Weekly Update 3/16
Dear NCHS Family,
It was a great week at New Canaan High School. A special thank you to the PFA for bringing in a bagpiper to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
Safe Driving:
It was an amazing week at New Canaan High School. We had our annual Safe Driving Week and it was newly updated for students and families. There were speakers for all grade levels and an impactful speaker for parents. Everyday included hands on activities for students and giveaways! Thank you to the PFA for sponsoring and coordinating the event!
Please see the links below - they are tips from our parent speaker, Tim Hollister.
42nd Street:
Our Visual and Performing Arts Program put on an amazing performance of 42nd Street. It was inspiring to see our students put on such a great show despite all of the snow days lately. I hope that you have a chance to see a performance over the weekend.
Through Our Eyes Art Show:
I was blown away by the Annual art show at the Carriage Barn. Every year, I am amazed at the talent of our students. Through Our Eyes VI did not disappoint. There was great crowd and my hope is that you get a chance to stop by and see the exhibit. Read the description and see some better pictures in the VPA section of the Weekly Update.
Testing:
SAT DAY:
3/21 - In-School SAT
Juniors report to school at 7:30 AM for testing (lunch will be available)
A modified Day C school day -- for all grades -- will begin at 12:24 PM
Pd 8 12:24 – 1:12 PM
Pd 5 1:17 – 2:05 PM
NGSS - The State will be piloting a test for the Next Generation Science Standards. More information will be coming soon, but we wanted to make sure that you were aware of a change in how we would be running our daily schedule for a couple of days.
3/27-3/28 Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Pilot Assessment
To provide for recommended time for all juniors to take this through their scheduled English classes, we will use a special two-day modified block schedule.
Tuesday, March 27 (Day G – Part One)
Pd 5 7:30 AM – 8:55 AM
Pd 6 9:00 AM – 10:25 AM
Pd 7 10:30 AM – 12:35 PM
1st Lunch 10:35 – 11:05 Class 11:10 – 12:35
Art & Music, Career & Technology Education, Math, Special Education, World Languages
Class 10:35 – 12:00 2nd Lunch 12:05 – 12:35
English, Physical Education & Health, Science, Social Studies, ACES
Pd 8 12:40 PM – 2:05 PM
Wednesday, March 28 (Day G with Period 2 as if it were a Day H)
Pd 1 7:30 AM – 8:55 AM
Pd 2 9:00 AM – 10:25 AM
Pd 3 10:30 AM – 12:35 PM
1st Lunch 10:35 – 11:05 Class 11:10 – 12:35
Art & Music, Career & Technology Education, Math, Special Education, World Languages
Class 10:35 – 12:00 2nd Lunch 12:05 – 12:35
English, Physical Education & Health, Science, Social Studies, ACES
Pd 4 12:40 PM – 2:05 PM
NOTE - Juniors should bring No. 2 pencils, a calculator (not part of a phone or smart device) and snacks/drinks for breaks
Congratulations to our March Students of the Month:
Grade 12
Josh Siegel
Samantha Smith
Grade 11
Myles Baliotti
Katelyn Sparks
Grade 10
Leila Dann
Ryan Lytle
Grade 9
Kendall Somma
Braden Sweeney
Congratulations to the March Staff Members of the Month:
Hope Blair
Kristen Brown
April Kish
Barbara Jean Lapolla
Danny Melzer
Jim Zambarano
I look forward to seeing you at the many events throughout the year.
As always, thank you for your support!
Be well and stay healthy NCHS!
Bill Egan
Upcoming Events:
3/16, 17 “42nd Street” NCHS Winter Musical
3/19 Board of Ed meeting Wagner Room 7pm
3/23 NCHS Fashion Show 7 - 9 pm
3/30 Good Friday, no school
Department News:
NCTV Broadcast:
Vex Robotics
The VEX Robotics team competed at the Southern New England Regional Championship in Worcester, MA on March 3 and 4, 2018. As expected the competition was fierce. After two days of qualifying matches, RamTech’s record was 8 wins, 2 losses, 0 ties, placing them 7th out of 78 teams. During alliance selections, RamTech eventually became the 5th seed going into elimination rounds. After winning their way into the semifinal round, RamTech qualified for the World Championship to be held April 25th-28th in Louisville, Kentucky. The robot the team designed and built was able to quickly retrieve 7” tall cones and stack them to create a 5’ tall monster stack. Then the robot was able to efficiently move the stacks into scoring zones both autonomously and by driver control.
Stephanie Murphy, Isha Teredesai and Elizabeth Greer, members of the NCHS Girls Who Code Club participated in the cyber-security competition Girls Go Cyberstart over the February Break. Since each person was in different places during the competition (one was in Italy and another was in New Hampshire), they had to use FaceTime and overcome the time zone differences to compete. They worked on challenges revolving around Cryptography, Web Attacks, Forensics, Programming and Linux. The girls placed 16th in the state with 24,000 points compared with 230 other high schools. The Club will continue to participate in other coding competitions and are organizing a field trip to Microsoft for the end of the year to meet other women in tech.
Human Rights Advocates
The Human Rights Advocates attended the Human Rights Institute for High School Student Leaders yesterday at Iona College in NY. The conference is hosted annually by the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center. Fatima Sonday and Joelle Anselmo presented research they did on human rights abuses in North Korea, and Sharanya Mukherjee and Esha Dagli presented on women's rights in Saudi Arabia. We also brought 10 sophomores, who attended presentations on various human rights abuses across the globe. The keynote speakers this year were Scarlett Lewis, mother of a first grade victim from Sandy Hook, and Judith Altman, a holocaust survivor.
