After several years of pandemic woes and leadership churn, Baltimore Center Stage is promising a fresh and ambitious start, led by artistic director Stevie Walker-Webb.

As the inaugural play of Walker-Webb’s inaugural season, “Oh Happy Day!” certainly delivers — and it’s more than appropriate that it’s a riff on Noah’s Ark, the ultimate do-over tale.

The 90-minute world premiere, written by and starring Jordan E. Cooper, takes place in modern-day Mississippi and dives deep into questions of love and family, church and God, identity and free will.

All these themes sound heavy — and they are — but the play itself is uplifting and funny, propelled by a tight, witty script, dare-you-to-stay-seated original songs by gospel composer Donald Lawrence, and the luminous (and more than a little sassy) stylings of the choir, Latrice Pace as Glory Divine, Tiya Askia as Mighty Divine and Courtney Monet as Holy Devine.

The action starts when Keyshawn, played by Cooper, returns to the family that kicked him out as a teenager. He blames them for his life of prostitution and drug use, and they blame him for outing their pastor and costing family patriarch Lewis (James T. Alfred) his job at the church.

Meanwhile, Keyshawn’s sister Niecy (Tamika Lawrence) is getting no gratitude for holding the family together while raising her son Kevin (Justin Sturgis). Even the meat she barbecues is roundly critiqued as too tough to swallow.

When Keyshawn’s return goes horribly wrong, God appears (in several different guises), instructing him to build an ark in order to save his family and himself. But can Keyshawn forge new connections to a family and church that don’t accept him? And does he even want to?  

The biblical story of Noah’s Ark probably lives in many people’s mind as a tale of cute animals marching two-by-two to safety.

“Oh Happy Day!” dispenses with the animals and instead delves into its complicated themes of redemption and connection through the words and actions of deeply flawed people who are struggling to do the right things. Keyshawn and his family, like Noah and his, are not sin-free. God isn’t so perfect either, at least not in a way that humans can understand.

They try, though, often getting tangled in their own logic. One of the best exchanges is when Keyshawn and his father are arguing about the famous phrase in Leviticus, the one claiming that a man lying with a man is “an abomination.”

Keyshawn argues that the same book also says that eating pork and shellfish are sins, and Lewis walks right into the trap, yelling at his son that “being gay and eating sausage are not the same thing.” Cooper tilts his head for the perfect beat, getting a big laugh without saying a word.

The set, until a surprise at the end, never changes, with all the action taking place in the yard of a humble home that’s both a blessing and a curse to this troubled family. A barbecue grill, cooler, and a few chairs are among the few simple props. Dramatic lighting and ominous rumbles convincingly portray the storms and strife.

Cooper, just 29 years old, is already a big deal, the youngest Black American playwright on Broadway with his Tony-nominated Ain’t No Mo’ (directed by Walker-Webb) and multiple Emmy nominations for The Ms. Pat Show, on BET, which he created, directs and executive produced.

As Walker-Webb noted, Cooper could have taken his new play anywhere, but he chose Center Stage and Baltimore for its debut before it goes to the Public Theater in New York City. At the curtain call, the two men hugged for a solid, emotional minute; there may have been tears.

Together, they have created something new out of something old, a new piece of art based on one of the oldest tales we know, and maybe a new chapter for Center Stage and Baltimore after a few years of choppy water.

“Oh Happy Day!” originally set to run through October 13, has been extended through October 20. Find tickets online at www.centerstage.org.

Teachers and media specialists talk about the books they recommend most to their students.

Remember being a kid and losing yourself in the pages of a book?

Maybe you immersed yourself in a magical world very different from your own. Or maybe you preferred nonfiction.

Books introduce readers to new worlds, teach empathy, and are just plain fun. Study after study shows that reading can reduce stress, improve problem-solving skills and boost vocabulary.

They also provide connection to other readers. “The thing I love to hear is when students talk about a book with their peers,” says Katie McGrain, lower school librarian at McDonogh School. “It’s my favorite moment in our library. I want that book to travel through as many hands as possible.”

Teachers and media specialists at local independent schools are always on the lookout for the books they think their students will love. They tailor their recommendations to what they know about their students, including other books they liked, while also nudging them to try new themes and genres.

Here are some of their current picks: Suzanne Fox, director of libraries for Roland Park Country School, has several favorites.

Firekeeper’s Daughter (2021), by Angeline Boulley. The story follows 18-year-old Daunis, who witnesses a murder and goes undercover to solve it, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine.

“It has a smart female main char[1]acter protagonist, who is trying to solve a mystery while advocating for her people,” says Fox. “There’s also a romance connected to the mystery. And there are all these questions about the tribal community and challenging stereotypes, and how we take care of each other.”

 She also likes: When the World Was Ours (2021), by Liz Kessler. Based on a true story, it follows three best friends from Vienna in 1936 through World War II, their fates entwined though they are separated by the war.

Wave (2022), by Diana Farid. A coming-of-age story about a Persian-American surfer in 1980s California.

Attack of the Black Triangles (2022), by Amy Sarig King. This middle-grade novel starts with sixth-grader Mac opening a classroom book and seeing that some words are blacked out.

The Marvellers (2022), by Dhonielle Clayton. Eleven-year-old Ella finds her way as the first Conjurer in the Arcanum Training Institute, a magic school for Marvellers from around the world.

Show Me a Sign (2020), by Ann Clare LeZotte, is historic fiction focused on a deaf girl in 1805 Martha’s Vineyard, and the scientist who arrives in order to figure out why so many in that isolated community are deaf.

Troublemaker (2022), by John Cho (the actor), follows 12-year-old Jordan on the tense Los Angeles day in 1992 when a jury acquitted the police officers charged with beating Rodney King.

They Called Us Enemy (2019), a collaboration between the actor and activist George Takei and Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott and Harmony Becker, this graphic novel describes the real-life interment of Takei’s family during World War II.

New Kid (2019), by Jerry Craft, is about a 12-year-old finding his way at a prestigious but not particularly diverse private school.

Kate Campbell is the incoming school librarian for The Odyssey School and was previously a speech-language pathologist and tutor at the Lutherville school, founded in 1994 for students with learning differences.

She recommends The Wild Robot series by Peter Brown (The Wild Robot, 2016; The Wild Robot Escapes, 2018; The Wild Robot Protects, 2023), which is about a robot who washes up on an island and thinks she has always been there.

“The beauty of these books is that they’re for everyone,” says Campbell, who both teaches the books and recommends them. “The animals are suspicious, so she has to figure out how to fit in and adapt. When we teach it, we look at examples of adapting, and how the main character, Roz, adapts. We look at the scenes of life and death and nature. We talk about purpose in life, chosen family, and the importance of friendship. I’ve never had a student not enjoy it.”

Angela J. Horjus-Walker, head librarian of the lower school libraries for Glenelg Country School, says Wishtree (2017), by Katherine Applegate, is one of her favorite books.

“It is told from the rather unexpected view of a locally famous red oak tree,” she says. “Red, aptly named, is around 200 years old and has witnessed a lot, endured much, and weathered the many storms of life.” Red is also a Wishing Day tree, bound to honor the wishes that people write and hang on her branches, and she is determined to fulfill Samar’s wish of feeling as though she belongs, no matter the obstacles.

McDonogh librarian McGrain says she recommends books based on what she knows about her students. Choosing favorites is almost impossible, she says, but she singled out two books by Dan Gemeinhart.

The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise (2020) is about a girl and her father who journey home after five years on the road in the aftermath of tragedy. “The thing I love is the intergenerational relationships,” she says. “The children are the ones who propel the story forward and have the right thing to offer at the right time.”

The Midnight Children (2022) is about a family of runaways who take up residence in a small town. She likes it, McGrain says, because it’s about “young people who are braving the world on their own, supporting each other but with a little secrecy and mystery.”

McGrain also likes The One and Only Ivan (2012), by Katherine Appelgate, told from the point of view of Ivan, a gorilla who lives in a glass enclosure in a shopping mall. The book, based on a true story, won the Newbery Medal in 2013.

Roxaboxen (1991), by Alice McLerran, with illustrations by Barbara Cooney, is a picture book describing a fully functioning town created by children out of rocks, boxes, imagination and community.

Janice Lloyd, director of instruction and a teacher at The Highlands School, reaches back to a classic: A Wrinkle in Time (1962), by Madeleine L’Engle.

The beloved young adult sci-fi fantasy novel follows the adventures of Meg and her brother Charles Wallace, along with their neighbor Calvin, as they travel through time and space to rescue their father from evil forces.

“There is so much depth to the characters and concepts,” says Lloyd. “We see how Meg changes from the beginning of the book, from being so unsure of herself, very self-critical and not wanting to hear what her parents and others were saying.”

