Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Cards
/Anisley, a second-year in Ms. DiFrancesco’s class, suggested that they celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday yesterday. The whole class decided to make handmade birthday cards!
Blog
Inspired by COVID-19
/A little covid humor and lightheartedness.... 4yr old requests mom for a “coronavirus hairstyle” 🦠
CyberPatriots Round #2
/In the middle of exams and end-of-semester assignments, four VIMSIA students participated in the second round of this year's CyberPatriot competition.
After a successful, socially-distanced but in-person Round 1, the team adapted to current conditions and went with a "Zoom in" version for Round 2. At the same time, this did create additional technical difficulties. The team could persevere with help from the school admin to help provide all the resources we could need. Thank you to the team’s Technical Mentor, Marc Boumedine, for last-minute firewall help. Thank you, especially to the team members who could participate: Mimi Boumedine, Lindsay Barr, Divina Kamara, and Amelie Zucker.
Even though these IB students are overwhelmed with all of their end of semester exams and assignments, yet they showed up via Zoom today, ready to go. Rebecca Hoffart, Cyber Patriot Coach, said, “I am so, so proud of them! Due to the technical issues of trying to control virtual images remotely via Zoom, we had to mostly work on only one computer image challenge at a time (normally we work on three at a time for up to six hours!)”
Typically full points in this competition on three computer images would be 300 points - with 6 hours available for each image if the team works on them all at once. Working on one at a time, the team only had 2 hours available per image. So a perfect score under those conditions might be 100 points at the absolute best.
Hoffart said, “I am so proud to say that our team scored 135 points today! This is a testament to the team members’ ability to overcome frustrations and carry on, even when the circumstances are quite difficult. According to the current Cyberpatriot scoreboard, our team competed for 5 hours and 16 minutes, via Zoom, on a Sunday, the week before midterm exams. As a reference point, the SAT exam lasts 3 hours. We have some amazing students at PGIA, and the schools were very well represented in Round 2 of CyberPatriot.”
The Nutcracker
/"This week in our Elementary music classes, students learned about Tchaikovsky's ballet, "The Nutcracker." As part of our lesson, students learned a routine set to the music of "Russian Dance" from Act II of the ballet." - Ms. Joie Byrd Video courtesy of Joie Byrd.
🎄 Salt Dough Ornaments 🎄
/Making salt dough ornaments is a hands-on team effort!
Congratulations Ms. Belshe! Graduation Ceremony - UVI Class of 2020!!
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This is one happy young lady!
Ms. Alayna Belshe, our Communications Coordinator, graduated in the Spring of 2020 with a major in Communications. She was also awarded Honors in Foreign Language (Spanish, by the way). Due to COVID, the ceremony was postponed until today’s Virtual Event that was live-streamed around the world.
We are so proud of Alayna and so thankful that she has chosen to work here at her Alma Mater.
Alayna says, “I am so grateful to VIMSIA, not only did I start my educational journey here but also my career! My joy of learning began right here on these grounds and I am so happy to be here every day.”
Nurse's Notes: COVID Guidance
/As you know, we have had a lot of COVID discussion this week on campus, at the Town Hall, and even a Testing Event. It's been a busy week as we try to support our families and staff in staying well! Here are a few links that I thought would be helpful to you be up to date on the latest guidance and information from the CDC regarding Covid prevention, and particularly with respect to infection in children:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/children/protect-children.html
https://www.cdc.gov/mis-c/index.html
We're in this together - thank you for your support and have a wonderful and safe weekend!
Yours in Health,
Nurse Sally
Elementary Students Participate in Hour of Code
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This week, the elementary students participated in the global week long event “Hour of Code”. Ms. Peggy and Mr. Jobsis facilitated students working through coding exercises found on the hour of code website. The students loved these, so feel free to let them show you what they learned by accessing the hour of code “learn” page - https://hourofcode.com/us/learn. All of the students coded using the “Beaver Achiever” and “Space Adventure” apps. But, if you go to this page with them, there are so many great options! Take your pick.
For the Lower Elementary students, we were also able to work with our little Cubetto - the adorable codable robot that you can program to trek along his/her colorful floormat. This was also a big hit. This little guy lets you program using a coding board and multifunctional tiles - which provide the inputs.
Hour of Code Website and Info
Excerpt:
The Hour of Code started as a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify "code", to show that anybody can learn the basics, and to broaden participation in the field of computer science. It has since become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science, starting with 1-hour coding activities but expanding to all sorts of community efforts. Check out the tutorials and activities. This grassroots campaign is supported by over 400 partners and 200,000 educators worldwide.
