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Welcome to the HGS Newsletter!
Greetings!
The Howard Gardner School is a small, progressive independent high school for college-bound learners in Alexandria, Virginia. With
a focus on environmental science and the arts, the school's mission is
to help bright, creative non-traditional learners use their unique
strengths to thrive academically, intellectually and emotionally. Hands-on
learning and weekly field studies keep students active and involved,
and internships let students explore their interests through work.
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Boat Building & Launching
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 Sawing, nailing, assembling, caulking-we did it all during bonding week, our first week of school! Teams of students worked together throughout the heat building their boats, problem-solving, leading, and cooperating in order to get them done. With help from dads Dar Silver and Alan Dickerson, teacher Alex Stevenson-Castle kept our teams moving ahead by manning the power tools and providing instruction and inspiration!
During Field Studies Day, the great boat launching was held at Fountain Head Regional Park on the Occoquan reservoir. To the surprise of a few skeptics among us, all of our boats made it through a demonstration voyage. Several of the boats were so successful that Alex and some students paddled them throughout the day. In a final showdown between Connor Anderson in his team's boat and Alex Stevenson-Castle in his own kayak, Connor was victorious!
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Fall Camping Trip
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 Beautiful weather and a great facility helped make this year's fall camping trip our best ever. Built by the CCC in the 1930's, our camp provided a rustic lodge with a modern kitchen, primitive but cozy cabins, and an almost new bathroom/shower facility. But most important was the positive, enthusiastic attitude of our school community. While there was time to hang out with friends or read or draw, the days were filled with an array of workshops, including: the physics of bubbles; bat watching; the CCC in the Depression; tree identification; night walks; story telling;and sky watching. For many of us a highlight was watching the Space Station travel across the night sky with our entire school community; for others it was the discovery of a six-foot black snake in one of the cabins!
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Senior Intern: Seth Waxman
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Senior, Seth Waxman has spent the last year and this trimester doing his internship at the National Science Foundation (NSF), working closely with Charles Bouldin. Seth has been working on software development to graphically display NSF award data using Arcview - a Graphic Information System (GIS). According to Mr. Bouldin, "Seth has learned a lot about Arcview. He is well up the learning curve of a complex program, doing work at NSF that is typically done by college students or IT professionals. He is now mostly self-taught because he has progressed substantially beyond my knowledge of the software." Seth now knows that he wants to be a computer programmer, and is confident that this experience will give him a head start towards reaching his goal. Seth has already been accepted to his first-choice college, Colorado School of Mines, an excellent engineering school in Golden, Colorado.
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Community Service
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Our students who are not yet placed in internships have contributed valuable volunteer hours while experiencing a wide range of volunteer opportunities. They have packed 7,000 books for 650 children across the country with Books from the Heart; helped to recycle building materials by cleaning and organizing Habitat For Humanity's Restore; painted store windows with fall scenes which were admired by thousands of people at Art on the Avenue the next day; and participated in a Walk for the Homeless. They have approached each job with energy, enthusiasm and a sense of purpose--and we are proud of them!
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Teacher Profile
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 Alex Stevenson-Castle
Alex teaches history, zoology, and various electives-and keeps a close eye on our buses. While Alex was earning his BA in history from St. Mary's College in Maryland, he spent his summers teaching outdoor education at the Burgundy Center for Wildlife Studies. Alex's experiences there led to teaching at HGS, where he joined us at the beginning of our second year. Alex now spends his summers chasing bats or reptiles for research projects, and his weekends working on cars and building his cabin in West Virginia.
Alex's ability to take charge is legendary. When the whole school was trapped in an absolutely unmoving traffic jam far out on Interstate 66, everyone became hungry and cranky. Alex got out of the bus to assess the situation and came back with crates of chocolate milk-enough for everyone. While he said he talked a truck driver into the donation, rumors of piracy continue...
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This is the first of what will be bi-monthly news and information for parents of Howard Gardner School Students. We hope you have enjoyed it!
Sincerely,
Katherine Keith
The Howard Gardner School |
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