When Lloyd teaches the book, she uses the mystery of what happened to the dad to encourage predicting and inferring. Heather Minor, director of student services at The Highlands School, also picked a classic. Her choice is Where the Red Fern Grows (1961), by Wilson Rawls, about a boy growing up in the Ozark Mountains with his two beloved hunting dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann.

The book, Minor says, offers a view of rural life that may be new to children growing up in the suburbs. She likes the way the main character, Billy, works through situations and finds his own way forward.

Another one of her favorites, also a classic, is Bridge to Terabithia (1977), by Katherine Paterson, about two lonely children, Leslie and Jesse, who become friends and create a magic imaginary world in the forest.

“I have a copy at home torn to pieces from when I was in middle school,” Minor says. “As a kid, I identified with Leslie. I moved around a lot as well. I get very engrossed in it and the students seem to do the same.”

The book explores themes such as wanting to fit in and what it means to let a friend down. She says students appreciate the celebration of imagination and play. “They’ll say to me, ‘I didn’t realize I could still pretend and be a kid.’ They want to know how to keep that playful side going as they get older.”

This article is part of the 2024-2025 Guide to Baltimore Independent Schools.

Ben Shifrin, the longtime head of Jemicy School, has some advice for parents of children with learning differences.

“Never lower your expectations for your child,” he says. “Don’t lower the bar for them. Offer an alternative route to get to the bar.”

That philosophy guides the educational approach at Jemicy, the Owings Mills school founded in 1972 for students in grades one through 12 with language-based learning differences.

The school provides small class sizes of eight to 12 students, and a multisensory approach that incorporates activity and arts. For example, young students might learn letter shapes by tracing them in shaving cream. Or students might throw a ball from one student to the next to designate the next speaker.

Shifrin, head of school at Jemicy since 2002, knows from experience that these techniques work. He was diagnosed with dyslexia when he was in fifth grade and is now an expert on learning differences and education.

Federal law requires that all public and most private schools provide reasonable accommodations that allow students to access educational opportunities. For students with learning differences, that might include equipment like audio readers, help organizing study notes, or additional time for test-taking.

Several Baltimore-area independent schools, including Jemicy, Baltimore Lab School, The Highlands School and The Odyssey School were created specifically for students with learning differences. They favor interactive and individualized approaches over a sit-and-listen-to-a-lecture style of instruction, and teach students organization skills and self-advocacy.

Leaders of all these schools stress the importance of getting to know each student’s learning style in order to tailor their education plans accordingly. That starts with a comprehensive professional evaluation of their cognitive, academic and socio-emotional functioning, known as a psychological educational evaluation.

“I have a school of 455 dyslexic kids and no two are alike,” Shifrin says. “When a parent calls me and says, ‘My son just got a diagnosis of dyslexia,’ I always want to see the testing.”

Claudia Nachtigal, head of school at The Highlands School, agrees. “We tailor their education based on that report,” she says.

The school, based in Bel Air, accepts students in kindergarten through grade eight with language-based learning differences, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, executive functioning issues, depression, anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

With just 70 students, the school has small class sizes and a full-time counselor, so “each student gets a lot of attention,” Nachtigal says.

The school uses the Wilson Reading System, which provides multisensory, structured reading lessons for people with dyslexia; and Orton-Gillingham principles of making instruction as direct, multisensory and interactive as possible.

To help students learn social skills, the mornings start with 45 minutes of an activity that requires communication and collaboration. For example, explains Nachtigal, it could start with a shoe in the classroom circle, and students challenged to find out whose shoe it is and greet that person. Then everyone would get a turn to say their favorite shoe and why. The activity could conclude with students silently lining up from smallest to largest shoe size, and then talking about what it means to walk in somebody else’s shoes.

Students also go to executive functioning skills classes that teach how to take notes, keep a schedule and study. Details like binders coded by subject help them stay organized. “Everything we do, from start to finish, has been done to help your kid grow as a confident and independent learner,” says Nachtigal.

The Odyssey School was founded in 1994 by parents who could not find the right learning environment for their smart yet academically struggling children. It started in Baltimore with 20 students and now welcomes about 165 K-8 students diagnosed with language learning differences to its 42-acre Lutherville campus.

It boasts a student-to-teacher ratio of three-to-one and provides specialized instruction that builds on student strengths, teaches how to compensate for weaknesses and instills a love of learning and the ability to self-advocate.

Baltimore Lab School, founded in 2000 as a division of the Lab School of Washington, became independent from it in 2014 while retaining its first-in-the-nation program for bright, motivated students in grades one through 12 with learning differences.

The focus is on small class sizes, with four to six students per teacher; and an arts-integrated program that incorporates music, drama, dance and visual art. For example, audio and graphic novels are embraced.

The program is notable in that it breaks lessons and assignments into manageable chunks, says Education Director Jennifer Kelleher. For example, she says, students might be asked to read a single paragraph and answer one question about it. The school staff includes counselors, occupational therapists and speech language pathologists. The day includes frequent breaks for activities like throwing a weighted ball or jumping on a trampoline, and students can ask for a break from the classroom whenever they want.

“While we instruct using state standards and local school system curriculum, we teach those skills through a lot of hands on and experiential learning, while incorporating student strengths and allowing them to demonstrate their knowledge in different ways, other than just through paper/pencil tasks,” Kelleher says.

Support for Students Who Need It

Many independent schools that were not created specifically for students with learning differences have robust programs for students who need them.

The Boys’ Latin School of Maryland, for example, offers an Educational Support Services (ESS) Program that provides individualized learning plans and teaches strategies for studying, time management, active reading and self-advocacy.

ESS is designed to support students who are diagnosed with language[1]based learning differences and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), though it is available to all students, including some who tap the learning assistance for a single class or assignment.

“We do not modify our curriculum,” says Stephanie McLoughlin, director of Marketing & Communications. “Rather, our program is designed to supplement grade-level instruction, ensuring that every student is prepared for the rigors of our curriculum, college, and life beyond school.”

Concordia Prep, in Towson, has Giguere, a program for students in grades six through 12 with diagnosed learning differences including dyslexia, dysgraphia, severe anxiety, ADHD and being on the autism spectrum.

The program, named for Irene Giguere, who started the program at Concordia Prep in 1975, promotes “inclusive excellence.” About 10 percent of Concordia Prep’s 430 students are in the program, although there is no cap, says Welbourn.

Many of the students applying for the program have an IEP, 504 or psych-ed evaluation from the last two years and are already receiving accommodations in their current school, says program director Emily Welbourn.

“If they don’t have those and parents are seeing challenges, then we help them get that information through private testing options or guide them through the process of getting tested through their local school system,” she says. “We use those results as our roadmap to best help students.”

Giguere students take classes with their peers, and also elective periods to teach functioning and study skills, and help students understand and use their accommodations. Welbourne also provides one-on-one homework and study help, and offers additional support as needed during office hours mid-day and before and after school.

“The main goal of the classes we offer with the Giguere program is to let students know that their learning difference does not define them,” says Welbourn. “It’s the first time for a lot of them that they’ve had someone believe in them and tell them they are capable.”

This article is part of the 2024-2025 Guide to Baltimore Independent Schools.

Steve Cusick started going to Summer at Friends day camps when he was four years old. Today, he’s director of the eight-week day camp program, a job he has held since 2019.

One of the most satisfying parts of his job, he says, is helping campers grow and mature during their counselor-in-training (CIT) summer, and watching them thrive later as counselors themselves.

“One of the big things we hear from counselors in training is that they had a great experience as a camper and they want to pay it forward, to keep the magic of camp happening,” he says.

Cusick remembers well his own counselor-in-training summer, and how it prepared him for a lifetime of summer camp leadership and joy. “I’ve been a camp employee since I was a counselor in training,” he says.

CIT summers are a beloved staple of both day and overnight summer camps in the Baltimore region and beyond.

Each camp has its own traditions and programs for helping teens move from carefree campers to responsible counselors. Some programs are just a couple of weeks long while others span several summers. But all share a devotion to creating fun, safe settings for both campers and counselors-to-be, with opportunities to learn and grow in a familiar, nurturing setting.  

For many young people, working as a camp counselor is their first real job.  Counselor-in-training programs give them their first experiences with applications and interviews, teach the importance of showing up on time and doing a job well, provide training, deliver important feedback, and prepare them for even more responsibilities as future camp counselors.

For all the responsibilities that a CIT summer entails, it is also a time of fun and friendship, one that many CITs remember with fondness.  Often, they have attended the same camp for years, and have come to know and admire their CITs and counselors. Finally, they get to emulate the best qualities of those leaders.

At Friends, says Cusick, the gradual transition from camper to counselor begins at age 12 or 13, when a first assignment might be to run an activity station during field day.

“When they’re 14, we start talking about how to apply to be a CIT,” he says. Counselors in training go through the same application process as staff, which means they must submit letters of recommendation and participate in interviews, he says.

