Yesterday we finished our last Histories and Literature classes and had one of the last few exploration times. During exploration many students went “Slack-lining” time next to the boathouse or went to some of their favorite spots such as current cut and fourth hole. In Literature class we finished Omeros while sitting on the dock. We closed our eyes and listened to the sounds of the waves hitting the dock as Ashley read the last two pages of the Omeros. This was a symbolic moment for us because Omeros is about the sea and finally we were reading by the ocean. We felt accomplished that we had finished the difficult text and jumped in the water to celebrate. The water felt refreshing and it felt like the perfect way to end a story about the sea.

In Histories class, we talked about all the major concepts that we have covered this semester in order to prepare us for our Eleutheros with the cumulative prompt: So What? Why does what you’ve learned at Island School matter? This last Eleutheros is a very important aspect of the semester because it allows students to reflect on what they have learned and begin to try and figure out how it matters for the future. I began brain storming ideas for my “So what?” Eleutheros and talked about my experience in Literature class. I told a story about my initial confusion about the text Omeros that then lead to a group effort to clarify the text. I remember at the beginning of the semester in one of the very first harnesses, I said, “I think that this story is about the divorce of a woman named Helen and a man named Plunkett”. This theory is completely off from the actual plot of the text but in that moment I said that phrase with confidence and truly thought that this may be the answer to the text. I remember that Ashley did not node her head in approval or shake her head no she simply smiled. None of the students in the class criticized my idea, but rather began building off what I had said. Through this experience I have realized that by taking a risk and stating my theory I was able to help further the discussion and ultimately come to conclusions about the text. This is one example of the types of things that students can reflect on from the semester. This last week at The Island School will be a time for reflection of the last 100 days. The last Eleutheros along with our Demonstration of Learning’s will prepare us to come home with a clearer vision of how we will apply what we have learned.

Hello, my name is Caroline Muggia, and I will be updating the blog for the next week. The rainy weather has continued, but has not put a damper on the spirit at The Island School. Yesterday, run track and swim track had their last workouts before the big events this weekend! Nerves and excitement are building throughout the campus as we prepare to accomplish our own events and to support our friends. The sign making and hydration has begun. The four mile swim and half marathon are going to be incredible events where the community will come together to support each other.

Yesterday, during advisory time some students opted to go on a dive to hole in the wall in a rainstorm. I went on this 90 foot dive a few weeks ago and it is incredibly beautiful. The wall drops off 4,000 feet into the Exuma sound, it was at first daunting when deciding to go on the dive but definitely an awesome experience. In literature class we wrote letters to our sending schools, students wrote about challenges they have encountered and the growth that they have seen within themselves. We have also begun working on our Demonstration of Learning. This is a chance for students to creativity show the community all that they have learned this semester. I cannot wait to see the presentations from my peers. Students have been working hard on their human ecology projects and the final projects are approaching. All of the projects are tackling hard issues either directly in the community or outside of the community and seem to be succeeding with their solutions.

Today we have Literature, Histories, and Research class. It is crazy that today is our last field day in research! In Histories we will be having a stakeholder discussion, debating marine management decisions. Literature class will be exciting as we are close to the end of the epic poem Omeros and share our own epic poems that we wrote earlier this week.

Today is the first day in a long time I have gone to sleep and woken up cold. It has rained for the last three days almost non-stop, and I am starting to forget where I am. Not so sunny for the Land of Sun and Sea. Despite the cold, wet weather, the final weeks of Island School are still moving along. While we have Eleutheros papers and math assessments on the horizon, the thing on everyone’s mind is the long run and swim. With only a few days remaining before the event, our morning workouts have become more mellow with the intention of resting before the weekend. By mellow I mean in our swim workout we only had to swim against the current once or twice, rather than the entire time. Even though everyone is fairly nervous about completing the final event, I am confident that the semester’s worth of training we have done will help us accomplish our goals. As long as it doesn’t rain all weekend…

Yesterday students spent an hour and a half preparing for their final Demonstration of Learning that is coming up next week. Our DOL is meant to replace traditional assessments like final exams with a more creative and open ended assignment. With no restrictive structure or format, DOL typically include both academic and extra-curricular experiences, and are presented in a wide variety of forms. My idea is to take my audience on a tour of my favorite places on the Cape and weave in my personal and intellectual growth into the trip. These presentations are meant to show our peers and faculty what information has stuck with us over the course of the semester, without putting the whole audience to sleep.

