Loudoun School for Advanced Studies

How did you spend your second day of school?

Welcome Back to LSAS Framers- We missed you! It's always better when we're together!

to our 2023 high school summer international trip to Portugal & Spain
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Remember that time our Middle School travelled the Civil Rights Trail from Atlanta, Georgia to Montgomery & Selma, Alabama, through Jackson, Mississippi and up to Memphis, Tennessee? That was

Congratulations Jacob (class of 2023) on your 4th place finish at the 2023 Olympic Esport Series!

We were busy this school year! Here is an inside look at what our students watched, read, and visited during the 2022-2023 academic year. We can’t wait to see what next year has in store for us

Let’s see if you can guess what some of our signature courses were based on the books, trips, and movies our students dove into!

We hope you have a PIE-fect start to your summer break…Hope it’s a SWEET one!

If it’s the last day, it must be FIELD DAY- an afternoon full of relays races, tug of war, and sprinkler twister capped off by an EPIC water battle!

With less than 2 weeks to graduation, the LSAS class of 2023 leaves their mark on our school by painting bricks on our senior wall before they go out into the world and

We may be a small school but we sure do know how to party! Enjoy these snapshots from our 2023 school dance last weekend :)

We are proud to share that our upperclassmen brought home 4th place at the Loudoun County Student Environmental Action Showcase (SEAS) for their Analysis of Diatom Composition in a Leesburg Stream

Congratulations to the Senior Class of 2023- Wherever you go, continue to !

Join us for our virtual Positive Guidance for Parents: Moving from Conflict to Collaboration event on April 25th! While every child is, indeed, unique, there are some discipline approaches that, when practiced with understanding and consistency, yield excellent results. This session explores the role our own mindsets have on our ability to effectively guide our children’s behavior. Practical, actionable tips will be shared as well as some big ideas that can help you make wise guidance decisions as you and your child grow together. To register to attend please visit https://bit.ly/3KR3EKo!

This month we had the pleasure of inducting new members into our National Honor Society and National Junior Honor Society! These student organizations function to promote community and service here at LSAS and we are proud to have them as members of our student body.

Thank you to all of the parents and loved ones that showed up to show their support for our new inductees!

Stay tuned for what they get up to this year

Our middle school students took off to Cooperstown, NY for an overnight trip to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame! When it comes to telling diverse narratives, this museum is a hallmark of getting it right. We just had to see it for ourselves ⚾️

Our Escape Room Club headed off campus once again to conduct research to create their own escape room- this time with a few new members on board!

This past weekend our MUN team competed at the National High School Model United Nations Conference (NHSMUN) in New York City, representing North Macedonia.

MUN is an LSAS staple and we were thrilled to be able to head back to NYC for another year:) Shout out to the team and our dedicated parents and faculty for representing LSAS in the big apple!

As part of our Pi Day festivities, whoever could recite the most digits of Pi from memory got to Pie Dr. Oliveau in the face. Congratulations to Saanvi for taking home the prize!

This marks the second time in the last 12 months that Dr. O has gotten covered in food by a student- you would think he would know better than to make bets with LSAS kids 😊

Happy belated Pi Day from the LSAS family! No better way to celebrate Pi than eating Pie 🥧

Mr. Percoco’s classes always go beyond reading from a textbook! Theres no better way to learn about the Battle of Gettysburg than to go to the place where it happened. This is one of the many instances of place based learning we have organized at LSAS this year

For this Wednesday’s Advisory we had the joy of hearing a thoughtful presentation about writer Salman Rushdie from the LSAS dynamic duo: Profe Niels and Dr. Clinton

The presentation was inspired by a recent article in the New Yorker, in which Rushdie is interviewed about his approach to writing after a brutal assassination attempt he survived in 2022. Rushdie insisted that he wouldn’t let his future work be defined by the attack.

Thanks to Profe Niels and Dr. Clinton for introducing this story and opening up the floor to a great conversation!

