Word Play is a weeklong celebration of the power of words. In a fun and mutually supportive setting, kids develop a personal writing portfolio and have the chance to share their literary creations.

WHO IS INVITED:

 Session 1:

• Kids entering 2nd through 5th grades
• When: Wednesday, June 20 through Saturday, June 23 from 9:15 to 1:00

 AND

Session 2:

Spotlight on fiction and memoir writing
For kids entering 6^th through 9^th grades
When: July 9-13 from 9:00-12:00

 WHERE: Buxton School in Williamstown, Mass.

 Cost: $175.00

For further details, please contact Jane D. Smith (Pine Cobble Upper School English teacher and children’s book author): 413-281-6997 or janesden@gmail.com

Buxton Performing Arts June 18-29

Several classes in performing arts are offered June 18-29 to children ages 6 and up at Buxton this summer. Mask Making and Commedia Dell’Arte Drama Workshop, led by instructor David Lane, guide campers through the creation of their own Commedia Dell’Arte-inspired masks to use in the following week’s performance workshop. Rhythm in Movement, taught by Buxton’s Kathleen Oliver, explores West African, Caribbean and modern influences in movement. More information and registration forms: Summer Performing Arts Information and Registration.

New England Puppet Intensive August 3-14

The New England Puppet Intensive is 10 days of vigorous training in the creative art of puppetry and animated object performance presented by members of The Old Trout Puppet Workshop. The program is open to puppeteers, actors, dancers, directors, designers, teachers, visual artists, writers, and anyone with a willing spirit.

Workshop Dates & Capacity
August 3 — August 14, 2012. The workshop will accept up to 16 participants.

More information and registration

Buxton Summer Arts Camp First Session July 9 – 13, Second Session: July 16 – 20

Buxton School is pleased to announce an opportunity for local youth to work in its recently-built art studios with current Fine Arts teachers Amrita Lash and Frank Jackson. Amrita and Frank are both local working artists and have many years of teaching experience.

Classes will be offered for 7-8 year olds and 9-13 year olds. Both age groups can choose to enroll in half day or full day programs. If they enroll in the full day program, your child will bag a lunch and their day will go from 10am until 3pm. During the lunch break, campers will picnic outside and play games with each other on the beautiful Buxton campus. Grassy hills, tree swings and more..

~Ceramics will include learning to throw on the wheel, making large sculptures and working with colored slips.

~Studio Arts will include making landscape paintings in nature, self-portraits, still-life pictures, drawing, printmaking, collages, and crafts.

More information and registration form: Buxton Arts Camp Registration Form

 First Session: July 9 – 13

Second Session: July 16 – 20

 Half Day $200 or Full Day reduced to $350

The ceramics building, the third and final phase of Buxton’s recent capital campaign, opened for classes today, October 5. It joins the music and art buildings to complete the Ellen Geer Sangster Arts Complex, named for Buxton’s founder and dedicated at the June 2011 Reunion.

This year’s Spring Arts weekend was full of amazing art work and wonderful performances. Drama III presented Cut by Ed Monk, and the play was Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer. Orchestra performed Machaut’s Kyrie, Bach’s Sinfonia, and an original composition by Mark Jordan-Kamholz ’11, while chorus treated us to Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. Ensemble pieces offered a variety of vocal and instrumental performances, and the creative writing group read from their work. Science and geometry projects were shared in the classroom building. African dance and drum and Balinese dance and instrumental groups rounded out the weekend on Sunday. It was great to have so many families and alumni joining us for the weekend! We hope enjoy watching some of these performances  and seeing the photo gallery of performances and and artwork. Click on any of the performance links to watch on our Youtube channel, and click on the first picture to view the gallery as a slide show.

Performance links:

Orchestra

Chorus

Women’s Indonesian Dance

Men’s Indonesian Dance

Starting in 1992, Linda Burlak and the Marine Biology class travel each year to Cape Cod for a four-day weekend. The group rents a house and takes turns cooking. The past few years, the house has had kayaks that the students used to explore Broad Cove in Onset.  The class this year chose to get lobster for one of the meals and dissect and eat them!

