As Jared Carson learned at CA, when it comes to sustainability, it’s often the little things we do as individuals that add up to the biggest community impacts. At CA, our efforts to reduce our environmental footprint and increase our sustainable practices come from every corner of campus.
The newly formed Middle School Green Club is looking at ways to reduce campus waste. They aim to reduce printing by at least 25 percent through an information campaign that advocates utilizing smaller fonts, double-sided printing, and electronic distribution of materials.
The Sustainability Committee of the Upper School’s Delta Service Club has worked with Upper School science department chair Heidi Maloy to revitalize the garden behind the Center for Math and Science; volunteered with NC State to help realize their goal of a zero waste football gameday; screened the documentary An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power for interested students; and spun plastic yarn from plastic bags to create sleeping pads for distribution to local non-profits that support people experiencing homelessness.
The CA SEEDS Club has been working to increase the amount that we compost and reduce trash and recyclable use. The club has created new signage and re-thought the arrangement of waste bins in the Dining Hall to reduce bottlenecks and promote better waste practices. From the beginning of the school year to February, CA has diverted 20,287 pounds of food waste to the compost pile, avoiding 2,368 pounds of methane production (nearly as much as 400 cars produce in a week).
Sustainable dishes and utensils are already in use in the Dining Hall, but their use is becoming more widespread throughout campus. The new café features paper straws and compostable cups. And all CA employees have been provided reusable tumblers in order to enjoy their beverage of choice with a minimal environmental impact.
For the first time, Taste and Toast utilized 100 percent reusable drinkware and dishes. And Ubuntu’s International Café used compostable materials, diverting more than 2,700 plates, 1,700 utensils, and 325 gallons of waste from the landfill. For future events, the PTAA has stocked 40 reusable table covers that will reduce the use of single-use plastic tablecloths for events of all sizes.
When we return to campus, a joint effort between the PTAA’s new Green Committee and CA’s Business Office will encourage parents to turn off their car engines while waiting to pick-up or drop-off students during carline.
Finally, our Business Office has worked with Wake County’s Habitat (Re)Store and the Public Schools of Robeson County to provide furniture from classrooms and the Dining Hall for reuse, rather than disposal.
Written by Dan Smith, Digital Content Producer and Social Media Manager
Though innovation and technology are often used interchangeably when talking about education, at CA, educational technology—EdTech, for short—is one of many tools that our faculty use to create personalized learning opportunities that are flexible and relevant.
In the Middle School, Technology Facilitator Chair and math teacher Leslie Williams works hand-in-hand with Information Services to help lead the charge to bring innovative tools to our Middle School classrooms—teaching students and colleagues alike. Be it Minecraft, augmented or virtual reality (AR/VR), or computer-aided design and 3D printing, this technology lends itself to deeper learning and retention, while encouraging students to develop crucial skills that they will use throughout their lives.
We recently had an opportunity to sit down with Ms. Williams to talk about the role and impact of EdTech at CA.
How does EdTech help CA deliver on its mission?
Technology allows me to tailor the way I teach to the different ways my students learn. And it gives me some much-needed flexibility in their assessment, a different approach to see if and how they are mastering the material.
I’m always amazed to see those kids—the ones who are a little bit quiet—come out of their shells when they are designing in TinkerCad, learning in Minecraft, or exploring with augmented reality. EdTech allows them to tap into their tech interests and skills to really show off what they can do—what they are learning—in ways that play to their strengths.
It allows them to show me that they’ve attained mastery of a subject in a way that would likely be overlooked if I were to just say, ‘tell me the answer out of the book,’ ‘do a problem on the board,’ or ‘write out the essay.’ In CA-speak, it empowers them to “own their learning” in transformative ways.
What’s one of your favorite EdTech approaches?
In my classroom, I like to use gaming. It engages kids and gives them instant positive reinforcement. Each time they demonstrate mastery of a topic, they earn virtual currency that they can use to buy prizes. All of this gets them very excited about learning.
Many of us use actual video games catered to education in their classrooms—Minecraft and Prodigy are fantastic examples. With Minecraft for education, kids build entire worlds from books they are reading; it lets them visualize geometry and even study chemistry. Prodigy allows students to review and learn math in a collaborative gaming environment much like Pokemon, which is familiar to students.
What sort of skills are you promoting via EdTech in the classroom?
