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A Knightly Newsletter March 2022

PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE

March was another busy month for Mesa Academy. We had the RMHS Carnival on our field. The Advanced Band performed at their Concert Festival in Tempe and earned the highest possible rating, Superior with Distinction. Likewise, our Orchestra performed at their Festival at Campo Verde High School and also earned the highest possible rating, Superior with Distinction. The 4th and 8th grades got together to connect at their U-Knighters lunch event. Our NAL team competed in the National Tournament held virtually on campus. Of course, everyone got to relax and recharge a bit during Spring Break. The Battle of the Books teams held their final competition with Team #7 winning first place. Lastly, we sent out the acceptance letters for new students and we had many tours to show off our great school.-Ms. Wilfert

Student Council Report

Twin day was a huge success! We had a massive turnout and the students enjoyed matching with their friends! We want to thank the Student Council officers and representatives for organizing the spirit day. But most importantly, we want to thank the students for participating! What a great way to end the quarter with a successful and exciting spirit day!

I am I.B.

Our school is participating in the I am IB program. Students are awarded tickets when the staff notices them demonstrating the IB trait of the week. Our knights did an excellent job this month! The I am IB ticket container was full enough to award all of our students a free-dress day. Congratulations!

In honor of Pi day on March 14th, Mrs. Heitland hosted a contest on that day to see who could recite the most digits of Pi. The 1st place prize was a whole pie, and the second and third place prizes were a slice of a pie. Congratulations to the first placer Stella Johnson, who recited 113 correct digits of pi. The second placer was Addison Wells, with 77 correct digits of pi. In third place was Ezra Johnson, who correctly recited 69 digits. Congratulations, knights!!!

Noteworthy Knights

The aim of all IB programs is to develop internationally minded people who, recognizing their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful world. As IB learners, we strive to be inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced, and reflective. These students were nominated by their teachers.

Caring students show empathy, compassion, and respect towards the needs and feelings of others. They have a personal commitment to service and act to make a positive difference in the lives of others and to the environment. -Grant Walker

Principled students act with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness, justice, and respect for the dignity of the individual, groups, and communities. They take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences that accompany them. - Ryan Wadholm

Communicators understand and express ideas and information confidently and creatively in more than one language and in a variety of modes of communication. They work effectively and willingly in collaboration with others. -Mayrin Martinez-Porras, Lindsay James

Reflective students give thoughtful consideration to their own learning and experience. They are able to assess and understand their strengths and limitations in order to support their learning and personal development. - Scarlet Sawyer

Thinkers exercise initiative in applying thinking skills critically and creatively to recognize and approach complex problems and make reasoned ethical decisions. - Sienna Goforth

Knowledgeable students explore concepts, ideas, and issues that have local and global significance. In doing so, they acquire in-depth knowledge and develop understanding across a broad and balanced range of disciplines. -Becca Wehrman and Kathryn Winward

Interested in MAAS?

Preparing students for life in the 21st century and helping students become life-long learners who understand how to navigate successfully through an ever-changing and increasingly interrelated world is not a secret. Share what we do at Mesa Academy with your family, friends, and neighbors and encourage them to visit our school website for more information.

Battle of the Books

Fifth and Sixth graders have worked extremely hard and made an effort to read and study a series of books. Some challenging questions were answered. Team #7 Alyssa Smith, Stella Johnson, and Katherine Trendler will be the team representing our school in the District Semi-Finals. This team only missed two questions in all three Battles. The Team coming in 2nd place was Team #1- Olivia Merrill, Hadley Kennington, and Abigail Whitmer. Team #12 came in 3rd place- Elijah Iguado, Ryker Romero, and Noah Gilbert. Congratulations to all of our team members! Come out and support Team 7 in the District Semi-Finals on April 25th @Kino Auditorium at @6:30 p.m.

