The Magazine of Cary Academy WINTER 2020 GREEN FOOTSTEPS LEAD THE WAY FORWARD Page 16 Games and gadgets: giving students the tech tools to shine Page 4 The heart of the team Page 12 Laying down the laws of physics Page 14 CHARGER PRIDE: SPIRIT WEEK & HOMECOMING page 9Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, we are bringing you this issue of ?, The Magazine of Cary Academy electronically. While we want to do our part by making sure print and mail resources can be dedicated to health needs at the moment, we had just too much good stuff happening not to share. So… welcome to a special electronic edition of a print magazine. In this issue, we are delighted to share some wonderful stories of impact. We hope you’ll enjoy reading about Cindy Laughlin, who has been a steady and uplifting presence in the Middle School since our founding. In addition, you can learn how Jared Carson ‘08 parlayed a passion for the environment sparked at Cary Academy into a career in environmental technology. A Q&A with Middle School mathematics teacher Leslie Williams shows how current generations of CA students are being introduced to the latest technologies. Please also check out the inspiring story of how a new Upper School physics team went from start-up status just a few years ago to national champions at this year’s USA Young Physicists Tournament. As this issue will hit your electronic in-boxes during a spring of “virtual schooling,” I also wanted to add a special thanks to everybody who is working so hard to keep the learning happening at Cary Academy. This goes for: • Students, who are so positive and resilient—an inspiration to all of us on how to handle challenging times. • Parents, who are supporting their students and their families through an unprecedented moment. • Staff members, who are providing support and expertise to keep the organization humming, both from school and from home. • Faculty, who are literally having to re-tool on the fly to provide robust and meaningful learning opportunities to our students. • And, of course, the various governmental, medical, safety, logistics, dining, farming, technical, and manufacturing folks who are on the front lines and keeping things going so that we can weather this crisis. Thank you, all! Hello Cary Academy Friends! FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL Mike Ehrhardt, Head of SchoolIn this issue Snap- shots 9 Campus News 2 Alumni News 20 Every day brings something unique and exciting. Back cover Teaching With Tech Innovation is an education buzzword synonymous with technology. With daily life at Cary Academy already infused with technology, how do teachers in the Middle School leverage EdTech to find ways of letting every student shine? 4 Death Rays and Grains of Sand: the Sweet Science of a Physics Fight Let CA’s reigning United Stated Association for Young Physicists Tournament team show you the path to victory. 14 Selling a Brighter Future What road leads to tomorrow? One Cary Academy alum is leading businesses along the path to a greener, more sustainable future—one small step at a time. 16 At the Heart of the Middle School Does your day start with a smile? For every single Middle School student since CA opened its doors in 1997, Cindy Laughlin has greeted them with a kind smile and the spirit to overcome any challenge. 12 The Magazine of Cary Academy WINTER 2020 COMMUNICATIONS TEAM Mandy Dailey Dean Sauls Dan Smith PHOTOGRAPHY Dan Smith The CA community HEAD OF SCHOOL Michael Ehrhardt DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS Heather Clarkson DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS Mandy Dailey HEAD OF UPPER SCHOOL Robin Follet DIRECTOR OF FACILITIES Jess Garcia DEAN OF FACULTY Martina Greene HEAD OF MIDDLE SCHOOL Marti Jenkins DIRECTOR OF EQUITY AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Danielle Johnson-Webb DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION Karen McKenzie DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT Ali Page CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Deborah Reichel is published three times a year by Cary Academy. CARY ACADEMY 1500 N. Harrison Avenue Cary, North Carolina 27513 (919) 677-3873 www.caryacademy.orgpitching a naturally anti-inflammatory tobacco- based skin-care cream. In addition, Boxide founders Jay Sagrolikar ’21, Vibhav Nandagiri ’21, Kathryn Chao ’21, Paul Ibrahim ’21, and Ritvik Nalamothu ’21 were named alternate finalists in the Health & Nutrition category for their invention and business plan which would expand access to on-site surgical equipment sterilization in remote parts of the world. Both teams will be applying for patents and developing out prototypes as next steps. RENOVATED ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, LIBRARY REOPEN Following a sneak-preview during the PTAA’s Taste and Toast celebration of CA’s commitment to service, the Administration building was officially reopened to students. The dramatically renovated library now features bright, airy, glass-enclosed study spaces; common-area lounges; redesigned offices and teaching spaces for Information Services, as well as a new café and campus store. SWIMMING CHAMPS On the heels of earning their eleventh- straight TISAC Championship, CA’s varsity girls’ swim team won the NCISAA State Championship