I think EdTech gives us more robust, immersive ways to increase student mastery and nurture crucial soft skills. As a math teacher, I can use it to hone spatial skills in a way that working geometry problems on paper or the board simply can’t.
Take, for example, our implementation of TinkerCad. In sixth grade, students learn about spatial thinking and the ins and outs of using TinkerCAD; in seventh grade, they use these skills to solve problems by creating virtual objects that they then print. That’s a real-world application of mathematical concepts—and it leads to a deeper understanding.
Leslie Williams
EdTech also allows us to incorporate design-thinking into the classroom in meaningful ways. Students design products to solve real-world challenges, print them, test them, refine them, and try again. They have to keep working toward a better solution, rather than simply completing a project and moving onto the next without really learning whether it worked or not. And that nurtures crucial skills like risk-taking, resilience, and perseverance. These lessons are echoed not only in my classroom but throughout the Middle School.
Beyond improving spatial and design-thinking skills, our students are also developing an important digital literacy: the ability to use a CAD program. And that will serve them in the Upper School and beyond. It’s a win on multiple fronts.
How are you using virtual reality (VR) in the classroom?
We’ve been using virtual reality in the Middle School for some time now, across the curriculum and disciplines, and we’re widening its use.
In the sixth grade, social studies teachers Katie Levinthal and Matthew Ripley-Moffitt use VR to help students explore the Indian subcontinent in their world history classes. That’s one of the most common uses of VR—going somewhere that’s difficult to visit. Lucy Dawson and Alicia Morris use it similarly, for the seventh grade’s world history of empires. They visit places like Machu Picchu, France, Spain, and England.
The eighth-grade science classes use VR and AR to study human anatomy; both allow students to move around inside the body, study the different parts of the heart, and even simulate surgery.
All of this allows us to take textbook information and make it come to life in a way that’s exciting, fun, and memorable for the kids.
What is something on the horizon that excites you?
I’m currently working with language arts teachers Katie Taylor and Katie Levinthal to use augmented reality (AR) to teach the sixth grade’s new book, The Wizard of Earthsea.
AR uses “triggers”—real-world objects, images, or QR codes that serve as links to virtual content when viewed through an app—to augment, rather than replace, the real world. I’m really excited. The students will build a map of the world in the story and then utilize triggers on the map to pull up additional materials that they develop. It might be pictures they create to tell parts of the story, narrative videos, or even locations and scenes that they recreate in storytelling platforms like Minecraft and Animaker.
There’s also a new tool called a MERGEcube that I’m particularly excited about. It is a six-sided QR code that allows you to interact with a virtual object in 3D space. These virtual objects could be anything from a model of the human heart to the Apollo Lunar Module. Because the cube has orientation—that is, each side of the cube has a unique QR code, so the app knows which way is up—students can move the modeled object in the real world, just as if they were holding the real thing. They can interact with the virtual model through their phone.
All of this enables our students to become hands-on with something that either doesn’t exist or that we wouldn’t otherwise have access to in the real world. It allows them to brainstorm, to think creatively, and creates opportunities for them to use storytelling to show us what they know.
EdTech Leadership Club
Thanks to a newly-formed club, students that are interested in technology will soon have an opportunity to step up as tech leaders within the Middle School. The EdTech Leadership Club (ETL) will provide additional leadership and technology training to students interested in EdTech.
Working at their own pace, club members will be tasked with mastering all the EdTech that CA has to offer and sharing that expertise back out to the community. As they master skills, students will earn micro-credentials that can be proudly displayed on student-designed wrist bands, necklaces, etc.. These signal to the community what tools club members can support, what skills they carry in their “virtual backpack.”
“As we so often to do at CA, with the ETL, we’re putting kids in the driver’s seat,” explains Williams. “The students will be responsible for learning all these different pieces of software and hardware—truly playing to learn. Once credentialed, they will take those skills to the classroom, assisting with the deployment of technology and offering tech support services to their peers and teachers alike.”
By empowering students, Williams thinks the entire Middle School EdTech program will be strengthened, even expanded. “While I have a basic understanding of each software tool in their toolkit—I may not be an expert in all the finer intricacies of each of them. The kids, however, they live and breathe these new technologies. They become true experts—and they can also get their friends excited and engaged. By supporting their passions and empowering them as leaders, we increase the number of students that we can reach, the number of projects that we can support in the classroom.”
