Dear International Families,

I want to thank everyone for their flexibility on Monday/Tuesday as we dealt with the impacts of the loss of power at International School. Our entire staff did a great job of being flexible, caring for students, ensuring essential needs were met, and keeping everyone calm. Even without power, classes and instruction continued. Our students did a great job in their response, and it helped us navigate no power, two evacuations, and storms.

Today, we will enjoy the sun.

Information regarding Focus Week has been communicated to students. Our staff worked hard in meeting student requests while balancing class sizes and nearly everyone received their first or second request. Our teachers have already begun ordering supplies and equipment based on their numbers because shipping times are longer than normal. Please know that we really do not have the ability to make shifts at this time which is why we prioritize the requests at the beginning of the process. Our teachers will work hard to make every experience engaging for their students.

I do want to give a shout-out to our Titan Robotics who are currently competing in the District Championships in Chelan, Washington. They are in the hunt for a spot at First Robotics World Championships. A few weeks ago, I got a chance to watch some of their competitions during at event at Sammamish High School. If you are unfamiliar with how Robotics works, each year First Robotics (the governing body) releases a competition/task for the year. Here is this year’s task:

In RAPID REACT presented by The Boeing Company, teams must use innovative engineering, creative thinking, and teamwork to reimagine the future of safe, high-speed travel, and lightning-fast deliveries to propel the next evolution of transportation forward – in this world and beyond.  Two competing alliances are invited to process cargo for transportation. Each alliance is assigned a cargo color (red or blue, based on alliance affiliation) to process by retrieving their assigned cargo and scoring it into the hub. Human players assist the cargo retrieval and scoring efforts from within their terminals. For the first 15 seconds, robots operate only on pre-programmed instructions to score points by taxiing from their tarmac and retrieving and scoring their assigned cargo into the hub. After that, drivers take control and score points by continuing to retrieve and score their assigned cargo into the hub. In the final moments of each match, alliance robots race to engage with their hangar to prepare for transport! This is viewed by hanging from bars of different heights (with different point values) completely off the ground. Bonus points are scored by climbing from one bar to another.

If you are interested, here is a recording from one of the matches from that competition. Titan Robotics were #492 (Blue).

Wishing everyone a wonderful Spring Break.

Russell White