Academy of Science and Technology
Newsletter-Reminders-Accolades-More
Just a few reminders of important dates that are coming up:
September 9th-AST Picnic
- Reminders about what to bring will be emailed to you this week and next week
September 14th, 15th, 18th, and 19th-AST Visits to Irons, Knox, McC, and York
- This is an FYI to you all as parents. Students are signing up right now, and I will let students know early next week if they are traveling.
- We have lots of AST students in Band, Reveliers, Cheer, our Twirler, Football Players to support.
- I am chaperoning-I hope to see you there!
September 21st-Science Fair Information Night
- 9th grade-required, 10-12 SF Participants encouraged to attend
- You will receive more details as the night approaches
- Please see the link below for volunteers
- We will send out much more information on how this works
- Students are very actively working towards this right now with our R&P sponsors
- Freshmen all do Science Fair as R&P, so this does not pertain to them
- We need volunteers...please see the link below
AST could not function without our parents! Not only do you nurture, protect and encourage our greatest commodity, you serve in such a helpful capacity to the faculty, staff, and future students of AST. We do not say it enough...parents rock! There are two upcoming opportunities to help out with AST.
First, we need Science Fair Panel Volunteers! We need parents each fall to volunteer to sit with our students as they speak briefly about their projects. Many of our students will have questions pertaining to areas that you study or currently work in. Even if you can't volunteer for September 21st, please consider adding your name to our expert panel list, as we may have a question at some time throughout science fair season that you can answer!
The following week, on Sept 25 and Sept 27-we will be hosting prospective students and parents for AST Class of 2028! . I am really looking for Prospective Parent Experts--some parents will participate as parent panelists those evenings--speaking briefly about their experience as AST Parents. Other parent experts will serve as a group of parents that prospective parents can contact if they have detailed questions that we can not answer. Please do not fear that I will openly post your email/phone numbers-I will not. Parent experts may be called up to speak to a family that contacts me about the transition from private to public school or the transition from the GOHS feeder to AST, or simply being very on the fence about even applying, etc. Quite often we get calls at AST that we can answer from our perspective, but I feel as though some of our parents may be of great help with this.
For these parent panelists (who will speak briefly after my presentation) I am looking for predominately junior and senior parents or underclassmen parents who have had an older student graduate. The reasoning for this is that we need parents who have experienced both freshmen year, the transition to high school, and then the transition from Science Fair to an independent R&P. Additionally, I will need parents who have students who participate in predominantly AST activities and parents who have students who participate in outside activities as well (band, athletics, etc.). I expect a lot of you will probably volunteer, so please understand that I can only select a few in each group...but I will definitely need you later!!! I am going to ask quite a few questions on the link to sign up, but that's due the nature of making sure that I have covered a ton of different scenarios (distance driving, transition from private schools, etc.).
Please sign up here! Thank you in advance.
Every student has a link to a program called Naviance. This program is located in the SSO where students access canvas, etc.
Naviance is a great place to start college and career planning as early as 9th grade or 10th grade. Naviance has a section called Self Discovery where students can take interest inventories, personality tests that match them with careers and a survey called learning and productivity that helps students realize how they study best!!
Juniors and seniors should be accessing Naviance's College Visit list ASAP to see what colleges are visiting CP in the College and Career Center. More than 100 colleges typically visit-many of which are fantastic target schools for our students (Rensselear Polytechnic, Purdue, Trinity, Florida Tech, and many more). Students should absolutely be visiting with more than just their reach (Rice, U Chicago, etc) schools. They will never know what's out there for them scholarship and fit wise if they don't broaden their horizons. College visits are truly designed for juniors and seniors, so that is who should be visiting. Go learn about these colleges! Please encourage your kiddos to do so.
If you or your student is looking for a beautiful, midsize (8,000 undergrad) campus, with fantastic opportunities for undergraduate research across tons of disciplines, Washington University in St. Louis might be a great fit for you. Besides being beautiful and offering weather with actual seasons (quite an unusual concept if you are used to Texas), Wash U (as it is typically called) is located in Danforth, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Wash U is known for student access to undergraduate research opportunities. It is a private university, so it is expensive, but Wash U offers great need based aid and competitive merit based scholarships. We have had several AST and CP students attend, and have raved not only about the education and opportunities they received, but how well prepared they were to move on.