for the fourth consecutive year. The varsity boys capped off a successful year as state runners-up in a close-fought battle, a week after earning their sixth- straight TISAC Championship. An astounding 47 Chargers qualified to compete in the State finals, with 31 earning points in the final meet. Go Chargers! YOUTH FORUM SWITZERLAND Six Upper School students represented Cary Academy at the 2020 Youth Forum Switzerland, hosted by the International School of Zug and Luzern. Students met with peers from around the world to discuss ways they can take action and assume the lead on a variety of global issues, empowering the next generation of leaders and changemakers. Topics discussed included moving schools and whole communities to CA’s Speech and Debate team took home its fifth-straight Dogwood Speech and Debate League title. As a result of their performance, 20 team members will represent the Dogwood League at the National Catholic Forensic League Grand Nationals in May. The Model United Nations team returned from the UNC Model United Nations Conference with several gavels and awards, including the Best Small Delegation Award—a first for CA. Now in its third year, the Ethics Bowl team won the 2020 North Carolina High School Ethics Bowl, earning the selection Campus News Cary Academy teams have a standout second trimester zero waste, gender inequity, digital privacy, and teen mental health. The first contingent from the U.S. to attend YFS, the CA group came away with a desire to combat global climate change with local efforts, including possibly hosting a similar conference at CA in the coming years. They continue to meet weekly to develop goals and specific plans. CONRAD CHALLENGE One of CA’s four Startup Challenge Club teams has advanced to the final round of the international Conrad Challenge. As finalists, Nexkap founders Mila Patel ’21, Natasha Sachar ’22, Sonia Shah ’22, and Ella Gupta ’23 would have had the opportunity to travel to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida in April to pitch their product and business plan to judges at the Conrad Innovation Summit. As a result of SARS-CoV-2, the Summit has now gone virtual and has been delayed until May. An entrant in the Re-Purposed Farmlands and Tobacco Crops category, Nexkap is ? The Magazine of Cary Academy on 15 of 18 ballots. The team will next compete at the National High School Ethics Bowl this spring. Middle School Robotics’ Blue Team earned first place for mechanical design during the FIRST LEGO League’s Regional Qualifier, earning them a spot at the FLL State Championship. The junior varsity robotics teams capped off the second trimester by hosting the first FIRST Tech Challenge robotics tournament to be held at CA. Last, but certainly not least, varsity robotics earned their first-ever FIRST Robotics Competition tournament as T2 drew to a close. TwoSERVICE FRONT AND CENTER FOR CA COMMUNITY DURING T2 Cheered-on by ‘Big Baby,’ more than 100 CA families donated hundreds of diapers, feminine hygiene products, baby wipes, and adult incontinence items, making generosity go viral on GivingTuesday. Our community’s generosity continued to shine as the Middle and Upper School Giving Trees collected gifts for children in need via the Wake County Guardian ad Litem and Johnston County Department of Social Services. Dozens of students and parents supported at-risk youth served by Wrenn House & Safe Place with landscaping, cooking, and cleaning during our Family Service Day. The new DELTA Service Club carried the enthusiasm from their first trimester into T2 with an explosion of community work —brightening the days of elderly members of our local community; hosting voter registration drives; collecting donations for all manners of causes; harvesting food for those in need; volunteering with Habitat for Humanity; addressing issues of women’s rights and wellbeing; and delivering candygrams, just to name a few projects. ? The Magazine of Cary Academy HOW DOES EDTECH HELP CA DELIVER ON ITS MISSION? Technology allows me to tailor the way I teach to the different ways my students learn. And it gives me some much-needed flexibility in their assessment, a different approach to see if and how they are mastering the material. I’m always amazed to see those kids— the ones who are a little bit quiet—come out of their shells when they are designing in TinkerCad, learning in Minecraft, or exploring with augmented reality. EdTech allows them to tap into their tech interests and skills to really show off what they can do— what they are learning—in ways that play to their strengths. It allows them to show me that they’ve attained mastery of a subject in a way that would likely be overlooked if I were to just say, ‘tell me the answer out of the book,’ ‘do a problem on the board,’ or ‘write out the essay.’ In CA-speak, it empowers them to “own their learning” in transformative ways. In the Middle School, Technology Facilitator Chair and math teacher Leslie Williams works hand-in-hand with Information Services to help lead the charge to bring innovative tools to our Middle School classrooms—teaching students and colleagues alike. Be it Minecraft, augmented or virtual reality (AR/VR), or computer-aided design and 3D printing, this technology lends itself to deeper learning and retention, while encouraging students to develop crucial skills that they will use throughout their lives. We recently had an opportunity to sit down with Ms. Williams to talk about the role and impact of EdTech at CA. Though innovation and technology are often used interchangeably when talking about education, at CA, educational technology— EdTech, for short—is one of many tools that our faculty use to create personalized learning opportunities that are flexible and relevant. TEACHING WITH TECH FourWHAT’S ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE EDTECH APPROACHES? In my classroom, I like to use gaming. It engages kids and gives them instant positive reinforcement. Each time they demonstrate mastery of a topic, they earn virtual currency that they can use to buy prizes. All of this gets them very excited about learning. Many of us use actual video games catered to education in their classrooms— Minecraft and Prodigy are fantastic examples. With Minecraft for education, kids build entire worlds from books they are reading; it lets them visualize geometry and even study chemistry. Prodigy allows students to review and learn math in a collaborative gaming environment much like Pokemon, which is familiar to students. WHAT SORT OF SKILLS ARE YOU PROMOTING VIA EDTECH IN THE CLASSROOM? I think EdTech gives us more robust, immersive ways to increase student mastery and nurture crucial soft skills. As a math teacher, I can use it to hone spatial skills in a way that working geometry problems on paper or the board simply can’t. Take, for example, our implementation of TinkerCad. In sixth grade, students learn about spatial thinking and the ins and outs of using TinkerCAD; in seventh grade, they use these skills to solve problems by creating virtual objects that they then print. That’s a real-world application of mathematical concepts— and it leads to a deeper understanding. EdTech also allows us to incorporate design-thinking into the classroom in meaningful ways. Students design products to solve real-world challenges, print them, test them, refine them, and try again. They have to keep working toward a better solution, rather than simply completing a project and moving onto the Thanks to a newly-formed club, students that are interested in technology will soon have an opportunity to step up as tech leaders within the Middle School. The EdTech Leadership Club (ETL) will provide additional leadership and technology training to students interested in EdTech. Working at their own pace, club members will be tasked with mastering all the EdTech that CA has to offer and sharing that expertise back out to the community. As they master skills, students will earn micro-credentials that can be proudly displayed on student-designed wrist bands, necklaces, etc.. These signal to the community what tools club members can support, what skills they carry in their “virtual backpack.” “As we so often to do at CA, with the ETL, we’re putting kids in the driver’s seat,” explains Williams. “The students will be responsible for learning all these different pieces of software and hardware —truly playing to learn. Once credentialed, they will take those skills to the classroom, assisting with the deployment of technology and offering tech support services to their peers and teachers alike.” By empowering students, Williams thinks the entire Middle School EdTech program will be strengthened, even expanded. “While I have a basic understanding of each software tool in their toolkit—I may not be an expert in all the finer intricacies of each of them. The kids, however, they live and breathe these new technologies. They become true experts—and they can also get their friends excited and engaged. By supporting their passions and empowering them as leaders, we increase the number of students that we can reach, the number of projects that we can support in the classroom.” One of Williams’ priorities with the ETL is to ensure that its member composition reflects that of CA’s diverse student body. She hopes the club might spark interests in those students that might not typically consider themselves suited for STEM-related fields or those students, particularly girls, who often feel social pressure in Middle School to do things other than spend time on STEM activities. At the end of the day, Williams’ goal with the ETL is to create savvy tech users— perhaps even tomorrow’s tech leaders—that are well-prepared to succeed in today’s technology-driven world. As she notes enthusiastically, “this sort of flexible learning gives those kids that might not otherwise have the opportunity in a more traditional setting, to step-up and thrive as leaders. It gives them meaningful opportunities to hone their leadership, technology, and communication skills to the benefit of our entire community.” EDTECH LEADERSHIP CLUB ? The Magazine of Cary Academy Fiveto virtual content when viewed through an app—to augment, rather than replace, the real world. I’m really excited. The students will build a map of the world in the story and then utilize triggers on the map to pull up additional materials that they develop. It might be pictures they create to tell parts of the story, narrative videos, or even locations and scenes that they recreate in storytelling platforms like Minecraft and Animaker. There’s also a new tool called