Student Spotlights February 2023

Satsuma High School’s HOSA club hosted the first of its biannual blood drives. The drive was a tremendous success with 83 people registered and 75 units collected by LifeSouth. CNA students were on hand during the drive to help with donor care including checking vital signs. Pictured are CNA students (front row): Jaylee Amacker, Abby Duke, Madison Lynd, Hayden Andrews, Lexi Lopez, Allie Bowdoin, Grace Giles; (second row): Kaitlin Ross, Emilee Scarbrough, Caleigh Turpin, Chloe Davis, Haylee Monte, Laila Baldon, Angel Yang, Alana Smith, and instructor Christina Ebbert.

St. Luke’s Interventions and Innovations (10th-12th) Biomedical Sciences classes were asked to be the patients at the University of South Alabama’s annual Mass Casualty Drill. The scenario this year was a bus accident. Our students prepared by practicing the application of moulage (medical and military trauma makeup). They learned about the various injuries they were assigned and how to remain in character while interacting with the student EMS responders and student ER staff. Thank you, USA Department of EMS Education. for including our students in your drill. We are already looking forward to next year!

January 4, 2023 Mobile Christian School Football held a ring ceremony for our 2022 Baseball 4A State Champions. Congrats to a fantastic team for having a 33-4 season!

Congratulations to Mobile Christian Football athletes that made All-Coastal Players this year!
Defensive MVP – Sterling Dixon
1st Team – Bo Cagle
2nd Team – Kentonio Kelly and Camden Lawson
Honorable Mention – Aaron Rogers and Carter Lewis

Mobile County Public Schools gave back to the communities it serves during the holiday season through Thanksgiving food drives and Christmas toy drives.
Fifty-five schools and Central Office participated in the annual Stuff the Bus toy drive, collecting nearly 7,800 toys for WKRG’s Magical Christmas toy drive. The departments of Transportation and Communication coordinated the drive, and students from Dunbar School for Creative & Performing Arts helped unload the two busloads of toys.
In addition, Central Office employees took part in the Joy of Giving campaign to fulfill Christmas wish lists for students in need in the system. More than $9,000 was donated by employees this year to purchase everything from fishing poles and art supplies to clothing and sports equipment. There were 81 students selected by the MCPSS Social Services Department in conjunction with local schools to receive gifts through this campaign.
Several MCPSS schools and Central Office held food drives in November, combining to donate more than 10,000 pounds of food to Feeding the Gulf Coast. O’Rourke Elementary delivered an amazing 4,168 pounds of canned and nonperishable food items with the help of the Baker High baseball team. Also holding food drives for Feeding the Gulf Coast were Central Office, E.R. Dickson, Leinkauf, Baker, Theodore, Bryant Career Technical Center, Alba, Orchard, Semmes Middle, Dunbar School of Creative & Performing Arts, and Denton Magnet School of Technology. Other schools held food drives for charities within their respective communities.

For the second year in a row, the Davidson High School RobotEx team won first place overall at the South’s BEST Robotics Championships in Auburn! It’s the only time in the event’s history that a school has won first place overall in consecutive years. Team sponsor Mike Fletcher was also named the South’s BEST Teacher of the Year.
In addition to first place overall, the RobotEx team won:
• 3rd place — Most Photogenic
• 1st place — Most Elegant Robot
• 1st place — Marketing Presentation
• 1st place — Exhibit Booth Interviews
• 2nd place — Spirit and Sportsmanship

Living Word Christian Center Kingdom Academy began the new year with the staff attending Total Participation Techniques Professional Development with special guest, ASCD’s best-selling authors Drs. Persida & William Himmele. LWCCKA Students eagerly learn using techniques implemented from the special work shop.

Students at Barton Academy for Advanced World Studies were chosen to decorate the tree representing Alabama surrounding the National Christmas Tree during holiday festivities in Washington, D.C. Only one school from each state was selected for this honor. Barton Academy Principal Dr. Amanda Jones and art teacher Christy LeGros traveled to Washington to represent the school at the ceremony.

Impalas, kindergarten through eighth grade, get to attend formal art, music, Latin, library and computer technology once a week. They also get to go attend PE every single day! Our preschool Impalas get an intro to these specials with art, music, library and computer weekly. We believe that in order to maintain high academic standards, it is equally important to get our students out of the classroom and stimulate a different part of their brain. Fine arts, technology, exercise, language and library sciences have proved to help our students focus when they get back to the traditional classroom. On top of the academic support these special courses lend, our students LOVE these courses! We are blessed with an amazing faulty that truly cultivates meaningful experiences in each of their content areas. We invite you to see for yourself by emailing admissions@stignatius.org.

St. Luke’s 6th-grade student, Mason Crosby represented St. Luke’s as a Kidcaster for WKRG 5 TV News. Mason had the opportunity to meet WKRG Meteorologist Ed Bloodsworth and be the meteorologist for the day. During this experience, Mason shared with viewers the daily weather forecast and that he enjoyed playing sports, (especially football) and his favorite subjects are science and math. Mason, and other selected Kidcasters from the surrounding area, learned about the behind-the-scenes operations and viewed the weather system that meteorologists utilize during a new cast.