School Counseling:
Counselors are busy meeting with students for course selection. It’s a wonderful opportunity for all students to get a chance to sit and speak with his/her counselor about their thoughts and goals for next year and to lay out plans as they move forward toward graduation. Students can continue to make changes and appeal for reconsideration of higher level courses until April 1st, when the portal will close for all students. Course selection will continue for the next two weeks.
Counselors are also meeting with juniors as they begin to see colleges and want to review their travel plans for the remainder of the spring. Additionally we are meeting with seniors as they hear from colleges to help them make decisions about where they will land next year.
Administrator's Perspective:
In his blog this week, Mr. Gusitsch reflected on the challenges of New England weather and some of the events over the past week. Please feel free to check it out, here.
English Department:
Last week, students in Ms. Week’s Literature and Film class, as well as some members of the Black Student Union watched the new Marvel action movie Black Panther. See below as students enjoy the reclining, enormous theater seats in Norwalk!
Students in Maggie Hamill and Kristen Brown's AP Language and Composition classes are busy working on persuasive letters about issues of local concern, either school or town related. Students have gathered research, conducted interviews, issued surveys, or taken fieldworking notes in order to argue for specific solutions to their selected issues. Students have also studied and implemented successful rhetorical techniques in order to make their arguments more persuasive. In the next week students will be delivering letters to school or town officials on a variety of issues including homework load, student attendance at dances, school start times, environmental initiatives at the high school, student stress, school safety, computer science desktop stations, school field trips, school assemblies, NCHS traffic concerns at drop off and pick up times, using cellphones and social media during school hours, teacher appreciation, programs for students with special needs, NCHS honor code, community service hours at the high school, salt usage on roadways, water conservation, cell towers in town, and proposed railroad service on the NC line. Students are excited about the research they have gathered and hopeful that their ideas will be well-received when they send out their final letters!
Next week, students in Ms. Hernberg’s Literature of the Holocaust senior elective as well as tenth grade students will have the opportunity to experience a Holocaust program with Living Voices, a historical fiction play and presentation through the eyes of a friend of Anne Frank. "Living Voices: Through the Eyes of a Friend” is part history lesson, part dynamic storytelling by a professional actress. The actress tells a story from the viewpoint of a fictional “best friend” of Holocaust victim Anne Frank. Sarah is a composite character inspired by the experiences and testimonies of real individuals who knew Anne Frank at certain points in her life, as well as various other young people who experienced the Holocaust throughout Europe. As the story is told, students will also see archival photographs, watch video clips, and hear music from the time period. There will also be time for a question & answer period at the end of the assembly.
This program will take place in the NCHS Auditorium during period 2 (8:22-9:09am) on Friday, March 23. It is free to the public and is funded by a generous gift from the PFA. If you are a visitor to the high school, please sign in at the front desk before proceeding to the auditorium.
Science:
New Canaan High School TEAMS Competition
On Monday, the New Canaan High School AP Physics Students competed in the national TSA/TEAMS (Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science) competition. Forty-eight students participated in teams of eight. The competition consists of three parts, and this year’s theme was “Engineering the Environment”. In Part 1 each team prepared an engineering proposal to re-engineer a local building in order to make it more energy efficient. They took about 6 weeks to prepare the proposal and it was submitted just before competition day. Part 2 was a series of questions about eight different topics. Part 3 was a design and build portion where teams were given a limited amount of materials, and were told to build a tower, minimizing the time needed and materials used, while maximizing the height. Though results will not be available for a few weeks, these students learned a little more about working together with a team of engineers to accomplish tasks and hopefully gained some ideas that they will use later on to make the world a better place.
Students in Mr. Brentson’s class using a spectrophotometer to analyze the relationship between solution concentration and absorbance:
As part of their unit on Extinctions, Earth Science students created infographics, with each group focusing on one of the major extinctions that has occurred in Earth’s past. Here are some examples of their work:
As part of this unit, students performed a lab on craters, investigating factors that determine crater size.
Physics students finished their unit on rotational mechanics by using torque to find the mass of an unknown object.
Several Astronomy students participated in an an evening program at Grace Farms on the evening of March 15. The planets Venus and Mercury were observed, as were several constellations that the class had studied in the planetarium.
VPA News:
New Canaan High School’s 6th annual art exhibition features works in all mediaby 105 current art students
The New Canaan Public School district celebrates the skills, creativity, and personal voice of its New Canaan High School art students with Through Our Eyes VI, an all media exhibition.
Through Our Eyes VI features 150 works of art by NCHS art students, grades 9-12, enrolled in several introductory, intermediate and advanced art courses. These include: Photography, Advanced Digital Media, Studio Art, AP Studio Art, Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, and Filmmaking. NCHS’s visual arts faculty and the show’s curators are Kimanne Core, Jeanne McDonagh and Jennifer Sinski.
Through Our Eyes VI includes several winning entries by NCHS students who have won awards at exhibitions and competitions such as the 2018 Connecticut Scholastic Art Awards, Sacred Heart University’s Teen Visions 2018, Fairfield Museum’s Images 2018 and at the 2018 Carriage Barn Arts Center’s Annual Photo Competition.
Through Our Eyes VI is presented by the New Canaan Society for the Arts and sponsored by Bankwell, New Canaan Alarm, HTG Investment Advisors, Santella Electric, William Raveis Real Estate, and The Fritz Eager Foundation for Art Education. Performing at the opening reception was music by NCHS electric ensemble Blue Orcas.
