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We hope your Winter Break is filled with the joy of the season, the blessing of good friends, and the love of your extended family. We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, January 3.

Dear Families,

We are so grateful to our Winter Festival Committee, and our school community who all came together to create a beautiful and magical Winter Festival. Our traditional advent spiral celebrated bringing light and warmth into the darkness of winter with lit candles and singing.

Thank you to all who have donated to our Annual Giving campaign. See below for an update of funds raised. Our campaign runs through Dec. 31. Donate now in order to claim your tax deduction for 2022!

Enjoy our last newsletter of 2022, and we will see you in 2023!

We have raised $29,671 so far

with only 20% participation from our families.

We can do this!

WSOC’s Annual Giving Fund is the cornerstone of the school’s fundraising programs as it provides the greatest opportunity to support the immediate financial needs of the school. It is the school’s most important source of unrestricted funds that impacts every student, every day, by ensuring funding for a comprehensive and dynamic curriculum of math, language arts, science, culture and foreign language study, performing arts, applied arts, music and movement. Every student and every family benefits from this extraordinary education, and we ask that every family participate in an amount that is meaningful to them.

WSOC is running its Annual Giving Campaign Nov. 29th to Dec. 31 and strives to raise $100,000 through 100% participation from all members of our school community. We strive for 100% participation in order to reach our goal and establish a strong collaborative message, within and outside of our community, that we are all in this together supporting the well-being and strength of our school.

Donate before the end of the year to receive a tax deduction.

Gifts to the Annual Giving Fund are welcome any time throughout the year. Got questions? Read our FAQ!

Thank you to our Winter Festival Committee - Erin Nichols, Kim Eijpen, Sara Rodelo and Claudia Boden - and all of our dedicated parent and staff volunteers. A special shout out to our set up and clean up crews- (beautiful teamwork on a tough job!) - and parents Jzin Teng and Joy Wang who carried on the tradition of the Elves Workshop. Thank you to Fermentation Farm, Nourish, Cream Pan, The Ecology Center, Peter & Lorraine Carson, The Vineyard 1924, Meet the Source, Farm to Farmers, the McDaniel Family, and our wonderful Festival Singers. All of you made our Winter Festival a day to remember.

We are thrilled to say that the event raised over $20,000 in sales, making this one of the most successful festivals in years.

Grade 5 studied fungi as part of their botany block, and also enjoyed a delicious pasta meal featuring the subjects of their study.

Grade 12 Contemplates Nature and Life during American Lit Trip

Grade 12's American Literature Trip with English teacher Ms. Kuczenski took them to Restoration Oaks in Gaviota, where they enjoyed lots of literature, nature, writing, conversation, and "exuberant togetherness as we explored our surroundings from a contemplative and curious practice of restful openness," said Ms. K. 

Students also enjoyed a bonfire under the stars, curated with some favorite poems, songs, and original writing from the students (followed by some stargazing as Walt Whitman would implore us to do on such an eve as this with a full moon out here in the "wilderness," noted Ms. K).

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

By Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Botany Studies Take Grade 5 to the Sea

Grade 5's botany block also included a field trip to Little Corona beach last week, where they explored the tide pools and local sea life (including lots of seaweed).

Grade 9 Visits the Getty in LA

Grade 9 recently visited the Getty museum with high school arts teacher Andrea Crozier. The visit was part of their Art History block. They made masks inspired by their viewing of the painting Christ's Entry intro Brussels and added to their mask decor as they observed various paintings in the museum.

Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889 (French: L'Entrée du Christ à Bruxelles, "Entry of Christ into Brussels") is an 1888 painting by the Belgian artist James Ensor. The post-Impressionist work, parodying Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem celebrated on Palm Sunday, is considered Ensor's most famous composition and a precursor to Expressionism. It has been held by the Getty Center in Los Angeles since 1987.

A Glorious Day at Green Park for Early Childhood

Ms. Margaret's Pre Kindergarten enjoyed a sunny trip to Green Park

Our entire community is invited to attend this extraordinary evening. Grade six will perform "La Unificación Hispaniola", written by our Spanish teacher Iris Ortiz in collaboration with Spanish teacher Sandra Blanco. The play will be performed entirely in Spanish!

