CVU Sleepout for Spectrum

Thank you to Mia Brumsted, student co-president at CVU, for sharing this post and photos with us.


On Thursday night, 61 CVU students and faculty (and two dogs) slept outside in solidarity with the homeless youth in our community. Despite some rain and intense wind in the morning, the sleep out was a major success. We raised over $7,000 for Spectrum Youth and Family Services and their efforts to support homeless and at-risk youth. After the rain died down at about 11pm, many students reemerged from their tents to sing and play games around the campfire. After a chilly night with little sleep, everyone woke up early the next morning to get to clubs and classes on time in order to experience the difficulties that students with home insecurity face every day.

Here's a link to the WCAX story about the Sleepout.

CCS 7th and 8th Graders Work with the Clemmons Family Farm

CCS Omega students had a wonderful afternoon earlier this week! This visit was a collaboration around the Vermont Reads book March, Book 1, and was made possible by the Clemmons Family Farm with the support of a Schip's Grant.


Social Justice Workshop with Clemmons Family Farm

All seventh and eighth grade students participated in a workshop that touches on social justice include themes like identity, diversity, courage, and helping one another in the face of injustice. This work connects to the earlier field trip this year to CVU and the reading many did this summer of March (and other books). Four artists came in to share their own experiences and skills with the students.

Group 1
Mr. Desmont, Visual artist #1/Painting activity: The students engaged in a painting activity. He added in stories of his childhood in Haiti

Group 2
Miss Hannon, Visual artist #2/Drawing activity: The students did a line-drawing activity.

Group 3
Mr. Dyke, Musician/Musical storytelling activity: Mike brought some musical instruments and told stories of Jamaica and how music was used to combat poverty and achieve education for many young people growing up there

Group 4
Ms. Edsomwan, Poet/Poetry activity: She shared a presentation about her own story and did a poetry activity with the students.

Thanks to Karyn Lunde for the photos in this slideshow and to Heidi Huestis for sharing the details for this post. 

HCS Students Give Back

Hinesburg Community School recognizes three students who have gone above and beyond to help hungry children in our school community. As part of their Personalized Learning Plan project (PLP), seventh-grade students Ezra Dziurzynski, Kate Roberts and Sage Peterson have been working hard to raise money to purchase food for HCS students in need.

In addition to putting a posting in Front Porch Forum and canvassing neighborhoods in Hinesburg, they designed their own website to spread the word and raise money. They managed to collect an impressive $505.00 worth of community donations! The girls then went to Lantmans, where they purchased $330.00 worth of groceries. After separating the groceries into 15 equal bags, they brought the food items to the Hinesburg Food Shelf. The students donated the remaining $175.00 to HCS to make snack packs for needy students. What an awesome group of students!

Thank you to the folks at HCS for sharing this story with us. 

SCS Students Create a Digital Tour of the Shelburne Museum

It's never too late to share exciting happenings as a part of the CVSD story! This project happened a few weeks ago with the 6th graders at Shelburne Community School. Teacher Diana Rich contributed the following to help describe the work.

This was our 3rd year doing a project based learning partnership with the Shelburne Museum and we were supported by the museum educators, Mollie Davis and Holly Miller. 

The driving question for this project is: "How do we as historians create a digital tour that engages middle level students?" 

At the project launch, students experienced a "boring tour" and then they were presented with the task of creating a digital tour. The students gathered evidence and analyzed evidence from the museum and created a digital map using the platform ThingLink. 

Here is one of the projects created by 4 students. This was the first year that all 6th graders at SCS experienced this project.

New Murals At WCS

If you walk into Williston Central School any time soon, you're bound to notice some incredible new art greeting you. Teachers Julie Rogers and Sara Beeken submitted and were awarded a CVSD Innovation Grant to make this possible. Artist-in-residence, Sally Duback, worked with students to create these powerful, bright, and welcoming installations. Julie provided us with more information about the project and outlined the next phase.

The smaller of the 2 murals (4' x 6') is entitled "All Are Welcome"  and was completed by 3rd and 4th graders. It is located in the front entrance on the left as you enter the building. That space has particularly nice lighting and welcomes everyone into the building. The larger of the 2 murals (6' x 12') is just inside the back entrance to the building which gets a lot of traffic as well. That mural is entitled " Sustainable Vermont".

Students were asked to make drawings about the themes of diversity & inclusion and sustainability. Students began by discussing what the themes meant to them and then sketched designs. The student sketches were sent to Sally Duback who took bits and pieces from them, traced them onto good old fashioned overhead paper, and composed a cohesive piece with many students' work represented in each. The students took that design and using an overhead projector then copied the design onto the large wooden mural boards (1 board for the smaller one and 3 boards for the larger one). Then the painting began. First backgrounds and sky, then outlining and detail, all the while adding layers and shading. Finally they added shadows and touch up work. It was really an amazing process to watch. Sally is amazing!

We have an artist scheduled for January and another in March which center around photography and kinetic art. There is a possible 3rd artist but we haven't worked out the details for that as of yet. 

Here are some photos of the work in progess. Go see these murals; they are stunning!

Harvest of the Month

The CVSD Food Service program has incorporated Vermont Harvest of the Month into its menus. From their website: "Vermont Harvest of the Month is a program run by three nonprofit organizations in the Green Mountain state to promote seasonal eating, encourage healthy diets and support the local economy. We provide ready to go materials for the classroom, cafeteria, and community that promotes the use of local, seasonal Vermont foods."

The November food is sweet potato! Our food service directors will share information and special additions to the menus throughout the month. We encourage you to supplement the learning and recipes at home as well. Here are some tips and recipes for home use. 

You can also visit the November Sweet Potato page from Vermont Harvest of the Month to view additional recipes. 

    

Creamy Sweet Potato Apple Soup

** Have you seen the updated menu page for our K-8 schools on the website? Nutrition and allergen information is now available for the main meals! We'll share more about that soon.

Spelling Success!

We'd like to congratulate of our middle school spelling teams on their recent accomplishments.

Hinesburg's 5th-6th grade team

Hinesburg's 6th grade spellers won their regional spelling competition.

Williston's 7th-8th grade team won their regional spelling competition. They came back from behind to win by 2 points.

Both teams compete in the State Finals on November 16th in Montpelier. 

Williston's 7th-8th grade team