a MERGEcube that I’m particularly excited about. It is a six-sided QR code that allows you to interact with a virtual object in 3D space. These virtual objects could be anything from a model of the human heart to the Apollo Lunar Module. Because the cube has orientation—that is, each side of the cube has a unique QR code, so the app knows which way is up— students can move the modeled object in the real world, just as if they were holding the real thing. They can interact with the virtual model through their phone. next without really learning whether it worked or not. And that nurtures crucial skills like risk-taking, resilience, and perseverance. These lessons are echoed not only in my classroom but throughout the Middle School. Beyond improving spatial and design- thinking skills, our students are also developing an important digital literacy: the ability to use a CAD program. And that will serve them in the Upper School and beyond. It’s a win on multiple fronts. HOW ARE YOU USING VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) IN THE CLASSROOM? We’ve been using virtual reality in the Middle School for some time now, across the curriculum and disciplines, and we’re widening its use. In the sixth grade, social studies teachers Katie Levinthal and Matthew Ripley-Moffitt use VR to help students explore the Indian subcontinent in their world history classes. That’s one of the most common uses of VR—going somewhere that’s difficult to visit. Lucy Dawson and Alicia Morris use it similarly, for the seventh grade’s world history of empires. They visit places like Machu Picchu, France, Spain, and England. The eighth-grade science classes use VR and AR to study human anatomy; both allow students to move around inside the body, study the different parts of the heart, and even simulate surgery. All of this allows us to take textbook information and make it come to life in a way that’s exciting, fun, and memorable for the kids. WHAT IS SOMETHING ON THE HORIZON THAT EXCITES YOU? I’m currently working with language arts teachers Katie Taylor and Katie Levinthal to use augmented reality (AR) to teach the sixth grade’s new book, The Wizard of Earthsea. AR uses “triggers”—real-world objects, images, or QR codes that serve as links ? The Magazine of Cary Academy The eighth-grade science classes use VR and AR to study human anatomy; both allow students to move around inside the body, study the different parts of the heart, and even simulate surgery. Six All of this enables our students to become hands-on with something that either doesn’t exist or that we wouldn’t otherwise have access to in the real world. It allows them to brainstorm, to think creatively, and creates opportunities for them to use storytelling to show us what they know.EDTECH PROJECTS IN THE MIDDLE SCHOOL EdTech takes many forms at Cary Academy. So many, in fact, that it’s practically impossible to catalog them all. Below, you’ll find a few highlights of how Middle School faculty, with the support of Leslie Williams, have incorporated technology into the classroom. For more examples, visit https://blogs.caryacademy.org/msedtech/. ? The Magazine of Cary Academy MIDDLE SCHOOL MEETS MINECRAFT The single best-selling video game of all time is also a powerfully versatile learning tool. Using Minecraft’s sandbox mode, seventh-grade social studies students have recreated lost cities of ancient empires, as part of exploring different empires in world history. Seventh-grade math students have used a program similar to Minecraft in conjunction with MergeCubes to visualize complex geometry and calculate volume. As a book report alternative, seventh-grade language arts used Minecraft as an option for students to build a world representative of books they read. Spanish students have built houses and crafted detailed walkthrough videos to demonstrate their mastery of domestic vocabulary. Seven RISING TO THE CHALLENGE WITH DESIGN THINKING Augustus Lavalette (’25), winner of the inaugural Middle School Designer of Distinction award, used TinkerCAD to design a tool that can be used to disable the hydraulic arm of students’ chairs so that they can be set at a certain height. This tool, which Lavalette developed and 3D printed through an iterative process, is especially useful for smaller Middle School students that don’t yet have enough weight to force the seats down. Prompted by a challenge issued by Ms. Williams, Lavalette demonstrated perseverance, design thinking, dedication, and independent work throughout the process. CUTTING TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER Eighth-grade science students used zSpace virtual reality systems to explore the inside of the heart and simulated surgery, placing a stent to repair a blocked blood vessel. Members of the Advances in Medical Technology Program performed simulated open-heart surgery using computer models, which provide not only anatomical information but insight into medical treatments of heart disease. DIGITAL PORTFOLIOS FOR WORKING ARTISTS MS visual arts students built online digital art portfolios to showcase their work. Guided by arts teacher Alyssa Armstrong, they designed websites to share their biographies, artist statements, and finished and in- process works, learning how to curate and organize visual materials in the process.Next >