Washington International School

Huge kudos to our Grade 9 students, Stella and Rory, who are attending the 50th UN-UNIS conference in New York City this week. With the assistance of some older UNIS students sitting with them, Stella and Rory shared their perspectives — with the entire assembly — during a debate session in which students were challenged to consider whether governments should prioritize long-term economic efficiency over protecting jobs. It was a great example of humility, collaboration, and risk-taking. Excellent work!

Will the luck of the Irish be with our Grade 11 students as they enter the Shark Tank for today’s carbon-focused Group 4 Science Project Presentations?

For this day-long project, students worked in groups to:

-Identify a current problem or an opportunity in the local DC area that is associated with carbon.

-Design a product or service that will help to solve the problem or take advantage of the opportunity, while considering the ethical, social, and environmental implications of their product or service.

-Make a persuasive presentation to “sell” their idea in the Shark Tank (in this case, the DC government).

Congratulations to Smart Plant for the win!

Who doesn’t want the opportunity to smash a whipped cream “pie” in their teachers’ faces? Especially when you donate money to a local food bank in order to do it?

Thanks to our teachers for being such good sports! Happy early Pi Day!

We were thrilled to welcome the Coretta Scott King Award-winning author of Under the Neon Lights, Arriel Vinson, to the Tregaron Campus yesterday!

She started off with our Grade 9 students during their advisory, talking about her book and reading an except from it before taking questions.

Afterwards, Arriel spent time with our Grade 10 English classes, who recently finished their poetry unit. She led a workshop focused on erasure poetry as resistance, where a poet blacks out or in some way erases words from a preexisting source to create a new poem.

Arriel asked students to begin my free writing things they would like to erase from their worlds right now. After discussing a few examples, she gave some examples of erasure poetry, before handing out writing samples and asking students to create their own. The workshop ended with several students sharing their new poems.

Thank you so much to Arriel for spending time with our community yesterday!

¡Adios! Au revoir!

Our Grade 8 students are off on their language trips today! They’ll spend the next ten days living with their correspondents’ families in Spain and France, practicing their language skills and learning more about Spanish and French culture.

¡Buen viaje! Bon voyage!

This morning, in honor of yesterday’s International Women’s Day, our Head and Associate Head of School, Suzanna Jemsby and Natasha Bhalla, hosted breakfast on both campuses in order to celebrate all the women of WIS... starting with our founder, Dorothy Goodman, all the way through to today, where we are proud to say we have over 120 women on staff!

In our 60th anniversary year, we are honored to carry on Dr. Goodman’s legacy with these two incredible women at the helm!

This morning, students participated in the fourth annual Career Day, designed to help them explore their interests and as many career options as possible in order to prepare them for life after WIS.

The day’s plenary session was a discussion between two WIS seniors and writers for International Dateline, Cate and Chloé, and Dr. Kwaku Nuamah, Senior Professorial Lecturer in the international peace and conflict resolution program at American University’s School of International Service.

After the keynote address, students attended four different 30-minute sessions facilitated by two to three WIS parents and/or alumni. Presenters shared their academic and professional background, the nature of their current work, and/or what a typical day at work might look like, then took time to answer questions. Students were able to choose from a wide range of career paths, such as medicine, computer science & engineering, nonprofits & NGOs, marketing & communications, education, real estate, law, journalism & media, fashion, film & television, and government & policy.

We are grateful to all the parents and alumni who volunteered to speak to our students, especially Dr. Nuamah for such a great opening session, and for the work of the parents and staff members behind the scenes who helped make this day a success!

On Friday morning, we were excited to welcome guest artists from Semilla Cultural, a group of Puerto Rican performers dedicated to sharing traditional music and dance, to the Tregaron Campus for a special Bomba workshop for our Grade 8 students!

Bomba is a traditional Puerto Rican musical and dance expression that developed among enslaved Africans. Bomba served as a powerful form of cultural resistance, communication, and expression in response to oppression and enslavement.

This experience connected directly to what students are currently studying in Unit 4: Slavery and Resistance in the Americas, and provided them with an opportunity to deepen their understanding through music, movement, and cultural history. Students learned not only about historical facts, but also explored how culture and artistic expression were used as forms of resilience and resistance.

We are grateful to these wonderful artists from Semilla Cultural for teaching our community more about their important traditions!

This morning, Grade 2 students and their families celebrated the end of their current Unit of Inquiry, with the central idea “Personal histories help us understand who we are and where we come from.” During this unit, students began to differentiate between the past, present, and future, while learning the elements of a story and what makes a good narrative.

Today, for their final project, students — with the help of their families — created a time capsule, complete with a letter to their future selves, a note from their parents, lengths of string indicating how tall they currently are, a family Polaroid, tracings of their hands and feet (for comparison!), and other personal artifacts.

After sealing the time capsules and decorating them, students will take them home and keep them sealed until they finish Grade 5... so they can see how much they have grown, literally and figuratively!

Be sure to join us for the Upper School Play: Medea! Showtimes are March 12–14 at 7:00 PM in the Black Box Theater.

Abandoned by her husband for a royal marriage and exiled by a city that fears her, Medea is pushed to the ultimate breaking point. In this gripping production of Euripides’ classic tragedy, witness a brilliant mind turn to dark calculations as Medea seeks a justice that will leave Greece shaken.

Tickets can be purchased here: https://www.wis.edu/theater-tickets

We hope to see you at the show!

On Friday, we were honored to welcome Dr. Gerald D. Smith Jr., Education Specialist and Curriculum Curator at the Smithsonian Museums, to speak at the assembly as part of our ongoing celebration of . Gerald’s presentation focused on storytelling, solidarity, and Black voices in media, with a particular focus on the Black Panthers from the 1960s and the Black Panther movies from recent years.

Gerald asked the students to discuss what makes a story powerful before talking about the importance of storytelling for all cultures, but especially Black cultures, where “storytelling has always been about solidarity, survival, memory, and possibility.”

Gerald also asked the audience to consider: “Who is allowed to narrate reality?” Are the people “in charge” telling the whole truth? How can we build solidarity across cultures and hear multiple sides of one story?

We are grateful to Gerald for taking the time to speak with — and inspire! — our Middle School community.