HS Principal

I hope you enjoyed that video. I have been experimenting with this program in Spanish because it helps me to understand how to use accent marks properly. My characters will not articulate the sounds properly if my accent marks are not in the correct places. My Spanish tutor has found this to be a very useful tool in teaching me how to improve my Spanish. As soon as I feel brave enough I will share one of my Spanish videos with you.

We have completed our first week of school, finishing off the week with a new parent welcome breakfast. Dr. Doll presented a brief history of CDS, introduced some key administrators, and gave IT director Michael Parrales an opportunity to introduce Edline.

Parents listen intently to Dr. Doll's presentation

I wanted to address the issue of extra-curriculars that was raised at the meeting. After school activities in the high school are limited to sports. We train all year round in basketball, soccer and volleyball, and we give each sport preference during its designated “season.” For example, we have started the year with basketball, so students interested in this sport have begun training and preparing for the AASCA tournament to be co-hosted by CDS and MBS. MBS will host the finals, and the tournament runs from October 21-25.

The Action Varsity Basketball tournament dates have been set:

Sept. 8:  Girls vs. MBS 3:15 at CDS

Boys vs. MBS 4:15 at CDS

Sept. 24: Girls vs. Humboldt 3:15 at CDS

Boys vs. AIS 3:30 at AIS

Sept. 29  Girls vs. Calasanz 3:15 at Calasanz

Boys vs. Calasanz 4:15 at Calasanz

Sept. 30:  Boys vs. Lincoln 3:15 at Lincoln

Oct. 6:  Girls vs. Lincoln 3:15 at Lincoln

Oct. 9: Girls vs. UWC 3:15 at CDS

Boys vs. UWC 4:15 at CDS

Oct. 15: Girls vs. ICS 3:15 at CDS

Boys vs. ICS 4:15 at CDS

Nov. 2-6 semifinal and final games

Please note that practices for soccer begin next week and volleyball will follow shortly after. Students can get more information from Glenda Pearson in the athletic office.

BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT

Mark your calendar for September 3rd and plan to attend our Open House in the high school, 5:30 – 8:00

EDLINE

We will be sending home the activation codes for Edline soon. I will send out an announcement via this site, as soon as they are available.

Biggest Pothole in Costa Rica?

You be the judge...

Have a great weekend.

We kicked off the new school year with an introductory assembly. The class of 2010 came equipped with noisemakers and feather boas (some) to mark the occasion. The 9th graders felt a little overwhelmed, but are beginning to find their way and fit in.  We talked about the keys to success: working hard, being engaged, setting priorities, and making commitments.

We emphasized some simple rules to follow which will keep us from getting distracted: dress code, tardies, and noise. You can help us each day by reminding your child to take responsibility for these simple tasks.

Here is a picture of the class of 2010 from this morning’s assembly:

Have a great year, seniors!

Thanks to all of you who have subscribed to my blog. Don’t worry: you won’t be receiving daily posts from me. This is an exciting and busy time so I thought I would share a few of the moments with you and then settle into a pattern for posts. I hope to communicate with you a few times each month.

Welcome to a new school year at CDS. It has been a busy summer preparing the campus for the start of school. Our 4 new teachers arrived at the beginning of August and spent a week settling into their new homes and getting to know their surroundings. The returning staff arrived a week later and busily began preparing their classes for opening day. Let me introduce you to our new staff:

Chris Stallings joins us from California where he has been teaching science. He has 15 years of experience, having also taught in Virginia in the United States. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University and did his graduate work at George Washington University where he obtained his teaching credential.

This is a picture of Chris on the new teacher scavenger hunt.

Chris recently married Erin Leydig Stallings who will be teaching science in the middle school.

Chris is excited to be teaching biology, AP biology and environmental science in the bio-diversity capital of the world, Costa Rica. He is a devoted runner, a lover of science fiction, and a devoted consumer of strange and unusual foods. He also has a passion for trivia which paid off—literally—when he made an appearance on Jeopardy! He will put that trivia to good use as he guides our Knowledge Bowl team this year.

