Friends and Families,
We have confirmation via text message this morning at 6am that the eye of the storm has passed over Eleuthera. Everyone is staying safe and waiting for the remainder of the storm to pass with the strongest part behind us and the winds tapering throughout the day. With internet and cell phone service wavering in and out, we are getting updates as often as possible and will continue to keep you posted.
–The Island School
Friends and Families,
We wanted to reach out and give you and update on Hurricane Irene from our perspective on the island. We are expecting Irene (http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at201109.html ) to pass over Eleuthera as a category 3 hurricane, with winds and rain starting to affect the campus tomorrow (Wednesday) evening. For the 8,000 local residents of Eleuthera, it’s a ritual to buy plywood, batteries, bottled water and bleach, and fuel up their electric generators. For the Island School, Deep Creek Middle School, and Cape Eleuthera Institute, we are cleaning up campus, securing the building project sites, and taking boats out of the water. The Island School and DCMS students have not yet arrived for the start of school, but research at the Institute will be interrupted for several days with the packing and unpacking of electronics, with all of us anticipating some leaks and puddles inside as the rains and wind arrive.
We anticipate losing phones and internet service during and after the storm for up to a few days because of likely interruptions in electricity supply to transmission equipment elsewhere on the island. We are positioning people and resources to be able to help in the community afterwards - often the biggest issues are downed trees and road flooding, and we bring tools and lots of willing neighborly help to the scene.
We don’t expect that people on the island will need extraordinary support after this storm. As always, we stand ready to respond to local requests for medical assistance, and with a full complement of Wilderness First Responders of staff coming off of a 9 day training earlier this month, we have resources to offer in that direction.
We appreciate your concerns and will continue to provide updates when possible via our blog. We are still VERY excited to welcome our 26th semester of Island School students to the Cape on Monday August 29th!
–The Island School
Hello Y’all,
The Island School is an incredible place. We are all enjoying every moment we experience together and we’re really becoming a family. It was our third full day in the Bahamas and the sunburns are kicking in, as well as the chafing. The bugs have attacked most of us… but that’s the lesson of this whole trip: to face the challenges that are thrown at us and embrace the lessons we learn from them. Continue reading
Hello Parents, Teachers, and Friends!
This is our second full day in the Bahamas, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we are having one of the most incredible experiences of our lives. It is difficult to describe in words the time we are having, but it is unlike anything that we have ever experienced before. It is not what I would describe as a vacation- it is much more like an expedition. Continue reading
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When you smile with a snorkel mask on your face water trickles in through the wrinkles next to your nose and slowly fills up the mask with water. If you are SCUBA diving this means you have to look up towards the surface and breathe out through your nose to clear the mask of water. The more you smile or laugh the more you clear your mask until, if you are playing underwater backgammon against your friend Benny Urmston, you are stuck in a downwards spiral of dice rolling, hand signals (not always polite), laughing, and mask clearing.
Last week, three Island School teachers and a friend sailed from Eleuthera to the Exumas to explore the Land and Sea Park and enjoy a few days off before semester prep. Continue reading
Geoff Walton, Director of Facilities and Systems at the Cape Eleuthera Institute, received some press on the website www.workboat.com. The article highlights the process and hard work Geoff went through to get all of the school’s dive boats to run off our homemade biodiesel. Check out the article here!
College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine is proud to offer scholarships to alumni of The Island School. Any incoming student who has attended The Island School and is admitted to College of the Atlantic (COA) will receive a scholarship of $10,000 per year for up to four years. Apply for admission to COA and include a letter of recommendation from a teacher at The Island School. If admitted, you will automatically receive this scholarship for your first year at COA; an additional $10,000 scholarship is available for each of the next three years of enrollment if satisfactory academic progress is maintained. This scholarship is available to incoming first-year and transfer students. In addition, you may qualify for need-based financial aid.
This is an amazing opportunity for our alumni applying for college to consider. If you have any further questions, contact us at alumni@islandschool.org.
CEI has a vibrant intern program designed to award individuals the opportunity to learn and contribute to all aspects of operating a remote research and education facility. We provide an intellectually rigorous atmosphere that allows new and returning members of our community to gain a deeper understanding of research projects, visiting educational programs, or systems at CEI. Continue reading
Yesterday marked an end of an era at The Island School with the departure of the one and only David Miller. David came to The Island School three years ago with a ton of energy, some quirky expressions and a passion to change young people’s lives. There is no doubt that every student of David Miller has at least one (if not 20) story that brings a smile and recalls how he helped make their time at Island School invaluable. David, we cannot thank you enough for all your hard work and dedication over the years and we are sad to see you go! We wish you the best of luck and expect you to stay in touch and continue to make us all smile and do good work!
–The Island School
A few weeks ago the Educational Programs team had the pleasure of running our longest standing camp, The South Eleuthera Kids Camp (SEKC) for a five day event filled with wild fun, good times, and most importantly, some powerful learning moments. SEKC is a camp run yearly during the summer for local Eleutharan children to get a first hand experience of all that goes on at the Cape Eleuthera Institute and the Island school. Continue reading