The Rotations

Yoga

Students practiced yoga poses, flows, and breathwork, focusing on paying attention to one’s body and practicing proven ways to relax and calm oneself.

Collaborative Art Project

In the art rotation, students decorated 4”square mirrors to visually represent gratitude. The intention is to install the finished artwork on campus for everyone to reflect on and enjoy. Students also played oversized customized Jenga games with prompts about gratitude.

Hawks Quest Olympics

Teams of students participated in a variety of mental and physical challenges requiring collaborative thinking, communication, strategy, and coordination. Teams worked for points to win a dress-down day. Upper School students and Hawks Quest teachers were there to assist.

Drum Circle

Katie Kilroy, Assistant Director of Bands and Middle School Band Teacher, brought more than 60 drums and other instruments to the Belk Gym for students to make noise in a festive drum circle. Warming up, she led them in rhythmic clapping, stomping, and high-fiving for an energetic opening. This boisterous activity showed students that making and listening to music is self-soothing—and fun!

The group of parents met with Kilby and Todd Ballaban, Head of Middle School, starting in late August last year. Meeting monthly, they spent hours thinking, talking, and planning, and Inside Out Day was born. “We knew we wanted to impart community, teamwork, resilience, and leadership through developmentally appropriate activities. Our goal was to look at the day holistically,” said a parent involved in the day’s planning. “We wanted to provide tools and build on some of our resources on campus like Hawks Quest.” A true collaboration between Latin’s educators and parents, both groups agreed they wanted the day to be fun for the students. They also wanted a meaningful day of programming that introduced and reinforced life skills to handle emotions and understand how emotions affect behavior, giving students a toolbox to use when life gets challenging or uncomfortable.

The morning started with a donut wall (food was an important part of the day), a short clip of the Inside Out movie, and a non-traditional welcome from Latin’s own Kurt Coleman, who enthusiastically charged the students to “get up, wake up, and embrace the day.” Coleman and Launch’s Ed Williams talked to the students about life’s challenges, that it’s okay and normal to feel uncomfortable sometimes, and that everyone experiences discomfort. They emphasized that the goal of Inside Out Day was to give the students tools for self-calming and dealing with adversity. They asked students to be open to experiencing new thoughts and feelings as they moved through the day’s activities.

After a day of games, food, activities, music, relaxation, and fun, the seventh and eighth graders met in Thies Auditorium with a screening of, you guessed it, Inside Out.

“What a super day it was,” said Ballaban.“It was an amazing partnership between the school and our parents. We couldn’t have done it without the incredible parent support and our super Middle School teachers.”