Coyote Spirit Week

GWCS Spirit Week 2020 was a resounding, spirited success!  It was different this year, of course, but that just means we appreciated it even more.  Students and staff loved having something fun and surprising to look forward to every day.  Themes, outfits, snacks, food trucks, selfies and school portraits....we could not have asked for more!

Parents, THANK YOU for everything you did to make Spirit Week possible. We hope you heard about all (or at least some!) of the Spirit Week excitement: the tailgate, home-made treats, the Tacos Mixto food truck, pop rocks and Ms. Warden's pink hair (hello, 80s!), plus so much more.  

The kids, as always, showed tremendous optimism and resilience. Rain on Spring Break Day? No worries. Our coyotes still went to play basketball during break time, and waited in line patiently and politely at the taco truck with not a single complaint. Our school is our community, and we could not be prouder of our students and families this year. 

GWCS ROCKS!

  • Monday: Sports Jersey Day, Tailgate Lunch with grilled hotdogs and stadium selfies

  • Tuesday: Professional Portrait Day by BoschStudios and fru-fru snacks at break

  • Wednesday: Awesome 80s Day with coke-a-cola and pop-rocks and 80s background selfies

  • Thursday: Spring Break in Cancun Day with Taco Mixto Food Truck for lunch and beach selfies

  • Friday: Blue & Grey Coyote Day with graffiti wall and Captain Cookies and the Milk Man Truck and blue & silver streamer selfies

GW Community School
Coyote Spirit Week
November 9-13, 2020
Ms. Alexa Warden
Director
Ms. Andrea Spiegel
PAC Communications

Halloween Hoopla

In one sense, Halloween this year felt like a normal day… everyone wearing masks. Although we, at GWCS, could not celebrate many of our Halloween traditions due to social distancing, we may have stumbled upon a few new traditions to continue in the future! Traditional, just not as cozy, pumpkin carving is always our kickoff activity followed by an afternoon of scary movies. The Halloween costume contest via Teams was a huge success. In-person students as well as remote students participated by posting a photo on Teams and then voting for three costume categories. See results below. As Plato once suggested, “necessity is the mother of invention”. It was absolutely necessary that GWCS celebrate Halloween and with the creative juices flowing, supportive and talented students invented the first ever GWCS Halloween Performance Assembly!

Pumpkin Carving:

COSTUME CONTEST:

CONTEST WINNERS:

 
 

HALLOWEEN PERFORMANCE ASSEMBLY:

While students and teachers performed out in front of the school, remote students at home and in-person students inside the school were able to stream the performances. It worked and it was wonderful to see so many coyotes sharing their passions, talents, and humor with the whole school.

HALLOWEEN Performance Schedule

Mr. Goldie - Master of Ceremonies 

  1. Jay performed “Halloween” the monologue 

  2. Luther sang two songs -“Still Breathing” by Green Day and “Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand 

  3. Kaitlyn sang “Dead Mom” by Eddie Perfect featured in Beetlejuice the Musical 

  4. Lauren sang “No Time to Die” by Billie Eilish 

  5. Marius recited an original poem titled “The Rogue Nightmare” 

  6. Mr. Robbins performed an original poem titled ‘This Isn’t Halloween’ 

  7. Evan performed an original standup called “An Original Standup ” - it’s real meta 

  8. Eva streamed special Halloween avant garde PowerPoint presentation 

GW Community School
Halloween Hoopla
October 30, 2020
Ms. Julia Kohler
Mr. Richard Goldie
Hoopla Coordinators

Hump Day Lunch Day

One of the perks of being a student at GW Community School has always been being allowed to leave campus and grab lunch at one of the local restaurants or the grocery store - literally in our back yard. Although we have started the 2020-2021 school year with in-person classes, we are being super COVID careful and, for now, we are not leaving campus for lunch. Instead, we are celebrating bi-monthly GWCS ‘Hump Day Lunch Day’ events. Our first Hump Day Lunch was a super cheesy success. Students and teachers ordered gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches from the Big Cheese Food Truck and enjoyed fresh-off-the-grill sandwiches for lunch. Rave reviews were voiced for the ‘Mt. Fuji’ (camembert cheese with fuji apple and honey on multigrain) and ‘Thrilled Cheese’ (chipotle cheddar, jalapeno, and guacamole on sourdough), and the brownies! It was fun for our small community to support a small business in this challenging time.


GW Community School
September 16, 2020
Hump Day Lunch Day

Ice Cream is the Answer

Yes, it was like ants on a picnic, but it was the GWCS community on an ice cream truck.  The fine people at ‘Scoops 2U’ sent over the truck, and we did the rest!  Coyotes came from all over the area to meet at school (outside) and converge on the sweet treats.  There were parents (new families and old), alumni, staff, rising seniors, and all the rest (including several dogs).  The hour-long event wrapped-up in almost exactly two hours and everyone enjoyed the ice cream, the sunshine, and the talking to other people!  If you missed it, you missed a good time, so watch for other outdoor, socially-distanced events coming in the near future.  Otherwise, we’ll see you next week in (or virtually in) school!