One of Williams’ priorities with the ETL is to ensure that its member composition reflects that of CA’s diverse student body. She hopes the club might spark interests in those students that might not typically consider themselves suited for STEM-related fields or those students, particularly girls, who often feel social pressure in Middle School to do things other than spend time on STEM activities. At the end of the day, Williams’ goal with the ETL is to create savvy tech users—perhaps even tomorrow’s tech leaders—that are well-prepared to succeed in today’s technology-driven world. As she notes enthusiastically, “this sort of flexible learning gives those kids that might not otherwise have the opportunity in a more traditional setting, to step-up and thrive as leaders. It gives them meaningful opportunities to hone their leadership, technology, and communication skills to the benefit of our entire community.”
Written by Dan Smith, Digital Content Producer and Social Media Manager
How do you start your day? Since ca opened its doors in 1997, the school day starts for most Middle School students and faculty with a wave and a warm smile from Cindy Laughlin, the middle school’s senior administrative assistant.
Though she’s been described as the heart of the Middle School, Laughlin sees herself in a different role: “I’m sort of like the grandmother,” she laughs. A longtime resident of Cary who had spent years volunteering in education throughout Wake County, Laughlin felt drawn to the promise that Cary Academy represented. “Watching the Goodnights’ and Salls’—CA’s co-founders—innovative involvement in education, I was ready for the next step.”
For Laughlin, being at CA is as exciting today as it was in 1997. “I thrive on the energy that comes from the children, from the collaboration. People come here because they want to be here. Every member of the community gives something of themselves.”
As CA’s very first day of school began, the first incarnation of the now-cherished handshake ceremony took place in front of the Middle School—a fitting location, as the Middle School was the very heart of Cary Academy. “Much of CA’s program was located in the building; it housed Middle School classes, arts, and the library for the whole school. We even had lunches delivered and ate in the classrooms because the Dining Hall wasn’t completed until a few weeks later, in the fall of 1997.”
In many ways, Laughlin has watched CA grow up, much the same way that she’s watched class after class of Middle School students mature before her eyes. “I have the best seat in the house. I get to watch everybody come in on their first day in sixth grade, when everything is new and the students have a sense of wonder. From my desk, I watch all year long as they grow up. If you’ve done it right, when they come back—whether it’s as students in the Upper School or after we’ve sent them out into the world—they look at you, talk to you, and say ‘hi,’ first.”
Laughlin is awed by the growing community of alumni and the physical expansion of campus since opening day, including the construction of the Administration building, Berger Hall, and the Center for Math and Science. However, it is the changes to the Middle School experience—including the shift away from textbooks toward more individualized learning, the Charger Trails program, the change from a static schedule to one that shifts classes across days, and the increased geographic and socioeconomic diversity—that impress her most. “Our founders were not afraid of change. Their vision lets us face new challenges to better help our students.”
One thing that has not changed is Laughlin’s role working alongside Head of Middle School Marti Jenkins. Laughlin likes to joke that she and Jenkins have been working together for so long that are practically “a couple.”
Indeed, it’s a deep relationship that Jenkins says benefits the entire Middle School. “We have been working together so long that we have an innate understanding of what we need from each other to do the best job of moving the Middle School forward on a daily basis.” She credits Laughlin as a critical member of the Middle School team for her role in helping to build a cohesive community and helping students to find their “right-fit” path through CA.
Cindy Laughlin (right) with Head of Middle School Marti Jenkins, in 1998.
“Cindy is an outstanding listener. She has an amazing way of connecting to various constituents in our community. Whether she is talking with a sixth-grader, a faculty member, a parent, a board member, or the Staples delivery person, everyone walks away feeling valued,” offers Jenkins. “She is always professional, completely reliable, steadfastly honest, and is a master at multitasking amid constant interruptions in the busy office. And she loves being around and working on behalf of young people.”
Even before each Middle Schooler first walks past the front office, Laughlin has already been hands-on, working hard to craft their schedule. Laughlin—who has a degree in accounting–says that, while there are software options that could produce student schedules at the touch of a button, such solutions don’t really address the challenge of ensuring that each Middle School student has the opportunities they need to succeed.
“Nobody is a square peg, here. That’s the vibe of the Middle School—kids are not afraid to be themselves. Everybody has a place where they fit. And we work hard as a team to help them find it. If you come to the Middle School, you’ll develop a strong foundation that can help you be successful wherever you go.” Laughlin’s biggest thrills, smiles, and happy tears come from seeing what former Middle School students have accomplished, how they have built on those foundations that she helped lay.