The ones who are accepted – and can commit to working at least one of the summer’s four-week sessions – are grouped so that two CITs, an older-teen assistant counselor, and a college-aged head counselor share responsibility for a group of up to 12 campers. (Counselors in training don’t get paid, though they can get service-hour credits for their schools. Assistant counselors and head counselors do get paid.) They also have a better shot at getting hired as assistant or head counselors in future years, says Cusick.

The CITS are in some ways the face of the camp, interacting with parents during pick-up and drop-off, says Cusick. “They have a lot of face time with the families and with the kids,” he says. 

Cusick says CITs tend to adjust well to their new responsibilities, partly because they are close in age to the campers they are guiding. “Often they’re able to relate to the campers in a way that is different from an adult,” he says.

At McDonogh School, which has been offering summer camps for more than 80 years, the two-week CIT program teaches teens 14 to 16 CPR, first aid, and other skills.

Most mornings, the CITs get two hours of instruction, says Ramzi Sifri, who has been assistant director and then director of McDonogh summer camps for 22 years. After lunch, they help the counselors who are working with campers aged four through 12.

A key learning experience for the CITs is that they are evaluated by each counselor, as well as by camp leaders. “If they’re successful in the CIT program, they get a certificate,” says Sifri. As many as 85 percent return as counselors.

The whole experience, he says, “gives young people the opportunity to learn a little about the work ethic and the patience it takes to work with campers of all ages, as well as how to be a leader and how to work cooperatively with other counselors.”

The summer camps at the Park School of Baltimore include a two-week counselor-in-training program for campers between 12 and 15 years old, says Jimmy Bonner, lead instructor for the Park Camp’s Leadership Development and Counselor in Training (CIT) program.

The CITs assist the lead and junior counselors with activities for campers aged three and a half to 10 and meet with Bonner to talk about successes and challenges.

The program includes a training program “that focuses on camper management, leadership, self-advocacy, and professionalism,” says Bonner, in order to give CITs the tools to become camp counselors, if that’s what they want.

“Many CITs are first on the list for counselor jobs as they age into a full-time paying position as a Park Camps counselor,” he says. “However, our main goal is to inspire responsibility and confidence in a burgeoning generation of young adults.”

Bonner, like other leaders of CIT programs, notes that the affection between campers and CITs is mutual, and a key component of camp success. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a CIT without a crowd of campers fluttering around them during recess,” he says. 

Alicia Berlin, director of Camp Louise, notes that the CIT programs at the all-girl Jewish overnight camp in Cascade date back to at least the 1940s, and that she was one in 1987. The program takes teens from camper to counselor over the course of three summers with training sessions and a growing roster of responsibilities.

Berlin says she interviews every CIT at the end of the summer and asks them about their experiences. “I always ask them, who was the counselor you strive to be like and what are the characteristics of that person that you most admire? They want to be for their campers what other counselors were for them.”

She notes that being a counselor isn’t easy. “It’s 24/7,” she says, and it involves waking up in the night to comfort a child who is homesick, or keeping young campers entertained on a rainy day that forced a change of plans.

Rising 10th graders are known as senior trainees, or STs, with responsibilities that might include leading a camp activity and helping with Louise Lends a Hand, a program that teaches kindness through charitable acts such as making cookies and sandwiches to donate.

The following year, the counselor assistants, or CAs, work directly with younger campers, serving as mentors and planning activities.

While STs and CAs are required to stay for either the three-week or the four-week session of their trainee summer, the CITs stay for all seven weeks.

These rising high school seniors are assigned departments, such as a particular sport or art form, and receive training in leadership, mental health, first aid, and other ways to help children, says Berlin, who has been Camp Louise director for 17 years.

“They’re living together as CITs, and they are mentored by counselors,” she says. CITs are also, in some ways, the face of the camp. They’re the ones who greet campers and parents on opening day, who walk the campers to their bunks, who perform in welcome shows.

Seth Tow, who went from camper to CIT to counselor at Camp Airy, the brother camp to Camp Louise, based in Thurmont, remembers his CIT summer well. Tow, now 26, started going to Camp Airy when he was nine and “got hooked on camp pretty quickly,” he says.

Tow, like his younger brothers Josh and Danny, went through the training programs and worked as a counselor for several summers.

“They still wanted to be campers but they also wanted more responsibility,” says their mother, Debbie Tow, of Howard County.  All her sons, she says, “just loved the camp. They wanted as much camp as they could get. Every year we picked them up they wanted more.”

Seth says the transition from camper to counselor was so gradual that he never felt particularly stressed about each new level of responsibility.

He also remembers his CIT summer as a time of particularly strong bonding with his peers. “A lot of those sort of bonding activities that you do to get closer with the rest of your group kind of stick with you,” he says. “Some of my friends still talk about it to this day.”

In fact, notes his mom, “the boys grow so close during CIT summer that it carries forward long after the summer ends.” Her son Danny, she says, still gets together with his CIT friends every New Year’s Eve, four years after that magical summer.

This article is part of the 2024 Guide to Summer Camps.

Independent schools nurture performing and visual arts
with a wealth of creative lessons, events and showcases.

Andrew Katz has led the visual arts department at the Key School for 16 years, and before that taught art to middle-schoolers in Howard County and Baltimore County public schools. Like other art teachers and art department directors at local independent schools, he believes art education is much more than learning how to hold a paintbrush or draw a face. 

His lessons, he says, are designed to teach students how to express themselves, think critically, use technology, better understand history, and “view the world through an artistic lens.” 

For one assignment, inspired by the French photographer and street artist JR, he asked eighth graders at the Annapolis pre-k-12 school to create large black-and-white portraits of themselves, which were then displayed in windows of the school. “It’s pretty dramatic,” he says.   

Sometimes, the students surprise and delight him with their interpretations. “The assignment calls for one person per picture, but our students decided they would work together,” he says. “The Black students in the grade are holding signs in front of their faces with a quote about their hair, the inappropriate comments people make about them, and hands coming in from out of frame, touching their hair.” 

The result: a grid of 15 faces, each mouth covered by a sheet of paper with a handwritten phrase like: “Just brush it,” and “I like it better straight.” 

There’s a technology component, too: video statements created by the students are linked to the images through augmented reality and image-recognition software, and can be accessed by an app.

The project, called Inside/Out, is one of many that uses art to encourage students to express themselves in new and sometimes uncomfortable ways, says Katz.  

Park School middle school students learn about dance.

Arts education is too often considered a luxury, less practical than STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects and not as exciting as sports. But Katz and others at independent schools say learning how to make and appreciate art are essential skills for a well-rounded education – and a full life. 

“I want kids to not only appreciate the visual world, art included. I want them to think artfully,” Katz says. “I want them to view the world through an artistic lens. They can appreciate beautiful things, they can appreciate design, appreciate the decisions that are made in putting together an app or a logo.” 

Art instruction takes many forms, and typically includes lessons in visual arts like drawing, painting, sculpting or photography, as well as the performance of dramatic arts like music, theater or dance.

At the St. James Academy, for example, students as young as preschool begin learning fundamentals of music and movement, an education that continues with instrument lessons in third grade and performing arts in middle school. Visual arts at the Monkton school include lessons in art history, instructions in techniques like color mixing and observation drawing, and an artist in residence program. 

Arts curricula don’t exist in vacuums – they typically look to the past for context, and to the future by using new technologies that change how art is made. They teach specific techniques as part of a larger mission of developing creativity, empathy and a critical eye. 

“The arts are an essential part of our daily lives,” reads the arts program web page of the Park School of Baltimore. “They frame our experience of the world, serve as vehicles for personal expression, and enhance our exploration of history, culture, and heritage. Our students experience the arts as painters, actors, dancers, and musicians, as audi – ence members, critics, and teachers. Art is often part of teaching and learning in other subjects. Art is everywhere in the school.” 

Arts are part of an academic curriculum, not separate from it.  

When Key School sixth-graders learn about the Civil War, their art classes show them how to use apps and augmented technology to create art that helps plunge them backward in time. 

“We study the photography of the late 1800s and we replicate what they looked like,” he says. “The students get in costume and take the photos, and we use an app to make the images look old. The next step is using augmented reality to lay a video on top of the image, with students reading aloud a letter that they had written, in the style of a person living through the Civil War.” 

At the Park School, a print-making curriculum supports fifth-grade lessons in medieval studies. 

“We see our students as intrinsically creative. We see ourselves on faculty as guides,” says Deborah Hull, Park’s Director of the Arts. 

“I believe that arts education can at its best encourage and equip students to express themselves authentically and skillfully,” Hull says. “My hope is that every child will have joyful, playful artistic connection to who they are. 

