This week is our Engineering Design Challenge week! It is one of my favorite weeks of the year because the students get to practice engineering thinking and have the opportunity to hear from real engineers. This year, Ms. Vinnedge, our Engineering Week Coordinator got to show the students how to persist, adapt, and succeed. On Tuesday, she was informed that the engineer who was scheduled to be here on Wednesday to present to our students was ill and would not be able to come. With less than 24 hours' notice, she was able to find three other engineers who were willing to Zoom with our students and talk to them about what engineering looks like in real life. We had one who is a civil engineer who works on buildings in Chicago, one who is a network engineer working in the digital space, and one who works primarily on robots at JPL and was part of the Mars helicopter. She also coordinated with Mr. Bieber to visit each class during their building to help students think through their approach to the challenge. The students got a lot out of the presentations and went on to do their own engineering work with the marble run. Go Cougars! And well done, Ms. Vinnedge, in putting together such a successful event!

 

 

Next week will be a big week for the community as our school is going through accreditation. As you know, we are accredited by both CAIS (California Association of Independent Schools) and WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges). We will have six visitors on campus to see how we work and what our school is like. They check 

to see we are following the requirements for accreditation and also compare our submitted report (our self-study) to what they see. It is a very positive experience for us as a school to ensure we are doing our best work. There is 

typically a lot of validation of the things we do well and also some ideas on how we can improve.