On the first day of the trip, the class met with Dr. Al Bradley (retired) of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) who does engineering on remote underwater vehicles; he gave us a presentation on ABE, (Autonomous Benthic Explorer) which was the one he did the most work with, and showed us the undergoing renovation of ALVIN which is one of the deepest, and probably the best known, deep-sea submersibles.   A visit to the WHOI exhibit center followed to see a mock-up of ALVIN as well as examples of all the other work done at the Institute. After that, students met with researchers in the lab of Dr. Roger Hanlon at Marine Biological Laboratory, who showed us their work with cuttlefish and octopus and toured their Marine Resources Center.

The next morning was spent at Waquoit Bay Estuarine Research Reserve near Falmouth, learning about their work and did water quality testing and sampling in their estuary.  The NOAA aquarium in Woods Hole was on the schedule for the afternoon.

The following day was spent exploring the outer cape areas:  National Seashore headquarters and museum, Marconi Radio site, Cedar Swamp trail, Marconi beach and First Encounter Beach for low tide, uncovering a variety of sea life. Click on the first picture to view the gallery as a slide show.

Click to enlarge

We had a wonderful time at the Reunion this past June. Over 160 alumni, their families, and faculty past and present came together on a gorgeous summer weekend in the Berkshires. We celebrated the dedication of the Ellen Geer Sangster, led by Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin ’74, Louis See Bingham ’40, and co-directors Bill Bennett and Peter Smith ’74.

Watch the dedication:

Welcome from co-director Peter Smith ’74

Remarks by Governor Peter Shumlin ’74 and Diana Hitt Potter ’51

Closing comments from co-director Bill Bennett and Louise See Bingham ’40

A hard-played soccer game, wood and garden work program crews, music and dancing in the evening, and lots of good food and conversation all contributed to a great Reunion. We’re happy to share these pictures of the weekend; look for more in our upcoming printed Newsletter (unfortunately, no pictures of the magical fireflies that joined the festivities!). Next Reunion is June 2013; please make plans to join us!

Click on the first picture below to view the gallery as a slide show.

As is traditional at Buxton, the entire school community and their families gathered at the Congregational Church in June to celebrate Graduation. Despite the chill and the rain, each of the 30 graduating seniors delivered their speeches with the warmth, humor, introspection and eloquence that have come to mark this annual event. Co-director Peter Smith ’74 addresses the seniors and presented them with their diplomas. You’ll find Pete’s remarks and two speeches featured below. Click on the first picture to view the gallery as a slide show.

Congratulations to the class of 2011!

Animals at Heart by Jake Hochberger

Pound It by Rachel Catchen

Remarks to the Class of 2011 by Peter Smith

Now in its fourth year, our Bali program welcomed I Wayan Yuda this spring from the Tri Pusaka Cakti Arts Foundation. Yuda joined us for the spring term, and taught Indonesian instrumental music and dance. His students performed at this year’s Spring Arts Weekend, showcasing women’s and men’s dance groups accompanied by a dozen instrumentalists. For the third summer, a group of Buxton students will travel to Indonesia with Kathleen Oliver to study percussion and dance at the Arts Foundation.

Watch video of the performances:
Women\’s Indonesian Dance Performance at Spring Arts 2011
Men\’s Indonesian Dance Performance at Spring Arts 2011

Every year, students in David Denhard’s music classes put their theory skills into  practice by composing their own pieces. Each spring, professional musicians come to campus to perform these pieces for the Buxton community. Recently, musicians Nat Parke, Bill Peck, and Jared Shapiro worked their way through this year’s repertoire of 20 duos and trios composed by Sylwia Kotarba, Meaghan Holland, Rabea Fuchshofen, Cecilia Denhard, Mark Jordan-Kamholz, Ollie Bernstein, Joey Cocivera, Henry Birdsey, and Shangren Zhu.

Listen here to Lost Turtle-Meagan Holland

Listen here to Midnight Tango-Joey Cocivera

Recent Work Program crews tackled spring work in the Buxton garden. In addition to preparing the beds, weeding, and getting ready to plant, work has begun to refurbish a chicken coop for the garden’s newest addition: a flock of Bantam hens, who are currently staying warm and cozy in the bio lab. After a cool, rainy start to spring, the garden is finally benefitting from some warm and sunny weather!