Even with the rain, our community celebrated Matt’s birthday yesterday with multiple rounds of “Happy Birthday” and a delicious chocolate cake. Everyone made it to the dining hall right on time even though it was pouring rain, maybe they should offer us sweets more often if they want us to be punctual.

While everyone would prefer sun, a little rain doesn’t faze the Island School community in the slightest. It can rain all it wants, just more water for our cisterns.

With parent’s weekend in the past, life at The Island School is slowly returning to normal. We began this morning with an exciting and challenging run-swim workout led by Charlie, Dale, Marcus and Ivy that included jumping off bridges and calisthenic exercises. Although everyone was sad to see their parents go, we are all jumping right back into the grind of Island School life.

Parent’s Weekend was a fantastic few days for everyone in the community, and it was nice to show our parents that we haven’t just been sitting on the beach all semester (even though we’re all way tanner than they are). The events began with our student led Art show, titled “Paddling Forward,” which was a big hit among all the parents. Some even requested to take their student’s art home, yet some parents seem to have forgotten…

The following morning was our Research presentations, a great demonstration of the diligent, hard work we have put in throughout the semester. All of the groups were very successful in conveying their objectives, methods and results, and most of the parents were blown away. The audience seemed very intrigued and impressed with our work in conjunction with CEI this semester.

The highlight of parent’s weekend for me was the Coffee House we held on Friday night. This was a great opportunity for the community to get together in a relaxed environment and enjoy ourselves. Peter C and Charlie were hilarious as always, and the vocal talent among the students was impressive. Noelle claims she had never sung in front of a crowd before, but her voice was incredible and I think she should try out for American idol. Girls North had a ridiculous, blind-folded, peanut butter and jelly eating contest that had the whole crowd cracking up, and we got to see a satellite launch during one of the intermissions. And we got cookies after. Overall, a pretty awesome night.

Now that parent’s weekend is over and we are in the final stretch, students are beginning to worry about having to leave this place. Instead of worrying we should enjoy the time we have left. Charlie Mauck always says, “don’t be sad because it’s over,  be happy because it happened.”

We are one day closer to the arrival of parents, and life is even more busy here at The Island School. We returned to our respective run and swim tracks today, and the swim workout was led by Maxey… by far the most challenging yet. Even though our workouts have been tough, we know we have to work really hard to prepare for the half marathon and super-swim.

Yesterday morning, half of the Human Ecology project groups met while the other half of students stayed on campus to prepare the Octagon at CEI for the art show. Students have begun transforming the space into a world class art show, and it is awesome to see how quickly everything is coming together thanks to such focused work.

My Human Ecology project went to DeepCreekMiddle School campus to meet with the PE teacher and discuss our plans. Our group is addressing the lack of athletic opportunity for Deep Creek kids. While we originally planned to build a baseball field, after speaking with local students and teachers, we have decided to focus our energy on an athletic equipment shed located on DCMS campus. Additionally, we will be constructing multi-sport nets and refurbishing DCMS’ basketball court.  Although we were thrown off track slightly, we were able to overcome obstacles and plan a project based on the needs of the community rather than the interest of our group. Accepting failure and rolling with the punches is definitely a key part of a successful Human Ecology project. Besides, without the change of plans we never would have come up with our project’s new name: The Grateful Shed.

Last night we did a practice run on our research presentations, and all of the groups were very impressive. Our community is excited to welcome our parents and share all our amazing work this semester.

As parents begin to trickle in, everyone is scrambling to prepare for their arrival. Students have been working hard to complete preparations for Wednesday’s art show, and all the research groups are getting ready for our biggest presentation so far.

Even with all the hype for parent’s weekend, we are able to focus on having a very fun weekend. On Saturday, both run and swim tracks did our longest workout yet. In the morning some of the runners ran almost 12 miles, while the swimmers completed a 2.5 mile swim, our longest yet. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, but I feel much more confident about the super swim after having done such a long distance. Even though everyone was falling asleep during dinner, we somehow found the energy to drive to Rock Sound for our final presentations for Community Outreach. The community center group was the center of attention because of their bake sale, which included the best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies anyone has ever baked. I almost teared up a little after my first bite… and I’m getting hungry just thinking about them. Island School and Deep Creek Middle School members of the Cancer and Plastic Awareness groups gave heart wrenching presentations about two of the most dangerous issues here on Eleuthera. To benefit the Cancer Society on Eleuthera, the plastic team also sold home-made jewelry we constructed out of pieces of beach plastic. Despite the serious issues discussed, Saturday was a great day for everyone in the community and it was great to see Island School students working hard and having fun with their DCMS buddies.

