Uncategorized

Island School and The Heroes Journey

The Island School Semester is filled with journeys. Students embark on their own, made up of the thousands of small individual journeys that happen each day here: the first run-swims, kayak trips, inner-loop explorations, settlement days. This place is blanketed with epic voyages, woven out of small journeys. In their Literature classes, students read Omeros that tells them: “in its travelling all that the sea-swift does it does in a circular pattern,” and learn about the Heroes Journey. Recently, we asked students to use this model to better understand and reflect upon their time at Island School. Today we feature these stories of of separation, initiation and return. Students consider their guides and mentors along the way, challenges, and how they have returned or will return, changed. So, as parents prepare to embark on their own epic voyages to campus for the upcoming Parent’s Weekend, enjoy these powerful stories of our own student heroes… (our apologies that not all student’s work is featured here. Many felt that their experiences were too personal to be shared in such a public venue, others, well… just have not turned them in yet).

Paul: I had been looking forward to this moment for years. It was one of the reasons that I wanted to come to The Island School in the first place. I had heard about solos many times before and it had always seemed so fun. Two days and nights by myself alone in the woods: Man versus nature with only myself to keep me company. I could build a fortress or write a novel. I had expected I would discover the meaning of life or think up the cure for a disease at the very least. The options had seemed limitless not a day before. But as I stood in the sand looking at the trees along Lighthouse Beach that I was to live in for the next two days, the reality of the situation started to sink in. I turned right and saw my companions walking far down the beach, being dropped off one by one. I searched my brain for thoughts to comfort myself, but came up empty. All I could think was that I was alone, and I was already bored of myself. I knew from those very first moments that this would be a very interesting two days. Continue reading →

Aquaponics, Cape Eleuthera Institute, CEI, research, Uncategorized

On Plastic Research Expedition with Kristal Ambrose

Cape Eleuthera Institute’s Kristal Ambrose embarked on her epic journey to of plastic research, leaving on April 24th.. From Nassau, Bahamas to Texas, USA; from Tokyo, Japan to Guam; and finally, on to Majuro, Marshall Islands, the last two weeks have been a whirlwind of exploration, opportunity, and learning for Ambrose, CEI’s Aquaponics Intern and researcher dedicated to finding solutions to plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.

“Most of what we eat, drink or use in any way comes packaged in petroleum plastic—a material designed to last forever yet used for products that we use for as little as thirty seconds then throw away,” describes Ambrose on her blog. “Plastic creates toxic pollution at every stage of its existence: manufacture, use, and disposal. This is a material that the Earth cannot digest. Every bit of plastic that has ever been created still exists, including the small amount that has been incinerated and has become toxic particulate matter. In the environment, plastic breaks down into small particles that release toxic chemicals into the environment. These particles are ingested by wildlife on land and in the ocean, contaminating the food chain from the smallest plankton to the largest whale…This trip will serve as my formal training experience to tackle the plastic pollution and marine debris issue within my country.”

In Nassau during the days before departure, Ambrose was invited to tea at the home of His Excellency Sir Arthur Foulkes, Governor General of The Bahamas. Continue reading →

Daily Update

Daily Update May 14, 2012

Weekend Recap: Saturday was an eventful day with Research in the morning and then Human Ecology in the afternoon. In the morning each research group presented to faculty and CEI in preparation for the presentation they will give over parent’s weekend. Every group received feedback on their Power Point Presentations and on their delivery. It was a great way to hear other points about our work and better ways to facilitate to others what we have done. Saturday afternoon we had a large chunk of time to work on our Human Ecology projects. Felipe and I went out with faculty guidance and speared lionfish. We are trying to show an alternative use of lionfish other then eating them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZpXZ4f_8xQ&feature=youtu.be

Our group is catching lionfish and then fishing with them to see if they are effective as bait. We will then facilitate that information to local fisherman. As of right now, most local communities still don’t know that lionfish can be eaten. Continue reading →

Daily Update

Daily Update May 10, 2011

Yesterday, during art class, the student body officially set the Art Gallery in motion. On Parent’s Weekend there will be a showcase of the students’ artwork set up in the octagon. There are multiple committees in charge of different tasks for the showcase. Some of the committees include set up and clean up crew, appetizer crew, and printing labels crew. The curators, in charge of the overall process, are Matti McAlpin and Liz Ellinger. They take over the entire design of the extravanganza. All the students are excited for their parents to see the hard work they’ve put towards their artwork this semester.

