Mr. Brian Balding
Secondary Principal
Hello Middle and High School Families!
Although we were not excited to re-visit remote learning, our students and staff at the Secondary level handled it as well as could be. Our teachers created learning sessions on Microsoft Teams that our students are completing before Monday. The PSAT ran successfully on Wednesday morning, which will give our students a good gauge on where they stand in the SAT suite of assessments. In the upcoming week we will be readjusting our High School Advisory classes to mix students from all grade (9-12), as part of our culture building initiative that is shared by our staff and Student Council. Students in the High School will also begin their first MIT challenge in Advisory, Middle School students will be exploring these challenges in the second semester.
Quarter 1 report cards will be published for all students on Tuesday, October 25 in our student information system (ISAMS). You will receive an email from CDS once grades are finalized, published and available for viewing. In the meantime, please ensure that you are able to access ISAMS to review your students' grades once they are ready for viewing.
STEP ONE: Visit our PARENT ESSENTIALS WEBSITE and click 'Parent Portal' .
Login to the ISAMS system using your login credentials.
If you are unsure of your credentials or need assistance, please contact Maria Elena @ maelena.umana@cds.ed.cr
Once logged into ISAMS, please use this tutorial to find and view your student's report card.
Update on secondary STEAM: This week the High School kicked off its first MIT Challenge. Students will be working in small groups to use household items to build a roller coaster. The roller coasters will be on display at CDS on November 18th. We also had our first STEAM talk on Thursday. STEAM talks is a student-led club that brings in people who work in STEAM professions to talk about their experiences. Our guest speaker this week was Pontus Janson. He works for Pagero, a company that creates networking and electronic receipts. He was born in Sweden and has had a fantastic career working in the marketing section of the company. If you work in STEAM and would like the STEAM talks student group to reach out to you, please email Brian Balding: brian.balding@cds.ed.cr.
During this year our Zero Waste Program at CDS is working in partnership with a CRDC Program to take on one of the most important challenges of our time: Plastic Pollution. Our Zero Waste students are promoting a plastic collection campaign across the school, by providing “A Bag that Builds” green trash bag to each student to take it home. Students simply place ALL plastic (including potatoes chip packets, straws, plastic grocery bags, Styrofoam, and all things plastic) into it and take it to the school collection point. Our CRCD partner will collect all the bags, sort, sell some PET and HDPE (1-2) back into the recycling loop, and process the rest (including the green bag) into RESIN 8 Eco-Aggregate for use in building. CRDC takes any type of plastic (Resins 1-7) and transforms it into RESIN8, an eco-aggregate that improves the performance of concrete and can be used in building homes, commercial infrastructure, poured-in-place concrete, and roads. This is a great opportunity for our CDS students and families to take action now!
The secondary is going to have a Themed Dress Down Day on Friday, the 28th. All secondary students are encouraged to dress like their favorite celebrity on Friday.
WEEK OF OCTOBER 24 TO OCTOBER 28
UNIVERSITY VISITS:
All parents are welcome!!!
DID YOU KNOW:
The cost of many European Universities is around 1/3 the price of a US institution, and that our students with APs can apply to Europe. Worldwide universities are looking at three competitive academic programs: APs, A-Levels, and IB. CDS has about 25 APs for our High School population. These APs can be set up to compete with the other two diplomas. Drop by my office; let´s have a talk.
