Thanksgiving Assembly Celebrates Traditions, Words

Head of School Dr. Rodney V. De Jarnett was joined earlier this week by a 'king', a 'queen', a 'turkey', and dozens of others to help to keep the tradition of the annual D-E All-School Thanksgiving Assembly vibrantly alive, blending memorable music, dance, and the spoken word.
  
To kick off the holiday season, the entire school gathered in the Large Gym in Modell's Sports Complex for the annual Thanksgiving Assembly, packed with various performances and videos. After the Lower, Middle and Upper Schools settled into their seats, the Upper School Orchestra performed Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, featured in the 1984 movie "Amadeus", under the direction of Performing Arts Department Chair Mr. John Littlefield.

Next, Dr. De Jarnett introduced the underlying theme of the assembly - spoken word. He then showed two videos of poets David Bowden and Sarah Kay.  These poets' video clips, "Start Something that Matters" (Bowden) and "If I Should Have a Daughter" (Kay), inscribed some inspirational words to the audience before the Lower School Chorus sang "Children of the World", with Ms. Milbauer conducting and Ms. Montroy at the keyboard.

Two more videos were shown: the first of an Animated Optical Illusion, the second an additional Sarah Kay video, "Hands", which addressed the fact that "hands learn more than minds do."

Then came a favorite of every Thanksgiving Assembly -- a visit from the Thanksgiving Assembly King, Queen and a Turkey.  Lower School music teacher Mary Heveran told the story of how Bert the Turkey danced his way to live another day, winning the approval of the King and Queen.  Lower School students Macri Leanza '22 (King)  Ally Abramson '23 (Queen) and Ben Tausner '22 (Turkey) were crowd pleasers as they then enacted the story.  

D-E's own spoken word group 3-Amigos (seniors Dan Garcia, Austin James and Avery Landau) then took the stage to share their original poem on giving thanks.  They were followed by Alex De Los Reyes '13 and other Upper School student members of CODES (Community Outreach at Dwight-Englewood School), along with several students from the Lower and Middle Schools, who reported on their Thanksgiving Food Drive efforts earlier this week  The students collected a truckload full of non-perishable food items and toiletries, along with gift cards, which were symbolically presented to Mr. Scottt Reddin of the Center for Food Action. Mr. Reddin expressed sincere appreciation on behalf of the Center for D-E School's annual tradition of giving food and monetary gifts to this critically important cause.  

Student Government President Ben Kaufman '13 then thanked the maintenance crew for their work in getting the school campus back to normal following Super Storm Sandy, before switching hats to introduce an original video created by D-E's student satirical group The Flea.

The final performance of the assembly had the Jazz Rock Ensemble featuring Nigel Lassiter '14 singing lead and Kylah Gonzalez '13 as lead backup, which left the audience with a warm feeling of gratefulness and much to be thankful for during this Thanksgiving break.