Our board of directors leadership team gathered on Eleuthera this weekend to see the programs in action, and honor the contributions of faculty, board members, and alumni. Thank you to all of the directors who help us stay on track and growing – our shared success and future rests with you! Congratulations to all of the award recipients – we are honored to display your names in Hallig House.
Every week at The Island School we get around 5 hours of exploration time to explore the area around the school. While many students just go to the marina store and buy sugary snacks there are loads of other activities and things that you must do during your time here. Below are some of the top 10 activities to do during the free time you are given.
You only have 100 days here and you get very little exploration time every week so it is essential to spend every minute of your exploration time effectively. You can spend your time eating sweet food when you get home and you are only at The Island School for one semester. Make every second count and take advantage of all the opportunities during exploration time so you know you made the most of your 100 days at The Island School.
Nathaniel (Nat) Davenport from the Spring 2015 semester has been having a killer swimming season. Earlier this month Nat won two Division 2 state titles and was on a relay team that captured a third title for his Duxbury high school swim team. Nat’s state titles were in the 50 free and the 100 free with times of 21.14 and 46.34 respectively. The third title was from a 200 free relay with an impressive overall time of 1:28.42. Nat has been an integral part of his school’s swimming success this season which has allowed his team to remain undefeated. Congratulations Nat! We hope to hear more of your successes soon!
As the we eagerly set up stations in the dining hall, the sounds emanating from the 44 other students stationed around the flag increased. About an hour earlier, the 4 other caciques and I posted the 11 teams and declared that extra points would be given to the teams with the most spirit, creativity, and, of course, the best costumes. In the final moments before the official Saturday Night Activity began, the 4 other Caciques and I went out to the flag pole, triumphantly observing all of our peers dressed up in extravagant costumes ranging from wetsuits to cowgirls to USA-themed and even to people dressed up as other members of their team.
Last Saturday’s evening activity was The Olympics. Essentially, there were various stations and competitions set up around the dining hall that each team competed in. There were prizes awarded to the every team, but the team with the most points got to choose which prize they wanted, as there was a wide range of awards from a dawn dive with hot chocolate or lunch with Maxey to a day with endless ice or a high-five workshop with Tom.
The evening started with a short briefing in the prez room and then the students were set loose to come up with a jingle/cheer/performance of sorts to represent their team. These were then presented and points were awarded for the best one—a team decked out in safari hats and PFGs took the win for this category with a hilarious dance/skit about Steve Irwin. Following these performances, each team chose a representative to complete the first challenge: thawing a thoroughly frozen t-shirt, untying the numerous knots, and finally putting this t-shirt on. I was later informed that teachers all the way at CEI were able to hear the excited cheers from the dining hall, showing how enthusiastic everyone was! As the night went on, teams traveled from a plank contest—where the Island School plank record was set by Charlie Widing—to apple bobbing, to “mystery cup,” and a few others.
The evening ended with birthday cake for Baker Casagrande’s 17th birthday and an announcement of the winners. It was an incredibly energetic, action-packed night that students and teachers alike enjoyed.
Hey guys! We’re almost half way there. So many things are happening this week and in the weeks to come. Thursday of this week we had our midterm demonstration of learning (DOL) presentations. DOL’s are basically when students talk about a specific event at The Island School and talk about how that has changed or accentuated his or her perspective. The next day we had kayak relays for morning exercise. This is where four teams – the four 3-day kayak groups – compete against each other by doing a run swim with added exercises and kayaking. Spirits were high and the sense of competition and teamwork scented the air. Although there was a set order to who finished first, there were other opportunities to gain points; it could not be determined who won from who finished first so the points were tallied and the winning team was announced at dinner that night. On top of that, Monday, we began our three-week rotations. For approximately 8 days a group of students will be kayaking or sailing, another will be on campus attending classes and the last group will be on the down island for a Histories tourism unit. After the 8 days are over, the groups will all rotate. During the kayak or sail trips students will have the famous 48-hour solos. During this time the students will only have a tarp, gorp, water, and certain necessities (excluding a watch, flashlight, books, etc.). It will be interesting to see how this 8-day tip will differ from the 3-day at the beginning of the trimester.
