January 22, 2020

Welcome back to the High School Corner!

We are excited to share that on Tuesday, we visited Japhet for the first time during the 2019-2020 school year! What the school has come to call “Japhet” is a property located in the Greater East End neighborhood that serves as a small patch of green in a heavily industrial part of our city. The Adolescent Community and the High School both take advantage of the unique learning opportunities Japhet provides. There is a small flock of chickens (taken care of by neighborhood residents and SCM students), a workshop in the garage, garden beds, plenty of open and wooded spaces to explore, and Japhet Creek—a small, spring-fed creek that runs into Buffalo Bayou—is only a short walk away. 

Our time at Japhet on Tuesday began with a few minutes of silence as we wandered the property and reflected on how much our work in refurbishing, improving, and adding to this beautiful piece of land has changed it. After we had some time to reacquaint ourselves with the space, we moved onto our work for our AP Environmental Science which was a fun game illustrating the impacts of natural selection on biodiversity. After this immersive lesson, we read, dissected, and discussed a poem by John Donne, a famous metaphysical poet, titled “The Flea.” Our morning time at Japhet flew by— we were all happy to be back in a place where so many of our memories in the past school years have been made. We look forward to spending more time at Japhet this semester! 

Feel free to click the link below to watch a video montage of the highlights of our day.

Thank you for reading; we hope you’ll be back to read more next week!

Jacob B and Sophia D