Waynflete encourages high schoolers from across Maine to join with students from seven Maine schools as they engage candidates for governor in dialogue about bringing their vision for a better Maine and a better nation into reality. Topics will range from gun violence to race relations. Don’t miss this unique and important engagement with American democracy.
Thursday, May 10
7:00–9:00 p.m.
Westbrook Performing Arts Center
471 Stroudwater Street, Westbrook
A group of middle school science students competed in the regional Sea Perch competition last Friday. The event is hosted by the Navy and the University of New Hampshire. Over the previous two weeks, students had built a functioning remotely operated underwater vehicle that they had to learn how to drive in the course of completing several tasks. The group had the opportunity to share their experience with scientists during a formal presentation.
This Wednesday during assembly, Spirit Club hosted their annual Superhero Contest as a part of Spirit Week. Students who dressed for the occasion participated by answering three questions: “Who are you?,” “What is your superpower,” and “Who is your arch nemesis?” Superheros included “Ava-lanche,” “The Glacier,” “Super-Mo,” and “The Waynflete Fryer.”
After a weekend of pure energy from the Summit, the vibe this past Monday around school was a mix of the usual exhaustion with a hint of something else—something rooted in perspective. The main goal of this year’s Summit was to gain perspective on new ideas and ways of thinking. There were moments of mutual agreement and moments of unease, but at the end of it all, the main message was an uplifting sense of hope and new ideas for our generation in the years to come.
4-5 students recently embarked on feats of creative engineering. After a thorough study of simple machines, students examined everyday problems in their lives, formulated solutions, and crafted inventions. With testing, troubleshooting, and peer feedback, their projects went through many iterations and were finally celebrated at the 4-5 Invention Convention on April 11.
The Waynflete Writers’ Guild has been around for a number of years as a place for students to meet, have fun, and share their writings. This year’s guild has taken on the ambitious goal of publishing student written and visual work. We hope that you both enjoy and are moved by what has been put to page.
On March 23, I was honored to receive the Rotary Youth Service Award from the Portland Rotary Club. I was instructed to be at the Holiday Inn by the Bay with my parents at 12:00pm. I did not know what to expect, but upon arrival we were greeted with such kindness and generosity that I soon saw what great people the members are.
This is a guest post by Waynflete parent (’20, ’22, and ’25) Jonathan R. Werner. Jonathan is a library and instructional technology specialist at Cape Elizabeth Middle School.
Let me be clear. I am no technophobe. In fact, I spend my days surrounded by technology working with 5th through 8th graders at Cape Elizabeth Middle School where every student has their own school-issued device. I spend my evenings and weekends with Nicholas, Julia, and Elliott, each of whom has a device, too. And this tech can—and frequently does—transform their learning.
But that transformative learning isn’t all tech is capable of. It has a much darker side. And there is actually an army of people, an entire industry, working very hard to keep us focused on our devices…and not on our real lives. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way just how difficult it is to resist this industry’s efforts. (more…)
The lights dimmed on the theater stage as the actors from The Defamation Play entered and took their places on the set. As I sat amongst the students of the Upper School, I felt the anticipation in the room. We were sharing a common experience of performance, and in the next 90 minutes, would listen and learn together. I relished the intensity of the moment in this profound example of community.
Last night three Waynflete students participated in the Lion’s Club Speak Out competition against Cheverus at USM. For the third year in a row Waynflete won first prize!
Windows from Germany, a hidden tunnel, mezzanine views, and new exercise rooms…
Congratulations to Luna Soley ’18, winner of a 2018 Scholastic Art & Writing National Medal! Luna was recognized with silver medals for her entries in the “personal essay and memoir” and “memoir poetry” categories.
Creative professionals reviewed nearly 350,000 works of art and writing in 2018, selecting less than 1 percent of submissions for recognition at the national level. Winners are invited to attend a ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York City and to participate in showcase events at The New School and Pratt Institute.
“Luna relishes ambiguity and uncertainty in her writing process—it’s what fuels her exploration,” says Upper School Director Lowell Libby, who taught Luna in Essay Writing earlier this year. “She writes as she lives and lives as she writes.”
The awards have been presented by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers since 1923. Previous winners include Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Robert Redford, and Joyce Carol Oates.
Congratulations to Shuhao Liu ’18, Molly McNutt ’18, Tabarak Al Musawi ’19, Carter Dexter ’19, Adelaide Lyall ’19, Abby Aleshire ’20, Thys Geldenhuys ’20, Haoming Ma ’20, Selina He ’21, and John Moon-Black ’21 on for their third place finish in the Class C State Math Meet at the Augusta Civic Center on April 3.
The team eked out a comeback in the final team round to pass Foxcroft Academy for third. Thys placed 7th in the Sophomore class state-wide. Haoming was 11th. Both John and Selina finished in the top 20 for students in the 9th grade or younger.
The energy for this show is fantastic, and I certainly have grown to love this play tremendously from when I first read it. The ensemble plays a very important role in setting the stage for wherever the Antrobuses find themselves next. As a student, this play is a great opportunity to explore new and different thoughts and ideas.
Waynflete’s fifth-and-seventh-grade girls attended the “Girls Rock! Conference” sponsored by Hardy Girls Healthy Women. Hosted at the Maine Girls Academy, students participated in workshops created and lead by high schoolers on the Girls Advisory Board. Workshops included “Let Friendships Sail,” “When to Defend a Friend,” “Who Runs the World,” and “Women in STEM.”
Paul Okot ’07 visited recently with students in Sarah Macdonald’s “Literature of Maine” English class.
The class is reading the novel The Good Braider by Terry Farish about a teen who leaves Sudan with her family and eventually settles in Kennedy Park in Portland, Maine. Paul shared his similar story about fleeing South Sudan to a refugee camp and then on to Kennedy Park, then fielded questions about his experiences and what it was like for him to be a Waynflete student.
Congrats to the students who participated in this year’s Science Olympiad. Upper School placed first and third out of 16 teams. Middle School placed second out of four teams.
Congratulations to Lydia Giguere and Diraige Dahia, named by The Forecaster as Waynflete’s winter athletes of the year!
Mary Lou Sprague, Class of ’46, was on campus for a Lower School construction site tour with supervisor Millard Nadeau.
Students in Cathy Douglas’s and Lisa Kramer’s Calculus Accelerated classes are in the thick of a unit on the disk method and volumes by rotation.
In today’s “opener” (an exercise used to get the math brain engaged), students were asked to find the volume of a Hostess cupcake by (a) a traditional formula for a truncated cone and (b) “by finding a function that can be rotated about an axis to create the shape, then using calculus to find the volume.” (!) The class compared the two results to see if the volumes were identical.
