Academics and More What I did this summer
A role-playing exercise helps middle school students understand their actions have consequences.
Finding balance in difficult situations By Mary Horrall, grade school parent
RIVERDALE GRADE SCHOOL – Our middle school students are walking an exciting, challenging tightrope to adulthood. The Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre Program, in collaboration with the Oregon Children’s Theatre, is using music, comedy and drama to teach forethought, insight and specific skills to help them navigate this journey. Above Between Below includes an assembly with workshops to introduce ideas and tools to use when handling difficult situations. Role-playing exercises also illustrate the following points: • Actions can have unintended consequences. • Bullying is a behavior, not an identity. • Social media can be used as a tool for wide- scale gossip and public shaming. • People can be on both the giving and receiving end of bullying behaviors in different situations. • Everyone needs to take personal responsibility for their own power to harm or help others. Students were tasked with core values scenarios such as challenging a friend to skip basketball practice to hang out and play video games, or begging a friend who needs to study for a test to play Fortnite. Language arts teacher Carrington Light said that kids came away with a better understanding of how they could report bullying behavior to an adult while remaining anonymous. The 8th graders were in agreement that this tip was "a biggie." The program will wrap up in mid-December with the final two workshops. Giving our tweens and teens balance to step along the high wire will serve them well on their course to the flying trapeze of adult life. Riverdale Review
RIVERDALE HIGH SCHOOL – From manufacturing to medical research, our high school seniors kept very busy this summer thanks to some pretty interesting internships. Henry O'ScannlainMiller interned at Lightspeed Aviation, which manufactures noise-canceling headsets targeted to the general aviation market. While there, he evaluated the designs of different mounts for a biometric sensor that could monitor pilot health. He also evaluated two sensors for use in detecting carbon monoxide in the cabin. Olivia Corvelli interned at Vigor Industrial where she assisted the aerospace engineer program manager with work focused on refurbishing a missile silo in Montana. She also helped out with trip logs, project management plans and collecting employee data. Abby Millender interned at the Woods Chemistry Lab, a joint effort between Portland State University and Oregon Health & Science University. Over the course of the summer, Abby worked on her own experiment to see if specific MRI contrast agents are toxic to a certain type of fish embryo. Clayton Pelz had two summer internships. One in which he built an ultrasound microscope that combines a high-quality, custom microscope with an ultrasound transducer to study the effects of ultrasound on cancer tissue, among other uses. In the other, he worked on OHSU's immunofluorescence project, validating whether certain antibodies — which will be
helpful in treating breast cancer — worked properly. Rachel Feiner interned with an OHSU lab researching multiple sclerosis. Her research involved how certain antioxidants, which have been shown to slow the brain damage caused by MS, interact with neural pathways. Aviva Soll interned at OHSU’s Oshimori Lab, where she was involved with researching squamous cell skin cancer and the effects of a protein called TGF-Beta and its receptors, as well as the cytokine IL 33. The research focused on how the proteins affect skin cancer growth and malignancy, as well as the tumor microenvironment. Norris Meigs interned with Donate Life, an organization that spreads awareness about organ, eye and tissue donation. Norris performed data research, created an educational pamphlet geared toward faithbased communities, and made a poster to be displayed in every Oregon and Southwest Washington Department of Motor Vehicles branch for DMV Appreciation Week — approximately 98 percent of registered donors come from the DMV. Alma Tzintzun interned at construction and project management firm Inici Group, where she assisted with architectural projects. Want to know more? Read Emma Brendle's personal account of her internship with Intel's Product Systems and Engineering group and how satisfying it was for her to see her ideas come to fruition at RiverdaleSchool.com/News.
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