Dream Court: Inclusion and Acceptance

by: Kate Rees, senior

Dream Court, a local nonprofit, is an adaptive tennis program that provides individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities the opportunity to play tennis. Dream Court’s executive director, Ms. Jessica Weyreuter, asked the high school art department to paint the storage boxcars used to store tennis equipment at O’Conner Tennis Center. Over three weeks, students signed up for 2 hour shifts on the weekends. Many students completed multiple shifts. The first task was to prime the boxcar to prepare for painting the design. Once primed, students were able to start painting!  The design was created by Mrs. Shoults, our high school art teacher.  Junior Emerson Hagen suggested adding hearts to the racket strings, which is a cute addition to the mural!  The design consists of a blue sky and green grass with the Dream Court logo in the center. Each side has a racket with a pink heart in the strings.  Students lettered the motto of Dream Court “serving hope, changing lives” around the edges and “be a game changer” at the bottom.  Mrs. Shoults supervised and instructed students as they worked on the mural.  She shared her thoughts on this great project, and said "I am honored that Dream Court asked the Saint James Art Department to design and paint a mural for them. This opportunity allowed our students to use their talents outside of the classroom while giving back and adding beauty to our local community. Being able to give back and put good into action is the Saint James way.”  STJ’s theme for the 2021-2022 school year is “putting good into action today,” and as Mrs. Shoults said, the art students did just that!  The bright, colorful mural will be enjoyed by all who come to O’Conner and will bring smiles to the Dream Court family. 

@dreamcourt

Exploring Guitars

Students in Mr. Martin’s Explore Music class practiced classical guitar this week. This course is a 9-week exploratory overview of the basics of music. Students learn about rhythm and develop music appreciation through hands on, experiential learning. Various instruments will be introduced and different types of music genres are explored. Rock on, middle schoolers!

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Paraguay's Itaipu Dam

by: Sra. Melissa Harris, elementary Spanish teacher

¡Hola! Once a month, we have culture week in Spanish class. The students look forward to it, and they treat it like Christmas, always asking me every week how close it is. We learn about a different Spanish speaking country to bring a "why" to learning Spanish. This week we studied Paraguay. Paraguay is a unique little country where they have two national languages: Spanish and Guaraní. On the border of Brazil and Paraguay runs the Paraná River, which is the source for a large hydroelectric dam called the Itaipu Dam. The Itaipu Dam is the largest source of hydroelectric power in the world in terms of its electrical energy output. Because of this, over 90% of Paraguay's power comes from hydroelectricity. That's a lot of clean energy! The students had the opportunity to construct their own dam using Legos and test its ability to direct water and control the force of the water. We saw lots of successes, and they were all so creative! Buen trabajo, estudiantes.

Invention Convention: Bridges

A fun and interactive STEAM activity in Mrs. Whigham’s middle school Invention Convention class is bridge building.  Students researched famous bridges and studied how lightweight materials can be designed to effectively hold weight. Using only craft sticks and a small amount of tape, students constructed their own bridges and tested them against varying levels of weight. Take a look at what they created - we have some engineers in the making!  Students created a website featuring their creations and a poll to vote for your favorite bridge. Invention Convention is a semester-long elective. Students investigate various inventions throughout history through research and writing, designing, building, and film critique. This hands-on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) is challenging and fun. #WeAreSaintJamesSchool

Party Like it's 1999!

As a culminating activity in Mrs. Otis’s AP Computer Science study of our Internet unit, students watched a cheesy, but valuable video from 1999, “Warriors of the Internet.” Students ate popcorn, drank a popular soda from the nineties, and enjoyed candy of the time. We got a chance to see how things have changed, stayed the same, and how digital transport works.

Of course we ended the lesson by listening to Prince's classic song, “1999!” Through this fun experience, students reviewed all the important internet protocols as well as some fun tech history.

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Check out “Warriors of the Net” for yourself!

Touchdown, science!

