Spring 2019 Intensive Learning Options: Local
BAYSHORE DISCOVERY PROJECT
At Bayshore Discovery Project in Port Norris, MFS students learn about the Delaware Bay wetlands ecosystem and oyster industry and help restore New Jersey’s tall ship, the AJ Meerwald. The group provides hundreds of hours of service work aboard the Meerwald, scraping, sanding, painting, and varnishing the boat to prepare her for the next sailing season when she is used for fundraising and educational programs.
BLACKSMITHING
Creativity at its most elemental! This program invites students to work with a master blacksmith to learn the basic techniques of making iron tools or artworks on an outdoor coal forge. There is also space and time for crafting wood-turned objects, especially if the weather doesn’t permit outdoor blacksmith work. We are also hoping to add a night of camping on-site at the historic Harriton House, to extend our working time and enrich the experience. Students will learn a variety of techniques and be given the opportunity to choose their own projects to complete.
CHINESE CULTURE
We will explore Asia, including Eastern Asia, Southern Asia, Southern-Western Asia, and Western Asia. Students will learn the traditions, food, clothing, arts, music, architecture, and so on. This program will include trips to local Asian communities in the area and feature guest lecturers on campus.
FOOD: COOKING, CUSTOMS, and CULTURE
Preparing a meal is a universal experience that connects families and communities all around the world. The types of food found in these various cultures have been transformed into a fantastic array of distinctive cuisines shaped by geography, history, and ingenuity spanning many centuries. Food: Cooking, Customs, & Culture will offer students an opportunity to learn how to cook dishes found throughout the world, while exploring and celebrating the rich food options found in our local community. Students will also research and examine their own family recipes and traditions, which will be shared through stories, pot-lucks, and culinary challenges.
LET’S SEW FOR BABIES!
Make a real impact in the lives of babies who live nearby while learning (or improving) a valuable life skill! Let’s Sew for Babies partners with the Philadelphia chapter of the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), an organization that works with low-income women who are pregnant with their first child, helping these vulnerable young clients achieve healthier pregnancies and births, stronger child development, and a path toward economic self-sufficiency. Whether you have strong sewing skills or have never sewn, you can provide adorable clothes for the children to help them on their way! In addition to sewing clothes, we will visit the NFP to learn more about the organization and meet the nurses who visit and provide support for the moms. At the end of the week, we will pack up our creations and celebrate with a delicious meal.
MIND & BODY — AN EXPLORATION OF YOGA, FOOD, ART and MINDFULNESS
Enjoy your time during Intensive Learning furthering your understanding of mindfulness and inspire a daily practice of well-being. We will be learning to step away from daily stresses and the intensities of everyday life for the purpose of renewal. By the end of our week you will have experienced many ideas and techniques to cultivate calm and a more balanced mind.
We will focus on using yoga, mediation, art and eating for our bodies and mind to begin (or continue) our connection with our self. Trips off-campus will include visiting yoga studios, meditation in outdoor settings and hikes in local parks depending on the weather (Ocean City, Pine Barrens and Wissahickon Valley Park are possibilities). We will also have access to a kitchen to develop our skills at cooking meals and snacks that feed our body and soul. During rest times we will have art projects that tap into our creativity and releasing our imagination.
There is a fee of approximately $100 for this IL group. The fee goes towards yoga classes, art supplies and food. Breakfast, snacks and lunch will be provided each day. Students will need to have clothes comfortable for doing yoga, yoga mat, reusable water bottle and comfortable hiking shoes (sneakers are sufficient). Your guide, Nicole Edmund, is a certified vinyasa yoga instructor (RYT 200 with Yoga Alliance).
MULTICULTURAL PHILADELPHIA
Come spend a week visiting diverse neighborhoods in Philly, learning the city’s history through the lens of different cultures and experiencing the current rich, multicultural tapestry of the city through daily field trips. Famed Philly chef Joseph Poon will lead us on a personal tour of Chinatown, complete with a dim sum lunch and a demonstration of fruit carving. We will tour the shops of the Italian Market with a professional guide, and take a trolley tour of important sites in Philly’s African-American history. More exciting experiences will be announced as we get closer to the week! We’ll also spend some time talking about our own stories and identities. Expect to spend the week exploring, eating, and bonding.
MUSEUMS: A PEEK BEHIND THE SCENES
Ever thought about being a museum curator? A zookeeper? Ever wondered how all that cool stuff got into those glass cases? Do you just love going to museums?
In this Intensive Learning, we’ll be looking at museums, but in a different way. We’ll be looking at what happens behind the scenes: what sorts of decisions are made before things go on display? What is it that curators want you to understand as you look at the objects they’ve chosen? Are there hidden messages that get to us subliminally? What ethical issues are museums wrestling with? How do museums acquire the artifacts? Should some of them be returned to the peoples they came from?
We will visit four different museums in the area, including, we hope, the Philadelphia Zoo, the American Philosophical Society Museum, the Penn Archaeology Museum, and Smithville Park. At each of them you will have the opportunity to hear from professionals who work there, to ask questions, and to consider how this form of popular culture conveys messages and meanings to visitors.
