Nueva students will have the opportunity to read a scene from award-winning playwright Kate Rawson’s new production Red Basin and to provide feedback on different potential endings to the work, and Carson Middleton (9th grade) will interview Kate about the process of creating Red Basin and the environmental dystopian themes it explores. Co-sponsored by Nueva’s Environmental Club. Red Basin is a multi-media production about a fraught mother-daughter relationship, Red Basin takes place in Silicon Valley ten years from now, when only the privileged get to experience the natural world in real life, everybody else can only wander through a forest courtesy of a virtual-reality headset. We watch thirteen-year-old Kelyn discover what has been stolen from her and ask what happens when our connection with nature is severed, how much we care about that and how much technology can be a replacement for it. It is an adventure story about adaptation, extremism and loss of innocence.

Room 240. Middle/Upper School.

Kate Rawson is an actor, voiceover artist and playwright who likes to tell uncompromising, innovative and honest stories about contemporary life. She won a UK Academy Award for her radio drama about baby loss (Little Blue Lines) and is currently developing Red Basin a multi-media stage play about tech, trees and being a teenager in 2033.

Learn about how an artist steals materials and ideas from the world around her and brings them into her studio. Participate in an activity involving Venetian red oil paint.

Room 346. Middle/Upper School.

Sally K. Smith is an artist working in Berkeley, California. She creates charcoal from unique materials such as money, chocolate and poppies. The charcoal is used, sometimes also with oil paint and other materials, to create meaningful compositions. Sally also paints landscapes and portraits, usually with oil paint on linen.

Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a lawyer? They just stand in a courtroom and argue with one another, right? Nope! Lawyers do all sorts of interesting things. Their legal practices are often as wide ranging as people themselves: lawyers advocate, teach, mediate, judge, represent, research, analyze, legislate and more. Join us for this interactive, problem-solving panel that will help you understand what it is to be a lawyer, and figure out what they do all day!

Room 217. 7th-12th grade.

Duo Chen is currently the Chief IP Counsel at Box. In addition to working as an in-house attorney at a number of enterprise software companies, she also worked as a litigator in a law firm setting, and as a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Before becoming an attorney, she was an electrical engineer in the telecommunications field.
Dan Fisher-Owens is a partner at boutique law firm Berliner Corcoran & Rowe. He has practiced law since the very late 20th century, focusing on the regulation of US exports of high tech items, such as semiconductors and cryptographic items, as well as compliance with US economic sanctions against countries like Cuba, Iran, and Russia. Before going to law school, he earned a Masters in the history of the medieval Middle East and worked as a translator for human rights organizations.
Michael J. Kaufman is currently Dean and Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law. Prior to joining Santa Clara University, Dean Kaufman served as Dean of Loyola University Chicago School of Law for five years and as Loyola’s Acting Provost and Chief Academic Officer. Dean Kaufman is a renowned teacher and scholar who has published 39 books and countless law review articles in three areas: education law, equity, policy, and pedagogy; securities regulation and litigation; and civil procedure and dispute resolution. A dedicated and award-winning public servant, Dean Kaufman was elected three times and served for twelve years on the Board of Education for a diverse school district in the Chicago area. He founded Loyola’s Rodin Center for Social Justice, Institute for Investor Protection, Rule of Law Institute, and Education Law and Policy Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening racial equity, special education, school discipline reform, early childhood education, and anti-bullying. Dean Kaufman also has delivered bar examination review lectures to more than one million law school graduates throughout the country, including in California.
Joshua Levenberg is currently Chief Counsel at PG&E, the company that supplies gas and electricity to your home. He handles all kinds of issues there, ranging from protecting PG&E’s computer network and the electric grid from hackers, helping to make sure trees can be trimmed and cut down to prevent fires, to making sure that PG&E is following all of the federal rules that apply to energy companies. Before working at PG&E, Josh worked at law firms as an intellectual property litigator and served as a pro bono attorney representing Tibetan refugees trying to get asylum in the United States. Before becoming an attorney, Josh worked for a research and consulting firm that focused on telecommunications issues in developing countries (Josh worked in Latin America) and got a Masters degree in International Economics.
Margaret Lynch is a child advocate and former attorney with a solo practice in San Francisco representing both children and parents in the child welfare system, and children in the family law system. She also engaged in pro bono work representing children in school expulsion hearings. Before going to law school, Margaret studied literary theory in graduate school, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Test your knowledge of all things geography in this fast-paced trivia GeoBee!

