The Mackintosh Academy-Littleton’s yearly grandparent and special friend day has evolved into, well, something grand. The Grand Event, as it is being called this year, will be a harmonious combination of the ideas of preservation and creation.
The first part of The Grand Event came from NPR’s StoryCorp. Dave Isay, the founder and president of StoryCorp, created an app that enables users to record conversations, and StoryCorp is challenging students across the nation to interview an elder over the Thanksgiving weekend and to upload the conversation to the StoryCorp archive at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center. It is called The Great Thanksgiving Listen, and Mackintosh Academy is participating by inviting its students in all grades to interview and record their guests at The Grand Event. The purpose of The Great Thanksgiving Listen is “to engage people of all ages in the act of listening.” StoryCorp is hoping to “preserve the voices and stories of an entire generation of Americans over a single holiday weekend,” and the students of Mack-Littleton will help give them a running start.
From the StoryCorp website:
The curriculum will help students develop the following:
- Research, archiving, and planning skills
- Speaking skills that enable students to express ideas clearly and persuasively
- Listening skills that reflect increased comprehension, lead to critical analysis, and advance discussion
- An increased connectedness, to community and to school
- A deepened sense of social awareness, exhibited by appreciation of diversity and respect for others
The students will prepare for the event by getting into their buddy groups to practice the interviews ahead of time. Students who will not see elder relatives or special friends until Thanksgiving will be encouraged to record their interviews then.
In addition to interview questions from the StoryCorp, each grade level will add questions that tie into their IB units of inquiry. Grades K-1-2 will ask questions about Celebrations & Traditions, for example.
“Remembering and honoring what has been fits in with this time of year as well as being a part of our Smart Village initiative, ” said Mack-Littleton Head of School Diane Dunne.
The second half of The Grand Event highlights the innovate/create/make aspects of The Smart Village; it is the Mackintosh Market Place, featuring the results of the middle year students’ agriculture/plants/botany unit. Customers will have the opportunity to buy the seedlings grown by the students in containers designed by the students in their Design Class. Some students explored 3D printing to make their containers while others used “upcycled” items to create their planters. Also for sale at the Market Place will be:
- Books by Mackintosh Authors Dave Kelley and Meg Rich
- New and used books for all ages
- Home-cooked items from the Parent Council: Empanadas, tamales, pies and more
- Pizza from community partner Jet’s Pizza
To tie in both the spirit of listening/receiving/preserving with the spirit of innovating/creating/making, one of the interview questions the students will be asking their “grand” guests will have to do with what innovations they have witnessed or contributed to in their lives.
Both halves of The Grand Event combine to make a grand event, indeed.