The students at The Island School cannot believe that parent’s weekend is officially a day away! The fact that we will be reuniting with our family for the first time in nearly two months is beyond exciting. In the mean time there is a lot to do on the Island School Campus in preparation for the arrival of our parents.

When our parents and siblings first come they will get a quick tour of the campus and then they are whisked off immediately to the art gallery where the cumulative artwork we have been working on this semester will be on display.

At the moment we are finishing the final parts of bringing the art show together but we are ahead of schedule so I am sure that it will come together beautifully.

Besides the art gallery the students are all gearing up for the final research presentations. At this point all of the research groups have presented there first run through to a small audience but we are still scrambling to make last minute changes to further perfect our performances.

What all the students are really looking forward to is alone time with their family to share all of the treasures that The Island School and Eleuthera withhold. There will be scheduled activities such as scuba dives and kayaking on campus for the students to do with their parents and I’m sure just about every student is excited to have the opportunity to start exploring the rest of the island!

There are plenty of great sights around the island, near and far. In South Eleuthera the two biggest attractions that Island School students know are the Rock Sound Ocean Hole and Lighthouse Beach. Lighthouse beach is an expansive Atlantic pink sand beach on the southernmost tip of the island, with high cliffs, beautiful sand, and (of course) an old lighthouse, this beach is a must see! This is also where the students took there 48 hour solos during the eight day kayak trips.

Farther north in Rock Sound lays Eleuthera’s famous Ocean Hole, visited by the first prime minister of The Bahamas, Lynden Oscar Pindling as well as Jacques Cousteau who tried and failed to find the bottom. This inland saltwater pond is believed to connect to the sea, and teems with fish- it ‘s like snorkeling without getting wet! Another one of the highlight from everyone’s down island trip, which is a great destination for parents, is Glass Window Bridge. Glass Window Bridge is the narrowest part of the Island and if you look to either side you will see a drastic contrast of the color of the ocean. On the Caribbean side the water is a vibrant turquoise, on the Atlantic side it is deep blue. Surrounding it are treacherous limestone cliffs that paint a dramatic landscape. These are just some of the many amazing sights that one can see on Eleuthera and some of the families will have the luck to do so.

by Faith Isham and Patrick Friend

My Name is Sam Parizeau. I made this video to display all aspects of my Island School experience. It contains footage from thousands of feet in the air, to deep beneath the sea. I hope you enjoy it.

Monday was the first full day that all of the 48 Island School students were back together as a whole community. For the past three crazy weeks students have been split up in a combination of exhausting eight-day kayak trips, exciting down Island trips and a usual academic week.

I started with the academic week which was very relaxing after our crazy midterms week.  Although we were still on campus there was plenty of fun things to do; night dives, yoga, free dives, an earth day celebration and best of all a rake and scrape dance class.

Then my small group of twelve embarked on our Down Island trip where we got to visit tourist destinations and resorts to see how tourism has affected Eleuthera and the greater Bahamas.  Highlights of the Down Island trip included visiting a ginormous banyan tree, exploring Harbor Island, indulging in all of the sweets and food that we have missed at the Island School, jumping off a twenty foot cliff into a beautiful blue hole, and the Hatchet Bay caves where we got to paint our bodies with red mud.

When we returned to campus with our stomachs substantially full and our faces a little redder we had to immediately pack for our eight-day kayak trip.  This entailed packing six days of food, kayaks, personal and other gear.

After we had a last good nights rest in our beds we woke up early the next morning at 6:30 and finished getting our kayaks packed up and ready.  I can easily say that for most of us the eight-day kayak trip and the two-day solo were probably the hardest experiences of our life.  With around five hours of paddling per day in the hot sun (don’t worry we were equipped with plenty of sunscreen) the first four days were pretty difficult.  On the fourth day we finally reached light-house beach where we had our much anticipated solos.

The 48 hours we all spent separately alone on the beach with very limited resources were spent in various ways.  Some people spent the whole time busy adventuring into the coppice others swam, sunbathed and danced on the beach.  Personally I spent a lot of time reflecting and writing in my placebook with the occasional visit into the coppice to open up a coconut.

Time at the Island School constantly feels like it goes by quickly so I really enjoyed the time to decompress and step back from all of the experiences that have occurred thus far in the semester.  As Klem my group leader said at the end of the solo when we returned as a group, whether you made sense of you solo now or sometime later in your life it is an incredibly valuable experience.

Lastly, we spent our final two days paddling before we returned to the Island School Campus. After a relaxing Sunday where we could shower with fresh water and get a good nights sleep in a real bed we have a normal week of classes.

Students on campus are all so excited for the arrival of there parents which is only a week away but we are also gearing to organize the art show and research symposiums which will both be a huge part of parents weekend.

