On March 25^th and 26^th, 70 individuals gathered at The Island School to celebrate students and schools that have been going to work to solve real-world problems, proving that authentic learning can happen outside of a traditional classroom curriculum.  Delegations representing twelve schools and independent organizations presented on their work ranging from oyster aquaculture in New York Harbor to building a solar house.  Representatives participated in an open house-style expo and formally presented to an audience that included Spring 2011 Island School students.  The conference was fortunate to host United States Ambassador to The Bahamas Nicole Avant on Friday afternoon, where she spoke about the power of young people during the keynote address.

On Saturday a group of panelists, facilitated by Middlebury professor Dr. Jon Isham, shared insights on their work, challenges they have faced, and advice on how to network.  Panelists included Murray Fisher, founder of New York Harbor School; Betsy Vogel-Boze, president of College of The Bahamas; Liz Robinson, director of the Center for Creativity and Innovation at Middlebury; Nikita Shiel-Rolle, founder of Young Bahamian Marine Scientists program, and several other distinguished conference guests.  Conference guests agreed: the most inspiring parts of the conference were the presentations by students ranging in age from 15 to 25 sharing the work they have done.  “All the presentations were outstanding and I was humbled and inspired by all that I witnessed,” said Michael Denning, a college counselor from Noble and Greenough School who attended the conference. Continue reading →

Maddie Hawk, an alumna of Spring 2010, will be running a marathon and swimming a 10K during her spring break to raise awareness of global water issues.  Check out this great article here about her cause.  Good luck Maddie!

Last fall, Alexandra Cousteau visited The Island School to film this segment for Revo sunglasses.  You’ll recognize a lot of the scenes in the clip!  It was great having Alexandra on campus – we hope she’ll come back and visit us again soon.

We recently received a suggestion from a parent of an alum to create a way for alumni parents and parents of current and prospective students to be able to share information and advice.  What a great idea!

So we’ve created The Island School Parents Network page on Facebook.  If you are a parent of an Island School alum or a current student, use this page to collaborate and share advice.  Go ahead and log on to Facebook and like this page…and while you’re on there; you should friend Cacique Maxey too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S3ctiSwSqs

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In 2002, Island School students pioneered a program for their research project creating biodiesel out of waste cooking oil.  Since then, our on campus plant has grown to not only feed our campus vehicles with biodiesel, but has become a model for The Bahamas.  On Monday, Bahamas Waste opened up its own biodiesel facility, which will convert up to one million gallon of waste cooking oil to biodiesel each year.  Geoff Walton, Jack Kenworthy, and Graham Siener of Cape Systems, a for-profit subsidiary of the Cape Eleuthera Island School, served as consultants during the planning and implementation of the plant.  At the ribbon cutting ceremony Peter Andrews, chairman of Bahamas Waste, handed over a check for $0.25 to Chris Maxey, Bahamas Environmental Steward Scholar Garneisha Pinder and Deep Creek Middle School student Moesha Leary.  This check serves as a promise that for every gallon of biodiesel produced, Bahamas Waste will donate 25 cents toward the BESS program and scholarships at DCMS.

Congratulations and THANK YOU to Bahamas Waste!

This past weekend Kalin Griffin, Cape Eleuthera Institute’s Human Resources Manager, and Cape Eleuthera Foundation board member Stephen Holowesko had the pleasure of greeting education reformer Geoffrey Canada at a US Embassy event in Nassau.  Canada, who has been recognized by President Obama for his work in education reform, met with Bahamian leaders to shared insights from his work on closing the achievement gap in Harlem, New York through his organization Harlem Children’s Zone.   The Island School and CEI have a strong relationship with Harlem Children Zone’s Promise Academy; for the past several summers, students from HCZ Promise Academy have visited our campus for educational programming.  We are looking forward to continuing this relationship and hope that Mr. Canada will be able to make it to Cape Eleuthera to visit soon.

To read more about Geoffrey Canada’s visit to Nassau, you can find the US Embassy’s press release here.

Island School was pleased to welcome several new faculty members over the past week.  Read faculty bios here and make sure to visit the blog regularly to catch new episodes of “Meet the Faculty/Staff,” which is scheduled to premiere next week.

Hey Alums!  We are looking for education and professional information about our alumni. A lot of the information we have is out of date or inaccurate, so if you are in or have graduated from college, please complete this form.  It should only take you a minute or two.

Thanks!

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This has been a crazy winter in the US with (too much) snow and freezing temperatures.  Unfortunately these storms forced us to cancel our Connecticut reception and reschedule our Lawrenceville reception.  Lawrenceville’s reception has been rescheduled for this Thursday (February 3rd).

A big shout out to everyone in Grand Rapids that trudged through the snow to make it out to the Cusack’s house last night for the reception there.  You Michiganders know how to handle snow!  Thank you especially to all our alumni that came out to share their stories.

Punxatawny Phil proclaimed this morning that we’ll have an early spring this year.  But today on Cape Eleuthera, the weather is calling for mostly sunny and 85 degrees….. so if you want to escape the winter, join us for Deep Creek Middle School’s 10-Year anniversary February 17-20th!