Room 240. Middle/Upper School students.

Rachel is the Nueva communications and website manager and ‘resident triviamaster.’ During COVID lockdown, Rachel facilitated and led more than 25 trivia games for members of the Nueva community. She loves trivia and seeing how much Nueva community members know!

The famous American poet Robert Frost supposedly said, “Poetry is what is lost in translation.” Although he never actually said that, it is a truism that something is always lost when translating from one language to another and that poetry is particularly difficult to translate. What, though, is actually lost in translation? More importantly, what is gained? In this workshop, we’ll consider these and other compelling questions regarding the theory and practice of literary translation. We’ll also try our hand at translating some poems from Japanese and Greek. As we will see, poetry can be found in translation, not just lost. No knowledge of Japanese or Greek required.

Room 245. Upper School students.

Chris Scott (Ph.D., Stanford University) has been teaching Japanese, Japanese culture, and translation studies at Nueva since 2014. He is also an active and accomplished translator himself, having published three book-length translations from Japanese, including most recently Kim Tal-su’s “The Trial of Pak Tal and Other Stories” (Seoul Selection, 2022).
Ted Theodosopoulos (Ph.D., MIT) has been teaching Math and Economics at Nueva since 2017. He designed and taught a seminar in linguistics at the Saint Ann’s School in NYC, and he led a workshop on Logic and Language at Nueva. For the past sixteen years, Ted has been writing poetry, in both English and Greek, and has worked on several literary translations, most recently Dora Tsogia’s new play, “The Peach Tree” (premiered in Athens, 9/14/21).

Sign up for a Collage & Writing exercise that is rooted in the Expressive Arts Therapy tradition (7th-12th grade). We’ll be using both hemispheres of our brain to get curious about how art/imagery/free flow writing reveal parts of ourselves. We will go over some agreements – kind/safe space and confidentiality are the 2 key ones. Participants will collage on a 5×7 sized cardboard piece, then using process and a prompt, participants will write about what they see in the finished piece. Participants will go over what they wrote, highlight the key ideas, and do a dyad/small group share. Volunteers can share with the larger group if they choose.

Room 346. 7th–12th grade. Max 12 students. Sign up at check-in desk.

Tina Mizukami, MA, LMFT, RYT-200 believes everyone has the innate ability to heal and is moving towards wholeness and resolution. She has been in private practice for over 10 years, worked as a Bereavement Counselor for Pathways (hospice) and was an instructor with The Art of Yoga Project, bringing yoga and art to youths in the San Mateo County Juvenile Justice system.

Join our panel of Nueva parent authors for a conversation about life as a writer and the journey from pen to publication.

Main Stage. Middle/Upper School students.

Ateret Haselkorn writes poetry and fiction. She is the author of the novel Call Me Obie.
Trina Currier is the author of Kai’s Journey to Gold Mountain. She is the parent of a junior.
Yangsze Choo is the author of The Ghost Bride, now a Netflix series, The Night Tiger, and the upcoming, The Fox Wife. She is the parent of a senior.
George Barnett is a parent of twin middle schoolers, who writes about strategy in all walks of life, both in book form and in a Substack newsletter.
Linda Woo is the author of a picture book, Ava’s Triumph. She is the parent of an 8th grader.
Ariel Balter is an academic, essayist, fiction writer and author of the memoir, The Maternity Labrinth. She is currently searching for a publisher for her novel, Yeshiva Girls. Her daughter is in 10h grade.
Eric Ball is the father of a recent alumnus. He co-authored, Unlocking the Ivory Tower, and is the author of Silicon Galaxy, a science fiction story.

A brief presentation about the history and current criminal justice.