“When a piece of art has to be more than interesting, has to be more than beautiful, the challenge really increases. When art has to stand for something, aiming to captivate people to take action or make small positive changes within their community, then it becomes Art Advocacy.” -Noelle Anderson
This statement was the basis for the artistic work produced by Noelle Anderson from the Spring 2013 Island School semester while she spent time in Napier, New Zealand this winter with PangeaSeed painting a mural for their Sea Walls project. Since returning from The Island School three years ago, Noelle has been busy. While still in high school, she founded a “Positivity Club” with fellow Sp ’13 classmate Greta O’Marah. The goal behind this club “was to make our community a less stressed one, and to get fellow students to focus on what is truly meaningful and important to them through positive thinking techniques.” Both Noelle and Greta agree that their inspirations for this club came to them entirely through their experiences at The Island School. Additionally, Noelle participated at the Varsity level in skiing and tennis as well as pursuing her interests in “the intersections of sustainability, social justice, and art by focusing on ‘EcoFeminism’ for my AP photography series.” Noelle has since been attending Dartmouth where she studies Geography and Studio Art as well as participating in the Dartmouth Ski Patrol which allows her to get out on the hill and put her Outdoor Emergency Care certification to good use.
Noelle initially became connected with PangeaSeed after discovering them on Instagram. She describes the app as being “a really incredible way for artists interested in similar initiatives to get connected through anything from hashtag use to following the same kinds of pages — pretty neat.” The “seed” in PangeaSeed is an anagram that stands for Sustainability, Education, Ecology and Design which are all considered by PangeaSeed to be its cornerstones. Once Noelle had found PangeaSeed’s Instagram page, she became “mesmerized by the work they and the artists they’re connected with do.”
PangeaSeed likes to describe many of the artists involved as “ARTivists.” Prominently displayed on their website is a definition for ARTivism as “An explosion of creativity, a marrying of art and activism.” Noelle feels that she can partially identify as an ARTivist. She explains that “when I was in high school and decided to focus on ‘EcoFeminsim’ for my AP Photography final series I think I was pushing the idea of using my art as a tool for activism, as a creative means of making a statement I felt more powerful than words.” PangeaSeed opened the door for Noelle to truly express her ARTivism on a larger scale than the canvases she was used to working with. Her project turned into a full-blown mural that commented on shark conservation. Of course, not everything Noelle creates is for the purpose of activism. Everyone needs to take a break and “simply reflect parts of me that love the beauty of a landscape or total abstraction.” This is because, for Noelle, “creating art and the very existence of it will always be a reflection of the artist.” Meaning that all aspects of Noelle’s work reflect back upon different aspects of herself. She loves “having the term ARTivisim in my toolbox, and empowering myself to own that side of my artistic self when it is right to do so.”
Noelle’s journey to New Zealand this winter began when PangeaSeed itself reached out to her. They asked her if she would like to join their Sea Walls: Murals for Oceans in Napier, New Zealand which is located on the North Island of New Zealand. In disbelief, Noelle spent the winter creating her initial sketch, and moving her final projects and exams at Dartmouth to an earlier time so that she could leave campus accordingly. When Noelle got to New Zealand, there were 30 other artists joining various other painting projects. Noelle was initially intimidated because many of these other artists were “internationally acclaimed professional street artists, and I am just a student who has never painted a mural before” but, once Noelle began work on her mural, she fell into her routines she had developed for her other projects and that allowed her to settle in and be confident in her progress as the mural took shape around her. As Noelle worked, the wall in front of her became “my canvas and the street was my studio!” There were certainly challenges to the process that included: “sketching out my shark figures without a projector, being rained out two of the 6 painting days and feeling the pressure of time, and lastly balancing answering passerby’s questions in an engaging manner while still trying to stay focused.” For Noelle, the process of creating this mural was extremely rewarding and she attributes this to feeling more physically connected to the work – “more so than any piece I have created at home or at the studio at Dartmouth, due to the way I had to move my body through space in order to apply paint onto my wall.
Noelle comes from a family with a fairly intense artistic background. Nearly everyone in her immediate nuclear family interacts with the arts on some level. Her “mother is a painter, a poet, a documentary film maker. My father is a drawer, a musician. My sister is a singer, a water-colorer. My family has always, always stressed the importance of creative outlets.” With that background, Noelle found that she jived with the art program at The Island School and gained much from it. Noelle says, “before attending The Island School I created art, but it was The Island School that taught me, that pushed me, to really make the art matter”. Part of the reasoning for Noelle’s shark conservation related mural stems from the fact that “The Island School also lead me to choose the environment, the earth, vulnerable ecosystems and species as a specific focus.”