If there is one thing Laughlin hopes students have learned from her, it’s the importance of kindness. As front line support for students, faculty, and parents, Laughlin understands that how she reacts to the challenges faced by those who come to her for help can profoundly impact their day—maybe even their lives. Whether it’s bringing a student her forgotten contacts or guiding a parent to their child’s classroom, small acts of kindness can have a big impact. “That one moment of kindness—even something small, just asking ‘how are you’ or asking about their day—could be something they never forget.”
As for what Laughlin, herself, has learned from students: “as silly as this may sound, they have taught me how to be a grandparent. I feel like I’m a grandmother to a lot of these children. They don’t give me assignments or homework; they give me respect. Being around kids all the time, I’ve developed the patience and appreciation that you need in order to be a wonderful grandmother. I just became a grandmother, and I can’t wait for my grandson to be a little older, so I can show him how silly I’ve learned to be.”
Written by Dan Smith, Digital Content Producer and Social Media Manager
Middle School cross country wins third straight conference championship
October 9, 2019
On a cloudy, breezy, chilly, beautiful (for cross country!) afternoon, the CA MS boys three-peated as conference champs! Way to go Chargers!!
The afternoon started off with the Co-ed Open race. Charlie Eheman was the overall winner of the boys’ race in 11:10 and was closely followed in by Derek Wang, Adam Zhang, Mordecai Mengesteab, Ike Ugwa, Ian Chen and Fred O’Brien – CA’s boys took the top seven spots in the race! Congratulations to all of our Charger runners in the Open, you did a phenomenal job!
The Girls’ Championship race followed. Our girls ran hard over the hilly, wooded course. Ava O’Brien was our first CA girl to cross the finish line in 12:31. She was soon followed by Maddie Alvarez (12:47), Maggie Su (13:31) and Mirella Digiulio (13:50). The girls field had tough competition and though our girls ran their best, Franklin Academy won the Girls Conference Championship, with CA finishing 7th out of the 10 conference teams.
The Boys’ Championship race was the last race of the afternoon. Our top seven boys ran to defend our Conference Championship wins from the last two seasons; it was a close race with excellent competition from several other teams. Our boys took four of the top 10 places: Blair Mitchell finished 2nd overall with a time of 10:09 and was the first Charger across the line. Kevin Kaufman finished 4th in 10:22, Jacob Farris was 5th in 10:30, Ben Holton was 9th at 10:40 and Evan Astrike-Davis rounded out CA’s top five in 19th place with a 10:58.
Everyone held their breath as the team scores were announced; it was a VERY close race, but the Chargers edged out 2nd place Magellan 39-to-43 to capture our third consecutive conference championship! What a great way to wrap up the 2019 season!
In my role as Head of Middle School, I wear many hats: cheerleader, mentor, advisor, teacher, and leader, to name a few. But, one of the most rewarding (and fun!) is observer.
Every day, in ways big and small, I get to witness the amazing learning that takes place across our academic, physical education, and arts classrooms.
A quick perusal of hallway art, an impromptu drop-in on a class, an overheard hallway exchange between students collaborating on a project—these small moments offer inspiring affirmation that we are on course, targeting our mission as a learning community committed to discovery, innovation, collaboration, and excellence.
Daily, I see our faculty embracing that mission with passion, translating it in developmentally appropriate ways that fuel student curiosity, foster engagement, and inspire a true love of learning. And, every morning, I see our students come to school genuinely excited, curious, and happy to be here as a result.
And, their excitement is palpable.
Year after year, what I’ve noticed about our students—and this year is no different—is that they race to their classes. Literally. Our sixth graders run from the dining hall to the Middle School so they can be in their seats for afternoon classes ahead of the bell, ahead of their teachers.
Mind you, this is not a start-of-school phenomenon—it happens all year long (and I’d venture this is not a problem that all schools have). When I stop a student—pointing out that they needn’t run to get to class on time—I’m met with a common refrain: “I just don’t want to miss anything.”
A glimpse at some of the unique classwork occurring over these past five weeks offers insight into our students’ enthusiasm and illustrates how our teachers carefully create and deliver learning opportunities that tap into the excitement, curiosity, and energy of their students.