UMS-Wright is always striving to provide unique opportunities to enhance the lives of our students, and Project Engage does just that. It offers a cross-curriculum, hands-on learning experience that allows students to delve deeply into an area of personal interest while developing deeper relationships with peers and faculty with similar academic curiosities! Project Engage 2023 kicked off on January 5 with a variety of adventures and experiences for our 9-12 grade students. Throughout this 10-day mini-term, students had learning experiences along the Gulf Coast, Belize, the Grand Canyon, Greece, Key West, and other exciting places! They participated in flight simulations, cooking classes, archaeology digs, museum tours, hunting excursions, camp outs, scuba diving and much more.
The Project Engage 2023 courses offered were as follows: Grand Canyon 2023; Lights | Camera | Action; Forestry; Key West; Belize; Explore Greece; Ready | Set | Dive; Take a Journey; Physics Xtreme; Design | Build | Fly; Art & Architecture; Choose an Internship; Habitat for Humanity; Archaeology; Entrepreneurship; It’s All About the Food; and The Other Side of Sports.

In January, Middle School Principal Jeb Blackerby hosted a celebration breakfast for 5th and 6th graders who met the Accelerated Reader Goals for 2nd Quarter. He also awarded AR pins to Emory Roe for reading 2 million words and Piper Clark for reading 4 million words!
Congratulations to the following 5th & 6th graders who met the AR Goals for 2nd Quarter: Francie Ashurst, Mason Bui, Jack Carl, Cammy Cluckies, Wren Cooper, Sadie Davis, Ellie March Dodd, Sally Dodson, William Dodson, James Fillers, Charlotte Ford, Hayes Giddens, Elizabeth Howell, Emily Lawler, Lilly Beth McCaffrey, Isabella Clinton, Beeland McGowin, Matti Mitchell, Jasmine Nguyen, Cayden Odom, Kate Elyss Pacheco, Aarya Patel, Heidi Peak, Bradley Peterson, Ava Pfeiffer, Madison Phan, Emmitt Quin, Celia Reid, Eliza Reynolds, Nellie Reynolds, Jacob Roe, Mills Schultz, Julia Scott, George Seawell, John John Smith, Lilli Margaret Smith, Trey Stevens, Faulkner Warren, Mary Mac Watkins, Ryann Whitman, Julia Clayton Wilkins, Price Williams, Matthews Wills, Kinley Grace Winter, Sam Winter, Bradley Wynn, Parker Abston, Ava Archey, Mark Blackerby, Parke Brister, Piper Clark, Chloe Clukies, Hayden Collins, Mary Helen Colvin, Richard Delaney, Matthew Driscoll, Katie Claire Elliott, Caitlin Finney, Lauren Greenwald, Ellis Grimm, Kenleigh Hess, Luca Karamovic, Tal Kellerman, William Marmande, Max McCrary, Patton Meek, William Mitchell, Gaillard Passmore, Reid Riddell, Emory Roe, Emma Shepler, Ayann Siddiqui, Jonah Williams, Dylan Wink and Jane Zundel.

St. Luke’s lower and middle school choir joined forces and beautifully performed concerts for both campuses and guests. We are so proud of all of their hard work this year.

Congratulations to McGill-Toolen Catholic 2022 AL.com Super All-State Volleyball Players! McGill-Toolen is represented by 4 players on the Super Team. That is the most from a single school!

Traditions are big at St. Ignatius Catholic. One of our favorite ones is the live nativity at Christmas Eve Mass made up of kindergarten students. These special students make their nativity debut at the school’s Christmas Program before the holiday break and the honor Baby Jesus by processing to the alter steps to “Away in a Manger” at Christmas Eve Mass. This year St. Ignatius welcomed around 1,000 parishioners at the 4 PM Mass. Kindergarten students Mabry Thomas (Angel), Ayra Habibollahi (Mary), Wright Pritchett (Joseph), 3 Wise Men (Max Froberg, Billy Lyon and Bishop Bagget) and 3 Shepherds (Bennett Drago, Walker Coffey and Edmond Kidder) did an amazing job! Another St. Ignatius tradition is these same kindergarten students will be asked to reprise their role in eighth grade at the annual parish tree lighting!

Father Victor Ingalls, Vocations Director for the Archdiocese of Mobile, visited Little Flower Catholic School. After Father Ingalls posed with a group of students, he made the rounds of all the classrooms, and even promised a basketball challenge. His lively presence always energizes the students.

Impalas 3K-8th attend Ms. Gibson’s art class once a week. It is a weekly highlight! Although students do art work in their classrooms Ms. Gibson focuses on technical instruction. Students learn a wide range of drawing, painting, sculpting, weaving and more. Each year Ms. Gibson transforms her classroom into a black light/glow art theme for an entire week! Impalas young and old can’t get enough of creating art with glow in the dark supplies. She is truly a favorite among the St. Ignatius faculty! Even our middle school students look forward to their weekly art lesson. Enjoy this photo of our eighth grade Impalas working on collaborative paper sculptures to kick of 2023.

For out December service project, Read Write Academy students packed over 40 “go-bags” for Mercy LIFE of Alabama that contained necessities such as hygiene and cleaning products. Our students enjoyed doing a simple act of kindness and giving back to our local community.

LWCC Kingdom Academy 5th Grade Reading Class incorporated Total Participation Techniques with a Reader’s Theatre developing the reading fluency through dramatic presentations of MONKEY and CROCODILES by Anthony D. Fredericks. Big Idea: Folktales often reflect values. A trickster tale is a type of folktale in which the characters – usually animals – try to trick one another. Trickster tales often become part of a culture’s oral tradition.
Readers: Narrator – Christian Roundtree, Monkey- Lamyia Brown, Crocodile 1 – Kayden Murphy, Crocodile 2 – Dwike Wilson and Crocodile 3, Yanissa Johnson. Reading Teacher – Ms. Hobdy

St. Dominic Catholic School seventh grade students selected a book to read and were asked to create a digital mystery box to help explain the story. This collaboration between Literature and Technology classes was a great experience for our middle school students. Pictured is Emily Bonneau