Sharing Winter Term With All

Sharing Winter Term With All


More than 400 people filled the hallways of Brooks' academic and science buildings on Friday evening for the school's annual Winter Term Symposium.


Family members joined students and faculty at the open house, during which Winter Term classes shared presentations and activities to show off all they've been working on for nearly three weeks in their intensive one-topic course of study.

Visit our Winter Term page for more details about the unique program and photo from the 2019 classes.

Each of the 30 courses hosted guests in individual classrooms and presented their work in different ways, from Lego Engineering's display of robotics in action (shown above) to The Art & Science of SCUBA Diving's hands-on expanding lung workshop (in photo below). The variety was fitting considering the wide range of subjects students studied this Winter Term.

See an album of photos and videos from the 2019 Winter Term Symposium on brooksschoolphotos.com


Read on for a snapshot of what a bunch of the classes were doing — on the same day — just one week ago to get a full sense of what Winter Term is like on campus and off!


Toy Stories: The Role of Toys in Imagination, Culture, & Development students went to the Natick Mall's American Girl store (see photo above) to learn about the history, marketing, and development of the toys and the company. The staff led students on a guided tour and explained the history of the development of the brand and the thinking behind many of their marketing techniques. Students had fun playing with toys, learning how this incredibly successful brand markets itself, walking down memory lane of their own childhoods, and eating a delicious lunch in the American Doll Cafe complete with dolls to join them! After this adventure, students went on a mini scavenger hunt in the mall to apply what they had learned to an examination of other toy stores.

Passion to Pass It On students toured Bellesini Academy in Lawrence and worked in the classroom with Bellesini students. They also heard from a panel of current students at the school (which enrolls grades 5 through 8), went to recess and ate lunch with them in an effort to learn about the opportunities available at the school.


The Complexity of War class (shown above) enjoyed the first of two days exploring Washington, D.C. Students visited the Washington Monument, WWII Memorial, Holocaust Museum, Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery.

All Things Korean class visited Rega's Grill in Lawrence, where students leaned about the different types of meat Koreans grill, using chopsticks, ssam (lettuce wraps) and other Korean side dishes. They also stopped by Shin Shin, a local Korean grocery store, to buy some snacks.

learn_code { < 3 weeks}; Vidcode spent a full day coding in JavaScript and/or coding a few "Rasberry Pi mini computers," and began preparing for their Tuesday trip to the headquarters of iRobot where they're taking a tour of the company's innovation lab.


Six Feet Under: The Art, Science and Business of Death classmates challenged themselves on a death-themed scavenger hunt through the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (show above). The trip to the MFA gave them a chance to consider the way that visual art presents another record of the human condition, including death. After an exercise in close observation, inference and interpretation in the Egypt room, teachers sent students out in teams to find works in which death appears or is referenced to see what they could discern about individual or cultural attitudes toward death using clues from the artwork.

History Detectives visited the site of the greatest unsolved art theft in history, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. (On March 18, 1990, 13 works of art worth $500 million, including paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet and Degas, were stolen from the Boston museum). The class also discussed finishing their study of the Sacco and Vanzetti case and preparation of their short films on their history mystery. Some of the mysteries that students this term are exploring are what really happened on Flight 93 on 9/11, Ted Kennedy's accident on Chappaquiddick, and FDR's alleged prior knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Still Waters: Poetry students also spent the day at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, where they focused on gaining inspiration and writing poems.


Balance students began the day discussing a quote from Marcus Aurelius about how to avoid being controlled by factors not good for us. The students then practiced unicycling for while before enjoying a "hammock hang" on the school playground. The highlight of the day was doing indoor sky diving at SkyVenture New Hampshire (shown above)!

Learn to Play Guitar musicians added one more song to their play list: "Hotel California" by the Eagles. Each student also brought in a song that illustrated some type of guitar work to share, and then explained to classmates why this song had special meaning for them.

The Power of Positive Living! group went to Boston's North End neighborhood and met with the owner of Artu. He discussed running a restaurant, and his business, with students, then served up a fantastic meal.


Dance Exploration: An Introduction to Dance in Techniques, Pop Culture, History & Community dancers (shown above) have been working on their own choreography, with the help of two teachers from a local dance studio, and started work on their video presentation for the Winter Term Symposium.

The Culture and History of Yoga class had a guest speaker, Teri Almquist, who suffered a spinal cord injury and used Bikram yoga to help her healing. Now recovered, Almquist opened her own studio: Merrimack Valley Bikram Yoga in North Andover. She spoke to students about the healing aspects of yoga, on physical and mental levels.


Walking Boston
took the commuter rail into Boston's North Station and then walked to the 7News studio (see photo above) to meet with reporter Steve Cooper. The journalist gave students a tour of the studio and told them about the challenges of covering the news in Boston. Next, the group took the T to Andrew Square in South Boston. They walked to Dorchester Heights through the Old Colony Housing Project — talking along the way about mobster Whitey Bulger, urban renewal and gentrification — up to the spot that General Washington broke the British blockade with cannons from Fort Ticonderoga, now celebrated as Evacuation Day. Having studied the 1970s busing crisis in Boston, they also stopped by South Boston High School, before taking the T into the South End for lunch. Miles covered on foot? Six!



Let's Make It Uncommon interior-designers-in-training went to IKEA and to Home Depot (again!). The students continued to paint the coffeehouse interior, including two accent walls, and prepared to redo the furniture by painting and reupholstering the cushions. The change from the previously dark space is (see above and below) significant!



Follow Brooks School on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to see the projects, trips and happenings in our community each day during the school year.

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