Jason Bell hails from Canada. He earned both his bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in education from the University of New Brunswick. He has taught for the past 6 years in New Jersey and will be teaching Algebra II and Algebra II honors.

Jason is the guy on the far left.

Outside of the classroom, Jason is a big sports fan. His favorite sport is hockey and his dream is to buy the Phoenix Coyotes (a professional hockey team) and relocate them to Escazu. If you build the ice rink, Jason, they will come.

Jason will offer a math workshop for kids, hoping to instill a passion in the kids for all things mathematical.

Doug Gamble is fresh off a year- long sabbatical after teaching for the past several years at Marian Baker. He has 23 years of experience having also taught in California, Japan, and Idaho. He earned his bachelor’s degree as well as a master’s in education from Stanford University. He also has a second master’s degree in biblical studies.

This is Doug passing through the library.

Doug is the father of 3 children and his oldest son Jesse is an 11^th grader at CDS. Doug is also an avid sports fan but he is especially fond of baseball, tennis and fly fishing.

This year Doug will be channeling the ancient Greek philosopher and teacher, Socrates, as he leads students in the now famous Socratic Cafe.

Elizabeth Huesing was born, raised and educated in Minnesota. She graduated from the College of St. Benedict and earned her teaching credential at Hamlin University. She has been a math teacher for the past 3 and half years and will teach algebra, geometry and geometry honors.

Elizabeth, where do you go to pay your bills?

While in college she interned and taught English in Costa Rica.

Elizabeth plays the piano, enjoys reading and likes to play tennis.

Elizabeth has also volunteered to advise our yearbook group and looks forward to sharing her expertise as a former yearbook editor.

This school year we officially begin our relationship with K12, the online educational program. So far over a dozen high school kids will be studying courses such as German, Chinese, psychology, and oceanography through K12. Our partnership allows us to offer a much wider range of courses to our students along with the convenience of self-paced study in an online environment.

For the first time since I have been at CDS (I am starting my 4th year) our students will be able to attend the AASCA leadership conference. Lincoln School, here in Costa Rica, is sponsoring the event and we will send a group of students to participate in a leadership camp. The students are excited to participate.

New Parents

We have a New Parents welcome breakfast on Friday, August 21st at 8:00 am in the cafeteria. We hope you can join us. This will be a chance to meet other new parents and find out about our parent association and how to help out during the school year.

Thanks for reading my blog. I will post reminders of upcoming events under the subject or category heading: “High school news.” If you are interested, you may read my occasional musings on education under the title “Educational reflections.” Your comments are always welcome.

May News

• AP Exams May 4-15 with some make-ups the following week.
• Check out the K12 partnership announcement sent to all parents
• If your child is interested in taking an online course in the high school, please have your child contact Mr. G. as soon as possible. He is currently enrolling students for the fall.
• Online courses through K12 are courses not available at CDS such as computer programming, AP psychology, AP statistics, Chinese I or Chinese II, etc. A complete list of courses is available from the high school office
• Sports banquet May 29

Steve (our ed tech guy) has hooked me on Twitter. Pretty incredible. I was skeptical and actually registered months ago but did nothing with it. Now that i’m on I definitely see the potential. It is an absoultely essential tool for professionals who want to stay current in their fields. It connects you to like-minded people and they share in manageable portions the information you may want to investigate. Like any internet based tool it can be a time waster if you approach it without a purpose, but that is the beauty of having an experienced tech guy like Steve show the way. He came in, helped me set up, and then used his personal network to help me link with others. Then he sent out a notice that I was someone “interesting” and others may be interested…and voila. I am now building an incredibly valuable network of resources. I haven’t even begun to tap into its usefulness.

Swimming is not an AASCA sport but we do offer classes and a program after school every spring. We also organize a competition with our sister school in Guanacaste each year, alternating the site between our campus and the Guanacaste campus. This year the competition will be held in Guanacaste.

