A team from Waynflete has qualified for the Maine Lifesmarts Challenge State Final, a competition-based program that challenges students to grow their marketplace and consumer skills.  Waynflete has participated in the competition for the past two years.  To qualify for the state competition, students from schools statewide competed online.  Based on the online scores, four teams qualified for the state finals competition on March 21.  This national competition challenges students to answer questions in the fields of Environmental Science, Health and Safety, Technology, Consumer Rights and Responsibilities, and Personal Finance.

The team is composed of  senior Sally Li (team captain and returning player from 2013), senior Mason Saltz, junior Sam Frederick, junior Codte Tiparos, and junior Chloe Williams.  These students were the top scorers from Waynflete School.  Much credit should be given to members of the Waynflete Finance Club and students of Personal Finance for helping the team to qualify for states.

Li, a returning competitor to the challenge, said, “The program was fun and educational. It provides an interactive way to prepare us for real-life challenges. Last year at states our team faced tough competition but we were able to perform our best and advance to nationals. With more experience we are very confident in the competition this year.” Saltz, who created the Finance Club at Waynflete, hopes that the team continues its success and said, “The Waynflete team includes efficient, sharp thinkers with great instincts for the topics. This challenge provides students with the opportunity to work on the practical skill sets needed to succeed in the marketplace, and in life in general.”

The state finals will be held at UNUM in Portland.  The winning team will head to Orlando, Florida, for the national finals April 26 – 29.  FAME, Maine Jump$tart, and the Maine Bankers Association are covering travel and lodging costs for states and nationals.

The team is coached by Steve Kautz, and Lily Collins ‘13, who was on the team last year, will be an assistant coach this year.  Students interested in participating next year should see Steve Kautz.

LINK TO LIFESMARTS:  http://www.lifesmarts.org/

Augusta, 2014: Boys Western Maine Championship Basketball Game

If you look at the final score, 62-38, it wasn’t close.  In fact, the only drama the television announcers were able to detect for most of the game is that it was the Flyers who were on top.  For whatever reason – despite our third seed in the tournament, our regular season victory over the eventual Class B champion, and our comfortable lead throughout most of the championship game – the announcers kept expecting that our opponent – who had handily vanquished the number one seed the previous game – would eventually prevail.

In fact, there was a moment with about six minutes left in the fourth quarter when it seemed to even the most fervent Flyer fan that they might.  After cruising for most of the game, we looked suddenly shaky; our opponent’s press was working, we didn’t score for several minutes, and our comfortable lead was cut in half.  We were in the need for something good to happen soon when the ball landed in the hands of senior Joey Schnier on the wing, just outside the three point arc.  With Flyer fans on the edges of their seats, Joey coolly faked left, cocked, and fired – draining the three that turned the game tide back in Flyer favor.

Five days later, that same Joey Schnier was released from basketball practice a a bit early, packed up his bass guitar, and headed off to another competition at  the Maine Music Educators Association District II Jazz Festival, where Waynflete’s jazz combo easily qualified for the States.  Two days after that, Joey was back on the court in Augusta for the State Championship basketball game.  Two weeks later, he will be competing in the State Jazz Festival.  Alternating rapid fire between sports and music is nothing new for Joey.  A key member of the Waynflete jazz combo, he is also a three sport varsity athlete.  Besides basketball, he anchors the defense of our soccer team as sweeper, and he is the ace of our pitching staff. 

 In a lot of schools, students don’t get to do both arts and athletics at such a high level. In fact, because the artist and the athlete are often perceived as such divergent identities, even opposites, many high school students don’t even aspire to blend the two.  Even at Waynflete, scheduling can be an obstacle, but in terms of identity, Joey never felt a conflict.  He took up the piano at the age of four, shortly before he started playing T-ball, and has been a musician/athlete ever since, expanding his musical repertoire in 5th grade when he took up the guitar.  In Upper School, choosing one over the other never occurred to Joey. In fact, at the start of his sophomore year, Ray Morrow, Waynflete’s jazz band director, asked him to increase his commitment to music by becoming the bassist for the Combo.  He quickly agreed and is delighted now that he did.  

When asked how he manages the inevitable conflicts, Joey had high praise for Ray and his coaches.  “Ray took an interest in my sports, and my coaches took an interest in my music.  They helped me work through any conflicts, like when I told Rich (Henry, basketball coach) that I had to leave practice early to be on time for the jazz competition, he said no problem, even though it was the second to last practice before the State game. In fact, he started practice early so I wouldn’t miss as much.”  Joey is hoping to continue music and athletics next year at Trinity College.  