Robotics

On the weekend of March 5th and 6th, 3 teams with kids from the Academy competed in the state level of FLL, or First LEGO League. During the competition, they shared their projects with the judges, completed Core Values problems, and used their coding and robotics skills to participate in the robot games, where the designed robot would complete a series of tasks on the playing board. While neither Batteries Not Included (Bryson Parker, Nico Perez, Revan Collier, and Benjamin Walker) or the Space Ninjas (Kendall Von Burg, Krew Eckman, and others) enjoyed the successes of trophies, the LugNuts (Davis Sterling, Jayden McConnel, and Dustin Harris) certainly excelled in the competition by winning both the project award and receiving a nomination for a global innovation award. They will be moving on to the international stage to share their ideas with members from all around the world! Congratulations to all of the Knights who competed in the tournament, and good luck next season!

Cue the Applause for our...

American Math Challenge

On January, 30 Mesa Academy Students participated in the American Math Challenge for 8th graders. The School Winner for Mesa Academy for Advanced Studies is Alex Li. Ryan Ngo, Revan Collier and Anise Carroll Covarrubias tied for second place. Cody Fordtner, Aaron Jury, and Kieralyn Kennington tied for third place. AWESOME JOB and way to represent Mesa Public Schools and MAAS. Thank you to ALL of the mathematicians who participated in the 2022 American Math Challenge!

Every year the students of Mesa Academy write exceptional work and submit it for the ever so famous, Voices, contest. Many students all over Mesa won for different roles. All of the winners are announced. Our school is proud to say we had numerous students victorious in earning the titles first place and honorable mentions.

Narrative - 6th Grade: Stella Johnson and Alice Hancock 7th Grade: Emma Hughes, Amelia Clement, Adri Cardall

Poetry - 4th Grade: Lindsay James

Essay - 4th Grade: Cambria Stradling, 5th Grade: Ayden Patel, 6th Grade: Sara Goitom, 7th Grade: Charlotte Whitmer, Staff: Ms. Shults

Band and Orchestra Update!

In early March, several orchestra and band events took place. On March 1, the preparatory, intermediate, and advanced orchestras performed their second concert of the year! In addition, on March 3, advanced band and orchestra took field trips to different festivals, where they performed for judges and had a chance to work with a musical specialist on their pieces. Both orchestra and band achieved the highest award given at the festival: Superior with Distinction. Great job, Knights!

MAAS STAFF SPOTLIGHTS FOR MARCH

Ms. Brown

Ms. Brown is the 6th and 8th-grade social studies teacher! This is her 2nd year teaching at the school, and she has enjoyed Mesa Academy, “I love being a part of the MAAS family. My fellow teachers are the hardest working and smartest teachers I have ever met. It is fun to teach motivated, passionate and polite students”. Right now, her 6th graders are learning about the middle ages. They are examining how Europe changed politically, socially, and economically. Additionally, Ms. Brown’s 8th graders are exploring the US Civil Rights Movement. She loves all of the units and likes it when students use primary sources to explore history. Ms. Brown appreciates her students and enjoys teaching them, “It is always fun when a whole class shares a spontaneous laugh or inside joke”. It is safe to say that Ms. Brown loves our students and staff!

Mr. Spencer

Mr. Spencer is one of our amazing Social Studies teachers! This school year, he teaches both sixth and seventh grade. Currently, his sixth-grade classes are studying the High Middle Ages while seventh graders are learning about the early Cold War and its impacts on Europe. These both happen to be some of his favorite units to teach. If he taught a class outside of social studies, he would prefer teaching science. A humorous class story he shared involved a student accidentally saying ‘escapegoat’ in place of the word ‘scapegoat.’ Amusingly, the class made a superhero named Escapegoat: one fighting crime while traveling with his red cape rippling in the air! Mr. Spencer recalled that they made a comic book or graphic based on the Escapegoat. Mr. Spencer will certainly be remembered fondly by all of his students.

“I was among the "opening crew" for MAAS in 2007 and I love how this school has managed to be a unique offering in Mesa for all of those years!” -Mr. Spencer

Mrs. Chiren

Mrs. Chiren, our art teacher, teaches at MAAS and Salk. The thing she most loves about MAAS is the staff and the students. She would also be interested in teaching computer technology. Her favorite things to teach are clay, printmaking, and drawing. In her class, the fourth graders are working on painted mandalas, the fifth graders are soon going to be working on clay, and the seventh/eighth graders are working on clay. Here is a funny story about her! “A bird walked in through the open door to the back courtyard one day. All the students went crazy. They were so shocked and excited to see a bird INSIDE school. They were SO excited, they scared that poor bird half to death and it flew out even faster than it had come in. It took the students a few moments to notice that there was no longer a bird in the classroom, and now we know why birds don't visit more often; they obviously don't like the drama.”