The arts are also tools for building connections and making the world a better place. Through a program called Memory Project, high school girls at Notre Dame Prep in Towson connect with peers from another country (this year, it was Syria), and use photos that are sent to them to create portraits, which they return with messages on the back. 

An annual Notre Dame upper school fashion show, called CW Project Greenway — named for student Claire Wagonhurst, who died of melanoma at age 17 — challenges students to create clothing out of recyclable or repurposed materials like coffee filters, socks or junk mail. 

“Part of our mission statement at Notre Dame Prep is to encourage these women to transform the world,” says Christian Leitch, who has been teaching middle-level art for 23 years at the Catholic preparatory school for girls in grades 6 through 12. 

“These girls are creative and critical problem solvers throughout their seven years here,” says Leitch. “What they’re learning in these classes can be translated into life and into their future.” 

 Another popular Notre Dame project, called I Am portraits, marks the end of eighth grade by asking students to draw or paint portraits that include, in the background, their “interests, their beliefs, a lesson they learned in life,” says Leitch. “It helps them realize what they want to explore as they move into high school.”  

This article is part of the 2023-2024 Guide to Baltimore Independent Schools.

As admissions policies change, expert guidance can make a big difference.

College admissions policies are changing fast. 

On June 29, the Supreme Court struck down race-influenced admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, effectively ending affirmative action at institutions of higher learning across the country. 

Already, many colleges and universities have stopped taking family legacy status into account when assessing a student’s application. There’s less openness than in the past to high school college counselors advocating for particular students. 

Standardized tests like the SAT and ACT are no longer required in many places, and in any case are moving from paper exams to digital ones. Meanwhile, strategies like applying early and demonstrating interest through tours, visits and social media activity are more important than ever. 

College counselors at local independent schools are adjusting to these changes the way they always do: by helping students choose a range of suitable college options, and working with them to build application packages that give them the best possible chance of getting in.  

A Balanced Approach

“We want students and families to understand that it has changed,” says Elizabeth W. Almeter, director of college counseling at Garrison Forest School, a K-12 school for girls in Owings Mills. 

She advises students and their families against setting their hopes on a particular school. “I think there is a healthier way to look at it. There’s not one right school, there’s not one wrong school. It’s not to say don’t apply, but be realistic. What can you add to that class? What does the school want?” 

When families ask her when college prep starts, “the answer I give is ‘The first day of school,’ ” says Almeter. “It’s a matter of thinking that each class you take, each activity you participate in, each experience you have outside of school, that’s all part of your story.” 

Preparation begins in earnest in 10th grade, she says, and includes career exploration, essay brainstorming sessions, and practice ACT and SATs. Officials from college admissions offices visit to talk to students about schools and their institutional goals in building a class. 

“We advocate through letters of recommendation,” she says. “We write as if we’re speaking to the admission committee. We know the student and we have relationships with college admissions officers.” 

Alice Margraff has been helping McDonogh School students and their families wrestle with the complicated and emotional application process for 30 years. Before that, she was an admissions officer at Johns Hopkins University. 

“It’s really about making sure students have a balanced list,” she says. “You can be absolutely qualified, but when the admit rate is 4%, you just never know.” 

Margraff warns against getting obsessed with the application process or focusing too much on acceptance to a particular super-elite school. “One of the best pieces of advice we give students in 10th and 11th grade is, ‘Don’t let college be your only conversation at home,’” she says. “Set aside an hour a week, if that, and enjoy your time in high school.” 

McDonogh students are assigned a college counselor halfway through 10th grade, says Margraff. The goal at that point is for the counselors to get to know the students, the classes they take and their interests both inside and outside the classroom. 

Next steps include prepping for and taking the PSAT, SAT or ACT; working on college essays; and meeting with students and parents to start developing a list of potential schools. At that point, they talk about affordability and financial aid, strategies around early decision and early admission, and insights about how different schools evaluate applicants.  

Privilege not the First Priority 

Halaine Steinberg has seen a lot of changes in her 15 years as college counselor at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School, the Jewish private school in Pikesville for preschool through 12th grade.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that parents often ask her what they can do to nudge their child’s application into the “accepted” column, says Steinberg. 

“Years ago, when I first started out, a parent said to me, back when you mailed the applications, ‘How about I just put the first semester check in the application?’ Not only is it going to be seen as crass, it’s not even a donation,” she says. 

Some parents still ask if giving money to a school will boost their child’s chances. “I never tell people whether donating will or won’t help,” Steinberg says. “However, colleges at the highest level are trying to show that privilege is not their first priority.” 

Instead, says Steinberg, who is also the school’s first diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator, “What I have been hearing from college admissions people is that they are looking for students who have had an impact.” 

Starting junior year, she says, students are paired with one of the school’s three college counselors to begin selecting schools and crafting application strategies. 

“What I would like for students and parents to know is that the most important thing is to be authentic,” says Steinberg. “To really pursue the things that you love and you care about. You can do that while at the same time being on board with what colleges want.” 

For example, she says, a lacrosse player could coach children who have fewer opportunities to play. 

“We help our students find ways to use their passion to lift up another person or community,” Steinberg says. “I don’t see my job as solely to get these students into college. In the process, I want to help them be the best people they can be.”  

This article is part of the 2023-2024 Guide to Baltimore Independent Schools.

On a warm Friday night in May, the Movement Hampden gym is bustling.

A few people are playing pool and some are in the weight room, but most are in the large bouldering terrain area, with its bouncy cushioned flooring and massive craggy structures that stretch from floor to ceiling, dotted with colorful handholds and footholds. 

Heather, 31, tall and pony-tailed, is here with Baltimore Queer Climbers, a group that meets at the gym once a month. She heard about Queer Climbing Nights through a friend, and decided to add them to her other climbing activities.

“The fact that there are queer people around makes it feel nice and safe,” she says.  

Heather is hanging out with Lindsey, 25, who doesn’t drink and “pretty much figured out I was queer right before COVID,” she says. Eager to meet people as the pandemic waned, she “looked specifically for queer climbing in Baltimore.”

A few years ago, that quest might have ended after a futile Google search. Not anymore.

Queer sports are, increasingly and happily, a thing. And they seem to have found a warm welcome in Baltimore.

These groups, teams and leagues, which typically connect people through social media, are specifically for LGBTQ+ athletes, but don’t discriminate based on gender, sexuality, age or athletic ability.

“We are always welcoming of allies,” says Rebecca Winslow, founder of Queer City Sports. “It’s always been our stance. That being said, we were created to be a safe space for the queer community connect.”

In addition to Baltimore Queer Climbers, Charm City is home to  Queer City Sports, which fields teams playing softball, touch football, kickball, basketball, bowling and volleyball; and the Baltimore chapter of Stonewall Sports, which offers kickball, dodgeball and other sports.

Nationwide, the United States Gay Sports Network, a directory for LGBTQ+ sports, lists some 750 leagues in cities all over the country, according to its founder, Tyler Foerster. And he expects the numbers to grow.

“The trend that I’ve seen is that the more and more coming out stories you hear, especially in professional sports leagues, the more confident players are to join these local leagues,” he says by email. “And even better, the more leagues that form, the more leaders emerge to help run these organizations.”

Those are leaders like Winslow, who started Queer City Sports in 2018 after a couple of her favorite lesbian bars closed. Without those gathering spots, she says, “Our community became fractured, and we thought about how we could bring people together.”

The obvious answer was sports. “I love sports and I think they’re a great uniter,” she says.

Winslow put a note in the Young Queer Women of Baltimore Facebook group asking if anyone wanted to start a softball team. In no time, 20 strangers had signed on for a summer of swings, strikes and stolen bases as the Hub Caps, a team competing in a women’s softball league in Dundalk.

“We didn’t win a single game but we had an absolute blast,” says Winslow. “From there, we decided to do football.”

Now, Queer City Sports coordinates a full calendar of games and events, including a “Gym Class Heroes” competition with retro games like dodgeball and scooter ball.

“The community we’ve built has been incredible,” says Winslow. “I’ve had so many people come up to me and say they moved to the city, didn’t know anybody, joined a league, and now their support system and friend group has come out of the connections they’ve made.”

Mer Parra, who moved from Texas to Baltimore in 2016, founded Baltimore Queer Climbing in 2019 because she wanted a group like that for herself. “It’s an opportunity for queer people to meet and enjoy a sport together,” she says. “People want to feel welcomed and they like doing something with people who understand who they are.”

“All rise.”

Those words bookend the fantastic production of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird at the Hippodrome. Spoken by the bailiff during the trial of Tom Robinson, they signify respect for the judge and respect for the American legal system.

They also call to mind one of the most famous scenes in the 1960 book and the 1962 movie of To Kill a Mockingbird, a scene that Aaron Sorkin wisely removed when he updated the classic text for Broadway in 2018.

