Congratulations to the Outliers Robotics team for an impressive showing in the New England Championships, where they faced off against the region’s 96 top teams. The Outliers got off to a rocky start on the first day as their robot was plagued with problems. The team pulled together and systematically worked through each problem—by the end of the second day, the team’s entry was statistically one of the top robots in the world!

On the third day, the Outliers and their alliance sailed through the playoffs, winning every match until the finals. While they easily won the first match of the finals, they unfortunately lost the next two by narrow margins. In addition to coming in second place, the Outliers also won the Autonomous Award for their vision system, controls, and one-of-a-kind shifting gearboxes.

They’ll head off to the World Championships in Houston over April Break. Best of luck, Outliers—we’re rooting for you!

Congratulations are in order! Waynflete continued its reign as Maine State Science Olympiad champions in a close 23-event competition at the University of Maine this past weekend. The team beat Falmouth by a mere three points, illustrating just how important it is to perform at a high level in every event (and how well our competitors responded to the pressure!). Special shout-out to Rowena Schenck for all her hard work in her first year of coaching.

A stormy end to the week didn’t deter more than 300 students and educators from attending Waynflete’s eighth annual New England Youth Identity Summit on Saturday. More than 31 student-run workshops were on offer, on topics ranging from climate justice and women in medicine to gun safety reform and the changing face of high school sports. Educators gathered for their own workshop on how to bridge divides when different perspectives enter the classroom.

Keynote speaker Weatherspoon demonstrated their use of poetry to explore relationships, connection, and understanding, while featured performing artist Veeva Banga had everyone on their feet learning Afro Beats in at the close of the day. “I loved getting to meet kids my age, at similar stages in life, to share our experiences together,” said one attendee. “I realized that so much of what I ponder on is very much relatable to others. I have learned that I am never alone.”

Thank you to Valo for playing an essential role in making the Summit a success, and to Educate Maine and M&T Bank for their support. We look forward to seeing everyone next year!

Congratulations to the Upper School Math Team for earning second place in the Class D division of the Maine State Math Meet yesterday. Each question in the meet was worth three or more points—the team missed out on the championship by a mere two points! Great effort by all. With the entire team made up of students in grades 9–11, we’ll be even more competitive in 2025!

Upper School Math Team
Lydia Birknes ’25
Fallon Culley ’25
Ben Duda ’25
Nico Herrera ’25
Yiyang Liu ’25
Abie Waisman ’25
Lucy Olson ’26
Mya Clark ’27
Mac Mini ’27
Aya Timon ’27

Ten Waynflete students recently competed in the Maine State Science Bowl, a trivia competition sponsored by the Department of Energy. Coached by science teachers Wendy Curtis and Katrina St. John, Waynflete’s two five-person teams faced off in this rapid-fire, buzzer-style competition via Zoom against other teams across the state. Both teams advanced to the quarterfinals before being eliminated after two narrow defeats. 

Congratulations to all students involved for an excellent showing! A special thank you to Science Bowl enthusiast Jacob Curtis ’22 for graciously filling in as a substitute coach on competition day.

Waynflete team 1: Nik Chaney ’24 (captain), Mira Levine ’24, Tipton Heminway ’24, Miles Sims-Kastelein ’24, Wyatt Adams ’24

Waynflete team 2: Jack Vickery ’24 (captain), Rose Bukowski-Thall ’24, Fallon Culley ’25, Nico Herrera ’25, Abie Waisman ’25

The Outliers Robotics team is once again the winner of the Granite State Robotics competition! 35 teams from across New England competed in this three-day event in New Hampshire.  

Team members grappled with unexpected and complex mechanical, electrical, and coding problems through the competition. With the robot dying partway through most early matches, the team was ranked 23rd at the end of the first day. Team members worked late into the night to diagnose and resolve problems. In the first match on day two, the Outliers scored 17 goals and continued undefeated for the remaining qualification matches, climbing to 5th place.  

For the playoffs, Bucksport (ranked 2nd) turned down the opportunity to partner with the top-ranked team, opting instead to partner with the Outliers. Together with a team from Manchester, New Hampshire, they went on to win the event.

The Outliers were also chosen by judges to receive the Creativity Award for their unique shifting swerve drivetrain that resulted in their robot being the fastest on the field. 

Congrats to the team for pulling together and overcoming significant obstacles on their way to victory!

(Watch a video of the last finals match. The Outliers are the blue robot with the light bar across the top (5687); Bucksport is the blue robot with purple lights (6329). The goal of the game this season is to collect rings on the ground or at a feed station on the far side and shoot them into a high or mid-goal on the other side.)

Last fall, Waynflete offered a Digital Journalism course taught by local podcast producer and journalist Emma Reynolds. During the semester, students produced podcasts and wrote articles about stories in the Waynflete community. They learned how to conduct interviews, record audio, and edit. At the end of the semester, the students created a website that features all of their work. 

