Yesterday we visited Harvard Westlake and attended a few classes as well. Their campus is unbelievably beautiful, situated on top of a hill overlooking the city.
Their schedule is somewhat similar to ours, but they attend classes only four days.
One of the most striking things there was a beautiful art gallery, and they also use it to showcase a local artist often. It convinced all of us even more of the value of having an art gallery. The gallery also has a mounted flat screen for video art, which was a nice feature.
The school offers a digital film course, and they gave us some dvds of their films. They invite a different person from feature films to speak at the campus each year when the student projects are completed, which is another idea we could emulate.
They also did a wonderful job of portraying their school in their handouts, literary magazine, digital film festival, etc. There is much more that I want to share, but not enough time to write about it…so that will be my “school snapshot” for now.
Your snapshot has certainly peaked my interest…..I think there would be lots of interest in a “digital film course” at WHS.
I’m intrested in the world of TV and Film. I think that this will bring more people in the life of technology. I hope that WHS will look in to bringing some of these ideas back home to WHS.
that is soo cool that they only have four days! What is their basis for doing that? Of course I would not object, but Im just wondering what the reason is…
All of your blogs are so interesting! It is so great to hear all about the differnt methods that other schools are using to teach their students! 4 days of school sounds great to me!
The description of Harvard Westlake was very interesting, i think it would a digital film course at Westlake would be very benificial in many ways!
The college my son attends does not schedule regular classes on Fridays. Instead, Fridays are used for field trips, tutorials, guest speakers, etc. Before starting school, he thought he’d be enjoying three-day weekends when, in fact, Fridays have turned out to be very busy. Setting aside one Friday (or an afternoon) at the end of the six weeks for programs, presentations, guest speakers, etc. might be worth a try. It could be used as an opportunity for students to showcase their work.