Educational and technology pioneer Alan November spent all of Thursday, April 19 at Saint George's, visiting classrooms, speaking to faculty and staff, and addressing the concerns of parents and community members that evening.  See a Photo Gallery from Alan's visit.  His key messages included: 
> Learn fact-checking strategies, such as looking up the primary source, since a lot of the information online is not true.
> Google is designed to give you the information it thinks you want, so learn to use the Google Operators Guide to make your searches more accurate.
> "If you only get one point of view, you won't do the best job.  No matter what that job may be."
> A knowledge engine like WolframAlpha can pull information from many sources and compile it in new ways.
> Need to organize a lot of online information for a research paper? Try Diigo.com.
> You can find the news coverage of past events by typing a webpage into Archive.org's "Wayback Machine".
> Answers are becoming "cheap", so power will flow to those who ask the most creative questions!

A dozen private colleges in Oregon are offering to waive their college application fee to any students who visit four or more of these institutions during the week of July 23-27, 2018.  Plan your visits and register at oregonprivatecolleges.com...

SGS art teacher Jennifer Davenport has been selected by the NorthWest Association of Independent Schools (NWAIS) to serve as a Futurist Fellow.  Futurist Fellows imagine the future of Independent Schools, such as Saint George's, through a year-long design experience with an interdisciplinary group of colleagues.  Using the guiding question, "How might we reimagine our current schools so that we sustain, flourish and thrive into the future?", the team will develop a design question to explore over the course of the year and then disseminate their learning to the rest of the NWAIS community...

Four teams of 8th graders spent Friday, April 27 in the woods above campus completing team-building challenges.  They tackled balance beams, a Tyrollean Traverse, blindfolded tasks, and even rappeling down the 40-foot-high Dragon Crag!  See a Photo Gallery of their hot, busy day, ending with setting up tents on Graduation Lawn to prepare for their Coast Trip in May.  (Saturday morning's rain made the experience more realistic.)

SGS seniors Connor Cremers and Cynthia Fan received scholarships at the annual Spokane Scholars ceremony on April 16.  Connor was awarded $4,000 as the top Science student in the area, and Cynthia received $1,000 as one of the top four Math students.  Read more about them and the awards on the April 17 Spokesman-Review's Front Page Article.  Congratulations to all of our Spokane Scholars, including Solveig Baylor (English), Susie Jones (Fine Arts), Max Mihalick (Social Studies), and Ashley Sande (World Languages).  Plus a shout out to Ilina Logani, the top English scholar (G Prep), who attended SGS in Lower and Middle Schools...

SGS foreign language teachers took 40 10th graders to Washington State University on Thursday, March 29 for Foreign Language Day.  See a Photo Gallery of their day.  They heard from current university students about the benefits of learning another language, studying and living abroad, and how to access more financial aid to do so.  WSU professors gave mini lessons in Spanish, Chinese, Russian, French, Japanese, and German.  After touring one of the many dining halls on campus and the Department of Foreign Languages, the Dragons had to stop at Ferdinand’s for some campus-made ice cream deliciousness... 

Monday, April 23 is Saint George's Day, also known as the Feast of Saint George, celebrated by various Christian Churches and by the nations and cities of which Saint George is the patron saint.  Today marks the traditionally accepted date of the saint's death in AD 303.  In Catalonia, Diada de Sant Jordi is also known as El Dia de la Rosa (The Day of the Rose) or El Dia del Libre (The Day of the Book), involving traditions similar to those of the Anglo-Saxon Valentine's Day.  Traditionally, boys give girls a flower and girls give boys a book; today books and roses are given to both boys and girls.  April 23 as Day of the Book recognizes the day that William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, and Incan/Spanish author el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died.  See a Photo Gallery from a combined US Spanish class on April 23 discovering that all of these people and events are celebrated that day!

Saint George's 6th, 7th, and 8th grade teams participated in the State "Masters" Math is Cool competition in Moses Lake on Saturday, April 21.  The 6th grade team won 1st Place in the "phi" division (2nd highest division).  Congrats to teammates Steel Lindauer, Sam Morris, Annalie Nachreiner, and Kara Chiang.  Kara had the highest overall individual score in the phi division, and the 3rd highest score overall in the entire state of Washington for 6th graders!

The 7th grade team of Gabe Gustafson, Nate Hennings, John Nowland, and Paul Poole placed in the top 4 of their "e" division (3rd highest division) at Masters.  Judy Fitzpatrick returned to coach this team to State, where they did a great job of working together as a team.

The 8th grade team earned 6th overall in the phi division out of 12 teams, but were #1 in the Spokane area in this division, according to coach Shane Kangas, who also coached the 6th graders.  Congratulations to teammates Stella Brown, Patrick McCarthy, Tariq Ravasia, and Ethan Wu.  See a Photo Gallery of all three teams at State Masters competition.  Go Dragons!

The Washington State Chess Tournament will be held in the Tri-Cities on Saturday, April 21.  Congratulations to Saint George's state qualifiers:  Donovan Bradford, Rohan Dhillon, Noah Hochheimer, Eshan Reddy, Adrian Rooney, Per Sande, Preston Sevigny, and Robbie Witmer.  Good luck, Dragons!

A dozen Upper School students traveled to Southern California to visit and learn about eight different colleges and universities from April 1-5.  They visited major public research universities (USC, UCLA), regional universities (Chapman, Redlands), faith-based universities (Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine), and national liberal arts colleges (Occidental, Claremont McKenna).  They also managed to fit in a Dodgers baseball game and stops at Hollywood and Redondo Beach.  See a Photo Gallery of their explorations...