GW Community School
Ice Cream Truck Social
August 19, 2020
Richard Goldie

Senior Celebration and Graduation 2020

On Saturday morning, June 13, 2020, the GWCS Class of 2020 gathered for their long-awaited high school graduation — not in the plush auditorium of the George Washington Masonic National Memorial as planned — but in the school parking lot standing in chalked circles in front of their cars indicating where they should stand to maintain a 14’ distance.  As was true around the world, formal graduation, along with every other anticipated spring event, had been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

On Friday, March 13, 2020, all GWCS students and staff went home knowing that there was a need to shift to online learning until this virus was under control.  By the following week, all GWCS classes were up and running using Microsoft Teams and for the next three months (not the few weeks we had hoped for) students maintained their normal high school schedule of classes online.

As, one by one, events were canceled, GWCS staff and parents worked together to celebrate the seniors in new and very personalized ways; determined that the pandemic would not cheat this class of their well deserved recognition and celebration. Over the next few months, seniors were reminded that the GWCS community was thinking of them in a myriad of ways:

SENIOR TREES:  For Earth Day, each senior received a baby tree that was secretly delivered to their home and presented to them during an all-school Zoom along with a letter from Ms. Warden & the GWCS Crew.

LAWN SIGNS:  Ms. Warden (Director) and Mr. Goldie (Assistant Director) drove to each seniors’ home unannounced to deliver a GWCS Graduate lawn sign.    

SENIOR SURPRISE BOXES:  Next a box of goodies was assembled for each senior which included goodies, essentials, senior t-shirt, coyote facemask and more.

SENIOR TRIBUTE PRESENTATION:  On our last Friday of school, the entire staff and student body met on Zoom to participate in a special tribute where each senior was recognized.

SENIOR TRIBUTE SONG: Dr. Garon lyrically adapted and performed a personalized song for the GWCS Class of 2020 to say... "Bye, Bye, from GW High. We're so glad you came here, we're so glad you stopped by. This place has got no equal, you can sure testify. Your time has come and now you must fly."

 
Click on guitar to view video and hear the song.

Click on guitar to view video and hear the song.

 

GRADUATION: As it became clear that we were not going to be able to have our traditional graduation ceremony and reception, the graduation committee worked hard to plan and execute a physically-distanced graduation where all of the seniors were able to safely gather, hear their name called and their parents cheer, have their photo taken, flip their tassel, throw their cap, and even parade through the ‘honk & holler lot” of friends and alumni.

 
 

Click here for more graduation photos posted on Facebook.

It was definitely not a typical senior year but, as proud coyotes, we adapted academically, socially, emotionally, and always physically-distanced out of love and respect for all. Congratulations to the GWCS Class of 2020!

GW Community School
Senior Celebration & Graduation
June 13, 2020

Distancing But Not Disconnected

HEAR YE, HEAR YE, READ ALL ABOUT IT…

GWCS IS IN THE NEWS…

As you may know, last week we had a reporter, Joan Brady, from The Connection Newspaper join us for part of our Friday ArtJamz OBX. What you might not know is that she also spent a lot of time calling and interviewing teachers, students, and parents. Ms. Brady said she could have written a book with all the info she gathered and apologizes to all who were not included in the article. She seemed particularly distraught at not being able to include the photo of Grouchy and Sweetie! Thank you everyone for giving your time to Ms. Brady and your kind and humorous words about GWCS. “That’s just how it is when you’re family.”

GW Community School
Newspaper Article
Now, For Something Completely Different
The Springfield Connection
The Alexandria Gazette
May 14, 2020

Coyote Robotics Skystone Season


2019-2020 COYOTE ROBOTICS IN REVIEW

The GWCS Coyote Robotics Program had a very busy 2019-2020 FIRST Tech Challenge season! It began with the Skystone Game Reveal party in September. Then, after weeks and weeks of brainstorming, building, and practicing, both of our teams, FTC 965 “League of Incompetent Gentlemen” and FTC 3749 “Good Enough” competed in qualifying tournaments in Newport News and then Charlottesville, Virginia. Come the new year we found ourselves participating in pre-states scrimmages in Haymarket and then Herndon, Virginia where we faced off against seven other teams and did quite well.

FTC Virginia Pre-States Scrimmage at Nysmith School in Herndon, VA.

Two weeks later, both our teams, FTC 965 “League of Incompetent Gentlemen” and FTC 3749 “Good Enough” traveled to Warrenton, Virginia to participate in a Pre-States Scrimmage.  We practiced and competed against five other teams.  We had a lot of fun in between matches just driving our robots around and interacting with people at the event.