PINE BARRENS EXPERIENCE
The Pine Barrens Intensive Learning will provide an opportunity for students to learn the unique history and culture of the nearby “Pinelands,” the first National Reserve created by Congress. The area has also been designated by the United Nations an International Biosphere Reserve. Yet the area is little known, even to people who live nearby. We will spend time hiking and exploring the forest as well as learning about the intriguing history of the area, including the Jersey Devil and the indigenous “Piney” population.
“The quantity and variety of significant religious landmarks in Philadelphia is unsurpassed in the nation. The early establishment of religious freedom in William Penn’s colony allowed people of many faith traditions to construct houses of worship.” These congregations and their meeting places have remained an integral part of the city’s physical and spiritual fabric for more than three centuries.”
Philadelphia Historic Preservation Corporation
Students will explore the places held sacred to a selection of world religions and gain insight on the diverse ways in which people worship. Students will have the opportunity to visit largest Friends meeting house in the in the US, Arch Street Friends Meeting House, a Buddhist Shrine, a Mosque, and Congregation Mikveh Israel. Spirituality through art may also be experienced by viewing the French Cloisters, and visiting medieval and Renaissance Catholic art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
SOUTH JERSEY SERVICE
South Jersey Service will provide an opportunity for students to volunteer and serve at a variety of organizations with varying missions. Students will learn how they can serve in multiple ways and about the different kinds of need in our region.
Spring 2019 Intensive Learning Options: Overnight Domestic
GIVE KIDS THE WORLD, FLORIDA
Give Kids The World Village is an 84-acre, nonprofit “storybook” resort in Central Florida. Here, children with critical illnesses and their families are treated to weeklong, cost-free vacations. There, we will serve food, run rides, and escort families around the village. Provided we have time, we will also spend half a day at the 2nd Harvest Food Bank in Orlando. They provide snacks, lunches, and dinners to city public schools. Finally, after a hard working 4 days, we will enjoy some fun at Magic Kingdom.
PUERTO RICO: HURRICANE MARIA RELIEF
This is a Service/Culture/Adventure. During the day we will work in the community of Villa del Rio on home construction projects. We will mix concrete, build floors, walls, staircases and more. In the evenings we will have time to swim, listen to music, shop in the markets of Old San Juan and do a little salsa dancing. We’ll end the trip with an evening kayak excursion through the waters of the magnificent Fajardo bio-luminescent bay. This trip is a real “work hard/play hard” experience that has been organized by Global Works to help with the continued restoration of the beautiful and culturally rich island of Puerto Rico.
Spring 2019 Intensive Learning Options: International
CUBA: LA IGLESIA de los AMIGOS
Experience language and cultural immersion, as well as service in an active Quaker community in Holguin, Cuba. Participants will have an opportunity to work with locals on a variety of building projects, take day trips to local points of interest, and meet with youth groups to better understand each others’ culture and life experiences.
This trip was born from a 2009 Global Service Project presented by the George School. Mrs. Washington traveled as part of a 13 member team to work in a small Cuban Quaker community in Holguín, Cuba. In 2010, she co-led this trip with MFS students for the first time, building upon a relationship between this community in Holguín and New Garden Friends School in Greensboro, NC, and the George School going back to 1978. This Quaker community has endured the test of time. All 3 of our schools have “sustained” the program since 2010.
CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY IN MARTINIQUE
The IL Martinique Immersion program is targeted towards students of the French language as well as any student interested in diversity work in our community. During our eight day trip, students will explore the complex identities (with a focus on black, creole, and métis identity) of the residents of the island nation. Martinique is a small but complex place reflecting the impact of the African diaspora and the island’s colonial relationship to France. Students will have the opportunity to develop cultural competence through a four day home stay with a Martiniquan family, visits to the Cap 110 slave memorial, and exploration of other historical sites focusing on the role of sugar cane in the island’s colonial past. Students will unpack and affirm their own identity as MFS students through service work at one of Martinique’s French public schools, sharing local products and practices along the way.
IRELAND, WALES & ENGLAND
Students will travel to Killarney, Ring of Kerry and visit a Sheep farm and travel to Dublin via Blarney Castle. They will visit Blarney Castle before going to Dublin. In Dublin they will visit Phoenix Park, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Trinity College to see Book of Kells. Then to O’Connell Street, Parnell Square, Henry Street. Next they will take a Ferry to Holyhead across Irish Sea. Their next stop will be North Wales where students will visit Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Snowdonia National Park. London guided sightseeing tour: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Tower Bridge, Hyde Park, St. Paul’s Cathedral Classic fish & chips dinner.
MATH AND SCIENCE IN GREECE AND ITALY
We will travel to Athens, Greece for four nights. We will spend two days exploring the sites of Athens. We take a day trip to Delphi to visit the Temple of Apollo. Another day we will take a cruise in the Saronic Gulf, visiting some of the nearby islands. Then we will fly to Rome and take a motor coach to Florence, where we spend three nights. In Florence we will spend two full days exploring the beautiful city, including some museums.