So, what comes next for Noelle now that she is officially an international artist? Noelle begins by saying, “I would love to continue my involvement with PangeaSeed! They are an inspiring organization and I truly respect their initiative. As I have a passion for both art and the ocean, I would be really thankful to work with them again. That being said, I am still a student.” Noelle wants to take the experiences and knowledge she gathered by working with PangeaSeed and turn all of it into beneficial experience for her work at Dartmouth. She is already stepping into action by volunteering to help Dartmouth’s Sustainability Office paint a mural for Earth Week. Noelle’s goal for the future is to attempt to “identify places I want to make change in my various communities, and using the influence and power of art to inspire others to help make those changes.”
The completed mural above stands as a testament to and reflection of Noelle’s thoughts on sharks in our current global mindset. She sent along her complete artist statement which gives a clear picture of the meaning that drove each brush stroke along the wall:
“Sharks are depicted and presented to us, above all else, as dangerous – a personal threat to our safety. Yet the reality is: (1) Humans are the ones threatening sharks, killing nearly 100 million each year, (2) the removal of these apex predators will lead to total marine ecosystem structural collapse, and (3) we need to transform the way in which sharks are seen to make these matters most salient for the public. To help tackle that last reality, I hope my mural illuminates these misunderstood creatures in the beautiful, positive, esteemed light they absolutely deserve.”
In closing, Noelle reflected back on her time as a student at The Island School and wrote a thoughtful summary of her semester:
“I still reminisce upon and cherish the time I spent at The Island School — choosing a single favorite memory is nearly impossible. Yet when people ask me about my experience studying abroad there, I am always asked about the marine research, the food, the run, the solo, the kayak, The Bahamas… Rarely do people realize that The Island School is a hugely academic experience. While the classroom differs from a typical high school, the learning experience is all the more meaningful. Projects such as interviewing local Bahamians for Histories class, creating my own research project for human ecology (we focused on substituting scallops for conch on local menus), or helping to curate the student art show are some of my fondest memories. And of course, all of the people. Never in my life have I met people, whether these were my friends, members of CEI, teachers, staff – everyone, who have cared so deeply about building a community that cares for one another and the environment supporting us all.”
Noelle, best of luck to you from all of us at The Island School! We hope that Earth Week was a blast and that your work continues to be an inspiration for all who see it!
Every year, The Island School is proud to present the Maxey Cacique Alumni Award to honor one alum who has lived our mission to make a difference in the world. Our alumni community includes over 1,500 individuals who have achieved outstanding accomplishments since transitioning back home from The Island School.
This year, we honor Peter Meijer from the Spring 2005 Island School semester. Peter was chosen by his peers and the faculty to be the final class Cacique in celebration of his leadership and commitment to the community. Peter was always looking out for that individual who might feel left out; he would reach out and bring them into the circle, Maxey remembers. After returning home from his semester at The Island School, Peter graduated from East Grand Rapids High School and received an appointment to the US Military Academy at West Point. He later transferred to Columbia University and continued to serve his country enlisting in the US Army Reserves. Peter deployed to serve on Operations Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn from the summer of 2010 to the summer of 2011. He spent his time in Iraq embedded with the Iraqi Army as a combat advisor at Joint Security Stations in the Baghdad area. Upon returning home from his tour of duty, Peter rejoined the student body at Columbia and graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology and Political Science. Currently, Peter is studying for his MBA at New York University’s Stern School of Business where he is scheduled to graduate in 2017.
Peter’s transition back from the military to civilian/college life led him to join the Student Veterans of America (SVA) organization where he was recently appointed Vice -Chair of the Board. The mission of SVA is to provide veterans with the resources, support, and advocacy needed to succeed in higher education and beyond. As a leader at SVA, Peter helps other young veterans by serving as a mentor as they return to civilian life. The organization also helps with the social and emotional issues many veterans have when returning home.