Upper School Director Asra Ahmed had two objectives in mind when she created this course: 

• To begin the process of creating a dedicated journalism program at Waynflete
• To provide an additional educational experience that is interdisciplinary, intellectually rigorous, fun, and driven by the students who choose to participate in it

“I know from past experience that student-run journalism is an important way for students to take ownership of their school community, to help them reflect on their school experience, and to take responsibility for supporting the school in its constant evolution. Journalism programs also provide students with significant life and educational skills, like writing, research, interviewing, and interpersonal skills. They have to learn about history, politics, the constitution—for example, what is “freedom of speech”?—and they have to incorporate that knowledge into their journalistic works.”

Journalism programs help students see that leadership skills manifest in a variety of ways, including being a journalistic voice for one’s community. Asra points out that these programs push students to see their whole community instead of just the segment of it that they are drawn or attached to.

“The digital aspect of it is something I chose to focus on because it is aligned with where journalism is currently,” says Asra. “Students still crafted written pieces, but they also learn about podcasting as another means of sharing news and culture with their community and see how it can provoke conversations about topics that could be overlooked.”

Check out the links below for more from our Digital Journal program: 

Digital Journalism website

Digital Journalism podcasts

Waynflete’s SoundCloud page (displays each class’s podcasts separately)

And listen to these podcasts from Waynflete classes that Emma Reynolds taught as a guest:

Anya Parauda’s “Native American History” book review podcasts

Jim Millard’s “What’s Up With That?: Journalism in The Digital Age”

Lindsay Clarke’s “Native American History” book review podcasts

Fifteen Upper School science students traveled to MIT on January 20 for an invitational Science Olympiad tournament. Students competed with schools from across the country in 23 different science and engineering events. Some events required students to design, build, and troubleshoot an engineering problem, such as Air Trajectory, in which students built a device that launched a ball using air pressure to hit given targets, or Scrambler, in which students built a vehicle propelled by a falling mass that propels an egg as quickly as possible toward a wall a given distance a way (the goal is to stop it just before it hits the wall and scrambles the egg!). Other events are tests of knowledge in fields such as astronomy, microbiology, and forensic science, or field tests such as tree and fossil identification.

Waynflete was the top team out of the four Maine schools present, and did very well against New England schools in general, placing fifth out of 23 New England schools. Overall, against schools from California, Texas, New York, and other large states, Waynflete team’s placed 49th out of 72 teams and earned five finishes in the top half of the field.

Notable successes included a 16th-place finish in Write It Do It by Mira Levine ’24 and Kira Chown ’25. Other finishes in the top half of the field included Air Trajectory by Noah Abbott ’24 and Nik Chaney ’24, Fermi Questions by Alec Benton ’24 and Max Shurman ’24, Forestry by Elliott Werner ’25 and Kira, and Geologic Mapping by Fallon Culley ’25 and Max. Next up is our state tournament in early April in which 30 Upper Schoolers will compete with schools from around Maine.   

Team Roster: Noah Abbott ’24, Alec Benton ’24, Nik Chaney ’24, Tipton Heminway ’24, Mira Levine ’24, Aelia Russell ’24, Max Shurman ’24, Lydia Birknes ’25, Kira Chown ’25, Fallon Culley ’25, Nico Herrera ’25, Abie Waisman ’25, Elliott Werner ’25, Jasper Nichols ’26, Len Harrison ’26

Coaches: Wendy Curtis and Rowena Schenck

Waynflete’s Third Thought for Civic Engagement initiative recently hosted “Can We? Connect,” a full-day conference at the Augusta Civic Center for high school students from fourteen partner schools in Maine who are participating in The Can We? Project this year. The event was a resounding success, providing an opportunity for students to come together to make connections, build bridges, and engage in civil dialogue on topics that students themselves identify as important in their lives.

Can We? Connect followed an initial day-long retreat held in partner schools where students consider their own identities and lived experiences, build trust with those who may have different viewpoints than their own, and begin to learn the skills of dialogue across political and other differences.

Can We? Connect was the subject of a recent Maine Public Radio feature. Check it out at https://wf-link.org/3SE7YR7!

Four Upper School students recently joined more than 2,000 students at the NAIS Student Diversity Leadership Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. This conference was a multiracial, multicultural gathering of student leaders from independent high schools across the globe that allowed participants to develop their cross-cultural communication skills, design effective strategies for social justice practice through dialogue and the arts, and learn the foundations of allyship and networking principles.

Our four attendees shared their takeaways from the conference during Upper School assembly yesterday, noting how transformative and motivating the experience was. Tristan Choi ’25 was inspired to create the Asian Students Association at Waynflete. He hopes that the group will provide “an affinity space to discuss Asian experiences and changes that need to happen, but also the beauty of our culture.”

The Perspective Project is an Upper School student-led initiative that uses the power of conversation to learn from—and celebrate—diverse perspectives and experiences. The Project recently held their first event of the year featuring Margo Walsh ’82, the founder of MaineWorks and the United Recovery Fund. Margo discussed her work helping new Americans, people in recovery from substance use disorder, and previously incarcerated individuals who face barriers to re-entering the workforce. MaineWorks helps people access transportation to job sites; rental assistance for sober living; workforce outerwear and tools; dental, vision, and mental healthcare; and assistance developing practical living skills like financial literacy. Margo shared one essential piece of advice: “If your voice shakes, you have to say it.” Stay tuned for more events from the Perspective Project!