In the latest garden development, the summer garden internship has been expanded this year. In this second year, three graduating seniors will return to live and work at Buxton, helping with the summer work in the garden.

Alumni, parents, students,  friends and prospective families gathered on a beautiful spring afternoon on April 30 to celebrate the completion of the music and arts buildings. The construction of the ceramics building, the final phase of the project, is scheduled to begin shortly and to be completed by the opening of school this September.

The Arts Building was completed over spring break, and was open for classes last Monday. April 11!

The school’s garden, a project spearheaded by science teacher Will Miller and his biology class, continues to expand its presence behind the classroom building. The garden is expanded a little each year, and now covers around 300 fenced-in square feet. In addition to area, the variety of plantings has also expanded from the initial offerings of “the three sisters” (squash, beans and corn) to last fall’s harvest that added peppers, onions, potatoes, beets, cabbage, and purple carrots. This year’s additional 100 square feet allowed the planting of Swiss chard, garbanzo beans, peas, sugar snaps, parsnips, sweet potatoes, lettuce, hot peppers and garlic. The garden was harvested during work program one fall Saturday, and then served up by that evening’s kitchen crew, with a menu of potato-leek soup, chili and a root vegetable bake. Enough was produced in this year’s garden to supply the kitchen beyond the harvest meal with chard, kale, squash and parsnips. The kitchen returns the favor by contributing to the compost used in to enrich the garden. Future plans and dreams include more productive use of the space, allowing for more planting, and devising an irrigation system.

Thanks to a grant from Buxton’s Board of Trustees, work in the garden continued over the summer with an internship for Rachel Klinger ’10. Rachel helped Will with essential garden work, as well as continuing work on the garden shed, begun during the school year. Follow the garden’s progress in the students’ blog.

Lawrence pulling wire

Buxton is cutting edge! Thanks to a generous donation from ADC Optical Systems in North Bennington the campus has a fiber optic network. ADC contributed both the fiber, which is a brand-new technology, along with the installation, ably assisted by our own computarian, Lawrence Smith. The upgrade supports two separate networks for students and staff. Our present plan calls for a fiber optic network connecting the Main House, Library, Gate House, Classroom building, Forge, Barn, Theater, Music and Arts buildings. The longer-term plan will eventually connect all the other campus buildings. In addition to faster speeds, the benefits of fiber over our copper-wire network are that fiber is both immune to lightning and doesn’t attract lightning, and it can run farther between buildings than the wire.

Threading the fiber-optic cable

Other end of the wire

Ruby supervising

The dance and drum program, under the guidance of Kathleen Oliver, sends a performance group to local area elementary schools and other organizations. Recent visits have been to Robert C. Parker School, Hilltop Montessori, and Hubbard Hall. In addition to introducing  these African art forms, it serves as an introduction to Buxton.

Dear Buxton Families,

Greetings from the (very) snowy Berkshires!

I wanted to give everybody an update on the upcoming All-School Trip.

• We will be going to El Paso, Texas.

• We will be flying out of Newark and LaGuardia airports on Saturday, March 5^th.

• We will be flying in faculty-supervised groups on several airplanes. We will send you details about which flight your child is on (and which traveling “pod” he or she is in) soon.

• We will be in El Paso for a little over a week, returning to Williamstown on Monday, March 14^th.

• We will be staying at the Holiday Inn Express in central El Paso: 409 Missouri Ave., El Paso, TX 79901; (915) 544-3333.

• The school will be taking day trips to White Sands National Park and Carlsbad Caverns. Some groups may also be traveling to the artist community in Marfa, Texas.

• Under no circumstances will the students be crossing the border into Mexico!

Day student families: During pre-trip week, there are no classes; trip groups meet during the day, making appointments and plans, and the various performing groups rehearse throughout the week. But each day begins with an all-school meeting, and your child should be here in time for that. I’ll let you know the meeting time as we get closer to the week.

We’re excited—and so are the students. I’ll be sending you more details in the coming days.

Best,

Franny