Given the difficulties of this past year, Neal Gross wanted to do something special for the Grosse Pointe community — and especially the students at Maire Elementary School, where he teaches fourth grade. He came up with an idea inspired by a glass blower in Rhode Island, who creates glass orbs and hides his creations around Block Island every summer, attracting tourists from all over to find and keep them.
Gross enlisted the help of art teacher Mike Heenan to design and reproduce a Maire-themed clay tile, with the goal of hiding the tiles within the Maire boundaries for families and community members to find. Gross also designed a few tiles and limited editions of two 5x5 tiles were created by local artist Jake Frakes.
Tiles were crafted in Maire’s art room. If you’re curious about the process, check out this short time-lapse video showing Mr. Heenan at work.
Gross set out last Friday and hid about 55 tiles, with more to come in future weeks. Maire families were out in full force that first weekend and posted photos on the Maire PTO Facebook page showing happy children with their newly found treasures.
More tiles are still out there to be found, including in The Village (don’t forget to check for tiles hanging from trees!) within the Maire district boundaries, which runs from Kensington to University and Mack to Lake St. Clair.
This Friday, Gross will hide more tiles and Heenan, who also teaches art at Mason Elementary School, will begin hiding tiles in Grosse Pointe Woods around the perimeter of Mason’s building for families and neighbors to find.
Anyone is welcome to join in the hunt, but Gross and Heenan have one request: If you do find a tile, be sure to register it so they can keep track. Check the back of the tile for its number and instructions.
Finally, if you find more than one tile, the teachers ask that you re-hide it within the Maire or Mason boundaries for other community members to find and keep.
Reflecting on identity during Culture Week
Student facilitators of Grosse Pointe South’s SEEDS (Student Empowerment: Education for a Diverse Society) club hosted its second annual Culture Week April 12 to 15. This effort was led by seniors Awmeo Azad, Christina Thomas and Siena Weisbrodt.
According to these leaders, the overall aim of Culture Week is to celebrate diversity and inclusion and the benefits of each.
SEEDS hosted various events throughout the week aimed at starting conversations and exposing students to new cultures and identities.
Tuesday was Dialog Day consisting of student-led activities on identity and social issues.
Wednesday was a Google Meet with guest speaker Vito Valdez, a local artist and educator with the Detroit Institute of Arts known for his murals. According to SEEDS faculty adviser Lisa Kline, Valdez shared his family history and personal struggles with his racial and social identities, growing up in a household where he and his siblings — all from mixed racial backgrounds — didn’t look like him. This experience triggered his activism as well as his artwork, which he has presented around the world in his travels.
“He talked to the kids about where he’s been, what his messages are he wants to convey, the power he sees that art can bring,” Kline said.
Friday is movie night. Students will view the Academy award-winning movie, “Moonlight,” with a discussion afterwards.
The week also featured a student art showcase. Students were asked to reflect in their artwork the meaning of identity to them.
Culture Week was largely online with the exception of Dialog Day, which was held on South’s front lawn in a tent and followed COVID-19 safety protocols such as mask wearing and social distancing.
Awmeo said one of his favorite parts of Dialog Day is the activity Four Corners, in which participants are asked to consider four roles they may have played in an incident of oppression — victim, bystander, perpetrator and oppressor.
“It’s a very introspective activity that helps us consider our own place in these systems and helps us consider what we can do better moving forward,” Awmeo said.
Awmeo and Christina said they look to the support of the community to continue to address the issues SEEDS has taken on not just during Culture Week, but throughout the school year.
For Christina, the challenge is addressing these things “in a world that feels like it’s becoming increasingly reactionary and violent toward the efforts that we’re trying to move forward with.
“It can’t just be student groups that are talking about these things and trying to facilitate that conversation,” she continued. “It has to be admin, teachers, the Mothers’ Club. All sorts of parent groups need to be talking about these issues because it happens at all levels. Racism doesn’t just happen to young Black kids. It happens to my older Black mother. It happens to Awmeo’s immigrant parents. It happens to a lot of people at all ages and so it needs to be talked about at all of those levels. I would ask that more adults get involved in this sort of thing and join the conversation because especially with COVID, it’s hard to do it alone.”
Awmeo emphasized the importance of “speaking up for each other and supporting each other, especially when we’re in those positions of privilege because that’s when our voice has the most power.”
He also recommended listening to people from one’s own peer group to better understand challenges people face.
“The important thing is that we’re all trying to spread these messages within our own friend groups, within the people we’re become familiar with, because those people are most willing to listen to us, he said, adding, “I think the major issue of Culture Week — of everything that SEEDS does — is that there are many layers of diversity and inclusion. There are many different social groups involved, many centuries of history involved with all of these issues. We can always learn more and do more for those around us and it’s rewarding and moral to do so.”
Music to our ears
It’s official! GPPSS has been awarded the National Association of Music Merchants Foundation's “Best Communities for Music Education” award. Grosse Pointe is one of 14 school districts (out of more than 500) in Michigan to receive this designation in 2021. The application this year was mainly based on how music education continued and was supported during the pandemic. This is the third time in five years GPPSS has been granted this distinction.
“I am proud of our faculty and each teacher's dedication to their students and our community,” said Carolyn Gross, vocal music teacher at Brownell Middle School. “Thank you to the administration for supporting music education from pre-K through the advanced offerings in our high schools.”
“It is wonderful to be a part of a district that provides the opportunity to take part in a robust musical experience — band, orchestra and choir — and extremely rewarding to have the collective efforts of staff and students recognized two years in a row, even more so with the challenges of this past year,” said Tom Torrento, director of bands at Grosse Pointe North and Parcells Middle schools.
Monteith magnet students see the light
Students in Shelley Denison’s grade 3-4 magnet class at Monteith Elementary School have been investigating the phenomenon of why there is a decline in the Tokay gecko population in the rainforest in the Philippines. As part of their Amplify Vision and Light unit in science, they discovered light makes it hard for the Tokay gecko to see.
To give the students a deeper understanding, Denison invited Gary Abud, a former physics teacher at Grosse Pointe North High School and 2014 Michigan Teacher of the Year, to visit the class as a guest speaker.
Abud kept the students actively engaged in hands-on learning with experiments involving light and color. They conducted an investigation with a giant slinky to understand light waves, observed a “flying eyeball” to comprehend infrared light, and used colored finger lights to make shadows during a read-aloud of “What Color Will it Be?” from his Science with Scarlett series on how the eye works to see light and color. They also saw a clip of a cornea transplant surgery and participated in a Zoom with a lab scientist from Eversight to learn how the company is working to restore sight and prevent blindness.
“It was an awesome learning experience meant to deepen their understanding of vision and light and inspire a love for science,” Denison said.
Summer spotlight
Registration for Summer Connection will be live Tuesday, April 20. Connection programs are FREE to residents and $50 for non-residents. All programming is subject to enrollment and staffing. Families in need of transportation to Monteith or Parcells should contact program co-directors Katie Parent at parentk@gpschools.org or Kevin Shubnell at shubnek@gpschools.org.
A complete list of 2021 Summer Programs is available online.
School Pointes is a publication of the Grosse Pointe Public School System. To submit story ideas or Pointes of Pride, email info@gpschools.org.