By Shawn Wilson
Staff Writer
Art is all about expression and personality, something the students taking arts Expeditions courses at Everest Public High School showed during Everest’s Celebration of Learning.
Visual Arts
Students in the Visual Arts course were tasked with creating art pieces that represented themselves and their own interpretation of an image.
The students all created a picture of a unique eye, with various other elements such as the eye’s reflection showing an image or creative choices with its overall shape. Everest sophomore Samantha Suchite said her art teacher “told us to make it
what we perceive, what our interests are. For instance, mine is focused on nature – that’s what I like.” Her picture takes pieces of nature and incorporates them into an eye, such as the lacrimal caruncle (the small pink flesh close to the nose) being hooked to look like a bird’s beak and the eyebrow growing into trees.
Rock Band
Rock Band is an Expeditions course at the Riekes Center. It educates students wanting to learn or improve their music skills through the help of musically skilled teachers. For Celebration of Learning, Rock Band instructors allowed students to practice their new found skills by performing in front of different-sized audiences. The students built their piece off a cover of a song and showcased their ability to have fun while performing.
Everest freshman Mako Oshiro said that students in the class “learn to play music and get to choose songs.” Students develop and practice their musical skills in this class and even reignite old passions. Everest sophomore Rojo Mendoza said, “I love Rock Band. I used to play drums, and then I stopped playing. Then, Rock Band helped me pick it up again, and that was such an awesome thing to do for me.”
Students who took the Rock Band Expeditions course performed in the main lobby at the start of the Celebration of Learning and then moved out back as the crowd got ready for Everest’s award ceremony. See below for clips of their performances. VIDEO CREDITS: Teresa Faasolo
Creative Writing
Creative Writing is offered at Everest Public High School as an Expeditions class in which students can express themselves through multiple ways, including poems. Students make poems using figurative language and then present those poems to an audience. It is a place where students can show off their writing capabilities.
For the Celebration of Learning, the class put on a Poetry Slam, which is a spoken word competition. Everest freshmen Kaitlyn Hutcheson (below left) and Carmela Bello (below right) won first place.
Hutcheson said that her poem is “based off of music and how it is connected to me – and how, even in hard times in my life, I can always go to music because I feel like it understands me.” Bello said her poem is about “forgiving people” and learning to “not let others bring you down.”
Everest senior Madilyn Middlebrooks performs during the Celebration of Learning Poetry Slam. VIDEO CREDIT: Jose Luiz Sarabia
Madilyn Middlebrooks, a graduating Everest senior, performed a piece about what it means to be beautiful in society today and what we can do to break the stereotype. She feels that “in American society there is only one beauty standard. I wanted to tell people there is so much more to being beautiful than our outward appearance.”
Everest senior Sierra Sholes performs during the Celebration of Learning Poetry Slam. VIDEO CREDIT: Jose Luiz Sarabia
Everest graduating senior Sierra Sholes wrote her poem about a giant, explaining that’s “what was in my head” at the time.
Staff Writers Cameron Eberle, Teresa Faasolo and Jose Luiz Sarabia contributed to this report.
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