Mr. Fincken performed his one-man show for all of the students at BPS. He regaled us with tall tales from the perspective of Johnny Appleseed. He spoke about the importance of the apple to pioneers in the Midwest and eastern United States during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He also taught the students some acting basics.
Here is a description of the program from Mr. Fincken's website: "70-year-old Johnny Appleseed shares some tall tale adventures concerning his travels throughout the Midwest. This is story-telling in theatre form, legend and fact becoming one. John Chapman was a non-violent man in a violent time and as such deserves your attention today."
Danyel Mann visited all of the BMS choirs and taught them custom choreography for their
upcoming musical, Annie Jr. Adding choreography elevates the difficulty level of the production
and improves coordination since students need to be able to sing and move at the same time.
Danyel does a wonderful job tailoring the choreography to the skill level of each grade (6th, 7th,
and 8th grade).
The students always enjoy working with Danyel. She demonstrates the moves very clearly and
gives the students group and individual feedback as she works with them. Come see what they
learned from her October 1 and 2 in the BHS auditorium at 7pm!
During Bren Bataclan’s mural residency, every BIS student participated in a workshop where Bren taught them about his “Smile Project” where he leaves his paintings all over the world for people to find and take with them. In exchange, he simply asks for the recipients of his paintings to spread kindness. During the workshop, the students also learned how to draw characters in Bren’s style. He assigned each student a character to design for the mural. Bren then chose at least two students from every class and designed a mural using their characters.
The theme of the mural is unity and diversity, so students drew unique characters of the same kinds, i.e., some students all drew different kinds of fish, birds, houses, cars, etc. Each of the characters was combined with a symbol, i.e., hearts, peace signs, lightbulbs, paw prints, etc. Every character in the mural is completely unique and was painted as an exact (or very close to exact) replica of the students’ drawings. Bren painted the mural for the remainder of the week and had small meet and greets with students where they could observe and ask questions. All throughout the week, Bren gave away dozens of drawings of his characters to students. The mural celebrates diversity and encourages respect and kindness. It highlights the uniqueness of members of our school community. The experience was tremendously positive and uplifting for the whole school, students and staff alike. The mural is so bright and cheerful and quirky, viewers can’t help but smile when they see it.
