Hi my name is Carly Shea and I’m a sophomore at the Governors Academy. I’ll be writing about what is going on here for the next couple days. The past few days here have been super busy. We are in the middle of midterms so we have lots of big assignments. For history we had to do an ethnography project of which we could choose any topic. My group chose religion and we interviewed locals in the settlements of Wemyss Bight and Rock Sound. For that project after attending 3 settlement days and doing lots of readings about interviews and ethnography, each group had to create a short 15 minute video about what they learned and include interviews with the locals. Each person then had to write a 3-4 page paper. Another project we have this week is the beach plastics art project. We have been learning all about plastic and plastics in the oceans and have to create a sculpture made solely of beach plastics. For my project I created a fish net and made small plastic bottle shaped cut outs of some beach plastic and put those inside the fish net. It looks like a school of fish inside a fish net but when you get closer you realize they are plastic bottles. I thought it was a cool way to represent how much plastic there is in the oceans. We also have started the Human Ecology projects this week. The project is called “change bombs” and we have to find a way to improve the community. Some groups we have are planting grasses to prevent shoreline erosion, creating a medicinal herb garden, and creating an artificial reef.

This morning we had an option to run 5 miles or 3 and my running partner and I chose to run five. Today we also have Community Outreach and my group is working on a community garden with the seventh graders at Deep Creek middle school. There is so much to do here and never a dull moment!

by Chris Teufel

This past weekend consisted of a number of firsts and lasts. The first coffeehouse, but our last settlement day, the first Island School basketball game, the first, and hopefully the last, stitches and my first free dive. On Saturday morning we started off the day with run/swim track, and while the swimmer’s did their one mile trek to the pole off of the marina, the runner’s worked on sprints. We transitioned from sprinting up the hill leading into the inner loop, to sprinting to and from a telephone pole down the road. Both exercises provided a good wake up call and start to another beautiful day here. After breakfast, “Green Turtle” and “Hawksbill” classes went to settlement day in Rock Sound while “Loggerhead” and “Leatherback” stayed behind for History and Literature classes. In the afternoon we switched, and instead of Rock Sound the other classes headed to Tarpem Bay settlement while we discussed Omeros and got an introduction to historiography. That afternoon concluded classes for the weekend and officially started our Saturday night off. At 8:00 we kicked off the first coffeehouse with a performance from the sustainable fisheries and conservation research group performing an original poem by our very own Kate Barley and her research group. This act was followed by several a-cappella and guitar accompanied performances which blew the crowd away. After the coffeehouse, a movie was played in the Presentation Room while kids either went to bed early or stayed out to chat amongst ourselves.

Sunday morning brought an optional free dive after a late, 8:00 breakfast. With our group of about 15 students and faculty we boarded “Simon Says” and “Kenny” before making our way out on some of the clearest waters we’ve had here yet. We debriefed about the site, Cathedral, and its spiritual significance, which was why we always dive this site on Sunday’s, before dropping off the boats and into the clear, calm waters. Looking down at the site from above can take your breath away, but it’s not until your down there peering into the caves, tunnels, and ridges offered by this magnificent structure that you truly understand the awe-inspiring power of it. Maxey describes this site as something no man-made structure could compete with, which is another reason why it resonates so deeply with your spiritual side. We made roughly seven or eight dives, observing everything from small, two-three centimeter Christmas Tree Worms, to the occasional four foot remora and even a large Tiger Grouper. Two brave students, Harrison and Cutter, had the courage and lung capacity to dive down and travel through the tunnel of the structure and the way they spoke about the experience made me eager to try it next time. Later on, after lunch, a basketball game was held at Deep Creek Middle School where nearly every boy and a few courageous girls competed in our first game. Sunday night’s study hours consisted mainly of groups meeting in preparation for their Project Introductions on Monday morning. After meeting with my group for over an hour, practicing slides, adding final touches, and spell checking everything, we decided we were ready to present. That’s all for now but stay tuned for the next post on how these Project Intro’s went.

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!

by Sam Jensen

Today we started the day off with some early morning yoga or waterpolo, depending on your choice. I chose yoga, a relaxing class taught by Brady in the presentation room. After the class, everyone felt relaxed, rejuvenated, and ready for the day. It was a Friday, the day we change caciques (leaders for the week), I had been a cacique for the previous week, and Brady invited the five of us to her apartment for a final breakfast as a group. We made omelet’s and coffee cake together, and wrote our passing on speech to the next student who we decide would make a great leader for the upcoming week. After that delicious treat of breakfast, we made our way to the community meeting. At these meetings we get together as a entire community and discuss things that will help benefit everyone as a whole. In this particular meeting, we did the cacique pass off and did a activity about different kinds of leaders, what kinds we personally are, and how we need a diversity of leaders in a group to be successful. We answered some questions, which put us in certain groups: the driver, the motivator, the annalist, and the relationship builder. We learned about the positive and negative aspects of each type of leader, and how without each type of leader a society can’t function. It was cool to see who else was in my leader group, and this knowledge helped me better understand the group dynamic. After the community meeting, we broke off into our research groups for a 2-hour research class. I am in the lobster displacement group. In this class period, we had a discussion about the scientific paper we were assigned to read, we had a short pop quiz, and we went to the wet lab to begin setting up our experiment. Lunch followed research, and human ecology followed lunch. In this class, we talked about different types of plants around us, and how they help out the eco-system. We then went around and tested different water sources around campus: the well, the cistern, and the ocean. We tested salinity, ph, temperature, and conductivity. It was interesting to see what levels of what was in the water we were drinking. We then broke off into groups of 3 and had one hour to make a water filter. We searched the school for materials. We went to the beach, the resource center, the farm, and around all the classrooms. We found bits and pieces of things to use, and we found that natural materials seemed to work better. After this, we tested the levels in our water and compared it to the other water we tested. After this class, we had exploration time. Most of us biked to sunset beach, a beautiful beach about a mile away. It was a perfect way to relax and hang out with our friends. Everyone met again at dinner circle, had dinner together, and then went to our night class. We don’t have night classes every night, but tonight ours was about the use of plastic and how it can affect so many natural ecosystems and animals. It was eye-opening and inspirational. Those two words can represent more than the night class though, it can represent our entire Island School experiences we’ve had in just these short 4 weeks.

