Is it Graupel? Hail? Snow? Rime?

"Graupel" has been the word of the week on campus this week. 

Since spell check on Blogger doesn't even recognize it, you might not, either (but it is in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary - click HERE). 

Donner Summit has seen it all lately: snow, graupel, rain, probably even rime. In Monday's All School Meeting, Head of School Tracy Keller had advisory groups conduct smart phone and iPad-assisted Web searches to learn about and articulate before their peers the properties of the various kinds of precipitation we see from our campus at the base of Sugar Bowl Ski Resort. The following is an iPhone photo essay from the meeting. 

Scene on Campus Pic of the Day

Student collaboration on display at Monday's All School Meeting

Hands-on Learning, Human Geography Style

Human Geography students recently navigated Old Town Truckee using only Sanborn Fire Insurance maps from the 1890s. Teacher Andy Knox discovered the maps on microfiche at the Truckee Public Library. 

"They tell you a lot about what your community once looked like," said Knox. 

Spring Bake Sales Net $400 To Fight Fistula

For the last few weeks, the older girls' advisory has been tempting us with sweet treats for sale at the back of the lunch room. Quietly, and quite deliciously, they have managed to make quite an impact. Thank you to Joanne Knox for the following write-up on the older-girls' advisory's efforts to combat fistula. 

Older girls show the funds that 

they helped raise within our small

school community to help support 

the efforts of Ethiopia's Hamlin 

Fistula Hospital. 

"One theme of the older girls’ advisory has been to learn about the lives of young women, especially who live vastly different lifestyles than our own. Most recently we focused on health crises of women around the world. We learned that more than two million women in the world suffer from the very curable, but very debilitating life-altering condition of a fistula. These women are affected by both the physical trauma of the condition and the psychological trauma they endure when cast out from their families and society. Our goal was to help make a difference in at least one woman’s life by raising money for the Hamlin Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Through a series of spring bake sales, we were able to raise over four hundred dollars. This money will be donated to the hospital to support our sisters in need. This experience not only helped open our eyes to a real problem for women, but also allowed for us to change a life positively. For more information on the Hamlin Hospital, please go to: http://www.hamlinfistula.org/."

Plant a Tree, Support Your School, and Order a Yearbook ... by April 27th!

The Yearbook staff, led by Chief Editor Maya Anthony-Crosby, has been working diligently this year to produce a book which will make us all proud to be part of the Sugar Bowl Academy teaching and learning community. 

While the theme hopefully remains somewhat of a mystery within our school community, I can report with confidence that it could go down in history as one of the most unique - not to mention difficult - themes to ever be attempted by a yearbook staff. It is a theme which speaks to the individuality and creative spirit of our student-athletes. 

The price of the yearbook this year is $37.11, with $5 of the purchase price going to support teaching and learning at Sugar Bowl Academy. The yearbook staff this year is working with TreeRing Corporation, a Silicon Valley-based company which has been featured in a number of national news spots and which pledges to plant a tree for every book it prints. Naturally, that means that the more books we order, the more trees will be planted. 

Purchase orders are due April 27th to the office. Delivery is currently scheduled for the first week in June.

We all owe a huge collective THANK YOU to our yearbook staffers, including school leaders Anthony-Crosby, Laurel Fiddler, Lauren Dunn, Katrin Larusson, Cassidy Cichowicz, Sinclaire O'Grady, Bria Riggs, Erika Klenk, and Taylor Elicegui. Each has given selflessly of her time to make a yearbook we will long enjoy and remember. 

Please support your school and Mother Nature and order your yearbook today!

Marmot Man Productions/High Altitude Films Collaborate for Parents Weekend Movie

Parents Weekend featured a film made in part by the students of SBA's Action Video Editing Elective. 

Enjoy!

Get the video now at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OGMe9L3Nwo ! 

Role Play Today at SBA

Joanne Knox submitted the following photo of a Humanities class production. Said Joanne: "Students are reading Mark Twain's Puddn'head Wilson, a story that deals with the bucolic town of Dawson's Landing, Missouri around the time of the Civil War. Students today presented skits incorporating plot elements, characterization, and textual support in costume."

SBA - TV en español

SBA - TV en español reporters conduct surveys on the following - yes, somewhat random - questions: 

*Have you ever skied in Europe?

*Have you ever kissed a frog? 

Sierra Sun Covers SBA's Foray into World Affairs

Click on the screen capture to go to the full article...

Marmots Storm United Nations

Solving complex global issues might seem relatively manageable from the comfort of the classroom setting during normal waking hours.

But being awakened at 2 a.m. to react in concert with other countries to an emerging global crisis can be quite another matter altogether.

Eighteen Sugar Bowl Academy student-athletes who recently returned from the International Model United Nations Conference in San Francisco learned how unreachable consensus might seem when all the world’s stakeholders - each with its own competing interests and political agendas - gather to weigh matters that potentially impact all of the planet’s inhabitants.