Peter also volunteers for Team Rubicon, a nonprofit disaster response and humanitarian aid organization that organizes military veterans to respond to crises. With Team Rubicon, Peter was part of front line volunteer disaster response team providing critically needed aid in South Sudan, the Philippines, Moore, Oklahoma and in New York City following Hurricane Sandy. Peter sums up his main mission at Team Rubicon as to help people — restore a sense of normalcy, he says, but there’s this beautiful silver lining. It also helps the vets, who often struggle with suicide, mental health issues, PTSD, issues of unemployment, how to integrate. All these difficult issues. When you try to work on them directly, you don’t make much progress. But when you’re working with other vets at a disaster, all those really difficult emotional bridges to get across fall away on their own. It’s the most gratifying thing.
Much of Peter’s inspiration for his volunteerism and willingness to help people came from his late Grandfather Fred Meijer. Fred was known for short quotes or “Fredisms” that Peter has carried with him always. One that immediately comes to mind as inspiring to Peter is: “No matter where you are and what position you have; you can always try to do good.” Peter took his Grandfather’s wisdom to heart and is living it every single day. For that reason, we at The Island School are honored to recognize Peter Meijer as the 2016 Maxey Cacique Alumni Award recipient.
Congratulations, Peter, from all of us here at The Island School! We cannot wait to hear more about the good work that you do out in the world.
A question I am asked constantly. There are so many different things we do everyday it’s hard to believe that some things that happened 12 hours apart were even in the same day. When I was a potential student, I remember wanting to know what a daily schedule is here, coming from another student. And the secret is, we never do the same thing everyday. Every single day is a new adventure.
At 6:15am, Girl’s North Dorm wakes up blasting music to get the day going. Its early, but its so exciting waking up because the day is full of adventures and opportunities.
At 6:30am we head to circle, and the caciques (student leaders of the week) and faculty make some announcements and then we head off to our designated track: run or swim. I’m a runner, and our typical track is about 4 miles daily, but the courses are always different. Some days instead of our tracks we do psychos, bizarros, or run swims (all things you will learn the meaning of at The Island School). On Saturdays we get the option of yoga or a team sport (ultimate frisbee, soccer, water polo, etc) and it’s an awesome start to the weekend.
7:30am we have chores, a group of about 3-5 of us in our designated spots for the semester playing music and making the campus spotless.
At 7:50am we have personal space, and basically we just make our beds and put away clothes. You’d be surprised how messy Girls Dorm can get in 24 hours.
8:15am is finally breakfast! We get so much done before 8AM, but it’s so cool because we still have the whole day ahead of us. Personally, my favorite day is Oatmeal Friday’s. Don’t miss it.
9:15am classes start-we have two 90 minute blocks but they go by fast.
Lunch is at 12:15pm, and typically at meals it only takes 20 minutes to eat, so I usually go back upstairs and hammock or start my homework for the next day.
At 1:15pm we have more classes, usually 90 minute blocks again but it varies. On Mondays and Wednesdays we have research class and that goes until dinner. But occasionally we have things like beach clean up, World Cup, or gym class with the Deep Creek Middle School. These are always the best days.
On days we don’t have research, 4:15pm is exploration time. Usually that would be Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (because we still have school on Saturdays!!) Explo is my favorite part of the day because it gives you a chance to explore outside of the Island School bubble. One piece of advice: never EVER do homework during explo. My motto is “we didn’t come to Island School to do homework all the time.”
6:00pm is circle again, where we regroup and start to settle down for the night. We have dinner at 6:15pm, and then after we typically have the whole night to relax and do homework. The workload here isn’t too bad but you should know how to manage your time well.
10:00pm is check-in, where everyone has to be upstairs but can still be doing homework. At 10:30pm all the lights are out. Although 10:30 seems early, the day is so exhausting it’s almost too late. I haven’t even seen 11:00pm.
This is our daily schedule from Monday to Saturday. On Sunday we get the entire day to ourselves until 6:00pm with an optional freedive in the morning. Of course this isn’t what the entire 100 days looks like though, because there is only a short snippet of time that we have a structured schedule. Like I said before, The Island School is 100 days of continuous adventures, and like snowflakes, there are no two days alike.
Check out some of the fun Aaron’s had during his free time over the last 25 days!
