Happy Summer 2015!
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FALCON FLYER SUMMER 2015 Congratulations to the Class of 2015! The AOSR community is like a big family. Many thanks to all of you for making the 2014-2015 school year such a Happy Summer great success! Special thanks go to all of our teachers, staff members and the dozens of parent volunteers including those on the Board of Trustees and in the 2015! PTO, for their endless hours of service to make our school such a wonderful place. It just wouldn’t have been the same without you. It is also that bittersweet time of the year when we must say “arrivederci” to many of our students, families, and colleagues as they prepare to move away from Rome. We hope that our school will always occupy a special place in your hearts and minds. Best wishes go to the following retiring and departing faculty and staff members: Ms. Christine Hogan, Mr. Joseph Mancini, Mr. Paul Haskell, Ms. Vicky Collier, Mr. Ken Kunin, Ms. Rhonda AbouHana, Ms. Tracy Arnold, Ms. Melissa Joseph, Mr. L. Mark Kibler, Dr. Jason Schipper, Ms. Josie Tierney-Fife, Mr. Peter Tierney-Fife, and Mr. Isaias Torres. Have a great summer! See you in September! Dr. Beth Pfannl, Head of School AOSR Summer Work 2015 • Parking Lot Project: In large part thanks to a grant from the US government, we will be upgrading the entrance/exit to the school. This project will include a new gatehouse, the creation of a new main entrance to the parking lot and other safety and security measures • Upgrading our Edible Schoolyard garden • New tiling leading to the entrance to the High School and and the gym for safety • Mats installed around the gym walls for safety • Upgrading the Music classrooms to include soundproofing, new furniture and other improvements (thanks in large part to proceeds from Mayfair 2015 - €9,400) • New Villa classroom doors with key card locks • Repair work on the cafeteria patio and stairway that leads down to the Hillside Theater • Adding soundproofing panels on the ceiling in the cafeteria to lessen the noise during lunchtime • Upgrading the Villa science labs (V2 and V4) with new furniture and lighting • Routine painting and maintenance work Buon Estate from PTO It’s been another action-packed year and everyone is ready for summer break! Mayfair was a great success! It was a wonderful day spent sharing international foods, playing games, singing, dancing and supporting local artists. A big ‘thank you’ to HS STUCO and to everyone who volunteered time or resources and to all of you who came out to enjoy the event. Mayfair raised approximately 9,400.00 Euro that will go towards updating the music classrooms. When you return in September, know that your AOSR PTO will be welcoming everyone back with the sale of school supplies and AOSR logo wear! So check the purchase of school supplies off your summer to do list and we will have everything you need when you return! It’s been a pleasure serving as your PTO President these past two space years. My successor, Kaprial Martinez-Perez, was recently voted in and is eager to get to work with such a welcoming, supportive community! Please give her a helping hand! Enjoy your summer! Stacy Mansager, Former AOSR PTO President AOSR Summer Work 2015 From the AOSR Board Chair I cannot believe that another school year is over! It has flown by and another group of brilliant, talented and beautiful young people have graduated. On behalf of the Board, I would like to congratulate the Class of 2015 and wish you all the very best of luck for the future. To everyone who is moving on this summer, including some of our wonderful faculty and staff members, thank you for your commitment to AOSR. We wish you good luck and happiness in everything you do. Over the course of the school year, the Board has been working hard on our annual goals not least of which is preparing to build our new Performing and Fine Arts Center. We have received lots of support for this project from the school community who understand that this state- of-the-art building will highlight AOSR’s vision and enhance its reputation as a world-class seat of education and achievement. In turn, our students will benefit from this enhanced reputation long after they have left school and moved into higher education and employment. Our new Centre will see the expansion of programs that support the development of skills and qualities essential in our changing world. It has been proven over and over again that students of art, drama, music, dance, and public speaking develop the essential qualities of confidence, leadership, and communication skills that are much sought after by future employers and leading institutions. As our school’s mission is to prepare tomorrow’s global leaders, our new Performing and Fine Arts Center will set this in stone. The final submission of plans for the Center will be made to the authorities in September and we anticipate that approval could be granted as early as summer 2016. If you are interested in helping the Board as we plan for this major building project, please get in touch. Finally, we wish everyone a relaxing and enjoyable summer and we look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new families, faculty, and staff in September. Joanne Martin Board Chair More from Mayfair! ‘How wonderful you’ve been for AOSR’ You will be missed! Ms. Christine Hogan, 37 years Ms. Vicky Collier, 9 years Mr. Joe Mancini, 19 years Mr. Paul Haskell, 11 years AOSR Welcomes new Secondary Principal We are pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Robert B. McCarthy, Jr. as the new secondary school principal beginning July 2015. Mr. McCarthy will take over from Mr. Ken Kunin who is completing his fourth year at AOSR and returning to Portland, Maine this summer with his family. Mr. McCarthy comes to AOSR after having served as a secondary school principal for the past 18 years in the United States. He will be leaving South Kingstown High School in Rhode Island where he has lived and worked for the past ten years. Prior to that, Mr. McCarthy served as secondary principal at East Greenwich High School in RI. He has had an extensive career as an educator having taught social studies and humanities at high schools and middle schools in Los Angeles, Cartagena, Colombia, and suburban Boston. Mr. McCarthy earned a BA at Emory University in Atlanta prior to receiving a Masters in Teaching at Brown University. After seven years in the classroom, he earned a Masters in Administration from Harvard University. He will come to Rome with his wife, Jocelyn, and two children, Sam, entering grade 9, and Madeleine, grade 7. Mr. McCarthy is excited to join the AOSR family and do whatever he can to sustain and celebrate the sense of community which is a defining characteristic of our school as he supports students and teachers in and out of the classroom. Elementary News Pre-K Our Pre-K classes enjoyed spending time in the edible garden this year. They helped to plant the vegetables and made observational drawings as the plants grew. They watered, weeded, observed, and in early June they held a harvest party in the garden with the help of our Go Green! Club Coordinators, Ms. Rahm and Ms. St. Onge. They were each able to take some of their fresh produce home to share with their families. What a rewarding experience and a great learning opportunity to be able to plant, grow and eat your own food! Kindergarten AOSR kindergarteners recently visited Explora Museum. While there, they were presented with a lesson to reinforce all that they had been learning in class about the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. One of their favorite activities was listening to their friends’ hearts with a stethoscope! After learning about all of the important things our five senses do for us, the kindergarteners were free to roam around the museum and put their senses to use! They played grocery store, weighed rocks, rode in the fire truck and played with water. Overall, it was a fun trip and they learned a lot! Playing IS learning! Elementary News Grade 1 First graders continued the tradition of an end of the year Portfolio Party to share their growth as readers, writers, artists and students in general. Samples of their work were collected throughout the year, and the students had a chance before the celebration to look through and see for themselves just how much they’ve grown. They were amazed and so proud of themselves, some even commenting that they couldn’t read their written work from the fall because it’s changed so much. They also shared their collaborative group dinosaur short-films. They created dinosaur stick puppets with Ms. Joseph in art, and then chose their background and filmed using the green screen with Ms. Waite. They wrote their stories in their classrooms using the information they’ve been learning about dinosuar characteristics, diet and behavior. It was a great celebration! Grade 2 On Friday, April 24, 2015 we presented our second grade family projects to parents, classmates and first grade students. The family project was a special assignment that explains our lives up until now. Our teachers gave us about one month to prepare our family projects. There were five parts to the assignment. First, we made family trees at home. A family tree shows your ancestry. Second, we created timelines of at least five important events from our lives.