Chuck Klein, Riley Plant

“I learned a lot about what politicians go through, particularly in solving international crises,” said SBA student-athlete Taylor Elicegui. “Being woken up at 2 am to solve a hostage crisis in the Philippines provided me with great insight to real international affairs.”

Hosted by the Parc 55 at San Francisco’s Union Square, the IMUNA (International Model United Nations Association) Conference ran from December 1-3.

According to IMUNA’s Web site (imuna.org), the goal is simple: "Education through Simulation."

Grace Hutton, Taylor Elicegui

For SBA students, simulation took a variety of forms, even pre conference. In preparation, students were required to write position papers - in SBA Model U.N. Club Founder Conner Evans' case, 7 pages long! -  regarding the issues central to their respective committees.

“Through research, discussions and lecture with the SBA History Department faculty and group meetings, Model U.N. members worked to understand complex global issues ranging from human rights of displaced persons to threats of bioterrorism,” said Andy Knox, SBA Social Studies Department Chair and one of three SBA faculty members including Corbin Prychun and Kelly Farrell to travel to the event.

During conference proceedings, SBA students represented the South African and Ugandan delegation in one of seven United Nations committees.

Said Knox: “Students worked in committee to discuss and debate their assigned world issues. The simulation had students using the same language and terminology of the U.N. while additionally following the same protocols as the actual United Nations of moderated debate, drafting resolutions and making amendments to resolutions.

“The Model U.N. experience attempts to simulate real world international discussions. Students must understand and play the role of their assigned country/delegation, form diplomatic alliances with likeminded nations as well as work under real time constraints.

“One of the more extreme, but very real, examples was when two of the seven committees were awakened at 2:00 am Friday morning and asked to dress and report to a conference room to be briefed on an evolving world crisis situation.

“The committees then proceeded to work until 6:30 am until they had successfully dealt with the issues at hand.

“This part of the Model UN experience aims to simulate the reality that - for world leaders and diplomats - a full nights sleep is certainly not guaranteed, and that if and when a crisis should take place that they need to be present to deal with the issue in real time.

“Overwhelmingly the feedback from SBA students was that this was a positive and fun new learning experience. The Model UN Club at SBA is already beginning to think about the next conference to attend.”

Fall Festival in Film

Taylor Elicegui and Alex Alvarez

Halloween and the 2011 Fall Festival attracted campus visits from the likes of Batman and Robin (Riley Plant and Colter Fellows), Candice and Douglas Brooks (Lauren Dunn and Augie DeRyk), not one but two Fighting Marmots (see the movie), and Calvin and Hobbes (Matt Hourigan).


All great costumes, to be sure, but, for simplicity, the hands-down and highly coveted Top Minimalist Costume Prize goes - in the humble and unbiased judgement of Marmot Man - to Mr. Stephen (with a "ph") Ascher.


Well-deserved kudos go out to Student Council and especially to Dylan Murtha and Master of Ceremonies Chuck Klein for a successful Fall Festival!


Enjoy the films, and keep an eye out for the Fighting Marmot Play of the Day, which goes to our esteemed Head of School.

-Marmot Man, powered by Blogpress and iPhone

Orientation 2011, Day 2

Fighting Marmot family:


More news follows from both our first night afield and from our Field Day events at Orientation 2011:


* The snorers of our community are now no longer anonymous. Everybody knows who we are, but fortunately the persecution has been pretty mild and good natured. One of my cabin mates - who will remain unnamed - told me that he tried to awaken me in the middle of the night to stop my chainsawing. He actually slept OUTSIDE with the bugs and the bears last night.


* There are now two "Jefes" on the SBA coaching staff, a Nordic "Jefe" - Schloss - and an Alpine "Jefe" - Kai - (both coaches noted that their understudies in the past have given them these affectionate monikers, which are also - from the perspective of Marmot Man - a tribute to the popularity of the Spanish language).


* Colter Fellows set the standard by which all future SBA volleyball players will be judged, leading his team to a 3-2 victory over a talented squad that featured the volleyball starpower of new SBA student/athlete Joelle Romo.


* New faculty member Izaak Eberst was sidelined due to an ankle injury he sustained in a game of Capture the Flag and has been hobbling around camp. The injury doesn't seem to have dampened his good nature.


* New SBA student/athlete Taylor Elicegui, a second-year J2 alpine racer from Reno, became the first student to correctly name each and every SBA community member present at Orientation 2011.


* Around the firepit, students, staff, and faculty shared their hopes and dreams for the 2011-2012 school year. The String of Hopes, an SBA tradition, will hang in the dining room of the SBA boarding house. Students may add or amend hopes at any point in the school year. Augie apparently still hopes to get huge.


* We watched the international space station fly over us at approximately 8:45 p.m. and learned, thanks to the space savvy of Steve Ascher, that it moves at about 17,000 miles per hour and houses about six astronauts.


Day 3 features a hike and swim on the North Fork of the American River, followed by the short return trip to campus with a schedule arrival of 3 p.m.


-Marmot Man, powered by Blogpress and iPhone