Family Bulletin – November 9, 2018
Upcoming Events
Monday, November 12 – Armistice Day: No School
Wednesday, November 14 – High School Museum Field Trip
November 15-16 – Middle School Urban Outing
Tuesday, November 20 – BTC Campus Visit
Wednesday, November 21 – Community Meal and Early Dismissal
November 22-23 – Thanksgiving Holiday
This fall the Whatcom Museum is hosting a series of events around its current art exhibit, called Endangered Species: Artists on the Front Line of Biodiversity. On Wednesday, November 14, high school students will join museum staff at Old City Hall for a viewing and discussion of the documentary “A Plastic Ocean.” Afterwards, we will walk to The Lightcatcher Building where students can tour the Endangered Species collection and the museum’s permanent exhibit on Coast Salish history. Both Origins and Endings clusters will find lots of material relevant to their classes here.
The movie starts at noon and we will give students a snack break afterwards. Students should pack their lunch from home, and expect a shorter-than-usual lunch period.
Middle School Urban Outing: Seattle
Middle school students are going to Seattle! On Thursday, November 15, Tania and Ed will escort students to the city for an overnight field trip exploring the arts and sciences of Seattle. Our planned itinerary includes visits to the Pacific Science Center, the Museum of Pop Culture, and the Frye Art Museum! Students should plan to arrive at school at the usual time on Thursday morning for a 9:00 am departure to Seattle. Students, please remember to pack your water bottles, a lunch for Thursday, and your Urban Outing overnight gear.
We’ll plan to have everyone back at school early afternoon on Friday, November 16 for pick up at 3:30 pm.
Students Visit Bellingham Technical College
On Tuesday, November 20, Bacchus and staff will be taking any interested students to Bellingham Technical College for a campus tour. BTC offers 35 associate degrees and 43 certificate programs, and boasts an 81% job placement rate for graduates. It’s an outstanding and affordable option for students interested in the trades or other skilled fields. Popular programs at BTC include welding, culinary arts, nursing, fisheries, and engineering. We encourage all interested students to attend this campus visit, regardless of your year at EA. Contact Bacchus if there is a specific program you wish to learn more about, so that we can be sure to include it in our tour.
Community Meal and Early Release: Thanksgiving Starts Wednesday!
We love our tradition of hosting community meals, and it wouldn’t feel right to let Thanksgiving go by without one. Wednesday, November 21, we will eat lunch together as a learning community and family, then say goodbye for the long holiday weekend. We’ll have more details about the menu next week, and in the meantime we hope you’ll plan to join us. Meal is at 11:20, and school will be dismissed at 1:00.
Notes From the Road
On Monday, we stopped in Olympia for a tour of the Capitol Building. Since this was the day before the midterm elections, students were keenly interested in the voting process. We learned that the federal government sets the numbers of voters per legislative seat in the House of Representatives for every state in the country, and that this will be reassessed after the 2020 census. This brought up the concept gerrymandering and Steve, our guide, explained to students how it can be used to manipulate outcome if managed inequitably.
We spent Tuesday at Mount St. Helens. Here, students descend into The Ape Caves, a 2000-year-old lava tube on the south slope of the mountain, in Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Students walked nearly 3/4 mile underground. The solid blackness was relieved only by headlamps until everyone agreed to turn them off and we sat for a moment of stillness in the dark, listening to steady plops of dripping water in the cave.
On Wednesday we took our lunch break at the largest spruce tree in North America, growing in the Quinault rain forest. This monster has a diameter of almost 59 feet, and is one of several giant trees in the Quinault Valley. From these trees, preserved in the Olympic National Forest, we drove on to Forks to learn about Washington’s logging history at the Forks Timber Museum.
We get a moment of play at beautiful Lake Quinault, on the Olympic Peninsula.
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