Team WHS

2018-2019: Episode 12

Hello readers and welcome back! Just a few quick notes to keep you up to date with the many happenings at here WHS while we are watching the weather for this week very very closely.

Quiet Cafe Room: Our quiet/silent cafeteria (room C113) is now open and available to all students looking for a quiet place to eat that isn’t than the hustle and bustle of the dining commons. Please feel free to mention this to your student(s) if you feel they may benefit from using from the space. Right now it is first come first served and seats about 20. We recognize that the room is a bit spartan. We are working on adding some WHS style and character to the space. To that end, we would love any donations (like games, puzzles, books or chalk board paint) for our students to use in the space!

The new space needs a bit for character but we are happy to have created it!

Time manager app: Check out Class of ‘20’s  Sal Mudrow’s Time Manager App for WHS. We have been working on this seemingly simple idea for our students for the better part of 3 years. The idea is to help them make smart choices when thinking about all of their activities and classes for next year. The data is the median response from student surveys regarding how much time students actually put in while doing homework. Special thanks to Mr. Pine for getting this projected started and Ms. Greene for taking it to the finish line with Sal. The link can be found found our main website page and works via desktop or phone app. http://whstimemanager.com/

Our WPS Report Card: Each year every school system is given an overall report card from DESE. The report is made public and will be shared out “officially” to our community in the coming weeks. We are happy to report that it is a very positive report, but we do recognize that there are always areas to improve, grow and evolve! Please take a look at the following links: WPS Report Card 2018 (direct to the report) or the Letter to WHS families that also contains the report infomation: 2018 WPS Report Card

WHS is Always Busy: We had a really busy extracurricular activities slate last week. The below pics are just a few of the highlights! We also had our mathletes compete in a home meet for the math competitions team and a group young scientists went to Brown University and experienced a Women in STEM program! These are just a few groups that had team activities last week!

Mock Trial: Take a look at our Mock Trial team. Word in the mock trial community is that this team was our most successful WHS Mock Trial team ever!

JSA: Our Junior Statesmen of America stormed Manhattan this weekend! Thank you Ms. Glenwerks for taking the team to NYC.

Model UN: A huge congratulations to the Model United Nations team for their fantastic work at the Boston Model United Nations Conference! Special shout outs to Elina Chen for winning best delegate, Alex Lee for winning an honorable mention, Jevon Bunting for winning best position paper and Sophie Chung, James Shiang, Tommy Bellaire, Joanna Zhou and Anna Flaherty for winning verbal commendations!

 

MFA + Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A number of our art students took in the MFA and Gardner museums last Friday.

Fun in Science: Dr. Geyer’s classes were super busy last week performing RNA sequencing with Legos and doing strawberry DNA extractions!

NEW WHS Athletics Calendar

Thank you for reading and enjoy our February break!

Dennis Mahoney

Team WHS

2018-2019: Episode 11

Hello readers and happy National Tom Brady Day! Wait, that’s not a real thing? Well, it should be by now, shouldn’t it?

We have a quick post today!

Tonight at 6:45 is our third PFA meeting of the school year. We are excited to have Lisa Wong, Winchester’s new Town Manager speaking at 6:45 PM. Ms. Wong will address the ongoing budget issues and how they impact our town and schools. We will also be joined by WHS history department member Dr. Scott Spencer who will talk about the Financial Literacy Program that will take place in March. We hope to see a nice turnout tonight!

 

Winter concert:  Another great winter strings performance by our music department last Tuesday. Bravo! Please see the pics, courtesy of Mr. Nixon, below:

Grades 11 & 12 WIN Block: Next week, 2/13, grades 11 and 12 will be visited by Travis Roy. Mr. Roy will be presenting to our students his story and talk about how anyone can turn a tragedy or set back into a new goal or direction or dream. Take a look at the link below to learn more about Travis Roy.

Roy, Travis_Bio

Writing on desks is now…acceptable! Did you ever get in trouble in school for writing on a desk? Yes? Well, it’s not so much a problem anymore. In fact, some of our staff now encourage students to write on our new desks with dry erase markers! Need to doodle to pay closer attention? That’s fine. Need more space or a bigger working area in a math class where you are collaborating with other students? No problem. The desks themselves are easily cleaned and will be fine. We thought we would share out these fun pics to show that the times do change!

Student Goals: Class of 2022’s Anna Caggioni, Catherine Armstrong and Eva Somers-Bridge are wide awake and ready for the week. “Make a new friend” might just be the friendliest goal we have seen all year! Thank you girls for thinking about doing positive things at WHS!

WINspiration: “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” — C.S. Lewis

Thank you for popping in this week!

– Dennis Mahoney