[ Q u a i n t Q u a g m i r e s ]

Don't forget to check out Matthew's post too:  1984: The Musical (What I've Learned) I'm sure a lot of us heard about the fight at Urbana High School that happened not too long ago. Some members of the community thought that the violence was because of the school's too-lenient "restorative justice" policies. Regardless of whether this perspective is accurate, it's true that restorative justice needs to be employed with thought and care at school. Restorative justice: a system of criminal justice which focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community at large. Contrary to what you might have heard, restorative justice does not mean students don't experience consequences. As one teacher has written (see link at end of post), "A helpful guiding principle is that consequences should always be educational in nature rather than punitive." Rather than, for example, suspend a student when they

To wrap up the last semester of high school, my best friends and I filmed 1984: The Musical . I hope to explain some behind the scenes but most importantly what I've learned about 1984 and dystopian propaganda. A 2-3 page stress letter or a whole musical from scratch? Our group and I chose the latter, and honestly, the time we spent on the musical was most likely exponentially greater than the time we would've spent on the letter. Last quarter, my group filmed a rap battle music video, and we needed six constantly working brains to finish the video on time. With a musical, we add a new element to the mix: actual acting and singing. As soon as we got a vague idea of what our musical was going to be like, we started to write a script and the lyrics of different songs. Tim (maybe Dante) had the fascinating idea to write the script and song in the perspective of Big Brother. In other words, our whole musical would behave as propaganda and would tell the story of how Winston was