Mr. Turner’s 6th grade science class is studying a unit on the basics of graphing. Students have been learning about how to draw a graph with proper labeling. To practice these skills, students participated in a fun and interactive lab. Each student took a turn flicking a foam football and then recording their measurements. They then calculated the average and graphed each student's average together on a bar graph. Touchdown, science!

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Dig It! 2021 Trojans Volleyball

by: Rachel Rice, senior

Rachel Rice, varsity volleyaball

The varsity volleyball season is in its peak right now! Saint James’s varsity team is number one in their area and will be hosting the area game at home. The Saint James volleyball team has made it to state many times and most recently won state in 2017. Because of this success, the varsity team is competing in the 6A area, as oppose to our normal 4A classification. Volleyball is a fall sport with practices starting in early July and goes until mid-October. Competitions begin in August and can continue into late October depending on how far the team advances in the state playoffs. Volleyball is a game that depends on teamwork and communication to succeed. In a game, there are 6 players on the court at once, and they usually have a setter and a libero. The libero is the main defensive player who wears a different colored jersey. The setter is the player who propels the second ball in a play and sets it to the front row hitters to try to get a point off their hit. Junior varsity games are played to the best of 2 out of 3 sets. Sets consist of 25 points and the JV teams have to win 2 sets to win the game. In varsity, games are played to the best of 3 out of 5 sets. This means that they have to win 3 sets to win the game.

I started playing volleyball in 8th grade and have played every school and club season every year since. I started playing it because I loved watching college volleyball on tv and had friends who played at school. The sport has taught me a lot about teamwork, competition, and communication. It has made a positive impact in my life and has given me many new friendships with teammates from other schools. I am so thankful for the leadership of our coach, Karen Lee, and for all of the time she dedicates to not only helping us grow as athletes, but as students and members of our community. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the season holds. Go Trojans!

The Hilinski’s Hope Foundation- Mental Health Advocacy for Athletes

The Hilinski’s Hope Foundation (H3H) was founded in 2018 by Mark and Kym Hilinski to honor the life of their son Tyler, who died by suicide in January of that year. At the time, Tyler was playing quarterback at Washington State and was leading a seemingly storybook life and never showed any signs of depression or struggle. The more Mark and Kym looked into the death of their son, the more they wondered what could have been done to prevent it. However, rather than find a “why” it happened, their work (spreading awareness and advocating for the mental health of student athletes) became a their reason to move forward.

Thanks to our sponsor, The Hughston Clinic, last night Saint James School was honored to have Mark and Kym to campus to share their story with our student athletes and parents. October 2-9 is College Football Mental Health Week. Over sixty colleges and universities nationwide will participate in breaking down stigma and offering quality resources to provide mental health support for student athletes.

#MentalHealthMatters

College Football Mental Health Week coincides with Mental Illness Awareness Week, October 3-9, culminating on World Mental Health Day on October 10. Saint James School is committed to the overall health and wellbeing of our students and we are incredibly thankful to Mark and Kym for sharing the story of Tyler and bringing Hillinski’s Hope to our school. https://www.hilinskishope.org/

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Tea Time

by: MaryEllis Killough, 8th grade

Last week in our advanced English class we had a tea party to celebrate finishing the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. We watched the 2020 film adaptation of the book and discussed similarities and differences in the book versus the movie. We were treated with Chamomile tea, scones, and shortbread cookies during the movie to really go back in time to 1938 on the countryside of England. Our whole class enjoyed our little tea party and was very thankful to our wonderful English teacher, Ms. Ramsey, for making this happen!

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pinkies up!

Art Enriches

Our elementary enrichment teachers work together to weave comprehensive, co-curricular lessons throughout the year. All elementary students, Pre-K3 through 5th grade, attend at least one enrichment class per day. A favorite is art. Visual art is critical for not only self-expression, finding creativity, and inventiveness, but art encourages motor skills, language skills, social skills, and decision-making. Mrs. Patti Pelham, elementary art teacher, worked with our first graders this week as they completed portraits of pigs. These beautiful creations will hang on display for their upcoming play, “The Barnyard Moosical.”

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