Like I said before, time passes by quickly at the Island School so I’m sure that we’ll see our parents in no time but for now it feels like there is so much to do before then.  It’s hard to believe that the semester is coming close to the end (less then a month but whose counting).  After Parents weekend we will only have two more weeks on the wonderful Island of Eleuthera.

But as a quote once said at dinner circle said, “Don’t count the days, make the days count.”

by Faith Isham

Mornings at the Island School begin at 6:15 with a beeping watch and a flick of the light switch. It is never easy dragging myself out of bed but the thought of doing push-ups at circle always gets me going. Once up, I quickly throw on some athletic clothes and grab my sneakers before rushing out of the door. At circle we do a quick count off, go through announcements for the day and then sing the Bahamian National Anthem with pride. After the National Anthem we split into either run or swim track and begin our morning exercise.

Before beginning our daily run, Sophia (an Island School Student) led us through some stretches. These stretches took us all over campus but ended near the dinning hall so we could all see and appreciate the beautiful red sunrise. Although waking up at 6:15 is definitely not my favorite thing, I look forward to seeing the spectacular sunrises every morning.

Once we had warmed up and stretched, we headed out to the Marina to do some sprints. The thought of sprints always makes me cringe but luckily today we did them in partner pairs so that one person would be sprinting and the other would be waiting on the bridge, recovering. When it was my turn to run the loop I started with a full-fledged sprint. However, by the time I was halfway through, my lungs felt like they were going to explode and my legs felt like jelly. As I neared the final stretch I was about ready to quit but the sound of everyone cheering kept me going. Once I made it to the top of the bridge I high-fived Will, my partner, and watched him sprint off. It was reassuring to know that I would have at least a few minutes to regain my breath.
After morning exercises we all split up into different chore groups. In past chores I’ve had Girls Dorm (which usually means you’re stuck cleaning toilets) and Farm Chores (meaning you get to pick lettuce and other yummy foods). By the end of chores music is always blasting from girls dorm as all the girls begin cleaning their personal space. By 8:15 (maybe 8:30 depending on how messy your personal space is) people are packing into the dinning hall for breakfast.
When everyone is done eating Dish Crew stays behind to clean while everyone else prepares for the morning classes.

This morning we had a 3-hour Human Ecology block, where we split into our separate groups to work on our projects.

My group is building a garden for the ELC (Early Learning Center). We spent today talking to Oscar (the head facilities manager) and collecting materials to start building our trellis. When we got back the presentation room we saw Anya, Bailey, Tess and Abbe cutting up coconuts for their new soap product. We all crowded around trying to get a small chunk of coconut to eat before class ended.

Once class was over I headed to the dinning hall to grab a quick lunch before research. For Sustainable Fisheries we headed out to Rock Sound, a settlement 30 minutes away, to interview some local fishermen on their perspective of the surrounding marine environment. Ted, a local from Rock Sound who works at The Island School, came with us and introduced us to some fishermen he knows. Both of the interviews we conducted were very successful and we heard some interesting stories about sharks. After a long (and very hot) day, full of interviewing, we headed back to The Island School just in time for dinner circle.

At dinner circle we went through all the announcements and then one of the caciques, told the quote of the day; “Speak if only what you have to say is more beautiful than silence”. The quote was followed by a moment of silence. Once dinner circle was finished we all headed to the dinning hall to eat.

After dinner my hectic day finally winded down. Since it was a nice night I spent my study hours on the dining hall porch with some other Island School students. We played some music and chatted as we worked on our Art projects. At 10:30 we headed back to the dorm for the night. As soon as I got back to the dorm I collapsed into bed, exhausted after such a busy day.

by Fiona Ross

During our first querencia, we were exposed to the three important styles of writing that we will be using throughout the semester, which includes Personal Narrative, Descriptive, and Natural History writing. Through our three prompts to reflect upon during our querencia time, we learned how to work with each style of writing.

Later that week, students expanded their skills of specializing these three styles by writing an anonymous excerpt from each piece they wrote during querencia time as examples of what each style looks like. We then put all of our examples into one pile for the whole class to pick out of and practice identifying each style.

After organizing the excerpts into the categories of Personal Narrative, Descriptive and Natural History and discussing the reasoning behind our choice of which category to place it in, Olivia designed double sided posters to hang up in the dining hall as a way to share our voices in the contexts of our first impressions of querencia.

“Have you ever noticed that trees never sway the same way twice? The color of the lights refraction on its boughs gives it away” and “the waves encompass all around them in great storms, then recede like long hands, dragging back all they can carry” were some profound examples of our descriptions of querencia. This assignment allowed us to let our mind run freely and document our surroundings while still teaching us how to write in very different styles.