At Charles Wright, foreign languages and performing arts aren’t extracurriculars and electives, they’re an integral part of the curriculum from the Beginning School all the way through the Upper School. In recent years, the Beginning School’s production of Rainbow Crow has become a bit of a tradition around here. Now all our pre-kindergarten class fans can watch the 2007 production online.

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BCRA, the Tacoma architecture firm that designed Charles Wright’s Lower School, is working on the new Language and Performing Arts Center too. In consultation with CWA administrators and the faculty members who will teach in the new building, they’ve prepared these floorplans. In the coming weeks we’ll explain in much greater detail how each of these spaces will support our drama, music, and language programs.

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Parents, students and faculty from all three divisions are cordially invited to ring in the winter holidays by attending CWA’s holiday concert series. The choirs, bands and orchestra prepared some beautiful pieces of music. This is a great opportunity to celebrate the holidays with your family and the Charles Wright community. It’s also a great way to support our students and get your children excited about participating in the performing arts program.

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If you read The Olympian this morning you may already know that Ian Stoner, a 2007 Charles Wright graduate from Olympia, has won a writing contest and $1,000 college scholarship from ScholarshipExperts.com. More than 10,000 students answered the contest question: “If you could get one ‘do-over’ in life, what would it be and why?” Stoner’s short essay was one of the five winners.

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The Charles Wright Parent Association took a big step toward building the new Language and Performing Arts Center with record-breaking sales at the annual Wright Stuff rummage sale last weekend. In three days, the sale brought in $53,447. An astounding $40,000 was collected on Saturday alone.

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Today our campus provides facilities that beautifully support the work of our teachers, coaches and students in almost every way. We have tools to inspire and challenge students in almost every discipline, except the language and performing arts. Here, our facilities greatly limit what can be taught and what can be learned, and teachers often design their courses around the space they have rather than the students they teach.

The new Language and Performing Arts Center will complete the Charles Wright campus. In this new space, what we teach and how we teach it won’t change, but the opportunities for students to use their new-found skills will change dramatically.

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Even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart tried his hand at Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. This week Aimee Mell challenged her music composition class with the same musician’s rite of passage. Mozart wrote twelve variations for piano of the English poem by Jane Taylor. Mell’s students only had to write one, but their arrangements were for four parts and they also faced the challenge of rehearsing their arrangements with the combined Middle and Upper School orchestra.

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Finding your muse. Telling a story with a tune. Creating something out of nothing. Saying what you really mean. Going against the grain. Finding your voice in collaboration. Risking everything to do something great. That’s the power of Boundless Expression, and that’s what we teach at Charles Wright. Read the rest of this entry »