Sonoma Academy

This week, our Speech and Debate team received significant national recognition from the National Speech and Debate Association, the organization that oversees competition for the thousands of schools across the country that participate in speech and debate. Our team has been granted membership in the Association's prestigious 100 Club, which recognizes outstanding programs that gain more than 100 strength points over the course of a year. School strength is determined by the number of honor degrees earned by students and coaches, so this award is the result of every team member's hard work and dedication. Congratulations to the whole team!

That's a wrap! From Sonoma County to Copenhagen, our community showed up to run, walk, and join together in 3.14 miles of fun for the first SA5K. Congratulations to our prize winners! Most impressive route art: Deborah Hammon and Hannah Christensen Most creative 5k: Oona McKnight (on the rowing machine!) Best post-race recovery college dorm meal: Grace Rubardt '19... Best race prep and cutest sidekick: Kim and Ellie Eber Fastest current students: Riley Ryan '24 (male) and Julia Bilal '24 (female) Fastest alumni: Kheva Mann '18 (male) and Zoe Pond-McPherson '08 (female) Fastest trustee: Tory Nosler Fastest overall: Kheva Mann '18 (male) and Kerry Hanlon Congratulations and thanks to all who participated!

Have you registered yet for the first-ever SA5K? Registration is open now and we hope that everyone in our community, from students to families to alumni, plans to participate in this virtual 5k run/jog/walk during the week of Thanksgiving. Don't delay...register online today! https://raceroster.com/events/2020/36582/sa5k

This is a year like no other...luckily, we are used to that here. Curious about what makes us special? Join us for a virtual Open House tomorrow, Thursday, October 29!

It's that first day of school feeling all over again...after weeks of careful planning and preparation, we are thrilled to be welcoming students back to our campus for the first time today. The first students back are small groups of ninth graders, who will meet with their Health and Wellness TAs and finally get to see one another (masked) face to (masked) face. We look forward to bringing other small groups onto campus in the coming weeks for extracurricular activities and l...earning support, as permitted while Sonoma County remains in the purple tier. Our Health and Safety Task Force has come up with detailed procedures to keep our students and staffulty safe including frequent Covid-19 testing, small socially distanced cohorts, enhanced cleaning protocols, and outdoor meetings. You can read more about our health and safety guidelines on our website: https://www.sonomaacademy.org/2020-reopening-plan.

In a typical day at Sonoma Academy, visitors popping into our STEM classes might find physics students conducting experiments in velocity with flying pigs suspended from the ceiling; stats students huddled together, seeking consensus as they discuss possible solutions to a problem; biology students examining plant cells under microscopes; chemistry students dipping alkali metals into water and recording the reactions they observe. Of course, these are not typical days, and o...ur STEM department is reinventing their pedagogy to engage students in math and science from home. Our teachers are excited and intrigued by this massive experiment in learning. As they reimagine their teaching, they are guided by the tools of science: data, feedback, research, and above all, a lot of patience. Read more about how we are reinventing our STEM curriculum on our website: https://www.sonomaacademy.org/news-detail See more

Hey, Alumni! Don't miss our first-ever Alumni Coyote Tales tomorrow night, Wednesday October 21 at 5:30 pm PDT. The evening will be hosted by everyone's favorite storyteller, Brandon Spars, and Chris Fitzsimmons '09, and will feature ten alumni telling stories related to the theme "When We Were Young." Check your email for the Zoom link...hope to see you there!

What a week it's been! We are back in the swing of things, (virtually, of course). The first week of the new school year kicked off last Monday with students meeting up New Student Orientation and grade-level "returns," and now we are getting into the rhythm of classes. Last night, our campus hosted 25 firefighters from the San Francisco, Mountain View, Gilroy, and Sunnyvale Fire Departments. A team of alumni parents and staffulty sprang into action to offer up our gym for rest, relaxation, and lots of delicious food. The firefighters quickly felt at home at SA (it helped that several of them had stayed on our campus during the 2017 fires). Director of Athletics Chris Ziemer sent these photos of the crew, saying, "although we can't be on campus right now, it is serving our community well in a time of need."

Humanities Teacher Rodney Fierce has written this piece "The Price of Being Pleasing." "I don’t own Ralph Lauren polos in 15 colors because I have an irrational love of ponies. Each shirt is a piece of battle armor." Please take a few moments to read his perspective.

Announcing our 2020 Reopening Plan available at https://www.sonomaacademy.org/2020-reopening-plan

"The light in the restaurant was golden light, heavy lightan outdated sort of light, honestly, popular in the nineties but now a remnant of a kind of gaudy, old-school pleasure it was no longer fashionable to enjoy." So begins a new story, "Son of Friedman," written by Emma Cline '06. Read the story or listen to Emma's audible version by following the link to June 24 issue of The New Yorker Magazine. Emma's debut novel, The Girls, was a bestseller, and she won the Plimpton Fiction Prize in 2014.