Archive: Around Town

At Lansing High School D-Day isn't June 6th, 1944.  It's a Different Day of Learning that occurs approximately every two years.  This year D-Day was last Friday, and it meant a varied and eclectic schedule for high school students and teachers alike.  "We try to provide a range of just fun, goofy, let-go stuff, and some serious educational topics," ," explains English Teacher and D-Day advisor Julie Berens.  "The other piece is that faculty are right in there with the students learning and presenting.  It really brings people together in very unusual combinations."

Berens says that a student coined the term 'D-Day' the first time it was offered nine years ago.  Berens brought the idea from a previous teaching job  in Chappaqua, NY.  "They had something they called 'Seminar Day.'  Sometimes it would be two or three days at a time," Berens recalls.  "It would include field trips to the Metropolitan Museum, overnight trips to Boston -- it was very elaborate, and they often were more thematic than what we have here.  I thought, why can't we do something like that here?  So Julie Miller, who used to teach art here, and I spearheaded it in 1992."


To raise funds to pay expenses for the event, Berens also started the annual talent show.  The money covers presenters, supplies, incidentals and T-shirts.  The D-Day staff and presenters each get a T-shirt with a winning design from a contest.  This year Rachel Bland and Clair Eckstrom split the $50 prize for a design they created together.


The show features music, song, and comedy MCed by Berens.  For the past two years her co-MC was senior Marlene VanEs.  The two dressed in crazy wigs and costumes and mugged their way through the evening while students performed in rock bands, solo instrumentals, solos and duets, dance and comedy routines.  "I have to give PTSO a huge plug," Berens says.  "They are very generous in giving us their enrichment grant that they offer to each school.  We couldn't do this without their support."

Berens advises a group of about a dozen students, who brainstorm ideas and poll the student body.  They come up with sessions in various topic-groups including athletics, the arts, social justice, and careers.  Berens says they steer away from an overall theme on purpose.  About a week before the event all the high school students are given a schedule and asked to pick a first, second, third an fourth choice for each of the four periods that offer sessions.  The English teachers hand-schedule every student so that he or she gets at least one of those choices each period, favoring the upper classmen for their first choices, because the younger students will get another chance in two years.


They get their handwritten schedule first thing in the morning, then go to an all-school assembly.  This year Brian Wansink, author of the book 'Mindless Eating,' kicked off the proceedings with a lively presentation of some of his research on why we eat more than we think.  Wansink clearly has fun with his research, and radiated that fun while explaining how our assumptions about the amounts of food and drink we consume are often wrong.  

He illustrated this by describing a number of experiments where people thought they were eating less, but really ate more.  He showed clips from his appearance on ABC's 20/20 in which college age interns on the program swore that one cup of yogurt had a stronger strawberry taste than another.  In fact neither had any strawberry at all -- they were both vanilla yogurt with different amounts of chocolate syrup that were placed in strawberry yogurt containers.

Another experiment challenged professional bartenders to pour the same amount of liquid in a tall, skinny glass as they did in a short, squat one.  They consistently poured more into the shorter glasses, not compensating for the wider diameter.  Wansink explained that the cure for mindless eating isn't mindfull eating.  Rather it is changing your environment by, for instance, throwing out all your short wide glasses and keeping the tall thin ones so that when you do eat mindlessly, you will eat healthier.


The day was divided into seven periods including the opening and closing assemblies and a lunch at which students who bought their lunch in the cafeteria could make their own ice cream sundae.  The other four periods included an enormous variety of sessions, some taught by people from various walks of life who were invited for the day, some by teachers, and others by students.  In the first session Casey Collins, of Hair Graphics, demonstrated beauty secrets, while guidance counselor Carol Miller taught candy making in a room nearby.  Student Katie Bruno led a lively session on jewelry making, explaining to the boys in the class that girls like to get jewelry for presents, so it is a valuable skill to have (the girls in the class appeared to agree).

Other student-led sessions included hair braiding, Argentinian cooking, speaking Chinese, card tricks, and juggling.  Faculty showed student videos, which Berens says is hugely popular.  Other faculty taught sessions on scrap booking, cake decorating, and a cappella singing. Government teacher Isis Ivery led a session on debating the limits of free speech in the wake of the Don Imus firing.  Principal Michelle Stone led a session on making  bead earrings.

In the gym students took a lesson on ballroom dancing while others attended sessions on acting,sign language,  being a policeman, addiction... Crossroads the Clown (AKA Frank Towner) led a session on being a clown, Cornell's George Gull talked about 'Space Toys,' and members of the Cornell hockey team talked about balancing athletics with academics.  Wegman's Executive Chef Mike Washburn demonstrated his culinary expertise in the cafeteria.


At 1:20 everyone piled into the gymnasium to see James Warren's 'Magic With A Message' show.  Warren recently relocated from California to Ithaca.  On the west coast he performed at the well known 'Magic Castle' for 13 years, and performed for several celebrities including Michelle Pfeiffer, Warren Beatty, Goldy Hawn, Sinbad, Steve Allen, and Smokey Robinson.  Berens said his show would be more magic and less message for D-Day.  She added that parent Chris Barrett introduced her to Warren and that he had agreed to perform at no charge for the occasion.  Barrett himself conducted a session on modern slavery earlier in the day, using a video illustrating

"It is an enormous amount of work and the student population is half again as big as it was in 1992," Berens notes.  "In the old days we offered about 8 programs each period and I would take one day where I'd sit in the office and schedule it myself.  Now it's a massive effort.  But the faculty has been so supportive, Miss Stone has been fabulous, and my student group has been great, too."


Berens says the day helps students and teachers alike as they work together during the normal school routine after D-Day.  "It's definitely good for teachers to see students in a different light, but it's just as good for students to see teachers in a different light," she says.  "If you are in a Latin dancing class with a couple of teachers, you might never have imagined that they would get up and dance.  So it really is a two-way street.  It's a very positive day to build community.  It certainly breaks up the routine."

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