Dear CDS Families,
MIT STEAM & NAE Global Campus
We had the pleasure of meeting in person on our CDS campus with the Parents Association Board this past week, where we discussed, among other important items, the opportunity to partner with Texas Tech University (and its Costa Rica campus in Avenida Escazú). CDS Parent Ellen Rose, who is Executive Director at Texas Tech, shared exciting ideas and opportunities about working with TT’s faculty and facilities for STEM learning. (We use the acronym STEAM, which includes Arts, in our program collaboration with MIT.) We value Ellen’s commitment and are thrilled to pursue these opportunities, which will amplify the existing program activities and challenges we have with MIT STEAM, giving our students critical 21C skills throughout the integration of science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM).
While discussing the MIT collaboration, I highlighted the abundance of learning activities offered by the NAE Global Campus (GC) platform, including those related to STEAM as well as other subjects and experiences, the majority of which can be done on one’s own time at home. GC is available to all ES, MS, and HS students, through their CDS Gmail login, giving them access to an incredible range of activities, challenges, projects, contests, interviews, and collaborative opportunities with other NAE students. There’s a special section for younger students called GC Junior, where, for example, a new group of projects focuses on the science of bees (a perfect complement to our new beehive). All GC activity is documented and students can earn badges and awards for completing projects or entering contests. For instance, one of our HS students just entered the Comic Strip Contest. In the ES grades, your child’s teacher assists with their GC login and can help parents login from home; in MS and HS, the students know their own login and use it both with teachers in a class or advisory and independently. In future communication, we will go into more detail about the incredible value and richness of GC. In the meantime, talk to your child’s ES teacher for GC access or to your secondary (MS, HS) child to show you GC offerings.
Covid Restriction Changes
The Costa Rican Ministry of Health has indicated that Covid restrictions will begin to change over this month in March, with a phase in to reduced capacity and social distancing restrictions by April 1. This news is so welcomed since we have been dealing with the Covid pandemic for two years. (For the record, we closed F2F school and switched to virtual on March 11, 2020!) This means that we will be able to open our school gates and campus to families again and have normal capacities at events and activities. Masks and hand sanitation will continue, however, even with this easing of access and space restrictions. All parents need to make sure they have a current CDS parent ID badge to pass through the school gates. We will share more detailed information about the specific access changes and dates for the phase-in, leading up to April. We plan to celebrate this reopening, too, in special ways for our families, staff and students.
As always, please write to me at cds_director@cds.ed.cr or call me at 2289 0919 ext. 2224 if I can do anything to help your children and your family have the absolute best experience possible at CDS. The best to you and your family for a lovely weekend.
With Panther Pride,
Dr. Scott Adams, Director