What do aquaponics and type-2 diabetes research have in common? Curiously enough it turns out that The Island School is the common link! Christopher Teufel attended The Island School in the Fall 2013 semester after learning of the program from Bart (F’04) and Jake Cerf (F’05) who lived nearby in Chris’s neighborhood. Chris was close to Bart and Jake because they were “the only male babysitters I had and also the only people who would have pillow fights with me and let me stay up and eat ice cream on a school night.” When Chris entered high school it was the mother of Bart and Jake, Beppy, who dropped a hint to Chris’s parents reminding them of the program. It certainly helped in Chris’s case that “all my life I had been interested in marine science and the environment.” From there, the rest is history. Chris applied and attended The Island School saying that “my semester at IS did more for me than I could have ever imagined. I not only became more confident with my interpersonal relationships but also realized that I really am interested in scientific research and that this career path could very likely be the one for me.” Speaking of scientific research, Chris is currently pursuing two projects. One is a homegrown aquaponics study on cichlid fish conducted in Chris’s basement and the other is type-2 diabetes research at Jackson Laboratories (JAX) in Bar Harbor, Maine.
It is fairly unusual to hear of modern day mad scientists conducting half-baked experiments around smoking beakers in their own homes. Fortunately, Chris is not counted among that number, although his parents may have initially disagreed. Christ learned all about aquaculture and aquaponics during his time at The Island School but did not develop that interest until he returned home and “happened to be doing a lab in my AP biology class at the time that examined animal behavior and so as a result I decided why not conduct some research of my own.” Chris’s parents “were certainly a little hesitant at first and more than a few times inquired why the fish tanks had to be kept at our house and not the school or really anywhere else” but eventually, they became used to the new normal of having the basement re-purposed as a combination aquarium and laboratory and allowed Chris to work. Chris credits his research project with Sustainable Fisheries and Conservation for inspiring him to work in the field and demonstrating what “sustainable systems, such as aquaponics, could do for the future of Earth’s ocean ecosystems.”
When Chris first entered high school, he retained his interest in all things environmental but broadened that interest further to include biology. The result was the discovery that Chris was interested in medicine, specifically research revolving around genetics. Last summer, Chris received an “email from one of the STEM coordinators at my school regarding the opportunity to participate in a class outside of school conducting graduate level research in conjunction with Jackson Labs and three other schools around the nation.” These other schools were: Maine School of Science and Mathematics, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, and Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology. Chris jumped in with two other students from his school and “began this class with minimal programming technology and a relatively limited knowledge of computational genomics. Needless to say the learning curve was steep and we have certainly struggled but in the past month or two are definitely proud of the results we obtained and the knowledge gained from this experience.” This type of research never truly ends so if Chris’s interest continues, he could have all the experience he ever wants in this field.
Chris has, despite the relative differences between his two fields of study, been finding common ground between the two. His research on fish focuses on reactions to external environmental stimuli and his diabetes research involves the effects of genetic predispositions. In other words, his two projects create the classic nature vs. nurture debate that many scientists worldwide are studying. In the future, Chris is interested in examining the dispute of nature vs. nurture “in a variety of biological situations from levels of aggression in fish to a diabetic precursor in humans.” Chris hopes to return to his work at JAX in the future to further the study but has to put his work with cichlid fish on hold for his undergraduate years. He is, however, open to the possibility of more aquaculture research in the future.
When asked if he wanted to give any shout-outs to people who influenced his time at The Island School, Chris had quite a few:
“This is a tough one. I would definitely like to give shout outs to Emma, my advisor and histories teacher who I was recently informed will be departing Island School soon, Peter Z for fanning the flames of my interest in marine ecology, John Schatz for being my running buddy and making sure we stayed relatively well-behaved, Catherine Klem for being a great math teacher and phenomenal kayak trip leader (let me know if you’re up at Sugarloaf anytime soon!) Ron and Karen Knight for your friendship and guidance throughout my semester, Will Strathmann for furthering my photographic knowledge and saving my camera gear on that fateful first day of our kayak trip, and the many other characters who contributed to my phenomenal experience. Of course, shout out to Fall 2013 for being some of the greatest friends I’ve ever encountered.
Best of luck to you, Chris, with your next steps in college and beyond! All of us at The Island School look forward to hearing more from you in the future.