Today is the final preparation day for our Human Ecology final projects. Continue reading →

Alumni

BESS Students’ Turtle Tagging Adventures

This fall, 2 BESS (Bahamas Environmental Steward Scholars) students, Brian Higgs (F’11) and William Sturrup (F’11), attended The Island School. Now, this semester, as part of their full year BESS scholarship, they are interns at Bahamas National Trust and BREEF (Bahamas Reef Environmental Educational Foundation), respectively. Brian and William recently went on a two-week expedition, tagging turtles throughout The Bahamas. You can read about their trip here: BESS Newsletter.

Daily Update

Daily Update May 8, 2012

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Yesterday was the first day back into the swing of regular classes. We had a community meeting in which the new Cacique Council was named – Annie Obrecht, Ann-Marie, Rachel, Kyle Titsworth, and Brendan. The activity of the meeting was a kayak rotations themed relay race. Everyone was split into their kayak groups and had to run to stations which included putting on their spray skirt, life jacket, and singing “Row Row your Boat;” digging a Dead Man; and running to a van, getting in, and singing a Hannah Montana song (experienced during Down Island Trip). After the relay race, we split into random groups and talked about our individual goals for the rest of the semester. Some of the goals included: to finish the Super Swim or Half Marathon, to do better in class, or to beat their old Run-Swim time. It was a good time in which we officially ended our kayak groups and then came together as a community. Continue reading →

Eleutheros

Eleutheros

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The Human Ecology, Histories, and Literature Departments have collaborated on a series ongoing personal reflective essays called Eleutheros. Each week students are asked to write a reflective essay that demonstrates their understanding of the themes from their coursework and effectively links these themes to their unique thoughts and experiences.  Enjoy reading these two articulate examples of how our students have deeply and personally engage with essential questions, important to their course of study at The Island School…

Prompt:

1.  What does it mean to “marry your heart to your right hand?” (Omeros 72). Who lives this way? Do you? Should you?

Abby Anderson:

When I talk to my grandmother, she often tells me about weaving. She has been weaving for most of her life, was the President of the New Hampshire Weavers’ Guild, and goes to weaving conferences around the country where she shows her work and sees others’ work. In her little two-bedroom house, she dedicated an entire room to weaving, filling it with her loom and supplies. When my grandmother talks about weaving, I notice an important quality in her voice that perpetuates her love of weaving: passion. To find one’s passion and to be passionate are two goals that many people strive for throughout their lives. This passion makes up the essence of what it means to “marry your heart to your right hand,” (Omeros, 72). Continue reading →

Cape Eleuthera Institute, CEI

Dartmouth PhD Student Studying Bahamian Lizards at CEI

A PhD student from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, Mike Logan, will be on the Island School campus until May 31st collecting data for his research on thermal adaptation in lizards. Mike’s PhD focuses on the response to climate change in lizards, and in the Bahamas he is conducting transplant experiments to examine how traits like the thermal sensitivity of running speed might evolve in response to environmental warming. This May, Mike is capturing roughly 100 individual Anolis sagrei (Bahamian brown anoles) from a shady habitat on the interior of the island, measuring their running speeds as a function of body temperature in the lab, and then releasing them onto a sun-baked peninsula. Each lizard will be individually marked, so that when Mike returns in late August he can recapture all the survivors from the sunny habitat and figure out which lizards were “selected for.”

His hypothesis is that the lizards with the highest thermal tolerance (highest ‘optimal temperature for running’) Continue reading →