It’s the moment of greatest despair, after an all-White jury has delivered its death-sentence guilty verdict to Robinson, an innocent Black man. The Black people watching from the balcony, the only place they are allowed to gather, don’t protest or sob. Instead, they all rise in an ostentatious show of respect for Atticus Finch, the lawyer who took on the case and failed.

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up,” one spectator says to Atticus’s daughter, Scout. “Your father’s passin’.”

Ugh.

To Kill a Mockingbird has always been darker than Atticus Finch fanfic would have us believe.

In the tiny Alabama town of Maycomb in 1934, good and evil face off, and evil wins. Innocence – a belief that the law works, that people are basically decent, that father always knows best – is shattered. The mockingbird, which “don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy,” as Atticus says, is, in fact, killed.

The newer version does a masterful job of capturing some of that complexity, keeping audiences riveted through a running time of nearly three hours.

I don’t want to make it sound like it’s no fun, though. This play delivers plenty of well-earned laughs, and the real pleasures of watching smart, decent people trying to do smart, decent things, and getting smarter and more decent along the way. 

Is Atticus flawed for believing that people are basically good, that you can only truly understand a person if you “consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it?” Yes. Yes, he is.

Is he a basically good person? Of course.

As Sorkin famously noted, it was no easy task to update a beloved classic in a way that stays true to the 1930s of the plot, the 1960s of the book and movie, and the Trump years of the current iteration.

Of course, the guy who gave us West Wing and The Social Network is up to the task, though too often the characters have that trite but satisfying Sorkin trait of always having the perfect snappy comeback, delivered with impeccable timing, as exactly the right moment.  

Calpurnia, the Finch family domestic worker played by Jacqueline Williams, finally gets to speak up more than 60 years after Harper Lee invented her, delivering several of the show’s best lines. At one point, as Atticus waxes on about the importance of being respectful, she retorts: “No matter who you’re disrespecting by doing it.”

For the Broadway show, which debuted in December 2018 starring Jeff Daniels as Atticus, Sorkin rearranged the timeline of the plot, used adult actors for the children, and shifted the focus from Scout’s point of view to that of her father, Atticus.

The show, which runs at the Hippodrome through March 19, is part of its Broadway Across America series, meaning the same cast travels from city to city.

Richard Thomas, most famous as John Boy on The Waltons television show in the 1970s, plays Atticus with an endearing mix of self-deprecating charm and wry amusement at his children, Scout and Jem, and their new friend Dill.

Of particular note are Melanie Moore, who brings a childish blunt honesty to Scout; and Yaegel T. Welch, a member of Everyman Theatre’s resident company, who embodies all the fear, hope and heartbreak of Tom Robinson. 

Bob Ewell is a tough role to play, but Joey Collins finds the dark humanity in a man who spouts the most vile racist tropes, abuses his daughter, and falsely blames a Black man, and all Black people, for his own weaknesses.

Arianna Gayle Stucki exudes the terror experienced by Mayella Ewell in scenes that make clear the terrible things that people will do to protect themselves.

And here’s a fun fact: Filling the small role of Mrs. Henry Dubose is Mary Badham, the actor who played Scout in the 1962 Gregory Peck movie. Her Playbill bio notes that she has devoted much of her life to promoting a message of social justice.

I wonder what she thinks now of Atticus’s sentiment that, “simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”

If you go: To Kill a Mockingbird runs through March 19 at the Hippodrome Theatre, 12 N. Eutaw St., Baltimore, as part of the Broadway Across America series. Tickets can be purchased here.

Before the start of Crowns, the joyous musical at Baltimore Center Stage running through March 5, director Kevin McAllister stood on stage and told audience members that the show they were about to see was not a “sit back in your set and let others do the work” kind of experience.

With church as the setting and a bevy of stylish, self-assured, hilarious gospel-singing, hat-adorned women as the main characters, he expected people to clap, sing, stomp their feet, laugh and generally “make a lot of noise.”

And so they did. The full house on Feb. 16, which was press review night, even stopped the proceedings mid-performance to give a well-deserved standing ovation to vocal powerhouse Anitra McKinney as Velma.

McAllister, who collaborated with Center Stage artistic director Stephanie Ybarra on the show, says he chose Crowns after “searching over the last couple of years for more pieces that celebrate Black joy.” He found one in the words of Regina Taylor, who wrote the play after reading a picture book called Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry.

The story itself is simple. Yolanda, a young Brooklynite, is sent to live in the south after a family tragedy. There, she meets Mabel, Wanda, Velma, Jeanette, Mother Shaw and Church Lady, who all have big hats to wear, big stories to tell, and big voices to make sure they are heard.   

The lives of these women are filled with the glories of God, the love of family and the fantastic outfits that give them so much pleasure. Their triumphs are wrested from the harsh realities of their lives and the lives of their ancestors, and they are symbolized in the hats they wear.

More than fashion statements, these beautiful outfit-completing toppers symbolize style and success, flirtatiousness and independence, holiness and irreverence, and their ties to the past.  

Early on, Mother Shaw, played by Katrina Jones, explains that church is important because it’s the only place slaves were allowed to congregate. “And after slavery, there were ‘Whites Only’ signs everywhere,” she continues. “So if you had something you wanted to show off and be in style, you’d wear it to church.”

The women talk about how many hats they have, how to hug someone when you’re both wearing big hats, how to store hats, and how to fold a hat so it will fit in a casket. “When I get dressed to go to church, I’m going to meet the King so I must look my best,” says Wanda in one of many lines that earned chuckles from the audience.

If a husband objects to his wife’s hat collection, that’s his problem. These women earned the money to buy their hats, even though for a long time they could only shop in certain stores. When the Whites-only department store finally allowed Black shoppers, they went in dressed in their finest ensembles, opened their perfectly chosen purses, brought out the crisp bills they had brought for the occasion, and walked out proudly carrying their overpriced purchases, thank you very much.

McAllister is co-founder and artistic director of ArtsCentric, a Baltimore nonprofit that trains and showcases artists of color, mostly local people with little stage experience. For Crowns, he put together a stellar cast absolutely vibrating with musical talent, comic timing and charisma, including Asia-Lige Arnold as Wanda, Nikki Owens as Mabel, Ashley Johnson-Moore as Jeanette and Patricia Jones as Church Lady. Ryan Gholson plays a preacher who appropriately lifts up but does not overshadow his flock; dancers Jayme Howard, Quincy Vicks and Candace Foreman add fun and visual interest. 

Yolanda, played by Baltimore School for the Arts graduate Anaya Greene in her first lead role, has a hat of her own – a baseball cap that she wears backwards, signaling her resistance to the old-fashioned values embodied in these women and their high-heeled glamor.  

Of course, Yolanda’s blue jeans and cross-armed poutiness are no match for the high-energy certainty of her new friends, and by the end she relents. But I wanted to know more about why she thought these old-fashioned church ladies were uncool, so that her conversion would have more meaning.

Wanda, Velma, Jeanette, Mabel, Mother Shaw and Church Lady are not immune from hardship and discrimination. Yet the crowns they wear are not the thorns of the suffering, but rather the jewels of the royalty that they are.

If you go: Crowns will be performed at CenterStage theater through Sunday, March 5, and tickets can be purchased here.

Editor’s note: This article won first place (Division O) in the Headline category of the Maryland, Delaware, and D.C. Press Association’s 2022 Contest. The article also won second place in the Feature Story (Profile) category. Read our other award-winning pieces here.

On a busy night at True Chesapeake Oyster Co., the stylish seafood restaurant in Clipper Mill, Darron Thomison might shuck 1,000 oysters.

When he started a year ago, he didn’t wear Crocs or use the special locally made Dale German knife that he now wields with such confidence. He didn’t know how to tell a smaller, saltier Huckleberry from a thicker-shelled, generously portioned Chunky Dunker, much less how to adjust his technique to pry open each one and release the sweet, opalescent meat inside.

Thomison, 19, a recent graduate of the nearby Academy for College and Career Exploration (ACCE), has proven to be a rare find: an oyster shucker with the talent, strength, work ethic and patience to feed a restaurant full of discerning mollusk-lovers.

Sometimes Patrick Hudson, the owner of True Chesapeake, can’t believe his luck in finding this oyster-shucking phenom. Hudson opened the restaurant in 2019, stocking it with oysters grown on the harvesting farm he started in 2012 on St. Jerome Creek in southern Maryland.

By that time, the Chesapeake Bay, once capable of yielding millions of bushels of oysters a year, was oystered-out – a decline that had started in the 1970s.

Farmed oysters, Hudson had told himself and his investors, were the sustainable and delicious future of quality seafood restaurants in the region. State lawmakers thought so, too, making oyster farming legal starting in 2009.

But when Hudson opened the restaurant, experienced shuckers were in short supply. The decades-long chain of one generation teaching the next had been broken. “It’s kind of a lost trade,” says Hudson.

