School’s Out!

It’s beginning to look a lot like summer here on Daniel Island: The pools are filled with the sounds of children, camps at the Daniel Island Club and Family Circle Tennis Center are in full swing, and the temperatures are rising.  As of this week, regular classes are officially finished for the summer at the island’s schools. It was a great year at all three campuses. Here are some highlights from the final months of the 2009/2010 school year on Daniel Island:

Daniel Island School
This spring, Daniel Island’s K-8 public school was one of just four schools in the District to receive the “Palmetto Gold” designation. This coveted title is awarded to schools that receive “excellent” ratings in both performance and improvement on the Palmetto Achievement State Standards Test. Only 16% of schools statewide were recognized with the Palmetto Gold designation this year. Congratulations to the students and faculty for their hard work!

Bishop England High School
The island’s Catholic high school reports that the class of 2010 earned approximately seven million dollars in scholarship money for college this fall. Additionally, more than 50% of the graduating class earned state lottery money to attend in-state colleges or universities. And Bishop England’s impressive athletics programs continued to excel this school year, with eight teams winning state titles: Girls Volleyball, Boys Baseball, Boys & Girls Soccer, Girls Tennis, Boys & Girls Track and Boys Cross Country.

Daniel Island Academy
The young students at Daniel Island Academy, the island’s early child learning center (serving ages 1-5) collectively planted and maintained what surely are the island’s most bountiful gardens this spring. Located in the school’s courtyard, the gardens serve as an important teaching tool each year. Each class is provided a section to plant, and teachers use the experience to talk about nature, ecology, recycling and nutrition. The children cared for their gardens throughout the spring, using water collected in rain barrels to keep the plants hydrated. They harvested herbs and produce and used them in the classroom to prepare nutritious meals and snacks.

BEHS Hosts 12th Annual Daniel Island 5K Race & Walk

On Saturday, March 20, the boys and girls of the Bishop England High School Track & Cross Country teams are inviting the community to come together for the 12th annual Daniel Island 5K Race and Walk. The race will begin at the school on Seven Farms Drive, winding its away through Daniel Island neighborhoods, parks and trails, before ending back at the school.

The run has been designed to accommodate everyone, from the highly competitive athlete to the casual walker. Cash prizes will be awarded to the top three overall male and female finishers but everyone wins post-race with food, fun and additional prize giveaways at the awards ceremony and festivities.

Also, kids under the age of twelve are invited to participate in a special “Kids Fun Run” that will start immediately following the race. All “Kids Fun Run” participants will receive a medal.

For more information or to register online, visit www.actioncarolina.com. Proceeds will benefit the Bishop England High School Track & Cross Country programs.

Since the doors first opened at the school’s Daniel Island facilities, Bishop England High School has played a significant role within the community — please come out and support them for this great spring running event!

Daniel Island Academy Adding Kindergarten to its Curriculum for the 2009-2010 School Year

Daniel Island’s popular early child learning center is expanding its program this fall with the addition of a kindergarten class designed to help prepare children to excel when they enter elementary school. On Tuesday, June 23 from 10 a.m. until noon, parents interested in learning more can come to the school to talk one-on-one with the new Kindergarten teachers.

“Kindergarten is a significant transition hurdle for children, especially when entering a school with larger classrooms and students with a wide range of pre-kindergarten preparation,” stated Kerry Nowosielski, Director of the Daniel Island Academy. “Our program offers an incredible opportunity for a child to prepare to excel in an elementary school program.”

The kindergarten curriculum hours will be from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m., but tuition also covers the school’s extended childcare hours (6:30 a.m. until 6 p.m., Monday through Friday). As with all of the Academy’s full-time programs, wholesome and nutritious snacks and lunch, prepared daily by the school’s full-time chef, are included.

Daniel Island Academy is the only East Cooper area pre-school accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the gold standard for early child education. The school offers full-time, part-time and mother’s morning out programs for children ages one through five.

Garden Club Transforms School’s “Front Yard”

The Daniel Island School will have some new students to take care of this spring, and mostly due to the hard work and dedication of the Daniel Island Garden Club! For more than a year, the Garden Club has been hard at work; planning, preparing and transforming the area in front of the school entrance from a wooded and uncultivated space into six different gardens.

Using several different techniques and themes, members of the Garden Club have created an alphabetical plant listing, bird and butterfly garden, Japanese garden, woodland shade garden and a rose garden. Already the irrigation system is in place, along with some winter plants. In the next several weeks, after the last frost of the season, the remainder of the plants will be planted.

Stop by the Daniel Island School this spring and check out all the Garden Club’s hard work!

Bishop England Introduces SMART Board Technology

By Contributing Bishop England High School Student Matthew Kuhn, ’09

At the start of the 2008-2009 school year, students and teachers at Daniel Island’s Bishop England High School encountered a new technological innovation present in their classrooms: Interactive “SMARTboards.” No longer hampered by the limitations of traditional chalk and marker boards, eleven teachers received the interactive teaching boards, which have a wide range of uses. Teachers can digitally display typed notes for their students with full-sized images. The SMARTboards also allow teachers and students to write onscreen with special digital pens, or even just their fingers.

The SMARTboards enable teachers to show movies and online videos to their students on large screens, eliminating the need for in-class televisions and bulky mobile VCR/DVD units. Teachers simply connect the SMARTboard to their computer and control it with a mouse and keyboard, or by using hand gestures on the board’s interactive touch screen. Bishop England senior Joshua DeLaporte finds the school’s new technology enriching. “It makes learning a lot more fun and it lets you to focus on the material that’s being covered,” he says. Bishop England is planning on expanding the number of classrooms with interactive SMARTboards over the next several years.