GPS District Digest (v5, i08)
Stories, news, and updates from Greenwich Public Schools
It's the most wonderful time of the year with the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you be of good cheer.
While everyone in the Digest newsroom appreciates each and every one of our loyal readers, it is time for us to enjoy our Holiday Recess too. We will put away our reporter pads, pencils, and thinking caps for just a bit to get ourselves recharged for the new year. Look for issue no. 9 on January 11.
Have a great break, no matter how you spend it.
Enjoy Issue No. 8 and thank you for your support.
GPS District Digest
A huge congratulations from the Digest to Old Greenwich School Principal Dr. Jennifer Bencivengo for recently earning her doctorate from Sacred Heart University. Everyone in the newsroom was glued to their screens watching her defend her Doctoral Dissertation entitled: "An Improvement Science in Practice: Empowering Parents as Partners in Education in Fostering Lifelong Learners."
The OG PTA folks even surprised her with an amazing celebration. I hope she saved a piece of that cake for us!
Way to go, Doc!
Loyal Digest readers will remember GHS senior Ziyi Yan from last year's issue No. 18 where we learned that she was named runner up for the 2023 State of Connecticut Youth Poet Laureate. She checked in with us with an update.
Recently, she was named a national YoungArts winner in Writing/Spoken Word. YoungArts award winners are selected through a highly competitive application, which is reviewed by panels of esteemed, discipline-specific artists in a rigorous adjudication process. This year, winners were selected from more than 9,000 applications across 10 artistic disciplines. Winners receive exclusive creative and professional development support for the duration of their career, including microgrants, financial awards, and presentation opportunities in collaboration with major venues and cultural partners nationwide.
Also, Poetry Northwest featured her poem, "Fish," through its "Presenting" feature. The mission of Poetry Northwest remains what it has been for more than five decades — to give place and attention to each poem published, to serve as a gateway for emerging writers, to represent the vital corner of the continent to a broader audience, and to attract and sustain readers with the promise of discovery.
"In Ziyi Yan’s poem 'Fish,' a reader enters into a barbaric landscape that is overgrown and hungry with desire. Yet, there is a gravity that holds each illusive image on the page like a caught fish," Senior Editor Xavier Cavazos said, "Musical abstraction and visual whitespace are energized by the motion and movement of each poetic fragment – deep dives that pull the individual lines with tension, and heartbreak. In this poem, a reader wades the shallow current, and indexes a journey of loss through aquatic interactions. Anchored and overflowing with images, the speaker reveals whole ecosystems of trauma and survival. But the use of white space on the page ultimately becomes a shiny lure in the reader’s belly, until we are a swimming fish out of the water, uncomfortable and desperate to breathe."
Last spring, eighth grade students at Eastern, Western, and Central Middle Schools traveled to Washington, D.C. for a three-day, two-night educational experiential trip with their peers and teachers after a three-year COVID hiatus. This trip is a beloved capstone tradition spanning over four decades and the verdict was unanimous: the trip was a huge success and very much missed!
Just read some of the glowing reviews from some of the trip attendees last year:
- "I had so much fun at Mount Vernon, talking to the people in costume, eating the bread they made there, and the museum was amazing!"
- "It was my first time staying away from home without my family and I really felt like I was doing a great job on my own. I learned so much."
- "The best part was the African American Museum."
- "While you can't really say you 'liked' the Holocaust Museum, I think it was the most important thing I studied this year."
- "I want to go to college in DC now."
The 8th Grade D.C. Trip Fundraising Committee, in partnership with the Greenwich Alliance for Education, Pitch Your Peers, and the PTAs, teachers and principals at Western, Central, and Eastern Middle Schools are now raising funds for current GPS eighth graders.
The Committee will be hosting a live music fundraiser called, “Dancing for DC,” on Friday, January 19 from 6:00-9:00 PM at the Old Greenwich Social Club. The event will feature beloved local band, “That’s What She Said,” in addition to free appetizers, fabulous raffle prizes, and a cash bar.
Tickets are $50 per person and proceeds will go toward funding the D.C. Trip for current and future GPS eighth graders. Be sure to purchase your tickets soon because only 200 tickets are available and they will sell out!
For more information on how to join the committee or help with fundraising, email dcfundraisingcomm@gmail.com.
Best-selling author and illustrator, Laurie Keller, recently stopped by Parkway School to speak to K-2 students about her background, how she got started, and the writing process. She even spent time drawing with the students, which helped facilitate conversation on character development and how to brainstorm ideas to use in stories.
And thanks to the Parkway PTA, each student brought home an autographed copy of "Arnie," a story about a chocolate sprinkled donut.
Last year, the PTAC Green Schools Committee teamed up with Waste Free Greenwich and the Facilities Department to initiate a Zero Waste Schools program at Greenwich Public Schools.
The first phase of the program – a cafeteria waste reduction initiative with new sorting stations featuring liquid collection, streamlined recycling and tray stacking - has now been implemented at all elementary schools. Students have eliminated an average 47% of trash from the waste stream, and contamination was cut significantly. Over the school year, it is projected that over 82,000 lbs. of waste will be diverted at K-5 lunchrooms instead of incinerated as trash, saving money, conserving resources and reducing pollution.
Phase two is now underway, which is aimed at reducing wasted food through donation and recycling. Wasted food is the largest and heaviest component of the cafeteria waste stream and the most expensive to dispose. While New Lebanon School piloted a successful food scrap recycling program last spring, Riverside School adopted the practice this fall after educational training led by Green Schools volunteers Hillary Harper and Caroline Viefers. A generous gift from last year's graduating class helped to fund the initiative. Students separate out all food scraps, along with paper towels and napkins, and the collected organic material is transported to Quantum Biopower, an anaerobic digester in Southington, to be processed into energy, as well as compost.
Partnering with Food Rescue US Fairfield County, Riverside also started an external donation program that delivers uneaten, unopened food to Barbara’s House and Greenwich Boys & Girls Club, supporting our neighbors in need. The students boosted their diversion rate from 20% to 61% by adding recycling and donating food that would otherwise go to waste and are on track to cut 8,460 lbs. of trash this year.
The Red Hawks have gone the extra mile, collecting mylar snack bags, applesauce squeezers and plastic bags to further reduce trash. These items are brought to special recycling programs through Terracyle via Subaru Stamford and Trex via local grocery stores. These additional programs are supported by teacher Ms. Audrey Barrette and her second graders, who recently upcycled the chip bags into festive florets and candy canes to decorate their classroom door for the holidays.
The playground at Old Greenwich School recently received an amazing addition: a communication board.
Both adults and peers can use the board to communicate with one another as well as model language for our friends who have limited verbal language or use an alternative form of language to communicate, such as sign language, speech generating device, or Picture Exchange System.
Everyone in the Digest newsroom watched an amazing video that explains how to model language on a communication board and we were all blown away.
Amazing!
We love sharing good news with our 2,068 closest friends on the GPS X (Twitter) account, @GPSDistrict.
Follow us, but only do it if you are a member our families, students, staff, or community that want to see all of the good things happening around the District. No negativity from us!
At the Digest, we love to show you some of our favorite posts from around the GPS social media world, including from some new accounts on Instagram.
Do you have a favorite social media account? Let us know!