Shucking an oyster is a little bit physics, a little bit love, and a lot of attention to detail.  

By 2019, the few experienced shuckers still working were close to retirement. They hadn’t taught potential successors how to grip the bulb at the end of the specially designed knife, how to insert the knife tip into the tightly clasped shell, how to wiggle and turn that knife, how to assess that each oyster is healthy and sweet, how to slice the muscle holding the meat to the shell.

And they certainly hadn’t taught anyone how do it again and again, 999 more times in a single night.

Thomison didn’t know either. He had never even eaten an oyster, as far as he could recall. But he was looking for work, and True Chesapeake needed a dishwasher.

One night, the regular shucker didn’t show, and Hudson gave Thomison a tutorial and put him to work. “Oyster-shucking is a craft,” says Hudson. “Right away, when Darron starting shucking, people started commenting about how beautiful the oysters looked.” 

In the beginning, Thomison says, he was slow, and “I stabbed myself a lot.” But he soon learned how to hold the towel in order to protect his hand. He learned how to nestle the released meat back into the shell’s pool of liquor, and how to scrape away any shell fragments, so diners would have the silkiest, most satisfying gulp of seafood. He got faster and more confident. He learned to appreciate the different oysters and the flavorful mignonette that goes with them.  

Thomison works at the restaurants Thursdays through Saturdays, standing each night behind mounds of oysters that diminish with each order. Those oysters, and Thomison, are the first things customers see when they walk in the door.

He doesn’t mind the attention. He likes being good at something that other people can’t do, something that literally puts food on their tables.

Thomison didn’t plan to be an oyster shucker and it probably won’t be his career, he says. He’s interested in computer science. But he’s fixing the broken oyster-shucker chain by teaching other restaurant employees his techniques.

“I just love shucking oysters,” he says now.

Editor’s note: This article won second place (Division O) in the Headline category of the Maryland, Delaware, and D.C. Press Association’s 2022 Contest. Read our other award-winning pieces here.

Ok, so, here’s what we want you to imagine:

You’re at Two Story Chimney Ciderworks, in Gaithersburg. It’s a beautiful fall day, and you’re sitting at a table in the sun with one or more of your favorite humans. Around you are other equally contented people, some with babies, some with dogs, many with snacks they brought with them or purchased at the “Cluck Truck” parked nearby.

Your view is blue sky and green grass. A few little kids race each other through a pumpkin patch. Everyone is wearing their cutest fall flannels and sweaters.

ln front of you sits four glasses, nestled in a cute wooden tray. The liquid inside, all shades of honey-gold, are different ciders, all made with nearby apples.

You sip the one called Over the Falls, which was aged in a red wine barrel. Flavors of oak and the wine linger. Like the other ciders, it’s crisp and a little tart, far less sweet than the big-name stuff you buy at the liquor store. You sample the others in your $12 flight – Proper Dry, Sweet Tart and Ruby Red – or seasonal ciders flavored with blackberry or pumpkin, and find subtleties in each.

Sounds nice, right?

As you may have noticed, we’re a little obsessed with cideries. We love the bright flavors and zippy fizz of locally made hard ciders, and the fact that they’re fermented from local apples. We love sipping and socializing and just hanging out, either outdoors or in a warm and rustic tasting room. We love the live music and trivia nights and food trucks, and we love the quieter visits too.

A Google search tells us that hard ciders date back to Roman times, and were quite popular in Colonial America, probably because pretty much anyone with an apple tree could turn their fruit into booze. Then came the industrial revolution; people moved into cities, and switched to beer.

Now, cideries seem to be having a moment.

Nationally, there are some 1,060 cider producers, up from 150 in 2010, according to Michelle McGrath, executive director of the American Cider Association.

And in Maryland, “there is growth in the cider industry,” says Jim Bauckman, communications director for Grow and Fortify, which represents the Maryland Wineries Association, the Brewers Association of Maryland, Maryland Distillers Guild and the Maryland Hemp Coalition. (Cideries can belong to either the winery or brewery association.)

“We think it is a de facto effect of the growth of craft alcohol producers, more broadly,” he says. “As the number of breweries, wineries and distilleries increases, so does the interest in and demand for cider,” he says.

We found three that we love, all within an hour of Baltimore, and all with tasting rooms for on-site sampling. The oldest of the three opened in 2018.

Spend an afternoon, and then pick up some bottles to take to Thanksgiving dinner. Unlike beer, ciders are gluten-free. Unlike wine, it won’t put you to sleep. And the bright flavors will cut nicely through the richness of turkey and mashed potatoes.

Our first visit was to Two Story Chimney Ciderworks, owned and run by Tommy Evans, who has experience making both wines and beers. Cider-making, he says, falls somewhere in the middle because it takes less time than wine-making, but uses equipment and fermenting processes that are similar to wine-making. His ciders use apples from his own and other Maryland orchards, including crabapples that add tartness.

Evans began selling cider in 2020, and opened the tasting room the following year. Events include teacher happy hours and trivia nights; check the online calendar for updates, including which food trucks will be on site. The cidery is open year-round. Etchison Country Store, across the street, sells sandwiches and other snacks, and in cold weather there will most likely be a fire in the fireplace.

From Two Story, we drove about 15 minutes along winding country roads to Doc Waters Cidery in Germantown. (We recommend a designated driver; these ciders are very drinkable and they pack a punch, with alcohol by volume that starts at 5.5 percent and goes way higher.)

This part of Montgomery County is so ridiculously scenic that it’s almost a parody of rural beauty, dotted with tastefully weathered barns and fat, shiny-coated cows grazing among rolling hills.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and Doc Waters was buzzing, with just about every table in the large field occupied. The band Rattle Root was rocking out, and people were playing corn hole, feeding babies, flirting, chatting, loving on their dogs, and generally having a grand time. The lines were long for ciders and snacks.

Doc Waters, which bills itself as the first cidery in Montgomery County, opened in 2018 as a value-add to the pick-your-own apple farm owned by Washington White and Susan Butler. They sold the orchard and cidery to their nieces and nephews in 2021.

The outdoor cidery, which sells cider made from its own apples, is open Friday through Sunday in season; check the calendar on it website for bands, trivia nights and other events. You can also reserve a fire pit.

Our third stop, Willow Oaks Craft Cider and Wine, in Middletown, was considerably less bustling but in many ways our favorite. It’s 45 minutes from Doc Waters, tucked out of sight off a gravel road, and probably best reserved for a separate outing.

Housed on the oldest organic farm in Maryland, Willow Oaks is open on the weekends March through December, and by appointment in the winter. Visitors can picnic with their own food on the patio or lawn, or can warm up in the lovely, welcoming tasting room, which also sells fruits, jams, pottery and other treats. Owners Eric Rice and Lori Leitzel Rice even have board games and baskets of Legos to encourage people to linger.

Their ciders, carefully crafted with their own heirloom apples, currants and other fruits, are tasting-competition winners. The critic’s darling is Gloaming, a tart yet somehow warm combination of heirloom apples and organic black currants, which sells for $25 a 500ml bottle. The Rices also make and sell perry, using organic pears, and sell grass-fed beef.

Eric and Lori both have been making ciders since 2013 and opened the tasting room in 2018. They both have outside jobs – he’s a professor and she’s a Craniosacral therapist – yet they take their cider-making quite seriously.  They are all about the terroir and the blending and the long, cool ferment of a year to 18 months that allows it to stabilize without sulfites.

The payoff for all that time and attention, says Lori, is seeing people enjoy their cider and hospitality. “We just love it when people come and settle in, enjoying each other and enjoying the view,” she says.

Other Maryland Cideries

• Antietam Ciderworks (no tasting room)
• Branch Bender (in Accident, near Deep Creek Lake)
• Chesapeake Cider Co. (no tasting room)
• Distillery Lane Ciderworks (no tasting room)
• Faulkner Branch Ciders & Distillery (in Federalsburg, near Easton)
• Free State Ciders (no tasting room)

This article is part of the 2022-2023 Guide to Baltimore Independent Schools.

How the pandemic pushed educators to embrace the best of technology for learning

Students at Gilman School are taking more virtual field trips. At Roland Park Country School (RPCS), students are using platforms like Quizlet and Kahoot to make their own in-class learning games. The Bryn Mawr School is launching a fully accredited online high school.

Educators throughout Baltimore say the technologies they relied on in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when classes abruptly shuttered and learning went remote, are still in use now that students are back in the classrooms.

The software, apps and other tools don’t replace hands-on, in-person learning, but instead provide new opportunities for creativity and collaboration. Zoom can help students connect with off-campus experts and learn from virtual tours. Combined with devices like the Swivl robot or Owl camera, it enables students to participate in classroom discussions from afar. Technologies like Google Docs and Office 365 allow teachers to critique assignments collaboratively with students, who can see and respond in the same document in real time.