Mrs. Heitland

Ever wonder what is going on in the 4th & 5th Grade Hallway after school? Well if you are lucky you are participating in one of Mrs. Heitland's fun math activities with the Math Club. Mrs. Heitland is one of our Math teachers here at MAAS. She has had many students and has definitely taught students to love Math and to see that it is more than just numbers and equations. It is not a surprise that one of the things that she wishes other schools had that MAAS has are students that care about learning and that's because caring about how students learn and about what students learn is one of her strongest traits. She probably wouldn't come out and say that but, we know her well and we can all agree she goes above and beyond for all students at MAAS. Mrs. Heitland appreciates that our students like to learn and that they ask a lot of questions. Knights are inquirers for sure! In the month of March, her students focussed on percent and proportions. We asked her what she thought would be nice to have at MAAS and she said, "lockers". If you haven't had a chance to meet Mrs. Heitland, swing on by her room and say hi, she is always happy to meet new people.

Mrs. Larsen

Mrs. Larsen is our 4th, 5th and 6th grade Math teacher and students enjoy her class for many reasons and one of those her classroom garage sales. She uses these garage sales and grabbers as incentives for her students. They seem to work really well!

We asked Mrs. Larsen to share her favorite skill to teach and she shared that there are lots of them! "With 4th-grade, my favorite unit to teach so far has been our unit on perimeter and area." She has loved seeing students work through the volume unit, and make connections with geometric figures. Her favorite 6th-grade unit to teach was algebraic equations. "Finding the missing pieces to the puzzles known as variables is always fun!"

"Everyday at MAAS is a unique and creative experience. Students at MAAS come to school with such a thirst for learning. They are highly motivated to do their best, which makes teaching here so much fun!" - Mrs. Larsen. She enjoys being part of a school where the staff goes out of their way to set up clubs, so all students can feel involved at school!

Here is a funny class story that she shared with us, "In our classroom we have an aquarium with many special critters living there. Well, one time the frog somehow escaped from the tank and hopped across the room. One of our 4th graders found it sometime later under their desk. Sadly, by this point it had been out of the tank for too long, so was all dried up! Students were intrigued by the dare devil escape artist, and created many stories about how and why they think the frog had escaped.

We are so happy that Mrs. Larsen joined our teaching staff and look forward to more crazy class stories.

RMHS Annual Carnival

This month Red Mountain High School held its 4th annual carnival. On March 4th there was a MAAS Family Mixer, where we saw many familiar faces.

Upcoming MAAS Events!

Please visit our PTO Newsletter to stay up to date with all of the amazing activities and events our organization has planned for MAAS.

Follow us on social media! Mesa Academy is now on Facebook and Instagram. Our Instagram is mesaacademymps and our Facebook is @mesaacademymps. Follow us to keep up to date on the wonderful things happening at school.

Newsletter Team Spotlight

Cora Hanna is an 8th grader at the academy. Her favorite part of the newsletter club is that everyone pitches in to make the whole newsletter, but nobody gets saddled with a ton of work unless they volunteer to do a harder article that they enjoy. Outside of school, Cora enjoys volleyball, arts and crafts, and spending time with her family. During the month, Cora went to the carnival and went on all the rides multiple times.

Claire McNamee is an 8th grader at the academy. Her favorite part of newsletter team are the meetings because they have a casual and fun environment. Outside of school, Claire enjoys writing novels and currently, she’s finished the last book of her five-book series. She also likes to play the viola and electric violin. Her favorite moment this month was when Mrs. White allowed her and a friend to play a duet for the next orchestra concert.

Thank you from the Newsletter Team- Anna Reeves, Emma Hughes, Cora Hanna, Claire McNamee, Cosette Sampson, Arianne Rencher, Liam Zappone, Hadley Kennington, Olivia Merrill, Joey Sandoval, Olive Van Slyke, Ryan Weinstein, Xavier Vaughan, and Kendall Von Burg.

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