The Courtyard: An Upper Division Newsletter

Dear Garden Families,

I hope this finds you well and enjoying the Halloween Season. We are quickly coming to the end of our first quarter and I want to encourage you to be in touch if you feel your child is in need of greater support or guidance as we progress. We have skilled teachers and advisors at the ready as always, so please make a point to connect with them. As a reminder, grade advisors are listed below.

7th grade – Nancy Massand
8th grade – Nancy Massand
9th grade – Sarah O’Sullivan
10th grade – Gabriel Gomis
11th grade – Marlene Dapice
12th grade – Richard Kruczek

As we move towards the holiday season, please note we will now begin our work on the strategic plan for Garden School. This work looks to set a course for our long-term health on many fronts (facilities, enrollment, finances and community engagement to name a few) and everyone’s continued support of our efforts here are needed and appreciated. If you have ideas and/or time you wish to share, please reach out to us as we are always looking for committed families to help us lay out the path for our near and well-off future.

I would like to close by saying thank you again to everyone at Garden School for the start to this school year. Teachers have gone above and beyond time and again while delivering high-level content to students across all grades. Our maintenance staff has continued to hum along, placing new temperature scanners at strategic locations in the building while handling our internet issues with unwavering diligence. Ms. Sullivan has done a tremendous job chronicling the days at Garden with her spectacular photographs she posts to Instagram while also quickly getting to speed learning the culture of the school and initiating a robust enrollment and marketing plan. And our students have come to school eager and ready to learn day after day. It almost begins to feel normal after a while. Let’s keep it up and keep taking care of one another.

Zhouran “Wilson” Wang, a Garden Senior who has been with us for 4 years, was humble when describing how he had addressed nearly 6,000 attendees at an online forum last week. The forum discussed nutrition and health among young children and adolescents, especially during a pandemic. Wilson reached out to the Shenzhen Children’s and Adolescent Health and Development Association to express his sincere interest in sharing his passion for healthy lifestyles in young people. In partnership with them, Wilson co-hosted the forum with six others, including two nutritionists and a UNC-Chapel Hill sophomore in the school of Public Health. Following the panel, Wilson remarked, “That was my first time holding a live online forum, but it went unexpectedly well. I expect to hold more events like this in the future.” After graduation, Wilson plans to study Public Health and is currently considering schools such as Cornell University, UNC-Chapel Hill and Johns Hopkins. Congratulations and best of luck, Wilson!

This past week, Cailee Malone ’21, was notified she had made the finalist round of Questbridge’s annual admissions scholarship competition. QuestBridge is a powerful platform that connects the nation's brightest students with leading institutions of higher education from across the country. Questbridge member institutions include Yale, Macalester, Boston College, Hamilton, Williams, CalTech & Dartmouth just to name a few. Final decisions on Questbridge winners will come in December. Good luck, Cailee!

If your child brings a device to school, you may have heard of our recent tech issues. Though the worst is behind us, there are still limitations on wireless access, so we wanted to ensure you had all the information. Garden School was the victim of two DDoS attacks that resulted in our internet provider turning off access two weeks ago. The disruption was felt mostly by our remote learners who were unfortunately locked out of classes temporarily.

Our tech management firm scanned every machine in our system, clearing teacher and office devices. This means a non-Garden device was the likely source of the attacks. We assume the attacks came from an infected device and an unknowing user. Regardless of source, our provider cannot sustain us if we have a third attack.

We have installed a new firewall, are conducting heavy system monitoring, are evaluating providers, and considering proposals for equipment upgrades. These things take time and money and not having internet just isn’t an option. So, for now, we are restricting student access to eliminate the possibility of another attack.

This is all to say if you have been hearing the grumbles of your student who cannot get on our network, the grumbling will likely continue a bit longer. Our immediate consideration is ensuring remote learners can access classrooms and teachers can access our network with ease. We recognize this makes it more challenging for those who bring their own devices and appreciate everyone’s patience while we identify the best path forward.

While the pandemic has impacted many elements of life inside school and out, we want to celebrate Halloween as best we can this year. Students are welcome to wear costumes (nothing too scary and no weapons please) on Friday, October 30th and we will conclude the day with a Halloween party for each homeroom, complete with individually wrapped goodies. In the evening, we will host two parties on campus, one for 7th and 8th grade students from 5:30-7:00pm and another for 9th-12th graders from 7:30-9:00pm. These parties will be held indoors, chaperoned and all distancing and capacity restrictions will be observed. Cost of attendance is $10. Hope to see you there!

Contemporary YA author Austin Aslan met with Mrs. Massand's 7th and 8th grade classes to discuss his 2014 release, The Islands at the End of the World. Mr. Aslan spoke in a combined Zoom meeting to engage topics from the writing process to the individual characters and themes to his own life journey. For many students, it was their first time speaking with an author of a book they had read.

In addition to choosing from the list the students had emailed to him, Mr. Aslan fielded impromptu questions from the Zoom participants. As an author, he loves connecting with his readers both in person and on social media. This connection enhances his ability to write material that resonates with the YA audience: suspenseful and action-packed plots, drawing on his passion for biology as well as concern for the wellbeing of our planet. What's not to like? One of our seventh graders said, "This is the most fun I've ever had reading a book."

If you want to check out his other books for middle school and upper elementary school readers, you can head on over to his webpage here: https://laustinspace.wordpress.com After our meeting, Mr. Aslan wrote, "I'm incredibly moved and grateful that you're teaching my book and that we were able to connect." The feeling is mutual! We are proud to call him a friend of Garden School.

As you might have guessed, we were unable to hold Student Council elections last spring, as is our standard protocol. Thankfully, a dedicated team of students and staff enabled us to get the wheels of democracy spinning again as we held elections this week, voting in Johnathan Shalamov ’21 and Aditya Kapoor ’21, as Student Council President and Vice-President respectively. Student Representatives have also been selected for grades 7-12 to ensure a full council, which will meet weekly to discuss matters related to students and their goals for the academic year. Special thanks go to Flance Dervishi and Michelle Ferreira, who will serve as faculty advisors to the Student Council this year.

Did you know Abraham Lincoln was believed to have Asperger’s Syndrome, or that Whoopi Goldberg has dyslexia? With time we have come to realize many people across the world have various disabilities, whether they be noticeable or not. Our goal this month is to recognize there need not be any stigma attached to ADHD, Depression, Anxiety, Asperger’s Syndrome, Autism or anything in between. Instead, we at Garden School wish to honor and celebrate our many differences across a vast spectrum. Please join us in celebrating!