Joey is not the only student who has pursued both at Waynflete.  Like Joey, Helen Gray-Bauer started playing music and sports at a young age.  Today, she is a three sport varsity athlete – soccer, basketball, and lacrosse – and a highly accomplished violist.  In May, right in the middle of lacrosse season, she will spend two days at the All State Music Festival, where she has been accepted each year.  Helen’s lacrosse coach Cathie Connors recalls watching her team hold hands before a tournament game, listening intently to Helen play her soulful rendition of the National Anthem on her viola. Said Cathie, “I was overcome with emotion.  The girls huddled up after Helen played looking to me for last minute instructions and inspiration and I’m an emotional mess.  It was so beautiful.  The kids go from being psyched up for the game to being so proud of Helen to worried about me.   And then Helen’s out on the field taking the draw, just like it was all so natural.  Such an inspiration.” 

Of course, it is true that students can spread themselves too thin by doing too much, but seeing athletics and arts as the mutually exclusive activities creates a false dichotomy.  Joey and Helen are among a countless number of Waynflete students over the years who have held a passion for both and have pursued a wide variety of each with great success.  Fortunately, according to Joey, there is no stigma to being an athlete and an artist at Waynflete.  “My friends know that I love sports and music.  There’s really no problem at all with being both.”

Waynflete invites all parents to a screening of the film “Tough Guise 2” at the Freeport High School Performing Arts Center, March 27th, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. We are pleased to help sponsor the screening which is hosted by Boys to Men and TARP (the Tolerance and Respect Project). The mission of the Portland based nonprofit Boys to Men includes “supporting the development of emotionally fluent, civically engaged boys” by promoting conversations about masculinity that move beyond limiting gender stereotypes.  Later this month, Executive Director, Drew Wing, will join a group of Upper School volunteer mentors and 7th grade boys to share and discuss clips from the recent release of “Tough Guise 2: Violence, Manhood, and American Culture. ” This thought-provoking film features speaker and educator Jackson Katz and attempts to deconstruct the cultural messages about violence and manhood aimed at boys and young men as well as promote a broader range of possibilities for expressing one’s true self.

Two teams of five students each competed today in the 2014 U.S. Department of Energy Science Bowl competition. The competition is a round robin style tournament. held at the University of Southern Maine, in which students are pitted against teams from other Maine schools and quizzed on science knowledge.

Waynflete’s A team won 4 of 6 of their rounds, then had to complete THREE tiebreaker rounds in order to advance to the finals! They finished in 2nd place overall! Waynflete’s B team won 3 of the six rounds in their bracket.

Students involved were Lydia Fox (’14), Al Ghorashi (’15), Sally Li (’14), Wasita Mahaphanit (’14), Jacob Hagler (’15), Dana Peirce (’15), Quinn Shivel (’14), Stephen Epstein (’15), Jackie Xiao (’14), and Henry Johannen (’16). Teams were coached by Carol Titterton, Wendy Curtis, and Peter Hamblin.

Congratulations to Senior Alpine Skier Louis Frumer, who recently captured Class C individual State Championships in both the Slalom and Giant Slalom events and then excelled in the all classes Maine Shootout earning a spot in the Maine Team competing in the Eastern Championship.

“After winning Class C State Alpine Championships in both Slalom and Giant Slalom, Senior Louis Frumer finished 3rd in Slalom and 4th in Giant Slalom at the “Shootout” (Classes A,B and C) thus securing 4th (out of 12) place on the Maine State Alpine Ski Team. Louis was one of only 2 Class C skiers to make the State Team and the only Class C athlete to make the Team in 2 consecutive years. The Team represented Maine at the Eastern High School Championships held at Attitash, New Hampshire.
At Easterns Louis finished 17th overall out of 126 skiers from 12 states in Slalom, scored for the Team in 3 of the 4 races (he crashed in one Giant Slalom race), was the only Class C athlete to score, and thus contributed meaningfully to the Maine State Team’s 3rd (out of 12) overall finish in Slalom.

Louis ends his High School skiing with a total of 3 Gold, 1 Silver and 2 Bronze medals at the State Championship level.”

Basketball notebook: Waynflete’s Cleaves glad he heard coach’s plea

Last Thursday the Waynflete Upper School Jazz Combo performed exceptionally well at the Maine Music Educators Association District II Jazz Festival in Cumberland.  They advanced to the State Jazz Festival with an average score of 96.5 out of 100!  All four members earned outstanding musicianship awards for receiving a solo score of one [1].  They will now travel to Hampden on March 14th to participate in the State festival.

With so much happening on the newly designed USNOW page (thanks to Sam Frederick (’15)), you may have missed the new Community Blogs button in the header.  Under that heading, you will find three blogs – two by faculty and one by an alum – that you really should check out:

Making Cents: A Guide to Personal Finance  The Portland Press Herald online edition is hosting a blog created by 6-12 math teacher Steve Kautz.  Named named Jump$tart Maine’s Financial Educator of the Year for 2012, Steve offers the same wisdom on financial matters in this blog that he does to the students in his Upper School electives.

