Some people wonder how frisbees fly. Aden Stinebrickner-Kauffman is not one of these people. He could tell you about the disk’s aerodynamics. He could tell you about distorted air flow, the Bernoulli Principle, and the lift component of force vectors. He could also tell you about what it’s like to play on a professional frisbee team. Indeed, the renowned physics teacher was a professional athlete. Inspired by his sister’s success on Duke University’s frisbee team, he picked up the sport during his freshman year of college. Not too long after, the Australian (yes, he was born Down Under) started to
While many voters believe that election day takes place on the first Tuesday of November, Georgetown Day School (GDS) students know that election day for the Student Staff Council (SSC) president occurs on the first Monday of May. Beating junior Jeff Elias and sophomores Jonah Doctor-Loeb and Margaux Van-Allen, junior Shonali Palacios will succeed graduating senior Cecily Davis as the school’s student body president. Starting this year, with an amendment to the SSC Charter, SSC opened presidential elections to the public instead of holding private elections. This change established a more democratic process to get the entire school involved. Elias,
You walk into your first day of high school, everything is new: new teachers, new campus, new students. How will you get to know this school? What are its values? How will you explore and come to understand your identity and find your place in this new environment? Perhaps surprisingly, ninth grade English class can help you find answer to some of these questions. As the GDS course catalogue explains,“English 9 texts focus on journeys — both metaphorical and physical — in which the protagonists “adolesce” as they struggle toward the formation of tested and tempered identities.” One of the
In February, students gathered in the forum as high school principal Katie Gibson announced that new security measures were being debuted. The administration communicated by email to the wider community, and within several days, these new measures took effect. “The securing of the front doors, updating our camera systems, setting up infrastructure for what will become the lower-middle school, are the general ideas,” said junior Robin Forsyth, summarizing the new policy. In practice, the Davenport street doors have been locked aside from designated timeframes, and people who wish to enter the building via those doors have to press a
On April 11th, the carpeted hallways of Georgetown Day School (GDS) were unusually still for a Wednesday afternoon. Across town, nearly 500 GDS students and faculty crowded Section 110 at Nationals Park and witnessed the Washington Nationals lose their final game in a series against the Atlanta Braves. Earlier that morning, the hundreds of high schoolers had donned baseball caps and t-shirts sporting the Nationals logo and patiently waited to board buses to begin the nearly annual Hopper Holiday. This tradition surprises everyone, except the administration, becoming a source of excitement for some while an added stress for others. The
When Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election in 2016, Sarah Sherman, Georgetown Day School (GDS) class of 1993, decided she had to do something. Sherman has been politically active since her days at GDS, but this time, she decided to take action by starting her very own super Political Action Committee (PAC) called “Vote Me Too.” The “#MeToo” hashtag trending in 2017 empowered women across the world to speak up about their experiences with sexual harassment and assault. Sherman decided to combine the momentum of the “Me Too” movement to challenge the gender power imbalance in the government by
As the end of the school year draws closer, so do the dreaded final exams. For many freshman students, these exams will be the first exam they have ever taken. This is a very stressful time for all students; many believe that those ten hours of testing can dictate their entire future. Additionally, the final exam is a significant portion of one’s final grade in a class and no one wants to attempt something so important for the first time without preparation. This winter, for the first time, Georgetown Day School (GDS) decided to have minimesters in the place of
Recently, Georgetown Day School (GDS) held conversations about socioeconomic status, where students discussed the way social class affects life both inside and outside of school. Ultimately, many came to the conclusion that finances play a role in many facets of GDS culture such as tuition, athletics, prom, trips, and lunch. This past year, teachers Juan Vidal and Amanda Deringer created a new affinity group called Students for Socioeconomic Awareness (SSEA), hoping to prompt important conversations about social class at GDS. “We wanted to provide students with a healthy space to talk about socioeconomic status,” Deringer said. The teachers stressed that
On November 10, Open Spaces were brought to the GDS high-school, facilitated by members of GDS’s student and faculty community. And while it may seem that these conversations are in the distant past, they will be returning twice more over the course of the remaining school year. Open Space discussions are defined as “a self-organizing practice of inner discipline and collective activity, which releases the inherent creativity and leadership in people. By inviting people to take responsibility for what they care about, Open Space establishes a marketplace of inquiry, reflection, and learning, bringing out the best in both individuals and
On Wednesday, January 31, the entire freshman class and their parents congregated in the Georgetown Day School library. This mandatory meeting was organized to discuss the usage of drugs and alcohol in the 9th grade class. Amy Killy, the GDS guidance counselor, believes that the main goal of the meeting was to get students and parents talking about this issue. She hopes, “that there can be some sort of common ground that can foster a good conversation about what’s real, that is both real and relevant.” In previous years, meetings similar to these have occurred for the sophomores and juniors.
As she was walking to class, freshman Marleigh Ausbrooks did something pretty normal for any GDS student: she took an elevator. She piled in with a few fellow students and headed up to the third floor. Ausbrooks recalls the scene: “the crowd started to get on the elevator and a few people decided to just take the stairs. I decided to cram in with another girl from my French class.” As the elevator began to move, Ausbrooks immediately sensed that something was wrong. “As soon as we got on the elevator seemed to start to move but very slowly,” she
Over mid-winter break, a group of 21 GDS students traveled to Puerto Rico to help those still struggling to rebuild their lives five months after the devastation of Hurricane Maria. While we were fixing houses in Toa Baja, a town on the northern coast, one of the memorable people we met was Ernesto. Ernesto’s house had been destroyed by the water that rose to the second floor and lost one of his dogs in the flooding. “There was mold everywhere, roaches behind every piece of fallen debris, and everything was completely destroyed,” said junior Alex Wellisch of the house. Ernesto