Hooray! We are honored to have been nominated for Best of Ashburn 2023 and are glad our wonderful teachers are getting the recognition they deserve. Voting has begun, and you can vote once a day! Click here to vote and show some love to the LSAS family https://va.secondstreetapp.com/Best-of-Ashburn-2023/

6th Grade History at LSAS: To get the students amped up for their Gettysburg field trip, Mr. Percoco showed some 3D photographs from the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg

Today we had the opportunity to interview Father James Martin - a Jesuit Priest whose outreach to the LGBTQIA+ community has defied traditional expectations of the Catholic Church.

Father Jim authored “Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity,” and was featured in a documentary by the same name (which we watched as a school)

Thank you to Jim Percoco, our History Teacher, for organizing this opportunity to learn more about how we can create meaningful change in spaces where change might not seem possible!

Pros of having outdoor PE? Fresh air & Vitamin D!
Cons of having outdoor PE? Cold rainy days…

Coach Dan isn’t afraid to get creative when a storm blows through. Even if the weather keeps us inside he can still find a way to keep us active and make the most of PE :)

We didn’t want our High School students to miss out on the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum, so we scheduled another trip and loaded up the busses! We raced through a scavenger hunt to learn about the history of cryptology in the US- spanning everything from Navajo Code Talker Uniforms to the CM-5 Connection Machine.

Afterwards we learned about careers at the NSA and tested our problem solving skills with the classic Tower of Hanoi puzzle!

LSAS Advisory: Over our lunch break today the students had the pleasure of learning from Stephen Leach, Director of Diversity & Inclusion, People & Culture at the Walt Disney Studios!

Stephen shared what it means to create impactful stories, and what is lost when we don’t work to create an inclusive working and learning environment.

This is certainly an experience we won’t forget anytime soon! Thank you Stephen for taking the time to teach us something new today

Last week Mr. Percoco brought his Political Leadership class off campus for a private tour at the National Portrait Gallery where they took a deep dive into the history of American political leadership

Our biology students have begun conducting a multi-week experiment on flatworms and regeneration! Ms.
Gam knows the best way to learn scientific concepts is to see them with your own eyes

Field Trips at LSAS: Last Thursday, middle school students took a trip the National Cryptologic Museum (a part of NSA)! They competed against their peers in a scavenger hunt that took them from artifact to artifact. They also got the chance to see several code breaking machines including CM-5, which our very own Dr. Oliveau wrote code for in his previous life at Thinking Machines!

At LSAS, Dungeons & Dragons Club is where all the cool kids hang out. Our seasoned Dungeon Master, Dr. Oliveau, is enthusiastically sharing his decades of D&D expertise with the next generation as he leads them through enchanted forests and treacherous caverns.

Happy Thanksgiving from our LSAS family! Each year we prepare a friends-giving feast as a community and take a moment to appreciate each other’s company before we break for the holiday. Thank you too all of the LSAS community members who made this day so beautiful (and filling) 🤎

Last week our Intro to Foreign Language students celebrated Día de los Mu***os and arranged their very own ofrenda in class! Our Intro to Foreign Language teacher, Profe Niels, is passionate about combining language studies with cultural studies to shape our students into well rounded citizens of the world. Not pictured: a mountain of Mexican treats from the Latino market :)

Happy Halloween from LSAS! We had the day off of school this Halloween so our students got to take their costumes out for a trial run last Friday. We rounded out the day with a spooky double-feature movie night where we watched “Army of Darkness” and “the Thing”!

Mission Accomplished! The LSAS Escape Room Club conquered their first escape room of the year! Lead by our wonderful Mrs. Pernick, the team of three managed to escape a room with a 15% success rate. Next week they will be back on campus to review the experience and use what they learned to begin crafting their very own escape room.

We wrapped up LSAS homecoming last week with Fancy Friday and needed to share the highlights! These kids (and Profe Niels) absolutely slayed!

We might not have a football team but that didn’t stop us from having a homecoming game! Coach Dan rallied the troops for a feisty game of kickball that had everyone watching on the edge of their seats

LSAS HOMECOMING: Wednesday was “Anything but a Backpack” Day here at LSAS and no matter how cumbersome it was our students rose to the occasion!

HAPPY HOMECOMING! Yesterday was Twin Day here at LSAS and we are seeing double (and triple) (and quintuple)! The challenge was to dress up like a fellow LSAS student or teacher. How do you think we did?