Travels with Sue Stein  Having listened for years to her students tell their stories of living in far distant places and having helped them and their parents to navigate life at Waynflete and in America, EAL tutor Sue Stein decided to reverse the experience by taking a leave of absence this semester to travel throughout much of Africa to make herself the cultural student and to get more an an “in-my-bones understanding” of where many of her students have come from.

Liv Chap (’11): Adventures in St. Petersburg Having caught the “Russian Bug” in high school from her Russian history teacher Alice  Brock, Liv Chap (’11) is spending a college semester abroad in Russia.  With all that is happening now in the news, what a fascinating time to be there.

This is the second year in a row Waynflete has garnered success in the state Poetry Out Loud contest.  Last year, Dyer Rhoads was chosen as the state champion and represented Maine at the National Finals in Washington, D.C

The other day, my literature class was deep into a discussion about Mohsin Hamid’s novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist.  The discussion pertained to the protagonist’s complex perception of America’s military reach and general influence in the world.  As time was running out on the period and the discussion not yet concluded, I was on the alert for an effective way to tee up its continuance into class the next day. Then a student’s question reminded me of something that science teacher Neil Rice had said the previous fall in his Veteran’s Day talk about the responsibility of citizens in a democratic society to be actively engaged in their nation’s discourse on foreign policy.  Before they left, I asked my students to recall what Neil had said and to be prepared by the next class to relate his message to the topic at hand.

In 2009, with the United States embroiled in two wars, the Upper School faculty and I realized how far we had strayed from the original intent of Veteran’s Day.  In its first iteration, Armistice Day was meant as a time when people across the country would pause in their daily activities at 11:00 each November 11 to share a moment of silence in their communities to commemorate when the guns fell silent at the end of the Great War nearly a century ago.  Since then, as it became clear that the Great War was not proving to be “the war to end all wars” as people then had hoped, the intent changed along with the name to recognize the sacrifice of all those who have served in the military, and instead of being a pause in the daily routines of communities across the country, it became a national holiday.  One unintended consequence of the latter change, at least at Waynflete we realized, was that the higher purpose of the holiday had long ago become secondary to the fact that it was a day off from school.

We decided to start a new tradition in the Upper School intended to remind our students of that higher purpose by inviting a veteran of the armed services to speak at an Upper School assembly each November.  In 2009, Joshua Broder (’97) spoke about being in the Civil Air Patrol while in high school and his subsequent military service as an Army Captain and communications specialist, including the 13 months he spent in Afghanistan.  The next year, we were addressed by Robert Rheault, a US Army colonel, who spoke not only of the lessons learned from his 23 years of military service but also from his extraordinary personal transition from being a Special Forces commander in the jungles of Vietnam to being an assistant trip leader for Outward Bound.  A video of his talk is linked here.  The following year, we were addressed by history teacher Bob Johnson, who served in the Air Force in Thailand during the Vietnam War.  Last year we were addressed by Neil Rice, who drew lessons from his 15 years in the US Navy, including being in ROTC while in college, running the nuclear reactor on a submarine, teaching submarine tactics and navigation, and finally training Iraqi Special Police in Baghdad in 2005.  This past fall, Doug Rawlings, a Vietnam veteran and a founding member of Maine Veteran’s for Peace, read from his collection of poems that were inspired by his experiences at war.

Our hope in starting a Veteran’s Day speaker tradition was to help make our students more aware of the world around them and their responsibility as citizens of a democracy that possesses the greatest military might history.  In fact, my intent in referencing Neil’s talk in my class was exactly the same.  I remembered that toward the end of his talk, Neil had named the various resources that our students have at hand to make themselves informed citizens because “at Waynflete, you are surrounded by people who embody the principles of freedom.”  He concluded by saying:

“Do you want to honor our veterans? Then get in the middle of everything when it comes time to decide where they are going next. If our military is a hammer, then you are the hand. Don’t blindly trust the media or our government. Question everything. Don’t give up your freedom to wield the hammer or keep it at your side. Members of our armed forces have no control over where they go, but you do. Let them be proud of their service. Let them, from now on, not be aggressive pursuers of our way of life, but true defenders of our freedom.” (The full text of Neil’s talk is linked here.)

And yes, my students remembered Neil’s talk and what he had called on them to do.  Knowing that they are listening reminds us daily of our solemn mission as educators to engage our students with the world around them through meaningful and thought provoking programming such as our Veteran’s Day speaker tradition.  And knowing that our students are not only listening but that they are also smart and savvy and full of hope and integrity is good reason for optimism about our collective future.

As you have likely heard, Waynflete is hosting two performances of Incognito next Tuesday, March 4.  There will be a daytime performance for students in grade 8 through 12 and their advisors and an evening performance at 7:00 p.m. for the community with a reception sponsored by the Parents Association and Parent Diversity Committee in the Arc hallway preceding the performance.