Nurse's Notes: Bubbles...and overlapping Bubbles...what does this mean in a Covid world??
/Bubbles...and overlapping Bubbles...what does this mean in a Covid world??
By now, we have all heard of the term “bubbles” to refer to our own personal pods of household members or close friends whom we consider to be “safe” to interact within close quarters.
But here’s the thing about Covid Bubbles...We all have multiple bubbles, and they can overlap with each other. Think about this: Adults have a home bubble, a social bubble, and maybe a work bubble, even a gym bubble. Kids have a home, social, and school bubble. Maybe some kids from school are also in their home/social bubble, but there are other kids in that bubble who are NOT in the school bubble. Same with the grown-ups.
The other thing is that, like real bubbles, Covid bubbles are penetrable. They can “pop” easily. And all it takes is one overlapping bubble to pop a multitude of other bubbles. This is what we see right now happening in our community. And it does pose a threat to our ability to maintain a Covid free campus at VIMSIA.
Holiday time in a Covid world is proving to be tough to navigate. Nobody wants to miss visiting our loved ones or missing out on celebrating an event. It is our human nature to desire to gather together and socialize. Parents, teachers, students are all being forced to consider their actions within the community, knowing the consequences that could arise and affect others in their various bubbles. At VIMSIA, we care for our entire community's wellbeing but have a special obligation to our “School Bubble.” It takes commitment from ALL of us to prevent our school bubble from being “popped.”
So please - do your part, play your role in protecting ALL of your Bubbles. Comply with mask-wearing, sanitizing, social distancing, and don’t get lax, even if you think you are safe. Because as we are finding out, Covid-19 knows how to break all the rules. We are all going through many disappointments this year. As someone said to me today, “There is nothing about Covid that doesn’t suck”! Let’s support each other to get through these times to continue to provide on-campus learning, stay healthy, and be together next year for the celebrations that we all love.
Yours in Health,
Nurse Sally
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
PGIA/Montessori Collaboration
/Ms. Kessler (Science Teacher in the PGIA) visits Ms. Satter’s class to give a lesson on how to use the compound microscope.
Toddler Concentration
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Video shared from Ms. Stocking’s classroom. Ronan demonstrates the concentration capabilities of toddler age students.
Pinhole Photography - 8th Grade Design Class
/Ms. Jamie Truax shares a project her 8th graders are embarking on in their Design Class.
“The 8th graders began a pinhole photography project this quarter. The class started by studying the science of seeing and understanding how pinhole photography works. Basically, you need a black box with a pinhole and a shutter. When the shutter is open, light enters the pinhole and projects an image upside down and left side right on the opposite side of the box. Using special resin-coated photo paper, the image will "stick" on the paper once developed.
I knew it would be difficult to find a developer/fixer on the island, so we made our own using natural ingredients like mint tea, vitamin C tablets, baking soda, and lemon juice. I created a darkroom by finding a very dark closet on campus and a red lightbulb because the photo paper is insensitive to red light.
The students load their cameras with one piece of photo paper in the darkroom and then go outside to shoot their subject. They only have one shot per film session, so they know they have to keep the camera very still. We played around with different exposure times, concluding that the best photos came out at about a 4-5 minute exposure time.
After that, they come back to the darkroom and put their photos face down in the developer for 2-4 minutes and hopefully begin to see an image. They put it in the fixer for 30 seconds, which seals the image in place. Then we start the whole process all over again!
This is a perfect Design class project because they really get to experiment with different exposure times, lighting, distance, etc., and reflect on what works and what doesn't work for the next photograph.”
VIMSIA Students Compete in Cybersecurity Competition
/On Sunday, a socially-distanced, masked, and temperature-checked VIMSIA CyberPatriot team met in the library for their first round of the annual competition. Lindsay Barr, Mireille Boumedine, Ian Gutierrez, and Amelie Zucker competed actively for over 5 hours. The team members worked together, and they worked extremely hard. They fixed vulnerabilities in three different computer systems (Windows 10, Windows Server, and Ubuntu Linux), answered digital forensics questions, and completed a networking quiz.
The VIMSIA CyberPatriot team ended with a base score of 232, placing in the top 50% of their division according to unofficial results. Half of the VIMSIA team is competing for the first time this year, and this is the second time the school is participating in this event. The team benefited from free online training provided by Sandia National Laboratories.
CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program created by the Air Force Association (AFA) that inspires K-12 students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. One of their main programs is the annual National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, which places high school and middle school students in the position of newly hired IT professionals tasked with managing a small company’s network. The top teams in the nation earn all-expenses-paid trips to Maryland for the National Finals Competition, where they can earn national recognition and scholarship money.
Team coach Rebecca Hoffart said, “I am extremely proud of our team's achievement today! I extend a special thanks to the parents of team members for allowing them to compete, providing transportation, and offering enthusiastic support.”
Team members:
Lindsay Barr (Grade 10)
Mireille Boumedine (Grade 11)
Ny’Kel Emanuel (Grade 12)
Divina Kamra (Grade 9)
Ian Gutierrez (Grade 9)
Amelie Zucker (Grade 9)
Thank you to Our Veterans - VIDEO
/Tuesday, November 10th, 2020
Virgin Islands Montessori School Students in Ms. Joie Byrd’s music classes perform “Thank You to Our Veterans.” Her students worked throughout the past few weeks to learn and perform the song within their pods. These students are in our Primary and Elementary programs and are ranging from ages 3 through twelve.
In honor of Veterans Day tomorrow, her students have prepared, "Thank You to Our Veterans." To work within our social distancing policies, she filmed each group's performance and edited them together for the final product.
Ms. Byrd is not only our music teacher; she also serves as Staff Sergeant Byrd in the Virgin Islands National Guard 73rd Army Band.
“Last month, when we began preparing this song, I asked our students if they knew anyone who had served in the military. Hands were raised excitedly as students took turns sharing about their family members who have served. Seeing the pride on the students' faces and hearing the voices of 90 students singing together made this tribute especially special,” said Byrd.
Welcome to Ms. Ojuwa Lewis.
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Ms. Ojuwa Lewis was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in St. Thomas. She attended All Saints Cathedral School. After high school, Ms. Lewis attended the University of the Virgin Islands. She then transferred to Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, where she received her Bachelor's degree in History and Education grades 7-12. Now that she is back home, Ms. Lewis is currently working on her Masters in Educational Leadership. She is happy to be joining the VIMSIA community.
VIMSIA Participates in National School Lunch Program
/Each day 93 VIMSIA students are fed by the National School Lunch Program. Students receive both breakfast and lunch through the program. The food arrives on campus between 9:30 and 10:00 and the distribution is over by 11:30.
VIMSIA Completes Earthquake Drills
/On Thursday, VIMSIA students and staff practiced a “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” drill along with an Earthquake Evacuation Drill. School Nurse Sally Kiser coordinated this event for the entire campus today at 10:00 am. VIMSIA held these drills utilizing the new COVID mask and distancing protocols.
The first drill consisted of "Drop, Cover and Hold" at the outset of a tremor which Nurse Kiser announced over the PA system, and then an all-clear to proceed to their safe areas. Students and staff gathered in two locations in an orderly fashion.
By holding these drills, VIMSIA participates in the Earthquake Country Alliances annual "Great ShakeOut" program for earthquake preparedness.
Nurse's Notes: General Updates
/Good Day VIMSIA families! A reminder to keep up your hand-washing and mask-wearing! Colds and Flu are transmitted the same way Covid is - let's stay vigilant to keep ourselves and families safe and healthy! PLEASE be sure your child/ren's masks are clean and fit well when coming to school. Last but not least, be sure you get your Flu Shots - 'Tis the Season!!
More news:
November is National Diabetes Awareness Month. Did you know that diabetes is one of the most common chronic conditions in school-age youth in the United States, affecting about 193,000 youth under 20 years old? You can find out more from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Fall Wreaths & Spooky Scary Skeletons
/Check out this video with some of our Elementary classes celebrating the Fall season!
Ms. DiFrancesco and Ms. Donastorg’s class created a fall wreath out of paper leaves!
The Upper Elementary classes requested to learn this song on their Orff percussion instruments. Each class learned the melody and an ostinato pattern and put both parts together in just 3 class periods.
Governor Bryan and Lieutenant Governor Roach Meet with Rhea and Deja-Marie
/Governor Bryan and Lt. Governor Roach visited VIMSIA on October 23rd to meet with Rhea, Author of the Runaway Watermelon, and Deja-Marie, Illustrator. It was a wonderful morning celebrating books, reading, and the hard work of the students. Rhea and Deja-Marie were inducted into the “Kids Cabinet” of the Governor’s Office.
This story has been covered by the CBS affiliate in the US Virgin Islands, here.
Please see all photos from the event here.
Photos Courtesy of Clara Freeman/Government House USVI