We also hosted our 8th Annual GW Community School/Coyote Robotics Pre-States scrimmage at GWCS.  We welcomed about 30 kids from five other teams, and their coaches, to three hours of learning, interacting and fun.  All the teams that came were very pleased with the opportunity to practice on our field, play in practice matches, use our shop tools and spare parts, and get valuable advice about their robots.  It is always a fun and exciting way to introduce many people in our community to GW Community School.

Finally, FTC 3749 “Good Enough” team competed in the FIRST Tech Challenge Virginia Championship at Atlee High School in Mechanicsville, near Richmond.  They faced off against 57 other great teams from Virginia, other nearby states, and DC.  Eight of the participating teams earned an invitation to the World Championships in Detroit in April.  Sadly, our Team 3749 “Good Enough” was not quite that at the Virginia State Championships.  They won their first two qualifying matches with help from strong alliance partners, but lost the next three with weaker partners.  To some extent it is the luck of the draw.  Our Robot and Team performed very well but was not chosen to join an alliance for the elimination rounds.

Our goal, for the remainder of the school year, is to build an intake roller system like we saw many robots using.  To do this we will learn some 3-D design software, do some building, and learn some programming.   All are welcome!

Thanks to all the families who supported Coyote Robotics this season!

GW Community School
Coyote Robotics
Gary Lindner
Volunteer of the Year!
February 27, 2020

 

Pennies for Patients Fundraiser

In conjunction with our new Student Enrichment and Development class, Mr. Connelly’s Advisory “joined the squad” to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Pennies for Patients, a program for students to help raise funds to cure childhood Leukemia. Ms. Kohler and her Personal Finance class jumped right in to partner, providing valuable consultation, enthusiasm and follow through. The students set a goal of raising $600.00 over a two-week period. In a school-and-home-wide effort, junk drawers were emptied, car consoles dug out and couch cushions were over turned—all in the hunt for loose change, which in the end added up to $239.57! And these kids sure put the “fun” in fundraising, raising an additional $901.79 through the sales of Popeye’s chicken sandwiches, and an all-you-can eat popcorn and soda bar during a Friday-night movie marathon. Way to go Coyotes! Thanks to all for helping us almost double our goal!

Fundraising Total: $1,141.36!

leukemia logo.jpg

GW Community School
Pennies for Patients Fundraiser
Mr. Connelly, Economics Teacher
Ms. Kohler, Personal Finance Teacher
February 21, 2020

Wildly Different Theatre Production

For the past six weeks, the GWCS ‘Bit Off More Than We Can Chew Players’ have been working laboriously to assemble six different one-act plays for the 2019 winter production they appropriately titled ‘Wildly Different Things to Entertain You’.

Directed by Mr. Goldie and Dr. Garon, the six one-act plays included:

  • Jabbberwocky by Lewis Carroll

  • Time of Your Life: Gum Chewing Scene by William Saroyan

  • Who’s On First? by Abbott and Costello

  • The Proposal by Anton Chekhov

  • Words, Words, Words by David Ives

  • Puck’s Farewell by Shakespeare

The countless hours of understanding and memorizing lines; rehearsing six different plays; creating and then setting up and breaking down a theatre-in-the-round (daily since it was located in the heart of the school) — all of this work certainly paid off with two tantalizingly triumphant performance nights this past week. The actors may have thought they “bit off more than they could chew” but it turns out, that wasn’t true. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication and for two evenings of glorious entertainment. We can’t wait for the spring production. What? Too soon?

GW Community School
Wildly Different Theatre Production
Mr. Goldie & Dr. Garon
December 18 & 19, 2019

Juniors Journey to Gettysburg

Thursday afternoon, Oct. 17, GWCS juniors watched the 4-hour loooooong, exciting (and sometimes boring) “Gettysburg” movie, starring many well-known actors plus hundreds of Civil War re-enactors.  Early Friday morning the juniors (including Christian who flew in from Belgium to join us!), Mr. Connelly and Mr. Lindner climbed in the school van for the 90-minute drive to the Gettysburg Battlefield National Historic Park in Pennsylvania.

We started at the Visitors Center, where we watched an introductory film narrated by Morgan Freeman and then viewed the famous Cyclorama Painting.  This 42-foot high and 377 feet in circumference canvas, painted by French artist Paul Philippoteaux and a team of assistants, toured the nation in the late 1880s giving citizens a 360-degree depiction of Pickett’s Charge during the third and final day of the battle on July 3, 1863.  A program of sound and light helped us get a taste of the excitement, confusion and terror of the battle.