I am writing this note to inform you as to why we are hosting these performances at Waynflete.  Incognito is a one man play in which the actor, Michael Fosberg, tells his personal story of identity.  The performance highlights the many dimensions of identity, including race which features prominently in Mr. Fosberg’s life story.  It also, contrary to the assumption that many hold, highlights the idea that identity is not something stable that one “discovers” once and for all at some point in life but is instead fluid so that the “discovery” of identity is ongoing and sometimes surprising as one’s experiences change and perceptions of experiences evolve.

We are hosting this performance for our students because supporting identity formation is central to our mission.  Helping them to cultivate interests and passions in the present while staying open to the possibilities moving forward activates so much of their potential as students, as leaders, as ethical citizens, as artists, as athletes, or you name it.  In fact, I would name our support for this process as the secret ingredient of the Waynflete experience that propels our students forward and often leaves me wondering as I watch them in and out of the classroom, “Huh, what was I doing when I was in high school?”

Thus, the theme of identity formation underlies much of the Waynflete experience.  It is central to the Ninth Grade Seminar curriculum.  We had a fascinating assembly last fall in which Waynflete alum Lucas O’Neil (’08) told his story of identity formation.  The video of his talk is linked here.  And we hope that the Incognito show will inspire students to reflect constructively on the many dimensions of identity and the ongoing excitement of shaping it.

The show is powerful as Mr. Fosberg’s story is emotionally charged and includes times of anxiety and anguish. It may cause some students to reflect on unsettling experiences of their own, which is why we have scheduled the show so that students will spend time in their advising groups afterwards.  I hope you will be able to engage your child in conversation after the show, and I do encourage you to attend the evening performance.  I have been in regular communication with Mr. Fosberg and have come to realize that his story has messages about identity and race that are relevant to my life as well as to the lives of our students.

Waynflete Takes on Titan Challenge – http://jamaine.org/programs/titan-challenge/    

by Zak Starr

On Wednesday, February 12, eight students along with math teachers Steve Kautz and Zak Starr went to the University of Southern Maine to compete in the 8^th Annual Titan Challenge.  The event, sponsored by Junior Achievement and including volunteers from many local and national businesses, took place at seven different universities across the state of Maine.  The competition is a simulation in which groups try to create the ultimate business model for their product weighing factors such as marketing, research and development, and charitable giving.  The eight students from Waynflete were split into three different groups that eventually placed 25^th, 35^th, and 59^th out of 130 teams in the state.  This is the second year that Waynflete students attended and we are looking forward to coming back next year.  It was a challenging experience and the students represented their school very well!

The eight participants – split up by group:

Sahal Hourdeh, Rowan May, Mason Saltz

Salli Li and Emily Wasserman

and Abdi Dahir, Cody Tiparos, and Jackie Xiao

The Forecaster Article

Portland Press Herald Article

Between rounds, we set the robot on the table and prepared to remove the malfunctioning motor. Sticking the hex wrenches into the various crevices of the robot, we unscrewed the motor from the structure and replaced it with the new one we had just purchased. We finished in the nick of time, with just enough time to test it before our next competition. Our conjecture as to the robot’s problems had been correct, and it was now back in competing form. We moved it to the competition arena, waiting for the referee to give us the signal to start. Lexi drove the robot this time, with Tim and Owen in her proximity. She maneuvered the robot effectively, pushing the balls into the goal zone with ease.

This all took place on January 18, 2014, at Erskine Academy, where my fellow roboticists and I competed with other robotics clubs in the region and managed to turn in our best performance to date. The competition involved lifting balls of different sizes and putting them in elevated goals as well as floor goals. By the end of the qualifying rounds, we learned that we had made it to the quarterfinals, and, for the first time, competed in yet another round of competitions. Our robotics team is quite new, having only competed for two years, but we have made tremendous progress in that short amount of time by working together and with the guidance of our faculty coach, science teacher Neil Rice. We went from totally non-functional robots to functioning, successful, and pride-inducing robots.  Coach Rice explains the robotics club this way:

“The robotics activity is entirely student-run. They come up with their own ideas, create their own designs, and build their own robots. Some students prefer building, others prefer programming, but they all contribute to the final product — which is never quite finished. And that is the most exciting part — watching them think and work under pressure to get the robot onto the competition floor after some unexpected mechanical failure or design flaw is revealed.”

Next year, we aspire to build an even better robot, with the hope of possibly placing among the top schools at next year’s meet. We have already taken apart our previous robot and drawn up plans for a new one. We hope to attract even more freshman in the fall so that the team can be self-sustainable after its founding members graduate.

Preparing the Waynflete roboticists of the future, Middle School robotics coach Page Lennig looks on with her two sons at a competition held last year.