CVU Celebrations

Dear CVU Community: Happy Holidays and New Year. We look forward to seeing you in 2023! See the pictures below to get a feel for our festive week. And a big shout out to Sam Decker, Charlotte Tyler, and Karen Allen (who we will miss!)--winners of the Silly Sweater competition!

Please see these letters from our Direction Center regarding Pre-ACT and PSAT: Pre-ACT letter

PSAT Letter

The 9th and the 10th graders teamed up in the Morton and Reed advisory to build the best and sweetest gingerbread house. So much enthusiasm to beat out their 11th and 12th grade peers.

Check out this CVSD post on Jaden, Addison, and Max! Congrats!

Every Little Thing spread some kindness with messages of love on Wednesday C3!

10th Grade Class Council organized CVU’s first-every Holiday Cookie Decorating Competition this week. And despite last Friday’s Snow Day throwing advisories for a loop in terms of timing, the quantity AND quality of submissions was amazing. Advisories were provided with 15 cookies, white frosting and some sprinkles. As you can see from the collection of submissions, many advisories supplemented these supplies with their own. In the end the winner advisory was Carly Rivard’s who brought in enough materials to create an Advisory Campfire featuring marshmallow people gathered around a Twix candy fire pit.

From Karen Kirkland: This is R2 AP Statistics - a sea of red!!!

For the next two weeks, the school counselor podcast discusses standardized testing. This week we look at the Pre ACT and PSAT results and how students and families can and should interpret their results along with what they are able to do in terms of future test prep. Next week's episode is all about how colleges and universities integrate standardized testing into their admissions process. We interviewed UVM, Middlebury and Dartmouth about their holistic review process in an effort to give students a picture of testing and whether it is essential and/or necessary for them. After vacation we will be hosting our College panel evening where we host several local and regional schools to talk about their schools' approach to applications, finding the best college matches and more.

Week One: Spotify Link; Apple Link.

Week Two: Spotify; Apple

Mussel/Causey Gingerbread Houses!

On Saturday, December 10th members of the Volunteer Outreach Club put on their elf costumes and helped out at the Polar Express sponsored by the Vermont Children's Trust. They greeted 4 trainloads of excited kids as they arrived at the "North Pole" to listen to the beloved holiday story and see Santa Claus. This is the 20th year of this community event which raised over $180,000 for programs that serve Vermont children and families.

From Alison Duback: Last week 92 Junior and Senior Flight School Leaders met with our over 300 9th graders to check in on how the year is going for them. One of the activity options was to make a spiderweb while talking about all of the people that support them. Here is one of our Chittenden crews acing the assignment.

Claud Bigue's class at BTC got a pretty cool look at the BTC hangar and the future Beta headquarters!

Yesterday, the CVU Math League team traveled to Colchester HS to compete against 14 other schools in our region and came away with the win! This is the first CVU 1st-place finish in Math League that anyone can remember (and most likely ever). South Burlington placed second and Essex third. Combined with their second-place finish in Meet 1, CVU now leads the league heading into Meet 3. There are five meets in all (ending in March) so there's still work to be done, but this is the best-ever start for the team. Individual honors went to Elias Leventhal for top papers in Arithmetic and Advanced and Wylie Ricklefs for a top paper in Arithmetic. They were joined by Jacob Graham, Keaton St. Martin, and Sam Yager for a perfect team paper, sealing the win. It was a strong overall team effort, with contributions by Anna Dauerman, Patterson Frazier, Dan Knight, Thomas Garavelli, David Merchant, Veronica Miskavage, Clay Nicholson, Lily O’Brien, and Julia Shrier. Even more important than winning is the camaraderie and enthusiasm in this fine group! Thanks as always to Kiran McCormick for all his help with the team.

From Helen MacAndrews: Life Program holiday cookie decorating and Math

Students in Lacey Richards' AP Human Geography classes dressed up as political geography terms to "speed date" and learn about the connections and relationships between each other.

This week on Ready Set Go, Hosted by Connor Turnbaugh, we have an entire set of Holiday Tunes. Featured are shoutouts to or by, and/or music requested by: Asher Vaughn, Rahn Flemming, Henry Bushey, Peter Booth, Brian Rutherford, Chris Destito, Cesar Sanchez, Nick Clark, Bryce Bortnick, Meredith Visco, Sunny Francis, Garrett Richardson, Charlotte Taylor, Jess Lemeaux, The Special Services Staff, Lilly Caputa, CB Stackpole McGrath, Seth Emerson, Molly Fairhurst, Rose Destito, Alisa Craft, Tyler Davis, Adam Bunting, Caidan LaBarre, and Tamie Jo Dickenson Musical artists featured this week include: The Jerry Garcia Band, Myriah Carey, Straight No chaser, The Temptations, Chris Isaak, Tyler the Creator, Kaycie Muskgraves, Paul McCartney, The Ronettes, Bruce Springstein, Hall and Oats, Michael Bubble, Elmo and Patsy, Johnny Cash, Bing Crosby, Pentatonix, and The Grateful Dead Want to listen? Tune into 99.3 or head to this link. Just find the "Listen" button on the right.

From Casey Ogden: Sophie Ballard celebrating winter break with big and little Olaf!

RoboHawks News! Over the past few weeks, we cut our robot down to the base and rebuilt it from the rubble. We are excited to reveal our innovative “halo” design which allows us to pick up game pieces from multiple directions without turning the bot. This increases our efficiency and therefore the number of points we can score. Over the next few weeks, the RoboHawks will refine, code, and drive the bot in preparation for the quickly approaching state competition.On Tuesday, December 13, the RoboHawks continued their mentoring campaign by visiting Williston Central School where we eagerly presented our bot to the middle school robotics teams. After we showed our robot, we assisted the students in creating lego robots for their state competition at the Shapiro Field House this January (the 29th). On Saturday (the 13th) we hosted a scrimmage at CVU. The turnout was great, with eight teams attending from around the state. We exchanged ideas, tested our robots, and shared solutions to common problems. This event made all of the Vermont robotics teams better.

Our Engage Leaders work hard in this photo to prepare for their team meetings.

Vanessa Harman, second from right, gets some love from friends as we wish her luck on her next journey. Vanessa, you will always have a home at CVU!

Thank you to all of our faculty and staff and to Friends of CVU who honored us today with wonderful cookies!

Thank you to Arthur Chiaravalli for brining CVU Inspirations back in 2022. And congratulations to our many student recipients!

A big thanks to Nate and Bambi (and Nick) for rescuing Olaf!

Rico and Hank Dickinson have definitely joined our faculty ranks this week. I suppose we should thank Tamie-Jo, however, for all of the joy she brings when they visit!

While we are on the topic of dogs, meet Jennifer Marriott's newest addition...

CVSD and ParentIn provided these resources to help us learn about and address a rise in vaping in our community.