After piling back into the van we spent three hours touring important sites of the battlefield while listening to a recorded description from a tour guide supplemented by information supplied by the teachers.  We saw first-hand the important geographical features of the battlefield that significantly affected the battle, including Seminary Ridge, Devil’s Den, Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard and the Bloody Angle, stopping to climb across the same rocks the soldiers shielded behind on Little Round Top and Devil’s Den.  We learned about the importance of technological advances in weaponry and real challenge of moving almost 150,000 troops to, around and through a small town of 2,400 inhabitants.

We then enjoyed a great buffet lunch at Li’s (no relation to General Lee) Buffet to prepare for our own GWCS Charge.  Mr. Connelly lead our stalwart juniors on a ¾-mile charge walk across the same field that 12,500 Confederate soldier charged across under withering cannon and eventually musket fire while Mr. Lindner waited with the van at the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy” where the charge ended in failure.  During that less-than-an-hour charge the Confederates lost 1,123 killed, 4,019 wounded and 3,750 captured.  Union losses were only 1,500 killed and wounded.

After imagining that fateful hour, we visited the Military Cemetery where hundreds of soldier, know and unknown, are buried and where President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous “Gettyburg Address”.  Observing the many graves and reading the names of many of the fallen, we contemplated the courage of those who sacrificed their lives, the foolishness of the leaders who prompted the conflict, and the joy of the millions of previously-enslaved people who gained their freedom through this war.

A final visit to the museum, which could have filled our entire trip’s available time, and its gift shop, we crawled into the van for the ride back to school, listening to a final description of the results of the battle that were presented to the 2,400 citizens of Gettysburg which reminded us of the horror and folly of war.

The students were great, courteous and interested, and the trip was a huge success.  A return visit lies in the future plans of many of those who took the trip.

GW Community School
Juniors Journey to Gettysburg
Mr. Lindner, Teacher
October 18, 2019

 

Best Senior College Essay Writing Retreat Ever

It was THE BEST SENIOR COLLEGE ESSAY WRITING RETREAT EVER!

True, this was only my fourth year, but still…it was THE BEST SENIOR COLLEGE ESSAY WRITING RETREAT EVER!

If you believe in the power of symbols, here are two that illustrate just how good and successful the retreat was. First, we left GWCS for Lake Anna State Park in a biblical downpour, but the rain ceased by the time we arrived at our destination and within an hour the sun appeared. Ma Nature was definitely rooting for us, and she provided golden and glorious days and crisp, clear, starry nights to enhance the experience. Second, to bring the retreat to a ceremonial close on the second night, we started a bonfire by burning the draft essays the students had brought with them to the retreat. The draft versions were no longer useful or current; they represented the thinking of their pre-retreat lives and, as such, had been eclipsed by time, effort, and perspective.

The beauty of the retreat is that students have an opportunity to disengage from the rigors of their daily schedules and the demands of being constantly plugged in. In a scenic and (mostly) peaceful setting, they benefit from (and enjoy) personal reflection, individualized instruction, and camaraderie.

If you don’t believe me, ask them.

GW Community School
Best Senior College Essay Writing Retreat Ever
Dr. Steve Garon, English Teacher
October 18, 2019



Surviving the Campout

In many cultures there are events that are known as ‘rights of passage.’  They are moments in an adolescent’s life when they are required to demonstrate bravery, or wisdom, or compassion, or ingenuity, or grit.  They are moments that are not taken lightly.  They are moments that, after accomplished, will alter the way that the performer of the task will be regarded with a different air: noble, honorable, mature, or wise.  With your status elevated and your place in the community secured, you are a different person moving forward.  Confident.  Poised.  Empowered.

We have such a ‘right of passage’ at GWCS.  It is called the Freshman and Sophomore Campout.  The terrain is difficult.  The elements unkind.  The provisions scant.  It is not an activity for the faint of heart.  The youngest of the GWCS pack must endure these harsh conditions for nearly fifteen hours before they are scooped-up by their early-morning rides and driven quickly to a nearby restaurant for pancakes and waffles.  It is truly an ordeal for only the heartiest campers.  This year we were nearly 500 feet away from the bathrooms and showers!

Yes, there were s’mores, gogurts, and apple juice, but do not be deceived by these incidentals.  The conditions were brutal.  During a harrowing game of ‘assassins’ in the playground, or, that is, the dry, foreboding savannah, all of the campers except two were taken-out before Detective Jack captured Kaitlyn and ended her dastardly spree.  Truth or Dare was perilous.  The moonlight walk on paved roads was treacherous!  Cooking dinner on the iron grill that the park provided was indeed a harrowing experience!

Against all odds, we all survived.  We worked together.  We persevered.  We overcame.  We bonded.  We formed life-long friendships that are strong, even to this day.  Burke Lake Park was no match for our boundless ineptitude!  Wait, I meant intrepidness! 

Purple bandanas of the world unite!  The 2:00 AM hike has been cancelled!

GW Community School
Freshmen/Sophomore Camping Trip
Mr. Goldie, Camp Director
September 20, 2019