Yesterday was Ashley’s birthday, and a great way to end an eventful weekend. Last night we took a little study break, and had a cookout on the beach in honor of her birthday. The burgers were delicious, compliments to the chef . To top it off we sang happy birthday and ate some chocolate cake. A great way to end a great weekend here at The Island School.

Today at morning circle all of the girls surprised the whole community. They lined up in order of their circle numbers, and each girl had a different letter painted on their stomachs. The letters spelled out “Happy Birthday Dale, We love you” After everyone saw what they had spelled out, Dale stepped into the middle of the circle and we sang Happy Birthday. Although the boys were very confused, the celebration was a great example of how tight knit our community is.

The excitement continued as the caciques announced a break from Run and Swim tracks and that we  would instead be playing team sports….. and yoga. Students played basketball, water polo and I had an awesome game of soccer with a few other students at the Marina. Tsering scored at least 100 goals, and Anya stole the ball from me far more times than I’m willing to admit.

Human Ecology final projects are in full swing, and we have begun to have long block classes to work with our groups. We all are addressing a different problem at the Island School or beyond, and we work in groups to come up with a sustainable solution. Everyone is very excited to get started, and all the projects proposed are very promising. One problem students are addressing is the over-use of dive sites and how human contact can be a detriment to the health of the reef if it is visited over and over. An exciting solution a group proposed is attempting to sink a broken down bus at the saddle to create an artificial reef and an exciting new dive site.

As we prepare for parents to arrive, life at the Island School is very busy, but still just as fun.

My name is Jack Martin and I am from Philadelphia, PA. Newly assigned to write the upcoming student updates, I am excited to share my experience here over the next few weeks.
This past Tuesday was one of the most exciting Swim track workouts because we were finally allowed to swim in the current cut at the Marina. The cut doubles as a challenging exercise and a relaxing, lazy river, depending on which direction the water is flowing. Until this week, the cut had been off limits to students because of the strong currents and the not-so-friendly residents that swim through it. Although Scotty assured us the bull sharks were gone, having passed on seasonally to different waters, we spotted a small lemon shark about 10 seconds after we began our swim! A few girls shrieked and everyone stopped to look, but we were all quickly assured that a little shark like that is far more afraid of us than we are of him.

Yesterday, the shark research team had a second encounter with a Lemon shark, only this one was a little bigger… I was leaning over the front of the boat checking our fishing line, when I noticed one of our hooks was sagging deep into the water. As I began to work my way towards the hook, I spotted him. A big, beautiful 7-foot Lemon was hooked cleanly. This was our very first Lemon shark we caught this semester, and a very exciting field day on the boat. Two lemon sharks in two days is pretty typical of my life here at Island School… I wonder how many people in the world can say that?

Yesterday was beautifully sunny day. After our run-swim and breakfast, we all met with our research groups to start compiling and analyzing our results to present on Parent’s Weekend.

The afternoon was especially exciting because we had a couple hours to brainstorm for our final Human Eco projects. We used “open space technology” which basically means that we try and inspire creativity in a casual, conversational setting. We split up into conversation groups around campus that had themes such as: food, waste, water, energy, awareness, etc. Students and teachers alike spent time throwing ideas out there and getting closer to a specific problem that they want to focus on for their project. The goal of the day was not to come up with any solutions, but to identify a specific problem that they feel passionate about addressing, and find other students who share the same interests. Exiting ideas about solutions were also being discussed just because people couldn’t wait to get started. Some problems that were picked were: lack of pollinators on Eleuthera (bees), imported food, overfishing of conch, lack of activities for Deep Creek kids, plastic pollution, and more.

We finished Human Eco a little early due to people’s enthusiasm, so we got to finish our dorm deep cleans with exploration time left in the afternoon. After dinner, we had a night class and started to plan our Art Show for Parent’s Weekend. We voted for two curators (congrats Danny and Noelle!) to be the creative directors and help lead the process. I am confident that they will do a fantastic job.

This morning we woke up to a slightly grey, windy day. Swim track had an awesome morning, however, because we swam in current cut down by the marina. We did laps, first swimming with the current, and once we got to the bridge we turned around and pushed against the current all the way back to the start. We saw a baby nurse shark, a barracuda, and lots of other fish.

Chef Emery leaves tomorrow, who has provided delicious food for The Island School for a number of semesters. He was a student here himself, and we have many memories of hanging out with him in the kitchen, hearing his exciting dinner announcements at circle, and of course eating his food. He will be terribly missed, but we are wishing him goof luck in his travels!