If your child is a swimmer and would like to participate in the competition, the trip is open to everyone. You do not need to be involved in the after school swim program to participate. Just have your son or daughter inform the PE teacher.

The competition takes place from April 17 – 19. Here are the details:

1. We are leaving Friday, April 17 around noon

2. Swimming competition will be at CDSG pool Saturday morning

3. We will be camping at CDSG gym

4. We will eat at CDSG cafeteria. Breakfast 1700 colons, lunch, 2200 colons, dinner 2,200 colons

5. I still do not know how much for the bus

6. We are coming back Sunday morning, because we are taking varsity soccer teams also

We need lots of swimmers so please sign up.

The sessions were mostly tech related though my particular sessions were on critical thinking. Though not tech related I consider critical thinking important to the development of tech in the classroom. Here is how I see the connection: one of the biggest issues relating tech in the classroom is that we simply replace old methodologies with high tech ones, i.e. more bells and whistles (to use an overworked phrase). In other words, we don’t do posters we do power point, we don’t type we word process, etc. CT is one of the first steps to get teachers to change their thinking. Once they can make this pedagogical shift, they can see how implementing new technology is not about doing old things a new way but a shift in thinking and an attempt to teach new skills among other things.

I have decided to try my hand at blogging. I hope this approach will replace my need to communicate via monthly newsletter. Until you get comfortable with this medium I will also include a one-page, bulleted list of information for the upcoming month. In the meantime, for those of you brave enough to boldly go where no parent has gone before, let’s explore the possibilities of a blog.

My goal is to send you updates on the high school as they occur. In the true spirit of blogging I hope to use this opportunity to explore educational issues with you, share my thoughts on the latest educational reading that I am doing, share links of interest to high school parents, and report on activities throughout the school. You have three options with my blog. I recommend you put your email address in the box under Subscribe2 to on your right. Each time I add a post to my blog you will receive the blog in your email. The second option is to wait each month and I will re-send my blog link along with the one-page monthly update.  The third is to return to this site whenever you want to check on the latest happenings in the high school.

I will also create pages you can access on this blog concerning various topics. For example, I hope to have a page with information for all students and parents new to CDS. I also hope to create other pages that will serve as quick references or resources for parents. I am open to your feedback, so please do not hesitate to reply with your thoughts, ideas, and questions.

I also want to have some fun with this blog and demonstrate the kinds of things going on in the school. When my son was a student I knew what was going on all the time because I worked at the school. We did not have a lot of those “what did you do at school” conversations because usually I already knew from talking to his teachers. Not fair, I know, but it made me sympathetic to parents who struggle every day to get a few bits of information from their teenagers. I hope this blog will supply that information in a fun and demonstrative way. Here is an example:

One of the web tools we recently shared with our teachers is a cartoon/movie making program called Xtranormal. Using this program I created an interview where I tell you about upcoming events in the high school. Watch the following video:

I created that video in a few minutes, mostly by typing the dialog. All of the animation is scripted, though I have some control over it and can add other features from a menu of actions and gestures. Personally, I am using the tool with my Spanish tutor to practice writing in Spanish. You can choose from a number of languages including Japanese, Portugese, German and French (in addition to Spanish and English), and the characters will speak in the language you type. I can imagine the Spanish teachers will love using this program as a fun way to have students demonstrate their language acquisition skills as they create dialogues and monologues in Spanish.

As you noticed from the one-page summary or from watching the video, March is an extremely busy month beginning with our 9th graders leaving for their river rafting trip to the Pacuare River on March 11. They have been meeting with their teachers and the group leaders from Adventures Under the Sun and are eager to tackle the rapids.

The Pacuare River is a much politicized river. Check out this link to learn more about the issues surrounding the Pacuare:

http://www.pacuareriver.com/

I would like to end this first blog by sharing a video I came across on YouTube. I think you will find it appropriate and amusing. Enjoy.