulations in the world were gone."  After the hour-long session, we meditated and then walked around the temple observing the surrounding grounds. The Wat Buddharangsi temple project began in 1986, when the land was purchased.  Construction wasn't started until 1996, and it dragged on for over six years.  Now, five structures stand in the five acre property: a temple, two classrooms, an all-purpose building, and a bell-tower.  The quaint grounds are quiet and peaceful, with the Thai structures surrounding the central garden. Seven monks currently live in the temple.  The monks look as we expect: they have shaved heads, wear orange robes, possess a calm 8 Mr. Pete Masteller, Mr. Graham Andrew, Andres Policastro Nick Benenati, James Murphy, Julia Krakow, Carolina Barrios, Faris Desir, Briana Henry, Alex Hevia, Nick Nieto, Fernan Espino, Nat Davidson, Zach Schwartz, Michelle Evans, Dexter Carr, Luke Evans, Juliana Salazar, Jaquen Castellanos, Nadia Adside, Richie Befeler, Katie Titley composure and speak limited English with strong accents. However, they engage in actions Westerners would not expect.  They have cell phones, speak into microphones, and have a subtle humor in everything they say.  It is from them that the classes learned the most. By Richie Befeler, Class 2010

• Cover