You’ve recently read about two immersive, transdisciplinary comprehensive year-long learning projects that have authentic community connections—the sixth-grade’s retooled Backpack Buddies program, and the seventh grade’s new Change the World project, the Migration Collaboration. But, other examples of the exciting learning that takes place in the Middle School abound. From beginning of the year class trips that teach teamwork and social skills; to the “Becoming a Charger” unit in which students are learning and utilizing the essential skills of responsibility, collaboration, communication, curiosity, and reflection; to kicking-off the numerous student clubs that let students pursue their own interests beyond the classroom, wonderful educational experiences happen all the time and they are not by accident.
Utilizing the same skills they impart to their students, faculty members spend a great deal of time collaborating, researching, learning more about subject matter and the adolescent learner, seeking feedback, reflecting, and tweaking their work. It’s a continuous and dynamic process grounded by Cary Academy’s mission and the middle school philosophy.
On the horizon, we’ll be kicking off the affective education curriculum of Charger Trails and soon we’ll be exploring the marketplaces of various world civilizations with our beloved tradition of the Y1K Festival.
Observing is fun and affirming. You can feel the energy in the classrooms and see the engagement on students’ faces. To echo our students: “I just don’t want to miss anything.”
Written by Marti Jenkins, Head of Middle School
Community
Leslie Williams offers “technical” help for protecting people
On August 21, Scott Phillips, director of the NC Field Office for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, came to speak to seventh graders to kick off a new interdisciplinary design thinking project: Migration Collaboration.
Dr. Phillips gave an overview of who refugees are, the various countries they come from, and the kind of services and programs his organization offers in our local area: “For people whose lives have been uprooted, we offer a path to independence, safety, hope, opportunity, and empowerment.”
His presentation marked only the very beginning of what will ultimately be a year-long deep dive into the topic of migration in our local area—a journey where students will ultimately be in the driver’s seat.
Speaking of small and incremental steps: like so many innovative, collaborative projects, Migration Collaboration has gone through many iterations over the last five years.
Originally called “Change the World,” this unit was initially a Math-Language Arts project that combined graph interpretation with persuasive writing. Students chose a real-world problem they cared about, researched it, and then made a website that persuaded others to take action.
Middle School math teacher and Change the World originator Leslie Williams had always dreamed of merging it with seventh-grade service learning and expanding it to other subjects. So, last spring, several members of the seventh-grade team—Lucy Dawson, Matt Koerner, Allison McCoppin, Leslie Williams and Service Learning Coordinator Maggie Grant—came together and started to dream big . . . really big.
We knew we wanted the project to span disciplines, connect to service learning, get students out into the local community, and give them a chance to effect actionable change. When we took our idea to CA’s Dean of Faculty, Martina Greene, she immediately suggested that we attend the design thinking Institute at the Nueva School in California.
With Martina’s enthusiastic response, our team decided not only to go to California, but to apply for one of CA’s Innovative Teaching Grants. Awarded the grant, we were able to devote a week this summer to apply design thinking principles to our project and then align them with project-based learning teaching techniques (an approach that the seventh-grade math teachers had begun implementing last year). By combining these two pedagogical approaches we hope that Migration Collaboration deepens student empathy and provides for meaningful and authentic involvement in an exploration of human migration.
And why the topic of human migration? It was selected during our time together at Nueva. We all agreed it was a topic of great relevance in today’s world—one that beautifully spans disciplines and offers opportunities for our kids to get to know their community better.
In the classroom, students would study human migration in World History, read Alan Gratz’s Refugee in Language Arts, and learn how to both interpret and create graphs in math to enhance their research. The most exciting parts of the project, however, would be what kids could learn outside of CA’s walls.
A major goal of Migration Collaboration is to get students to interact with the diverse population of the greater-Triangle in multiple and authentic ways over the year—through personal interviews with members of local organizations, hands-on experiences working side-by-side with community partners, and brainstorming/getting feedback from these partners.
The first hands-on experience will take place in September, when seventh-graders will set out in small groups to serve various organizations that work with immigrants in the area. Then in October, in conjunction with our study of migrant farm workers, the grade will take a class trip to glean crops on community farms through the Society of St. Andrew. Students will later be required to interview someone in our local community related to their specific research topic and to follow up with that person during later phases of the project.
Through these multiple, meaningful interactions with our local partners, we hope to avoid the “one and done” approach to service. Instead, we hope to cultivate a substantial, lasting relationships with people in communities outside of CA. By providing opportunities for our students to interact with people of different backgrounds and different experiences, students will develop a sense of empathy and reflect on the way privilege works in our world.
