August 16, 2007
Dear Eighth Graders:
Welcome to your “senior” year at Adams School—almost! We know that you
have a couple more weeks of precious summer, but we wanted to start you
thinking about a very special, new project that your class will get to
inaugurate this year. And we’ll be getting started on it right away.
We’re going to call it the Senior Book Project. It will be a year-long
art-music-language arts activity, and the product will be an amazing,
beautiful, exquisite bound volume of your writing, reading, drawing,
painting, imagining work during the school year. It will become a kind
of personal yearbook that culminates your years at Adams School, and
this final year in particular. We hope it will turn into one of the
cherished objects of your life.
To get things rolling, we’ve invited a very talented calligrapher and
book maker to spend half the day with us on Wednesday, September 5.
that’s the second day of school. Jan Owen will show us her calligraphy
techniques, help you design a cover with your name on it, and show us
examples of one-of-a-kind bound volumes. This will give us a starting
point, and some models to work from and aspire to imitate. You might
enjoy having a look at Jan’s web site before school starts:
http://www.janowenart.com/. You could also spend some time finding your
own resources on the Internet or in Witherle library.
You might even do some thinking and writing and drawing for this
project before the year actually starts. We wonder if your 8th grade
year hasn’t already started to take shape in some way within your
expectations and aspirations. Are there some “August Thoughts” you’d
like to put down on paper, and refine, as a kind of preamble to your
senior book? Are there some summer experiences you’ve had that you’d
like to remember through writing or drawing? Start collecting! Save
amazing artifacts…be they thoughts or seashells.
As Mrs. Belyea’s favorite art teacher used to say, “Come back in
September and we'll set the world on fire!”
A bientot,
Mr. Nelson
Mrs. Belyea