Spreading the word

UCI English M.A. program supports K-12 teachers

By Megan Cole

After spending a few years teaching English at a small, arts-focused high school, Beka Castro found herself longing to engage in “the same nerdy, synergistic, literature-rich conversations I was asking of my students.” Immediately after finding UCI’s English M.A. program and meeting the faculty, she discovered just what she was looking for.

“I knew it would be the perfect format for learning about literary criticism and research while also having fun adopting new ways of looking at literary genres I already loved,” she recalls.

Castro, now a second-year English M.A. student, is one of about two dozen students in the program, which was designed primarily for K-12 teachers eager to develop their skills in communication, critical thinking and literary analysis. According to English Department Chair Elizabeth Allen, the English M.A. degree is not only pragmatic – it prepares graduates to teach at the community college level and can increase K-12 teachers’ salaries – but “intellectually nourishing, enriching and exploratory.” 

UCI’s English M.A. program has been around for about 30 years, but it was recently reimagined as a two-year, part-time program to better accommodate the schedules of high school teachers like Castro. It is currently the only humanities program across the UC system designed specifically for mature and returning students. 

Allen, the daughter of two public school teachers, was particularly thrilled to relaunch the English M.A. program, as her parents both attended similar enrichment programs and “grew tremendously” as a result. She is proud that UCI’s English M.A. program has had a similar impact on its alumni.

“Programs like these give teachers authority in their institutions, a sense of imaginative purchase on the work they’re doing with their students, new ideas – really, it gives them a sense that there is a huge, established world of literature in which they are participants,” she says. “As a teacher, the feeling that you’re part of something bigger than yourself is so powerful.” 

Castro has already transported ideas from the M.A. classroom to her own high school courses, where she covers everything from ancient literature to literary bioethics (using Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a primary text) to an interdisciplinary course called “Forensics with Agatha Christie.” 

“Professionally, I have connected more thoughtfully to the content I deliver in my classroom thanks to the English M.A. program, energizing the material and methods I use to help students love literature,” says Castro. 

Castro adds that while “the academics are stellar and diverse,” the highlight of the program for her has been “the delightful closeness of our cohort and our direct and encouraging relationships with the faculty.” 

“So many of us are teachers, so perhaps we are hungry for more satisfying conversations around literature,” Castro says. “Our cohort may share a desire to use what we learn in the wider world. But whatever the reason, the result is fascinating and engaging discussions combined with genuine care for the people in the room.”

Today Only. Nourish will be selling their specially formulated chai in the store from 8:30am-3pm. Come enjoy our favorite chai!

Last Day to Shop. Company of Angels will be open on Monday, December 19th from 9:00am-3:00pm. This will be the last day to shop until January 2023!

In addition to Nourish's popular chai, dry tea, oils, spice kits, neti kits and seasonal cleansing packets also will be available today!

Mon 12/12, 9:00a - 10:00a • Parent Study Group with Early Years Teacher Holly Richards (Parent-Infant through Grade 1 parents welcome)

Mon 12/12, 6:00p - 8:30p • Board Meeting

Tue 12/13, 3:00p - 5:00p • High School Soccer away game vs. CC Downey

Wed 12/14, 6:00p - 8:00p • Grade 6 Play

Thu 12/15, 3:15p - 5:15p • HS Soccer HOME (play at Vanguard) vs. Fairmont SJC

Fri 12/16 • Grade 9 Early Registration deadline

Fri 12/16 • Playgroup Session 1 ends

Fri 12/16, 12:30p - 12:30p • Early Dismissal Early Childhood classes

Fri 12/16, 1:00p - 1:00p • Early Dismissal Grades

Mon 12/19 - Mon 1/2 • Winter Break

January 2023

Mon 1/2 • New Year's Holiday Observed

Tue 1/3 • School back in session

Tue 1/3 • Early Childhood Application Deadline

Tue 1/3 • Playgroup Session 2 Begins

January aftercare forms will arrive in your inbox via ParentSquare.