Boosting Collaboration

The improvements extend beyond the classroom. Using technologies that were fast-tracked during the pandemic, teachers and students continue to rely on these more streamlined and consistent methods for tracking and submitting assignments via software-based learning management systems. Teachers can more easily collaborate with each other on lesson plans or virtually attend meetings or professional development sessions. And parents have the option of remote teacher conferences.

“I think the pandemic not only jump-started new ways of using technology for education at the St. Paul’s Schools, but also fostered a culture of adaptation alongside using new technologies that has allowed us to continue to innovate,” says Emily Ziegler, director of instructional technology and innovation at the St. Paul’s Schools. “Before the pandemic, I would have had a lot of hesitation asking faculty and experts in the field to connect remotely, but now it isn’t as an afterthought.”

Ziegler described how students in a technology and entrepreneurship course met virtually with business experts around the country to learn about their challenges and successes, and worked with a local entrepreneur to create revenue forecasting models.

Expanding Access to Innovations

In many schools, the technologies were used in moderation before the pandemic, became essential during the spring of 2020, and then moved from educational lifelines to in-person learning enhancements.

Gilman was already using a technology called Portal to connect students and educators on the Baltimore campus with other Portal users around the globe, enabling virtual exploration of landmarks like the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City.

Portal, though, required that students gather in a free-standing room on campus delivered by parent company Shared Studios, where life-sized images of collaborators were projected on a large screen. That option ended in March 2020, when students and educators moved off campus and shifted to online learning.

Tye Campbell, director of technology at the time and now director of strategic information and innovation at Gilman, wasn’t ready to abandon those opportunities to connect Gilman students with people and places outside their classrooms.

Seeing that more museums and other educational destinations had started offering virtual tours as a way to maintain interest when people couldn’t visit in person, he helped teachers arrange virtual field trips in place of both real field trips and the Portal.

The trips could be pre-scheduled and led by Gilman teachers, or individual students could explore at their own pace. Some tours made use of virtual reality headsets, while others took place over computer screens.

The innovation continued after students returned to in-person classes and remains a powerful and engaging educational tool to this day, says Campbell, one that lets teachers provide field trips in the space of an hour without the hassles of rearranged days, permission slips and chaperones.

“The pandemic definitely expanded a lot of opportunity,” he says. “So many virtual experiences became available, and we expect the incredible resources that the situation forced us to create won’t just disappear. From a teaching and learning perspective, one of our goals is to make sure the lessons and skills gained, those things don’t go away now that kids are back in the classroom.”

Going Fully Remote

Bryn Mawr will apply the remote learning lessons of the pandemic as it launches a fully online high school experience this fall, says Justin Curtis, the school’s senior director of academic and strategic initiatives and director of the new fully accredited online high school, Bryn Mawr Online.

“We joke that it took COVID for us to realize how well we could do it,” he says.

Curtis launched an online Bryn Mawr summer program in 2020, after the pandemic forced the school to transition to remote learning that spring. “I remember sitting in classes before spring break of 2020, talking about how to do remote learning,” says Curtis. “We have a great team of teachers and we just transitioned to online. We felt comfortable quickly. We learned a lot about how to structure lessons to keep kids engaged, and also realized we could get experts and other speakers from anywhere.”

Bryn Mawr Online launches in the 2022-2023 school year with a class of 9th graders, and will add a high school grade each year, says Curtis. The students are mostly on the East Coast and many have outside pursuits such as sports that make the more flexible online schedule attractive. They will offer a mix of synchronous and asynchronous classes, with opportunities to interact with their Baltimore-based Bryn Mawr college counselors, teachers, and fellow students. Tuition is lower than in-person schooling.

Striking a Balance

School officials and teachers keep tinkering with the balance between using technologies that enhance learning and protecting the in-person and hands-on aspects of education. The best technologies encourage students to create, says Robert Anderson, who joined RPCS as academic technology specialist in November 2020 and recently was promoted to the new role of director of academic technology and innovation.

He likes technologies like Prezi and Canva, graphic design platforms that let students make interactive and animated presentations; and tools like Quizlet, which can be used to make in-class learning games that are particularly popular with middle-school students.

Some technologies even limit distractions to help students focus on in-person instruction. “I’m a tech person, but there are times when technology is not necessary,” Anderson says.

With computers now ubiquitous in classrooms, Anderson adds Go Guardian and Go Guardian Teacher to school-issued Chromebooks to keep students from surfing and scrolling instead of paying attention to the lesson.

Go Guardian blocks and filters content and monitors student activity, so if a student is looking for information about bullying or suicide, for example, it will notify appropriate staff. Go Guardian Teacher lets teachers limit computer use during class, for example making it so students can open just one tab or can only use Google Docs.

Chris Case, director of library services and instructional technology for the Park School, says when the pandemic began, the school made sure all faculty members had laptops with Google Classroom, an app that gives teachers an organized and paperless way to make, collect, and grade assignments.

“We implemented dozens of new teaching tools and web-based applications to support student learning,” Case says. He describes how Zoom, sometimes with a Swivl robot that automatically tracks an educator walking around a classroom, allowed teachers during the pandemic to use remote or virtual instruction, something that continues today when necessary or helpful.

“The pandemic quickly made us pivot to heavier technology use,” Case says. “But having spent time with the technology, we are now seeing ways in which we can continue to improve student outcomes and engage students with more play and activity-based applications.”

After two COVID-induced years on dry land, the synchronized swimmers of Baltimore’s campiest water ballet are once again backstroking, flutter-kicking and hamming it up big time this summer.

The theme for the latest installment of the Fluid Movement show is “Yacht Rocket! A Synchronized Swimming Space Spectacular,” and audiences at Riverside Park and Patterson Park pools can expect plenty of smooth seventies songs and riffs on mustachioed icons Burt Reynolds and the Captain (you know, of Captain and Tennille).

If there’s meaning in this madness, it surely must be that love will keep us together. Even after two years apart.

In March 2020, during the planning stage but before rehearsals for that year’s show, COVID blew the lifeguard whistle and pulled everyone out of the pools. During a pause that stretched from one summer to two, Fluid Movement moved to smaller but nicer headquarters, and kept its creative energy and connections flowing with events like dance classes that were online in 2020 and in person the following summer.

Artistic director Valarie Perez-Schere, a Fluid Movement founding member, says she never considered shutting down the beloved annual show, even though it’s always a ton of work.

“I am anxious and nervous but that’s par for the course,” she says. “It’s a huge project. Especially this past year, people would say the one thing getting me through [the pandemic] is knowing we’re going to do a water ballet this year. That’s a lot of pressure. It’s got to be incredible or it’s not worth doing.”

Starting in 1999, the nonprofit each year brings together about 75 swimmers of all ages and abilities, and over the course of the summer molds a ragtag group of volunteers into a well-oiled — and heavily costumed — aquatic machine.  

The genius, beauty and challenge of Fluid Movement is that all swimmers are welcome, as long as they are willing to spend a couple of summer nights a week rehearsing. “We’ll work with you wherever you’re at and we’ll make you shine at a show,” says Ashley Ball, a longtime Fluid Movement participant who is heavily involved in this year’s show.

Perez-Schere, Ball and others need to dream up costumes, create shows that accommodate various aquatic skill levels, and find that sweet balance between rigorous choreography and plain silliness. “It’s not like putting on a play, where you can buy a script,” says Perez-Schere.

The show also leans on a troupe of non-swimming poolside performers who bring laughs and story structure to the proceedings. Themes over the years have included science fairs, War and Peace, and the War of 1812.

Perez-Schere and Ball say they wanted this year’s show to be an escape from politics and pandemic. They started with the idea that the troupe could literally leave our burning, angry planet aboard a cruise ship.

“Then we realized we would need a lot of people on the cruise ship, we had a limitation on microphones,” says Ball. “So now it’s a yacht. From that, we were kicking around names and we both thought it would be fun to give directors the challenge to use yacht rock songs. I think it’s turned into something really silly, not something we’ve seen before.”

The show is divided into six segments, including one featuring children who learn their moves in a two-week summer camp.

Some things, inevitably, changed. New protocols at city recreation and parks pools requiring time-slot registration added a layer of flotsam to the proceedings. A climbing wall at the renovated Druid Hill Park Pool meant there was no longer room to roll in audience bleachers. Rehearsals are still there, but the shows are moving to pools at Riverside Park and Patterson Park.

For all the logistics and hassles, there seems to be a palpable joy that the show is once again afloat. “We are creating this experience that’s not like anything else. It is this piece of magic, it’s a bit of a spell that we cast,” says Perez-Schere.

As always, it promises to be an inclusive, entertaining and quintessentially Baltimore event. And as always, each show will end with the immortal words: “We are Fluid Movement, and So Are You.”

