top left, clockwise: Katonah Elementary's third grade Country Crest Celebration opens with song. Increase Miller Elementary students step into African dance traditions. Meadow Pond Elementary's student ambassadors manage the school moolah. A John Jay High School’s Principles of Engineering student shows his model of Katonah’s Blue Dolphin. Technology teacher Steven Zoeller reveals the good news: the sixth grader's egg, traveling in a vehicle the students designed and built, made it through the crash test intact.

The students opened their eyes with a start to the rap-tap-tap of a drummer’s call. Peter Cutul, a visiting educator from Fort Montgomery State Historic Site, had asked Increase Miller Elementary's fourth graders to pretend they were sleeping in a tent or in barracks during the winter of 1776. He stood before them in dressed as a foot soldier in the American Revolution—wearing a linen waistcoat, breeches and tricornered hat—and playing a field drum.

“If you were in the Continental Army, this sound would wake you up, tell you when to eat and when to march,” he said. “The soldiers’ day was ruled by the drum.” MORE

Meadow Pond’s gym hummed with happiness as students decorated colorful classroom banners with pipe cleaners, stickers, markers, streamers, mini pompoms and personalized paper hearts. “Pass the glue,” “What do you think of this?” “I love it!” became the soundtrack to contentment.

It was the Pond’s first ever Banner Making Blowout—a surprise celebration of exemplary behavior, as evidenced by the full Moose Moolah bin in the cafeteria. MORE

From the moment the students quietly sat down, the drums called out from the stage and got them moving! The children spontaneously clapped and bopped in time to the rhythms—the faster the beats, the bigger their smiles!

The three visiting artists of Ferama invited students to learn about West Africa through its rich traditions of music and dance. The enrichment was arranged by Katonah Elementary's PTO as an experiential celebration of Black History Month. MORE

What do Super Bowl ads and Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre have in common? This is the uncommon conversation in Kelsey Madonna’s seventh grade social studies class this week.

Comparing images in the media just prior to the Revolutionary War to those students consume is just one way that Madonna makes the choices the colonists faced real for the class. Her students recently created videos to demonstrate their understanding of economics in Colonial America. Coming soon, the class will plan a hypothetical water balloon fight between seventh-grade teams, as if they were holding it within the building, applying the war strategies of the American Revolution! MORE

Students may have come to John Jay’s theater expecting a heartening story of justice prevailing in the criminal justice system. What they received was a first-hand look at the work to be done and a call to empathy and action wherever their lives took them.

“Be an agent of change,” Dateline producer Dan Slepian and 2024 Pulitzer finalist said to the students. “Be the person right now who does the right thing. The world needs all hands on-deck. Stand for something larger than yourself.”

Slepian, creator of the "Letters from Sing Sing" podcast, is also a Katonah resident and father of John Jay alumni. He visited the school on February 28 with his friend and exonerated individual Eric Glisson. The powerful presentation was arranged by English teacher Vicky Weiss as a way to support student voice and agency. MORE

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SCHOOLS: John Jay High School | John Jay Middle School | Increase Miller Elementary School | Katonah Elementary School | Meadow Pond Elementary School | Katonah-Lewisboro School District