After immersing themselves in the topic of migration in our community, students will choose a “need” or “problem” related to migration in our community that they are interested in addressing personaly. In small groups, they will brainstorm potential solutions, prototyping and tweaking their ideas using processes we learned at the Design Thinking Institute. Students will also utilize TinkerCAD software, which they will learn about in math classes, to create initial prototypes of their solutions.
Importantly, students will not only collaborate with each other in designing ways to address local issues, but will work with their community partners to solicit feedback and input on their ideas and proposed solutions. Finally, students will have time during their Language Arts classes to act on their final idea and make their plan a reality.
We didn’t want to neglect a major opportunity that this project offered–a chance for us to not only look outside of our CA walls but to also look within, to discover the myriad migration stories originating from our own CA community.
To that end, by interviewing parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, students will connect in the most personal way to what we are learning by exploring their own migration stories. A map in the seventh-grade hall will have threads from all the countries where our students’ families come from, all tracing their connection to our home here in Cary, NC.
Ultimately, our ambitions are lofty. We want students to learn a lot academically… a whole lot. But we’re equally excited about the learning that will extend outside classroom, as we explore the ethics of changemaking, build empathy and develop cultural competencies, and discover what it means to be part of a community, both local and global.
After all, when teaching empathy, we must remember the words of writer John Steinbeck: “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.”
Written by Lucy Dawson, MS Language Arts and Social Studies Teacher
Art
Chargers Score Big at Scholastic Art and Writing National Awards
Middle School Track and Field races to conference championship
May 9, 2019
Congratulations to both the boys and girls MS Track & Field teams for 3-peating as Capital Area Middle School Conference Champions! The following athletes placed in the top 6th and thus, scored points. Bolded names set the new championship record and underlined names set their personal best.
Boys
50 – Thuy Dzu (1st) CR, Thomas George (4th)
100 – Jared Cooper (2nd)
200 – Jared Cooper (2nd), Thuy Dzu (4th)
400 – Jared Cooper (1st) CR, Christian Herrera (5th)
600 – Kevin Kaufman (2nd), Derek Wang (4th)
800 – Arran Swift (1st) CR, Zan Hagar (3rd), Michael Singleton (6th)
1600 – Kevin Kaufman (2nd), Jacob Farris (3rd)
100mH – Max Li (3rd), Derek Wang (6th)
4×100 – (1st) Thomas George, Max Li, Matthew Ferranti, Thuy Dzu
4×200 – (1st) Zan Hagar, Christian Herrera, Arran Swift, Thomas George
Shot Put – Max Li (1st)
Discus – Max Li (1st) CR, Arran Swift (3rd), Matthew Ferranti (6th)
High Jump – Derek Wang (2nd), Kevin Kaufman (5th), Laiq Nasim (6th)
Long Jump – Jared Cooper (3rd), Thuy Dzu (5th), Derek Wang (6th)
Boys who set at least one personal best this meet: Jared Cooper, Thuy Dzu, Christian Herrera, Matthew Schricker, Kevin Kaufman, Derek Wang, Jacob Farris, Arran Swift, Michael Singleton, Evan Astrike-Davis, Max Li, Trevor Walker.
Girls
50m – Maggie Su (1st) CR, Ava O’Brien (3rd), Tanya Sachdev (4th)
100m – Leah Wiebe (1st), Noor Alam (2nd), Ben Natan (3rd)
4×100 – (1st) CR Ava O’Brien, Deborah Lemma, Leah Wiebe, Maggie Su
4×200 – (1st) Ben Natan, Tanya Sachdev, Elise Boyse, Noor Alam
Shot Put – Ben Natan (3rd), Alex Butulis (4th)
Discus – Ben Natan (4th)
Long Jump – Ava O’Brien (4th)
Girls who set at least one personal best this meet: Elise Boyse, Laney Bundy, Bela Chandler, Adora Koonce, Debora Lemma, Ava O’Brien, Jenna Pullen, Tanya Sachdev, Maggie Su, and Leah Wiebe.
CA sixth grader advances to National Geographic GeoBee state finals
March 26, 2019
Mukundh Ashok, a sixth grader, was the winner of this year’s Cary Academy Geographic Bee. After winning the school bee, he took an online test to qualify for the statewide National Geographic GeoBee. Based on his score, Mukundh was chosen to join 99 other students from across the state to compete in the state GeoBee in Charlotte on March 29.