by Sophie Ochs

Hi everybody! I’m so happy to be back and writing to you all about the events of yesterday! To start the day off, the groups of run track and swim track all got ready to push themselves. Whether that was by swimming against the current in the cut or running almost five miles, both teams had a great time and were really happy to see how hard they could push themselves. After chores and personal space, the community gathered or a delicious breakfast. All the students said this was by far their favorite meal with French toast, sausage and fruit! It was so good! Smelled exactly like “mom’s cooking.” After breakfast, the students brought their full bellies down to their first class followed by lunch and Community Outreach. I know for a fact that this is some of the student’s favorite activities because it not only lets you reach out to a new culture, but it also allows you to make a new friend along the way. Heading back to the campus the students sang songs and played games in the boiling and jam-packed vans as they became more and more excited for the big World Cup Soccer Tournament. During the world cup, advisories group up together and play pick up games of soccer all leading to a final match between the two teams India and Greece! While Greece scored numerous times, had totally awesome celebration moves and played hard, the winner of the World Cup was India. As the team threw curry up into the air, the students cheered and hugged as the teams walked off the field. Three showers later, the team India still smells like a traditional Indian dish. The bonding time really brought us closer together and everyone was so happy afterwards to have gotten the time to cheer on friends with some friendly competition. We cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings but we will definitely share it with you all.

by Sophie Ochs

Yesterday was a huge day for us. While everyone was enjoying their sleep in, a few of us went free diving with Maxey, Jason, Ashley, and Aaron where they had the opportunity to glide through a 35-foot deep reef tunnel with life surrounding it. The experience was so amazing and it was like no other. Then, the students began classes and research. Some of the students went diving, snorkeling and were able to catch and study some really cool species. Today the students are eager to dive and to go out with Lee and explore some survival techniques, such as building a filter, using all recycled and environmental objects. Then the team will hop on the bus and get ready to go out and help the community with our Deep Creek Middle school buddies! It is so fun working with the community and working with the buddies has really opened most of us up to getting out of our comfort zones. We are all so happy to be able to go there and see how thankful the community is to have us help out. The students also really enjoy getting to know someone from a different culture while learning about it in histories and literature class. These experiences not only help us during our Community Outreach time, but during our settlement days where we travel to Deep Creek to interview and observe the people there as well as the interactions between the population and the land. This allows us to be our own versions of independent anthropologists and really explore the land. We cannot wait to do it again this week and really show our enthusiasm and share our culture with the community!

Hello All, my name is Sophie and I will be writing this day’s blog. Yesterday was a big day for the students here at The Island School. In the morning we all gathered up at the flagpole for our daily circle where we sing the national anthem. Then both the students and faculty began to make their way down to the dock for our first Run-Swim! All along the way each student was cheering each other on and doing their best to push themselves and really challenge their bodies. It was so exciting seeing every student and faculty member at the end of the race lined up, encouraging one another as they reached the flagpole. Right after chores and breakfast, the IS members headed over to the boathouse to share meaningful “snapshots” of our life that lead us to where we are now. Hearing everyone in the group open up and talk about their past was something that I never thought would happen within the first three weeks. I already feel so close to everyone and so comfortable talking to them about what I am thinking and what my ideas are. This applies to everyone in research too. This is an opportunity to try new things and really connect with others. The research groups are all working really hard to test out new ideas and help the scientists further develop their theories and their studies. During the student’s class time, some were able to go diving during marine ecology and really had a blast! They saw many different types of algae, fish and coral. Peter lead the group to go exploring and “adopt a coral reef” to study throughout the semester. Later that day the students were given exploration time where a few went out to explore the water towers. When we returned for dinner circle, we had our new group leaders update us on what the plan of the night was and what the quote of the day was. Then the evening settled off and we had a histories night class that was presented to us by our teachers Brady and Emma. The purpose of the night class was to prepare us for Settlement day today and what to do when visiting a different community. We are all so excited and nervous to have our first settlement day and cannot wait to see what it will bring us! We will continue with the updates!