The Island School’s Spring 2010 band, under the pseudonym The Project IS, played a 40 minute set for Deep Creek’s Homecoming celebration this past Saturday night.  Despite only an hour and a half of practice time, the crew managed to put together a performance that got the local crowd talking.  According to one resident, her daughter heard about the “band from America” all the way over in Nassau that same night!  But don’t take my word for it; check out these videos of the action.

This was definitely a first in IS history; hopefully it won’t be the last either.  Enjoy!

To start off the day, we had a sleep-in. However, as typical Island School students and faculty, hardly anyone slept in– everyone was busy going free-diving and painting a mural in Deep Creek. After breakfast, we had our math final, which was based on the presentations from our Directed Study projects that had occured a few days ago. Another big event was our last community meeting. We certainly made it count– we didn’t talk about snacks at all! One discussion point of this meeting was sweatshirts. We are still deciding on the design of them, but hopefully we will come to a consensus soon and order them.

In the afternoon, some of us went on a dive for Marine Ecology, and the other half of us took the final fish ID quiz, and advisory time to prepare portfolios and DOLs (Demonstrations of Learning). It made for a full day. Also, after dinner we saw a very complex presentation about Lionfish done by a visiting researcher at CEI.

Soon thereafter we went to bed, so we could be well-prepared for our Human Ecology extravaganza.

Caciques: Grace & Will

Morning circle was ambushed by a myriad of pirates. Pirate Remo hired us all to complete missions for him in our kayak groups. We had to find the golden conchs in the boy’s dorm beach wreck while fighting off a pirate in a kayak. We had to cross triangle cut playing waterpolo while being attacked by sharks  (both faculty and dog) in snorkeling gear. We had to cross girls’s dorm cut with three hired pirates on top of a single sinking kayak and then we had to bury loot for Captain Sleepy-Snore-Pants. K3 completed the mission first and got to fill our pebble jar with 4 golden pebbles and some “magic water.” The magic water caused our pebble jar to fill with bubbles and because we “filled” it we are finally rewarded with a party. K3 is working to plan that party for this coming Sunday. The rest of the morning was filled with research where we worked on final posters symposium details. Human Ecology Final Project work followed lunch. We are all very near to finishing. R.E.E.F (Reef Environmental Education Foundation) gave us a presentation on the invasion of lionfish after dinner.

This Saturday was the 4.5 mile Super Swim which was the culmination of the swim track training. All of the swimmers finished with amzing times and everyone was extremely proud for the event they trained for all semester. The run track students supported the swimmers on the boats and on shore. After a physically and mentally draining day students went to an event in Waterford (a settlement near Deep Creek). The event raised money for the settlement by selling delicious food. Check in was at 9:30 to prepeare for the half marathon the next day which would start at 5:00.

-Olivia Millspaugh

As we wind down toward the end of the semester it is easy for everyone to forget that we still have many important projects to do. The Lionfish Human Ecology project is off to a strong start after a six fish capture a week and a half ago. Our objective is an attempt to raise awareness about the invasive nature of the Lionfish and help reduce their population on reefs by hunting them.  We will be presenting our information, and our fillets at the Deep Creek Conch Fest on the 5th of June.

-Will Drury

We started out the day with swim and run tracks! It was our last track exercise before our half marathons.  Afterwards, we all broke off to work on our Human Ecology final projects.  Later that day, we went on one of our last dives at the Island School,  and one of the coolest!! We went IN the underwater Cobia Cage, and got to chase Cobia around with nets in an attempt to harvest them. Morgan was a feirce predator in the Leo group, trapping a cobia against the bottom net, but unfortunatly her prey outwitted her at the last minute, and he escaped.  We then had dinner, and then worked on some of our final assignments of the semester!

-James Sands-Berking & Gaby Graham-Glicksman

We hope you all had a wonderful weekend here at The Island School!

Before we could kick it off as caciques, coffee house stole the show on Saturday night with a plethora of talent. The Island School band really knocked our socks off with their original mashups, Hey Ya, etc. The heart-melting slideshow that was so seamlessly put together brought tears to everyones eyes and we couldn’t help but laugh at Andy Dahlstrom’s sentimental speech about how our emotions are comparable to dish soap.

DAY ONE:

Every member of the Island School community was overJOYed after spending a day with their parents exploring the island and invisioning their lives at home. It brought back sweet memories of our down island trips, and countless mishaps (shout out to Bam for getting lost in the caves ) It was hard to return to the dorms on Sunday night after our day of adventuring, but we all returned to our beds with full tummies and a head full of good memories.

DAY TWO! (thats right):

Today each student woke up with a little piece of their hearts torn out, Mommies and Daddies were loading back onto their planes to go back home and leave us here… again. Despite the fact that our parents abandoned us we had a typical amazing day at The Island School. The generous teachers doled out a sleep in to help us recooperate from a hard weekend of work. We disassembled all of the artwork from the gallery, turning it back into Boy’s Dorm common room. Students have been working hard to put together their math lessons next week and we’re all beginning to feel the stress of FINALS week. That’s right, we’ll be home in the blink of an eye (but not really). Super swim and the half marathon are creeping up on us. We skeptically welcomed a group of newcomers to join us in our battle of wits, formally known as the half marathon. Today was also David Miller’s birthday which we celebrated by recreating his life story, year by year around our circle. Past, present and a very exciting future. We wrapped up the day with a delicious brownie cake… Thank you all and goodnight.

- Peter Sholley & Helen Bourdeaux

5/18/10