Seminar Week at CCA
Each January we suspend our Upper School class schedule for one week of concentrated work on a single topic. The staff team chooses the topic and arranges the week’s events, all while keeping the plans a secret from the students. Seminar Weeks have become a highlight of each school year for staff and students alike as we try to find topics that engage students in a variety of ways.
This year groups of approximately fifteen students will make ten to fifteen minute movies during the week. The same story line—The Beauty and the Beast—will be given to each group, but students are free to choose any setting and genre for their movies. Each group will write a script, make the soundtrack and film the movie. Soundtracks must contain at least one original song—to be recorded in the Durrell Sound Studio where staff members will be available to serve as studio musicians. Students may use items from home, curbside trash or from local thrift shops for their costumes and set but may not spend more than twenty-five dollars per team on supplies. The staff has procured five identical cameras for the teams. The movies may be filmed inside the school building, around the school property or “on location” at nearby sites. Leading actors and directors will be interviewed by Mr. Sanelli and Mrs. Stucky in a television show setting on Wednesday. Each team must produce a thirty-second movie trailer and their own promotional materials—press releases, posters and film clips—by Thursday. The week will culminate on Friday with a Covenant Awards Ceremony in the CCA Annex, with a gala lunch to precede the screening of all the films and the presentation of awards. Parents are welcome to attend the film screenings and the presentation of awards from 12:00 to 3:00. Categories for the awards will include best actor/actress in both leading and supporting roles, overall aesthetics, cinematography, costuming and makeup, editing, soundtrack, visual effects, screen play writing, publicity and best picture. Students will be encouraged to make their films unlike the Disney version; originality will be valued in the judging.
Past Seminar Weeks have been wildly successful with our students. In 2008 we focused on the Presidential election process. Six students were chosen to play the part of three Republican and three Democratic candidates; each had a campaign staff and had to learn their candidate’s position on a variety of issues so that they could debate one another and answer the questions of the press. Staff members conducted workshops on topics such as illegal immigration and national security so that all students were well-versed in the issues of the campaign. Students who were not part of the candidate and campaign staff group were divided into the press and the pop culture participants. The press produced a daily television newscast and two daily newspapers—one with a liberal bias and the other with a conservative bias. The pop culture group created political cartoons, protest songs and campaign jingles and a late-night television show. An electoral college system was set-up using the home school districts of the CCA student body as the “states”. Fifth and sixth grade students participated in the voting and represented the uninformed masses—those whose voting had been influenced by candidates’ promises of candy at lunch, more snowdays and the demise of school uniforms. In the general election the voters from Central Dauphin School District—the “California” of our electoral college—determined the election and gave the win to Barack Obama as played by our own Glenn Williams.
Seminar Week 2009 centered on Problem Solving. Student teams worked on engineering problems such as egg drop vehicles, toothpick and straw bridges and penny launchers. Mid-week the staff offered workshops in things like the physics of bridges which were eagerly attended by all teams due to multiple bridge failures. Supplies for the projects could be bought at the staff’s store using Seminar Week currency; teams earned this money by solving a host of other problems—word problems, visual searches, Logic problems and math brain teasers. By Thursday a vibrant black market had sprung up with teams underselling the teachers with their extra supplies. All the projects were unveiled to the whole student body on Friday, with the fifth and sixth graders voting on the aesthetics of the products. Each team then waited as the staff flew the egg vehicles off the gym roof, piled dominoes on the bridges and measured the distance of the penny launch throws.
The staff intends to continue the Seminar Week tradition in future school years and is always looking for creative ideas that will provide variety from year to year.