Loudoun School for Advanced Studies

Loudoun School for Advanced Studies greatly values learning beyond the classroom. Every year, our middle schoolers take a trip to somewhere new in the United States, both to explore an area to broaden their education, and to spend social time with one another.

This year, our middle schoolers were especially drawn to their history classes, so our history teacher Jim Percoco led them all over New York to visit historical sites and monuments, including: Roosevelt Memorial Park, Sagamore Hill, the 9/11 Museum, the Tenement Museum, the home of FDR, and Thomas Edison National Historic Site. Whenever possible, we also fit in a college tour, and this year, we got the chance to tour the United States Military Academy West Point.

Our middle schoolers are now home safe and sound, and they had a great time! Our high schoolers are still on their international trip to Paris and London. We can't wait to share about their trip when they return!

Best Runners and Loudoun School for Advanced Studies are hosting a presentation on June 15th - Navigating the Middle and High School Path to College. Join us to discuss important steps on the journey to college.

RSVP - https://www.loudounschool.org/navigating.

Congratulations to our graduating class of 2019! Our 12 seniors this year are incredible young men and women. We are so proud of what they have accomplished and can't wait to see the what they'll do in this next chapter in their lives.

We're looking forward to moving in this summer!

The details at Loudoun School for Advanced Studies in Ashburn are starting to show that this will not be your typical school building.

Having as much fun on our first week of summer break as we did on our last day of school this past Friday! Every year on the last day of school, we have a Field Day full of games, popsicles, and water balloon fights. This year's event did not disappoint! Check out some photos from our 2019 Field Day below.

Congratulations to our student, Mira, on her first professional art show at the Nelligan Gallery this past weekend! All 6 of her paintings that were showcased are stunning, and we were so glad to be able to go and support her.

Community Board Game Night

Join us for this free family event on Friday, May 31st!

https://www.loudounschool.org/boardgames

It always makes us proud to be able to share exciting news about our students. Today, we'd like to congratulate our 7th grader, Kashvi, on winning a national medal for her submission to the National Scholastic Arts & Writing competition this year! Earlier this year, Kashvi was one of our students who was recognized at the regional level, winning several gold and silver key awards for stories and poems she submitted. The gold key awards are automatically eligible to be reviewed at the national level, and one of Kashvi's gold key award winning stories received a silver medal. Winners at the national level are in the top 1% of 340,000 applicants from all around the country. This is a fantastic honor and we are so proud of her!

Every spring, we have a Fine Arts Night at the school for students to showcase their artistic talent in many forms. Half talent show, half art gallery, students give both live performances and showcase their visual paintings, drawings, clay modelings, and more. Our art teacher Ms. Danielle also always makes it fun and interactive for guests as well. This year, she created a scavenger hunt for attendees to find details and answers about students' work and even had an exhibit where attendees created a painting. Great job to all of our students who participated and a big thanks to Ms. Danielle for organizing such a great event!

Two of our seniors have won the highest tier of scholarship awarded by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation for 2019.

To qualify for this honor, students must score in the top 1 percent of students in their state on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The scholarship recipients are then selected from this group by a committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors. The winners are the finalists each state judged to have the “strongest combination of accomplishments, skills, and potential for success in rigorous college studies.’’

Congratulations, Katie & Layla!

Loudoun School for Advanced Studies

Next weekend, our high school student Mira will be having her art showcased at the Nelligan Gallery (21760 Beaumeade Circle, Suite #180, Ashburn, VA 20147). Mira is a recent winner of the 2019 Congressional Art Competition and her art will be hung in the U.S. Capitol. We are absolutely ecstatic for her and can't wait to support her success at this next showcase! As a preview, here is one of her most recent paintings.

The showcases of Mira's art will take place at the Nelligan Gallery on Friday, May 24th from 4:00pm to 7:00pm and Saturday, May 25th from 2:00pm to 5:00pm.

Congratulations to our graduating class of 2019!

Our seniors will be moving on to the following universities this fall:

- University of Virginia (Echols Scholars Program)
- University of Virginia (College Science Scholars Program)
- Virginia Tech (Engineering)
- University of California, San Diego
- Oberlin College
- Case Western Reserve
- Christopher Newport University
- University of Connecticut
- Virginia Commonwealth University (Honors Program)

We know that each of these students will go on to "Do Great Things"!

