Archive: Around Town

To accomodate all the classes in the Lansing High School schedule the week is made up of A-Days and B-Days with different schedules on each.  This week the school added C-Day, a day of non conventional classes taught by community members as well as students and others in the school community.  The purpose was to build community and break down barriers between students.

"This is a labor of love put together by the Race, Class and Gender class that Ms. Ivery Teaches," said Principal Coleen Ledley.  "Typically we have A or B Day in the high school.  Along with that the themes are Care, Career, Creativity, Cool, Compassion, Civility and Community, a different take on the Seven Cs.

Each year the Race, Class and Gender class completes a final school-wide project to break down barriers among students at the school.  This year they decided on a day of classes that would also break the barriers of traditional education.

Highlights of the day included a talk by Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick, and a special ice cream sundae desert at lunch.

More than 40 classes ranged from boogieing with Briana Mitchell to acing a job interview to emergency fire training to what it's like on a Hollywood TV set.  Other classes covered running a business, karate, yoga, robotics, and what it's like to be a Sheriff.  An advanced nail art class was on the roster along with boxing and cooking and wilderness survival, volunteering at the SPCA, jazzercise, landscape design, getting a pilot's license and dealing with teen depression.

"We have community presenters, staff members who are presenters," Ledley said.  "We have students who are presenters.  So on this day we're all together and we're all teachers."

Students picked their top four choices, then got a schedule back telling them when and where they would be throughout the day.

"Our hope is that kids will interact differently," Ledley said.  "They'll be given an opportunity to sit next to somebody they didn't sit next to before."

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