by Caciques Connor Sullivan and Simon Mauck
Today was a day of mixed emotions. It was the beginning of our three week long rotation of Down Island Trips (DIT) and kayak adventures. For the DIT’s, we stay in our same groups from our kayak trips and car camp while we take an educational road trip down the island, going north. They are called “down island” trips due to the current that flows along Eleuthera that runs south to north. We (Connor and Simon) are in kayak group three, which means we will be having academic class time for the first week and a half. For the other half of the students, they spent the morning preparing and packing for either their eight-day kayak trip, or DIT. After goodbyes to fellow friends leaving for their adventures, we started our academic classes.
Despite rearranged schedules and new class groupings, we still have our weekly Community Outreach class with Deep Creek Middle School. As being a part of the grade 8 class, my buddy Cam and I (Connor) worked on the topic of preventing dengue fever. We are a part of print media, which is to create posters and advertisements of the prevention of spreading dengue fever. Together, Cam and I worked on writing a letter to The Eleutheran, the island newspaper, about the signs of dengue and prevention of it as well.
In the 7th grade community class, our project had finally begun. Our project is to plant mangroves. We aimed to plant a bucket full of mangrove propogule seeds. After we had trudged through mud that sucked on our feet and planted every seed, we went for a walk on the beach of Red Bay to search for more of these seeds that were just sitting in the sand.
Even with half of our campus population out and exploring, The Island School community continues to run as well as we did before. We are continuing our academic classes for the next week and a half before we start preparing for the adventures that lie ahead.