Our extraordinary teachers – intellectually curious, highly capable, and here because they want to help students learn deeply and be successful in, and long after, college.

https://www.loudounschool.org/faculty-and-staff

Hello everyone & Happy Thursday! We have a special announcement today written by two of our honor society students:

LSG’s NJHS/NHS teams are currently holding a drive for INMED Partnerships for Children to help provide snacks for their summer camps. You can learn more about the camp at https://opportunitycenter.us/youth-programs/.

We are taking non-perishable, and nut-free items, which are listed below. If you wish to help with our food drive, please drop off your donations at 44675 Cape Ct, Suite 105, Ashburn, VA 20147. We hope to collect as many contributions as possible to help INMED, so it would be greatly appreciated if you could spread the word to your friends and family to encourage them to donate as well. We will be taking donations for the entire month of May. Thank you so much for your support!

Snack Items Wish List:
100% natural fruit juice boxes
Small water bottles (8 oz)
1-serving bags of snacks (e.g. pretzels, baked chips, cookies, crackers, etc)
1-serving boxes of nut-free trail mix
1-serving boxes of cereal
Butter-free popcorn
Granola bars (e.g. Nature Valley, Nut-Free Kind Bars, Nut-Free Kashi Bars, etc)

Last week, our high school art students took an awesome field trip to meet some local artists and see firsthand the ways they create art in our community. First stop was the Lost Rhino Brewery, where chalk art is a key method of design in the brewery. Students were able to meet the chalk artist and hear how her chalk art and use of social media has created huge career opportunities for her. Up next was a visit to the Makerspace at Brambleton Library. There, they learned how to duplicate designs on to all different types of materials and got to see the Makerspace rotating art exhibit. It was an inspiring day for our students to see the ways in which art is all around us in our community!

Congratulations to the new members inducted into the LSG National Junior Honor Society, National Honor Society, and National English Honor Society today! We had such a nice lunch and ceremony to celebrate. Here are photos of our new inductees joining our current members.

Today, we'd like to give a shoutout to our middle schooler, Case. He is currently on an Odyssey of the Mind Team that just won first place in their division at the state competition and will be moving on to compete in the world competition in May!

If you are just hearing of Odyssey of the Mind for the first time, it's an international program that teaches kids how to solve problems creatively. Competitions engage teams in solving problems in the areas of science, technology, engineering, math, and the arts. Some examples of past problems include: designing mechanical dinosaurs, inventing new factory machinery, building working vehicles, writing a new chapter to Moby Dick, putting a twist on classic artworks, turning Pandora’s Box into a video game, and so much more. Congrats to Case & his team - we are so proud of you!

Earlier this week, our CyberPatriot club got the chance to attend the final round of the CyberPatriot National Youth Cyber Defense Competition in Baltimore. The competition teams are given sets of virtual images representing operational systems and are tasked to find and fix the cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This year, LSG formed a team and practiced so that we will be able to register and compete next year. It was a great learning experience for us to see the final stage of the competition to learn from the teams that competed this year and prepare ourselves to enter the competition next year.

Interested in building a computer? One of our middle school students has put together a workshop, Build Your Own PC, that he is teaching at LSG. Participants will choose a system, then work with Michael and his team to build it.

Michael's first class has already filled up, but he is hoping to offer at least one more workshop this spring. Please complete the interest form at https://www.loudounschool.org/build.

The cost for the class is listed on the flyer below.

Build Your Own PC Workshop - LSG

We are so proud of our middle schooler, Michael, for teaching a workshop at LSG later on this month. The workshop is called Build Your Own PC and it will take place on our campus on Friday, April 26th from 4:30pm to 7:30pm. Participants will get to choose the type of computer system they want to build, build their own computer with the help of experts, and then actually take the computer home to keep!

Michael still has room in the class if you'd like to register. To register, view the computer system options, and pricing information, please visit this link: bit.ly/byopc-lsg

Great work, Michael!

signupgenius.com Register for the Build Your Own PC Workshop on April 26th from 4:30pm to 7:30pm at Loudoun School for Advanced Studies (LSG).

Getting closer to move in day ❤️

Some real progress is being made in Ashburn for The Loudoun School For The Gifted. The building is getting closed in so the interior work can start taking off.

Using insulated concrete forms (ICF) is one of the things that we have done to make sure that our new campus is an environmentally responsible space.