If you go: “YACHT ROCKET! A Synchronized Swimming Space Spectacular,” will be at Riverside Park Pool July 30 and 31, and Patterson Park Pool Aug. 5-7.

Tickets are $5-$10, or $20 for the night shows on Aug. 5 and 6. Tickets can be purchased online at this link. You CAN buy tickets as a walk-in, but it’s risky because the shows often sell out. Also, no cash for either tickets or for the fun merchandise, which this year includes a Fluid Movement fanny pack. Oh, and if you volunteer as a ticket-collector, you get a T-shirt and free admission.

I knew Dear Evan Hansen would be sad, but I didn’t expect it to be so funny.

A show about loneliness, depression and the warp of social media might seem too on-the-nose after two years of pandemic. Not so. Seeing it live, surrounded by a laughing, appreciative audience at our own beautiful, familiar Hippodrome Theatre, was sheer joy.

A woman behind me savored every exchange between the socially awkward main character and the friends and family in his life.

She laughed when Evan Hansen’s maybe-girlfriend accuses him of apologizing too much, and he can’t help but blurt out, “I’m sorry.” She let out an approving “um hum” when he called out his single mother for leaving him to fend for his own dinner most nights.

At intermission, another woman, chatting excitedly with her friends, raved about the singing voice of Stephen Christopher Anthony, the talented actor who gives the titular main character an endearing mix of sit-com timing and deadpan teen sarcasm that masks a desperate yearning to be seen and understood.

As it happens, I had tickets to see Dear Evan Hansen at the Hippodrome in 2020, but, well, you know what happened. COVID-19 came and all the theaters closed.

The Hippodrome re-opened in September 2021 with a full slate of its Broadway Series shows. The new run for Evan Hansen is just five days, ending March 20, but I was still surprised to see the theater nearly full on a Tuesday night.

People of all ages looked like they were having a great time, some more dressed up than others but all wearing face masks. Of course, we all had to show our vax cards to get in.

The reward for these simple and reasonable precautions is the opportunity to see a talented cast, led by Anthony, weave a complex story with nuanced characters, buckets of pathos and great songs.

The show is long, at two and a half hours (including intermission), but the plot skips along and the energy remains high. We are getting to know these characters, not watching them perform for us, following along in horror as small gestures and decisions reap agonizing consequences.

The simple, well-designed sets rotate between Evan’s teen-boy bedroom, complete with ugly plaid blanket and a box of depression meds on the nightstand; and rooms in the home of the wealthier Murphy family. Walls of screens project social media scrolls, sometimes frenzied and often serving as the focus of the action.

The story, in brief: Evan Hansen is a lonely, awkward 17-year-old living with overworked mom Heidi (an excellent Jessica E. Sherman). As an assignment from his therapist, he writes a letter addressed to himself. It ends with his despairing question: “Would anyone notice if I just disappear tomorrow?”

Another student, Connor Murphy (Nikhil Saboo) steals the letter. Connor then dies by suicide, and when the letter is found with his body, his parents Larry (John Hemphill) and Cynthia (Claire Rankin) assume their son wrote it to Evan.

Then comes the twist that you either buy or you don’t, that you either can forgive or you can’t.

Seeing that this fiction brings comfort to Larry and Cynthia, Evan not only lets it stand, but he elaborates on it, creating a completely false history of shared moments, with the help of “family friend” Jared (Alessandro Costantini) an elaborate trail of back-dated emails.

“All that it takes is a little reinvention,” Evan sings, dancing with the ghost of Connor in the powerful “Sincerely, Me.”

As a result, Evan’s life turns around. He becomes close with the Murphy family and dates Connor’s sister Zoe (charming Stephanie La Rochelle).

He and classmate Alana (Ciara Alyse Harris) create The Connor Project, a movement to keep Connor’s memory alive – mostly by making up stuff about him and what he would have wanted. Evan’s speech about Connor becomes a social media sensation, providing real comfort to strangers even though just about every word is a lie.

There are a lot of big themes here – about depression, loneliness, suicide, parenting, grief, honesty and social media.

And there are questions: Did Evan break his arm by falling out of a tree by accident? Or did he do it on purpose? And if a boy falls in the forest, and nobody is there to see it, did it happen? What if that boy lies and says his best friend rescued him?

“You Will be Found,” the moving finale to Act One, provides some deliberately unearned, feel-good answers: “Even when the dark comes crashing through/ When you need a friend to carry you/When you’re broken on the ground/You will be found.”

Dear Evan Hansen, with a book by Steven Levenson and music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, premiered July 2015 at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage. It debuted on Broadway in 2016, becoming a huge hit and making a star of angel-voiced, baby-faced Ben Platt, who played the title role.

Platt was also the lead in the significantly less-lauded 2021 Dear Evan Hansen movie, panned in part because Platt, who was 27 during filming, looked uncanny-valleyishly adult for the teenage role.

Anthony, with his slight build and his character’s teen-like perpetual embarrassment, doesn’t have that problem. His Evan is a floundering boy who is constantly sniffling and wiping away tears.

But I’d also argue that a live performance, and the energy of an audience, is just magical in a way that no movie can match.

So if you can, put on your mask, grab your vax card, and go.

Baltimore Fishbowl is thrilled to bring our readers stories and reviews of live performances throughout the Baltimore region, as venues are now Turning the Lights Back On.

Are you ready for some live performances?

Everyman Theatre hopes you are – with safety precautions, of course. And if you’re not, the theater has a plan for that too.

Because of COVID-19, Everyman is removing rows of seats, installing plastic barriers, and offering both in-person and online options for its 2020/2021 season.

“If you plan to come in, fantastic,” says Marissa LaRose, managing director. “If you don’t feel comfortable, that’s fine too. You can come later in the season, or you can watch at home. You can get an at-home subscription and just plan to get recordings of the six shows we’re doing, plus the six digital experiences we’re doing. That’s the major flexibility we are building in from the beginning.”

The theater at 315 West Fayette Street, is hoping for a November re-opening date for ‘Queens Girl: Black in the Green Mountains,’ starring resident company member Felicia Curry, though the actual opening date will depend on City of Baltimore pandemic restrictions.

The theater commissioned writer Caleen Sinnette Jennings to create the play as a follow-up to her popular ‘Queens Girl in the World’ and ‘Queens Girl in Africa.’

As it happens, all three are one-woman shows, which makes safety protocols such as testing and isolating the cast and crew easier, says LaRose. ‘Black in the Green Mountains’ is also not entirely new for Everyman. It played for a week before the theater closed in March, but will return with new staging to create more space between Curry and the audience.

“It was pure serendipity that we’re starting with a one-person show,” says LaRose, who began her job at Everyman on April 1, just as the city and nation were shutting down because of COVID-19.

If all goes according to plan, the season’s second play will be ‘Cry it Out,’ a comedy about parenting by Molly Smith Metzler. Then comes ‘Berta Berta,’ a love story set in 1920s Mississippi, written by Angelica Chéri; ‘Pipeline,’ a 2017 drama by Dominique Morisseau, about a mother fighting a school system that seems to be rigged against her teenage son; and adaptations of ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and ‘Steel Magnolias.’

Live performances will be recorded for online viewing, and six digital offerings, including staged readings and a musical event, are also in the works, says LaRose.

The old caveat about best-laid plans seems more apt than ever these days.

Founding artistic director Vincent M. Lancisi has seen a lot of his plans come to fruition since he began Everyman in 1990, six months before graduating from Catholic University. But planning for a special 30th anniversary season amid a pandemic has been an entirely new test.

His goal from the start was to create a local theater with a resident company of actors working together to deliver nuanced stories. And he succeeded.

“At the beginning, we didn’t have a theater, we didn’t have money. We had chutzpah, big dreams and a big vision. I had to learn what it means to be a nonprofit how to fund-raise, and what boards do.”

Everyman’s first show was ‘The Runner Stumbles,’ about a priest on trial for the murder of a nun. The venue was St. John’s United Methodist Church of Baltimore, on St. Paul Street, vacant after a fire and with no heat – a problem in the waning days of October. The homeless shelter downstairs provided blankets for shivering patrons.

After five years of bouncing from one Baltimore venue to another, putting on one show a year, Everyman converted a former bowling alley on Charles Street to a 170-seat theater. It moved to its new, larger home in 2013.

With the new protocols, capacity will be between 80 and 100 people, instead of its usual seating of 250.

The COVID-imposed limitations are frustrating, but the alternative is worse, says LaRose. “Our choices are to operate and stay connected with Baltimore under these conditions or just go dark as long as it will take.”

And there are silver linings, says Lancisi. “I always wanted Everyman to be a place for everyone. The digital work is providing a level of access that live performances don’t allow. Even when we get back, virtual streaming and virtual theater are not going away.”