Room 217. Middle/Upper School students.

Ayaan Dhruv is a seventh grade student who is very interested in criminal justice. His recent paoper on the topic was awarded the Gold Key (top honors) at the Scholastic Art and Writing awards.

Nueva students Oliver Cho, Kayla Ling, and Jacob McNab in conversation with documentary filmmaker Damani Baker.

Room 245. Middle/Upper School students.

Damani Baker is a filmmaker best known for The House on Coco Road (2016), Still Bill (2009) and 100 Years of Women (1999). Baker’s more than 20-year directing career includes work that spans museum exhibits, feature documentaries, music videos, and advertising. Most recently, in his critically acclaimed feature, The House on Coco Road, Baker combines family Super-8 with archival news and family interviews to weave his mother’s personal story with broader historical threads in order to tell a story of migration and the Grenada Revolution. The House On Coco Road and his first feature, Still Bill—on the life and music of the legendary Bill Withers—have been critically acclaimed and have enjoyed worldwide distribution on Showtime, Netflix, and BBC. He is a tenured professor at Sarah Lawrence College, where he teaches filmmaking to a diverse group of creatives and ensuring that stories from all communities continue to be told with grace, dignity, and power.

In an era of tribalism, civil discourse is essential. “Red Flag” will teach youth about affective polarization and techniques to engage respectfully in political dialogue. Through a role-play simulation, participants will identify logical fallacies, speak persuasively, and compromise. We hope this activity inspires students to become politically engaged and foster empathy at Nueva, and beyond.

Room 217. Middle School students; all ages welcome.

Olivia Chiang is a junior at The Nueva School. Struck by the severe polarization plaguing our political system, she founded the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Let’s Talk Unite in 2021 to raise awareness about polarization’s ramifications and transform the way we approach political discourse. She leads local workshops on identifying bias and manipulation, designs open-source conversation guides, and hosts a podcast featuring interviews with leading researchers concerning the intersection between polarization and corporate interests, vaccine hesitancy, and religious identity. Olivia is also dedicated to promoting positive educational experiences for all students. While volunteering with the nonprofit 100 Days of Conversations, she studied 100+ conversations on youth education and co-presented at the National Department of Education and Assessment for Learning Conference. Long term, Olivia aspires to conduct transformative research that disrupts our echo chambers and reshapes our political dialogue.

Dr. Lerer will discuss the history of the English language, including the evolution of pronunciation, how we still owe so much to the past, and how the study of these past English works and worlds helps us understand the literary imagination today. We will discuss why the humanities matter, and why studying literature in a STEM world makes you a different kind of (not necessarily better, though) person, and how to explain to your parents – who may want you to be a doctor or an engineer – why you may really want to be a poet.

Room 247. Upper School students.

Seth Lerer is an American scholar and specialist in historical and critical analyses of the English language, particularly Geoffrey Chaucer. He is a Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, where he served as the Dean of Arts and Humanities from 2009 to 2014. He previously held the Avalon Foundation Professorship in Humanities at Stanford University. Lerer won the 2010 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism for Children’s Literature: A Readers’ History from Aesop to Harry Potter.

Write your own Blackout Poem! Blackout poems start with a written piece of text from a book, newspaper, or magazine. The poet blacks out words, in order to come up with their very own poem. Blackout poetry pages give new meanings to old texts, and the interplay of those texts often creates new and surprising meanings.

Room 340. Middle/Upper School students.

Hailey Feldman is an 11th grader at Nueva High School. 

Join Katie Goldstein ’12 to learn how to publish your own stories! She will share her journey to create, publish, and market two self-published books, and the tools and tricks to create and distribute your own story.

Room 345.

Katie Goldstein is a lifelong reader turned pandemic author. Her children’s picture books, Ottie the Otter and Sell Me A Story are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. As a kid, she tried to read all the books in the Nueva (’12) & Crystal Springs Uplands (’16) libraries before adventuring to the East Coast to explore a new library at Dartmouth (’20). Currently, she moonlights as an author, but during the day, you can find her reading, working as a product manager for Microsoft, or exploring.