The Loudoun School for the Gifted is expanding its campus to better meet the needs of their students. To achieve their goal of building an environmentally responsible space, the new facility is being built with insulated concrete forms (ICFs) with concrete supplied by VRMCA-member Vulcan Materials Company. Learn more: http://ow.ly/4YaI50oRTpy #BuildVirginiaStrong! #concrete #concreteconstruction

Come on, spring weather! We are crossing our fingers that more warm weather is coming so that we can have more class field trips like this one. Check out our middle school ecology students enjoying their trip to Pavilion Lake to observe migratory waterfowl.

This past weekend, we had our middle school social! We played paintball in the morning at Hogback Mountain and then enjoyed a nice dinner at Sidebar in Leesburg in the evening. Thanks to everyone who came out. It was a full and wonderful day for our middle schoolers!

Yesterday, we celebrated Pi Day at LSG! Our AP BC Calculus students did a great job leading us in activities throughout the day. We had pie during lunchtime, a bracelet making activity throughout the day, and a Pi Day themed jeopardy competition during our advisory period. Hope everyone else enjoyed their Pi Day, hopefully with some pie as well!

It's always a neat experience when we can take trips off campus that build on work we're doing in the classroom. Yesterday, students enrolled in our history class on Thomas Merton took a trip to St. Anselm's Monastery in Washington DC. We took a tour of the monastery, observed their 15 minute daily midday prayer, and discussed Merton's prayer life and experiences inside the abbey. Trips like these help bring our classes to life and give us real world context for our studies. Here are some pictures of our trip!

Work on our new campus is progressing nicely!

Our Iranian Delegation (Model UN club) left LSG early this morning for the trip to New York and the National High School Model United Nations (NHSMUN). Good luck, team!

It is so great to see our new building getting a roof - we can't wait to move in!

Getting close to putting the roof on The Loudoun School For The Gifted building in Ashburn. The building will be enclosed soon.

LSG Announces Scholarship for Qualified Local Students

LSG seeks to enroll promising and motivated students. In particular, we are excited to reach out to students with the ability and drive to flourish in an academically challenging environment, but who cannot afford the school without substantial financial assistance.

LSG is now offering the Lola Jackson Scholarship for the 2019-2020 academic year. The scholarship is named for the beloved teacher who worked for decades at the historic Ashburn Colored School, a local landmark situated on LSG’s new campus and recently restored as a part of a student-led project (https://www.framersprojects.org/ashburncoloredschool). The scholarship covers up-to-full tuition, depending on need. For recipients who remain in good standing, the scholarship will continue from admission until graduation.

The scholarship application deadline for 2019-2020 is March 31st. For more information on this scholarship, or to apply, please visit https://www.loudounschool.org/admissions.

As part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival's Nifty Fifty program, Dr. Padhu Seshaiyer, a mathematical scientist at George Mason University, spent the morning at LSG talking with us about using mathematics to solve real-world challenges. These included understanding the spread of Zika, stopping poaching of elephants in Africa, finding solutions for access to clean drinking water and understanding gang violence in Puerto Rico.

Thank you very much Dr. Seshaiyer for your fascinating presentation and thank you to the Nifty Fifty speaker program for making this event possible!

Two LSG seniors were recently named Finalists in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program. Congratulations Katie and Layla!

Happy Valentine's Day❤️

On Saturday, we had our High School Social, the LSG equivalent to the prom. Our high school students enjoyed dinner at Clyde's in Georgetown and then saw "Admissions" at Studio Theatre.

Loudoun School for Advanced Studies

Announcing the 2019 Gold Key Recipients! – Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Two of our students received multiple gold (and silver) key awards in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for the Southeast Region! They will now move on to Nationals where winners will be announced in March.

Kashvi won two gold keys and three silver keys for her writing submissions.

Mira won three gold keys, nine silver keys, and three honorable mentions for her artwork.

Congratulations Kashvi and Mira - amazing!!

artandwriting.org Art & Writing

The Uplift

No school tomorrow - you're welcome😉

HALLELUJAH: To announce a snow day, these school officials sang their own rendition of "Hallelujah" – and their voices will blow you away ❄️ https://cbsn.ws/2CQVpcU

Uplifting Content - Because The World Needs More Of It

Some uplifting content on a Wednesday afternoon - "Treat yourself like someone you loved".

If you've ever felt incomplete watch this.

Some deep insight about loving yourself first from poet Adam Roa.