by Chris Teufel

Today I woke up to our second timed run-swim. I walk to circle ten minutes early to soak in the silence that accompanies the mornings here. As students and faculty begin to trickle out, a shape that somewhat resembles a circle begins to form around the flagpole. Today we have some special guests for morning exercise, the Alumni Advisory Board. Reminiscing and joking about their old run swim experiences, I can see they’re excited and determined to put themselves to the test. After exercise and a group stretch, we headed over to chores, me to the fishbowl. Breakfast consisted of English muffins, eggs and ham; the perfect sandwich after a heavy workout. After breakfast we have about twenty minutes to get ready for the day before heading to Research class. Making my way back to the dorms, I saw kids lined up to describe their Human Ecology project proposals, being the last day to propose an idea. In research (Sustainable Fisheries and Conservation for me), we do a run-through of our project introduction slideshow; assigning slides, adding pictures, and fixing spelling mistakes for Monday. After deciding to meet again to complete final touches on Sunday, we went over our research notes due that day. Since I was presenting, I gave a short intro and summary to the paper on the results of the implementation of MPA’s and NTMR’s in the Dry Tortugas national park region of Florida. I then led a discussion on the paper, which further provided a greater understanding of the paper for not only me but the rest of the class as well. To finish off the class, Kate, the head of our project, hands us all small slips of paper and we are told to memorize these lines for a poem we are now signed up to present on Saturday night’s Coffeehouse. This Coffeehouse concept took me a little while to understand and in case you’re not an Alum reading this I’ll break it down. First of all, it’s not actually in a coffee house, it’s in the boat house, with no coffee. But, there are a wide variety of talents and acts performed by students and faculty alike with everything from juggling, to singing, and whatever else people want to share.

After lunch, I headed to the boathouse to set up my dive kit for Marine Ecology class. Continue reading →

Hello everyone! This is Morgen writing again. We had another great day here in Eleuthera. Many students, including myself, endured in a very choppy scuba dive yesterday morning for Marine Ecology class. This week we focused on identifying species in and around our assigned coral reef patch we have been looking at for the past few weeks. The addition of large waves made this a very fun and thrilling dive!

Yesterday afternoon, we headed over to Deep Creek Middle School for community outreach. After picking up our buddies, my group (7^th grade), headed back to the Island School to our farm to collect soil for the garden we have been working on over in Wemyss Bight. Next week, we will lay down the soil to hopefully start planting soon. It’s been so much fun getting to know the Deep Creek students. The highlight of my day was singing various pop songs with my buddy and her friends during the van rides to various locations. We then traveled back to the middle school for extended advisory period and wrote letters to our buddies favorite celebrities. They are certainly hopeful that they will write back! After CO, we all broke off with our advisor groups and dispersed across Eleuthera. Many groups went snorkeling, some wrote poetry, and some just indulged, including mine. No matter the activity, advisory time proves to consistently be a highlight of everyone’s weeks.

Its been really fun to have new faces on campus these last few days as members of the Island School Alumni Board have trickled in to stay for the week. A lot of us have found mutual friends with them, so it’s been great to make some new connections. They joined us at morning circle today, a little more eager for the second timed run swim as us. Students were really pushing themselves this morning and it was awesome to see so many of us breaking our times from two weeks ago. The love and support of the community standing around the flagpole cheering as we finish is by far my favorite part of morning exercise.

We are all anxiously pushing our way through these next two days of classes, as we look forward to Saturday night where we will have our first coffee house. Students are urged to perform whatever they would like, talent or not. Updates on unknown talents to come. It has been a great week here, and a huge shout out to the kitchen staff for making countless cakes for all of the birthdays we have had lately!

Hello all, I’m Morgen Montgomery and I will be writing the blog post today. As another school week quickly comes to a close, there are many things to be caught up on. To all of the parents, most of you have probably received an anxious phone call from a child regarding research presentations. We have been working hard all week to perfect our research PowerPoint’s and presentations that will be given to our fellow classmates, teachers, and CEI leaders this coming Monday. These will be our first big presentations, so wish your child luck!

Research has played a large role in all of our lives this week. As I walked around campus yesterday afternoon, I came across many eager researchers fully entrenched in their projects. After a bit of complication, the students in deep water sharks picked up the medusa, while students in long lining sharks pulled in a 7-foot Nurse Shark just a few hundred feet away.

In other news, boys enjoyed a nice, well-deserved sleep in yesterday or an early morning free dive, while girls woke up before sunrise to start our first “deep clean” of the dorms. This was very much needed, and all of the complaints stopped once the large accumulation of miscellaneous objects and trash was witnessed by all of the girls, realizing we should probably be a little neater! While we swept, washed, and sprayed, a large group of boys took the gutsy plunge in Ike’s reef, another free-diving location, where many of them made it through the 15-yard tunnel.

Later today, we will join our buddies at Deep Creek Middle School and begin our Community Outreach projects. This seems to be a favorite day for everyone, which is then followed by advisor time, where students get to relax and indulge. Everything is great here, including a beautiful week of weather.

by Harrison Rohrer

We just got back from a massive capture the flag game, which spanned all the way from campus to triangle cut half a mile away. Swimming and running to tag opposing players while still trying to listen for my own teammates coming with the flag proved to be extremely difficult on such a large area, which is probably why the caciques (student leaders) were allowed to organize this event as our morning exercise. Yesterday was our free day, so after a long night of music and dancing on Saturday most of us slept in for a while. When I woke up, I joined a group of guys heading out to the Conch House, a local restaurant where we ordered stacks of pancakes and bacon. Having eaten like kings, we all biked to the current cut, which was flooding at the time and provided an awesome lazy-river snorkel to get the morning going. We headed back  and finished up some homework before going to brunch, only a few hours after breakfast. After eating, the boys had a dorm bonding afternoon with our faculty dorm head, Peter, where we all made teams of two and competed in many sports and activities to determine a victorious pair. I happened to be with Peter. We competed in ping pong, polo (using tennis rackets and an orange), bocce, and fruit ninja, winning each match except for bocce. When that was done, I went snorkeling to capture some fish for the dining hall aquarium. The nets were really hard to maneuver underwater, so CJ and I were only able to catch two fish, a fairy basslet and a bluehead wrasse. On my way out I picked up a west-indian sea egg because our fish count was so poor. I came back for dinner, and then went to presentation on seahorse research in Florida and the Bahamas. What a free day!