SBA Student/Athletes Take Charge of Pledge Makeover

Pilar Alvarez, Luke Rodarte, and Colter Fellows sign
the SBA Student/Athlete Pledge

Charged with a mission from Head of School Tracy Keller, a small volunteer committee of student/athletes from each grade level began meeting last spring to reevaluate and rewrite SBA's Student/Athlete Pledge. 


The pledge, said Keller, had become outdated and "seemed distant, adultish, and hard to understand.


"We basically started from scratch and brainstormed a list of things that are important to our community and important to remember as SBA students.  


"A few areas the kids thought of that I never would have included are the fact that it was a privilege to attend SBA and that it’s an opportunity to always keep in perspective.  


"We had some really insightful conversations as a small group and then presented a first draft (written mainly by Steven Tetrault and Cassidy Cichowicz) to the whole school during an all school meeting.


"The committee took feedback and made a few alterations to the pledge, and it was ultimately reviewed by staff before being published."


The final product, signed by all SBA student/athletes at a Village Hill formal dinner and pledge ceremony last week, can be seen below. 

Finally, kudos and many thanks from the entire SBA community to Chef Scott for a wonderful dinner!

¡Yabla!

Drew Hartley and Augie DeRyk on Yabla

All SBA Spanish students this year are subscribed to an on-line resource known as Yabla (and, yes, yabla is the correct spelling - there is an explanation for the strange spelling on the company's Spanish site if you are interested).

Content selected for the site is screened - all videos posted on the site are age appropriate (K-12) and culturally authentic. They encompass clips from documentaries and television shows as well as music videos and more.


While most of the Yabla videos will be assigned as homework, student subscriptions to the site allow Spanish faculty - with students carrying laptops and ear buds to class - to occasionally simulate a mobile language lab setting, with post-video discussions in the target language occurring either in class (if time remains) or later as a chat or threaded discussion group on Edmodo, our new learning management system.


Students log in, find the assignments that have been posted by their teacher, watch the videos, then play a gap-fill game until they have accumulated the point totals designated by the teacher. A virtual grade book allows teachers to track student efforts and progress. Students can click on any difficult word in the transcript and instantly create e-flashcards for themselves. 


The video you see below shows the Advanced Spanish class working on yabla in class during first period on Thursday. The music video they are watching is a song entitled Bandera by a well known Colombian band called Aterciopelados.

Wikipedia says the following of Aterciopelados: 

Honored by the United Nations for their work denouncing violence in Colombia, Aterciopelados speaks out about myriad issues including political injustice, women's rights, and environmental destruction.

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Location:Sugar Bowl Rd,Truckee,United States