The O’Bryant is an exam school with a STEM focus, adjacent to Madison Park HS and walking distance from Nubian Square in the heart of Roxbury. It’s the largest school I’ve visited in Boston, serving 1600 students in grades 7-12 with classes in four different buildings. Hallway walls are full of large scale student artwork and encouraging words, as well as numerous flyers advertising after school activities and cultural affinity groups.

Giant letters on the wall of James Corcoran’s middle school science classroom exhort students to “Always be looking for the presence of wonder.” Tenth grade students in Allison Lincecum’s Human Body Systems class are making models of muscles and how they’re connected, and Talia Clark’s physics students are calculating the speed of one sound wave generated by a note played on instruments they’ve created out of everyday materials.

A taped outline of a body on the floor greets me as I enter Alaina Ratanapool’s ELA classroom, where students are writing mystery dramas to fit the crime! In his AP Computer Science class, Howard Horner is teaching 11th-12th graders how to use the JAVA programming language. According to one of his students, math teacher Nikan Hodjat makes time to share “life lessons” on the value of honesty and persistence.

Katie Freiburger’s students are finishing up self-portraits and making paper mâché masks, while theater teacher Julia Perlowski introduces her class to an improvisational partner activity. This is a resource-rich school, with a whole building dedicated to a variety of music classes in piano, percussion, brass and wind instruments, as well as chorus — where Willie Jones is teaching his students a song of peace in Arabic.

Although there have been protests from families, teachers and students about the proposed move of the O’Bryant to West Roxbury, Michael Ward tells me that his engineering and architecture students are already working to redesign space in the abandoned building. I am impressed by the ways he and his colleagues create projects to connect academic subjects to the real world. I hope you find opportunities to do so, too!

Amika Kemmler-Ernst, Ed.D
amika45@gmail.com.

This is in my Human Body Systems class and Dr. Lincecum was demonstrating how muscles contract. We’re learning details about how body systems work; for example, we’ve learned about attachment points on muscles and connective tissues of the nervous system. ~ Anyia Dacunya, Grade 10

We’re talking with Teacher Chen about a short story we read in ELA, Lamb to the Slaughter, by Roald Dahl. This year we’ve learned to deconstruct paragraphs. We are also learning how to identify and use different literary techniques such as imagery and dramatic irony. ~ Marcus Bareng, Will Burns, & Jinno Estrada, Grade 9

We are working on an imaging project and looking over the code we created to make sure everything was working correctly. We are learning to use the JAVA programming language and about the broad range of possibilities it offers. We are also learning how to collaborate, since teamwork is a big part of how programmers work in the real world. ~ Mr. Horner’s AP Computer Science class, Grades 11-12

I am asking Ms. King a clarifying question about a particular calculus problem. Right now we’re learning about limitations of an equation, but we also examine graphs and tables in this class. ~ Imani Lavan, Grade 12

This is in Advanced Algebra class. I’m talking to Ms. Ridge and showing her a graphing problem I needed help with. This year I’m learning about functions, quadrilaterals, and parabolas. I’ve learned that an equation is not a function if the shape it forms is overlapping because it uses the same x value more than once. ~ Eyob Tilahun, Grade 10

We’re making masks with paper mache in Visual Arts with Ms. Freiburger. We’ve learned how to use different materials on our masks to create texture. We’ve also learned to mix colors in order to express feelings such as calm, anger, or sadness.~ Luis Guerrero, Grade 10, & Maya Ramos, Grade 12

We’re playing the clarinet in our brass and wind instrument band class with Mr. Moretti. We’ve learned how to play the chromatic scale and right now we’re working on a waltz for the Winter Concert in December. ~ Eva Hannon and Evelyn Gil Osorio, Grade 8

This is our physics class and Ms. Clark is helping us prepare for a test. We’re learning how to calculate the velocity, distance, and frequency of a sound wave. We created our own instruments and had to find the speed of one sound wave generated by a note played on our instrument. ~ Liz Geronimo & Jesyel Colon Alvarez, Grade 11