See 2007 Highlights

Highlights of 2006 at Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School

• Thanks to a generous donor, the 6th grade class spent a week at Nature's Classroom in New Hampshire, camping together in cabins, hiking, and studying ecology and the environment in their 326 acre "classroom" of wetlands and deciduous forest. The activities emphasized teamwork and bonding-- a great way for the new class to begin their CCLCS careers.
• Five CCLCS students and several alumni joined high-school and college students from across the US at the United Nations in New York for a student conference on International Peace Day. Alumna Jessica Rimington was one of three students to address the conference. Participants were able to talk by videoconference to students in Kosovo, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They met UN Messengers of Peace Michael Douglas, Yo Yo Ma, Anna Cataldi, Vijay Armitraj, and Jane Goodall, as well as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
• 8th grade French students traveled to Boston to see Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire, presented by the National Theater, at the Massachusetts College of Art. They lunched at Brasserie Jo, conversing with the waiter and Maitre d'hotel in French.
• This year's visitors have included:
  • Bernard Cornwell, historical novelist and author of the King Arthur trilogy [The Winter King, Enemy of God, and Excalibur], who addressed students in the seminar "Might and Right: Understanding King Arthur."
  • Knighthorse Theater Company, which presented The Tempest for CCLCS students, and gave two days of workshops leading up to the performance.
• The Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, one of our community resource partners, received a $25,000 grant which will allow CCLCS students to participate in the museum's research. 6th graders are studying the 4 major Cape Cod Ecosystems: barrier beach; freshwater; saltmarsh and upland. Students will also be participating in a bird banding project this year.
• Congratulations to CCLCS Alumni: Mari Reed, Nauset High School's Valedictorian for 2006; Brendan Kemp, whose plan to save energy at UMASS is one of ten finalists in MTV's "Ecoimagination Challenge" ; Lauren Brunelle, whose first country music album has just been released.
• Social Studies teacher Daniella Garran was awarded a Fellowship from the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, for her paper on the 7th grade "Imperial Scrapbook Project" which helps students "think like historians" while studying ancient Rome. The project was also summarized in Teacher Magazine.
• This winter CCLCS produced its first school musical: Guys and Dolls, which had 4 performances at the Cape Repertory Theater, one of our community resource partners.
• CCLCS is collaborating with Big and Small Puppetworks and the Orleans Council on Aging to produce Two Old Women, a pageant of masks, music and movement that brings to life Velma Wallis' retelling of the Athabascan legend of survival.
• Associate Director Paul Niles won a grant from the Friends of Pleasant Bay to study codium and other invasive plants in the bay. Students in his seminar "Stopping the Attack on Pleasant Bay" studied the bay on foot and in kayaks, then worked with the Cape Cod Hook Fisherman's Association to make GIS maps locating the plant colonies, data that will be used in an ongoing study of the bay.
• 16 CCLCS students participated in the Cape Cod Bioblitz, an inventory of species at a site in Brewster conducted by the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, the Boston Museum of Science and Technology, and the University of Washington Nature Mapping program. "A total of 14 mammals, 39 birds, 15 terrestrial invertebrates, 35 marine invertebrates, and 50 plants were documented. which wasn't bad at all since it rained the entire time."
• The Department of Education's 12th year charter review concluded that CCLCS has been highly faithful to its charter, praising our "high levels of student engagement and wide variety of effective instructional practices", and noting, as we often do, how enthusiastic and articulate CCLCS students are.