A highlight of the Westminster curriculum, the Upper School kicked off 2025 with the 10th JanTerm year of JanTerm, marking an important milestone in the program’s history. JanTerm is a three-week period in January where students select a unique course that would not otherwise be taught during the regular school year. During these three weeks, students take fun field trips and fully dedicate their school hours to the topic of their JanTerm course. At the end of JanTerm, each course has a final project that students must complete—ranging from magazines, presentations, videos, or even shows.
In the past, there have been many art JanTerms including Music and the Movies and Stringing It All Together. For the past couple of years, Live Performances: Experiment, Collaborate, and Present! has been one of the most popular artistic JanTerms.
Many students continually sign up for this course because of their love for music or the prospect of having a JanTerm with a friend. Some students even sign up for Live Performances as a way to try out a new hobby.
“I recently started trying to play an instrument, maybe sing, and I really wanted to see what it was like in terms of JanTerm,” said junior Jack Munger.
The Live Performances JanTerm usually spent its days learning about an aspect or style of music, allotting enough time to make sure students always had the opportunity to practice these new musical skills; however, Live Performances switched up this routine during the second week of JanTerm when they traveled to New Orleans.
“We got to see a lot of the culture in New Orleans and how music affects everyone there,” said Munger.
Live Performances’ final project was a show displaying all of the students’ musical skills. The show allowed every student to perform a song of their choosing in front of an audience. Even for students with no musical background, the JanTerm provides enough experience to give students the confidence needed to perform in front of their classmates.
“This JanTerm has helped me just realize it really doesn’t matter that much, wherever you are in the [musical] process,” said Munger. “So, starting the new instruments, as long as you’re confident and you know you’ve put in the work, it doesn’t really matter.”
Another extremely popular art JanTerm has been Raku Ceramics & The Japanese Tea Ceremony: Clay, Fire, Water. The Raku JanTerm combines the learning of ceramics with the tea culture across the world, specifically in terms of the history of the Japanese tea ceremony.
Their major field trip of the JanTerm was going to the High Museum. The trip to the High was much more inspiring to the students compared to the usual field trips, partly due to the focus on ceramics.
“They [the High Museum] had some ceramic pieces and teapots which I thought were really interesting,” said sophomore Elizabeth Quillian. “We also had time to just kinda go look around at the other artwork they had, and I love art, so it was really nice to just kinda walk around.”
The Raku JanTerm’s final project were small group presentations where students could choose a topic that they were interested in learning more about. At the end of the course, students also had many ceramics they could showcase as well. The ceramics mainly consisted of tea bowls; however, the tea bowls differed in technique. Students were able to learn how to throw tea bowls on a wheel, hand-carve bowls, and even hand-build some.
For students who enjoyed taking the ceramics during the school year, the Raku JanTerm is a great opinion to build upon their craft.
“It was nice to have this dedicated period to work on my ceramics skills,” said Quillian.
This year, a new global JanTerm was created: The Culture of Clothing. This JanTerm studies the art form of fashion, specifically through the perspectives of language, history, business, and science.
The inspiration for this JanTerm came after history teacher Christine Chen and dean of policy and programs Tiffany Boozer bonded in the Law and Order JanTerm, having the same interest in the historical and business side of fashion.
“Once you’ve done a JanTerm for several years, you’re ready to try something new,” said Boozer. “She [Chen] and I talked about doing a class, almost our fantasy class of the history and business of clothing. We put together a proposal and submitted it and we’re lucky enough to be able to have the course run.”
Later, the decision was made for the course to be a global JanTerm in which they traveled to Paris. The Culture of Clothing JanTerm decided to partner with the language department, allowing French teacher Elizabeth Hanson to have the opportunity to teach the course also.
The addition of a trip to Paris motivated even more students to apply for the JanTerm as it piqued students’ niche interests.
“I was interested in fashion and I wanted to know how fashion was different in France,” said sophomore Sofia Cha.
During the first week of JanTerm, the class started by learning about the history of clothing and going on field trips to complete data collections on how clothing is sold.
For both teachers and students, the highlight of the course happened during the second week of JanTerm: the global trip to Paris.
“I lived in Paris for a year and a half and I had never discovered or never been to some of the museums we visited,” said Hanson. “For me, it was like a whole new part of Paris that I had never seen, which was really incredible.”
All of these art JanTerms provided students and teachers alike with dedicated time to discover new places and new art, which is ultimately what both art and JanTerms are all about.
Edited by Kavya Athota
