HEAD OF SCHOOL
END OF SEMESTER REPORT
IAN CRAIG, DECEMBER 2018 Dear TVS Family, As it is the mid-way point of this school year, I wanted to take a moment to pause among all of the busyness of the season to reflect on what has been an incredibly successful year. This mid-year report captures some of our successes to date.
On campus: • We opened the year with the North Field additions, including the concessions/restrooms building and 120 new parking spaces. • The development of the Middle School play space has allowed for much-needed brain breaks, whatever the weather. • We are full steam ahead relative to the South Field projects that include renovated baseball and softball fields, a concessions/restroom facility, and a newly astroturfed field that all sports can take advantage of in inclement weather.
In the arts: • A number of Upper School students have been attending Shakespeare workshops at Northside High School. • Cook Children’s, in celebration of its centennial, unveiled a brand-new mural that was created by a TVS senior. • The Upper School TVS Strings ensemble qualified for All-State. • One junior is now the Principal Cellist of the Fort Worth Youth Orchestra. • Our new Lower School music teacher created, and 2nd graders performed, an incredible new production; she also directed and choreographed 300 Lower School students in a phenomenal holiday program. • Twenty-six students from grades 4-8 qualified for the March National Honor Choir, five Upper Schoolers qualified for the Women’s Concert Choir, and we had our first sophomore to ever
qualify for the Chamber Choir. • Nine TVS Upper School theatre students attended the Texas Educational Theatre Association Convention in Addison. • We had our first Upper School production, The Arsonists, and a number of Lower School performances. • A senior won first place at the University of Dallas Shakespeare Monologue Competition. • We hosted an all-day raku workshop with artist/ potter Ken Orr.
Academically: • Four students were named National Merit Semifinalists. • Five students were National Merit Scholarship Program Commended Students. • Three students were recognized as National Hispanic Program Scholars. • We have hosted a visiting author, Joan Schadt, and a nationally recognized poet, Dr. Traci Brimhall. • A team of TVS students placed 27th out of 3,000 middle- and high-school teams competing in the picoCTF, a web-based computer security game sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University. • Students participated in the Battle of the Brains, a programming competition at UT Dallas. We earned third place in a 50-team division. • A TVS 3rd grader placed first in the unrated K-3 Division at the All Saints’ Scholastic Chess Tournament. • Mathletes representing 20-plus schools from all over Texas competed in the Mathcounts competition organized by the San Antonio Spurs basketball team. One TVS student took first, and the team took fourth. • We had a number of students participate in the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. • Representatives for the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs selected 20 A.P. World History teachers from around the U.S. to attend a Florida conference on the Korean War. Our very own
James Scott was selected to attend. • The TVS US Mathematics team won against teams in Ojai, CA; New York, NY; Great Mills, MD; Byfield, MA; Rome, GA; Uniondale, NY; and Lexington, SC. This year, the group made it to the “Final Four” competition with 62 schools in the mix. • A senior was nominated by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History to be on the Smithsonian Secretary’s Youth Advisory Council (SSYAC). • Lower School author visits included Aaron Reynolds in grades K-4 and Michelle Marlow in 1st grade. • Three TVS students competed in the FirstBytes Programming Competition. They worked for two hours writing programs in their first competition together and placed sixth. • Librarian Maggie Knapp’s roundup of worthy databases was published in the October School Library Journal. • We have hosted 133 college admission representatives on campus to date.
Character, Community, and Life Skills: • We kicked off the year with our first-ever faculty community-service day. • Nurse Coats hosted the Fort Worth Fire Department visit with our students in grades K-2 as a way to celebrate Fire Prevention Month. • We hosted Gaby Natale for all divisions - she is an Emmy-winning journalist, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and speaker. • We collected 9,563 total cans as a part of the Canned Food Drive. • Trinity Valley hosted an officially sanctioned WCA (World Cubing Association) event on campus with 93 competitors from Texas and surrounding states. • TVS also hosted the Youth TEDx Fort Worth event once again where a number of students gave TED Talks. • We have hosted four community-education series events to date.
• Six seniors earned the rank of Eagle Scout.
Athletics: • We had three athletes participate in the National Signing Day celebration as they look to continue competing in athletics at the collegiate level next year. • Boys’ and girls’ cross country teams finished in the top four of SPC North Zone Championships. • Field hockey and boys’ volleyball earned the #1 seed in North Zone for SPC. • All of our teams qualified for the SPC Tournament, with field hockey taking fourth and boys’ volleyball finishing as runners up. • We had 10 All-SPC athletes. • JV boys’ volleyball won the Houston Cup. • Two 7th graders (male/female) placed first in their cross country meet against FWCD and Oakridge. • We started the Middle School wrestling team, with positive results. • Varsity wrestling has had individuals take two first-place finishes, a second place, and a third place in separate tournaments. • Boys’ Varsity basketball made it to the finals of their last two tournaments.
Trojan Outdoor EXPERIENCE / Global Education: • Dr. Michael Roemer, director of Global Education, received the Bob Bolen Award for Outstanding Board Leadership at the 2018 Annual Meeting of Fort Worth Sister Cities and the DFW World Affairs Council’s International Educator of the Year Award in 2017. • We hosted an International Assistant Teacher from the Netherlands in 1st grade. We will have five more IATs from Denmark, Switzerland, and Belgium in Kindergarten, 2nd, 5-8th Athletics, 8th Humanities, and 9/10th History in the spring. • We have welcomed 14 students and their teacher from Tec de Monterrey in Metepec and Toluca, Mexico, and six students and a teacher from Auguste-Viktoria-Gymnasium in Trier, Germany.
In the spring, we’ll host seven students and one teacher from Kaiwen Academy in Beijing, China; four students from St. George’s School for Girls in Scotland; and four from Whitsunday Anglican School in Mackay, Australia (the latter two are 1:1 exchanges--our students who host will stay with their “guests” in their homes in the summer). • For the holiday concert, we added songs in different languages, from different cultures, and about several winter holidays. The concert opened with a reception with decorations and food from more than a dozen cultures and holidays. • Students in Kindergarten and from grades 2-6 and 8 have already or will soon connect with students through Virtual Learning Exchanges in the Dominican Republic, England, Kenya, Japan, Mexico, and Taiwan. • We took approximately 800 TVS students on TOE Core trips last year to six state parks, four different states, and the Bahamas, and we are preparing to take approximately 50 students to Australia, Austria, China, Scotland, and Spain on language, experiential education, history, and culture-sharing exchanges. • After bringing in Szalan Ellis as site manager and making our first changes to the course in a decade, we have enjoyed hosting a number of outside groups and schools who were able to experience the Trojan Challenge Course and see our campus for the first time. • More than 50 US students have completed more than 140 hours of school service by acting as leaders on a multitude of TOE events.
It has been an incredibly productive and exciting 2018, and we look forward to seeing what new adventures 2019 brings! Until then, best wishes for a wonderful holiday. Sincerely,
Ian Craig