ACS Athens

Fall 2007 - Volume 2 - Issue 1

MS Science Fair: Scientific Inquiry through Collaborative Learning

ACS Athens

Fall 2007 - Volume 2 - Issue 1

Alumni Affairs • Professional Development • Short Subjects • Special Events • Snapshots of Student Life

The Odyssey of Two Student Teachers:Collaboration with the University of Winnipeg

From the Klondike to Kokinia:A Model for Investigative Historical Research

The Dome Installation:Sharing Experience

Publisher: ACS Athens, Editor-in-Chief: Marca A. Daley. Production Team: John Papadakis, Marianna Savvas. Contributors: ACS Athens Faculty, Staff, Students, Parents and Alumni. Art Direction, Design & Printing: GalPro. Cover Design & Concept: Dot Repro SA. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine (text or pictures) may be reproduced without the consent of the publisher.

Ethos: n. Greek: ethos: nature, disposition. The characteristic spirit of a culture, era, community, institution, etc., as manifested in its attitudes, aspirations, customs, etc; the character of an individual as represented by his or her values and beliefs; the prevalent tone of a literary work in this respect.

MISSION

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ACS Athens is an international school, embracing American educational philosophy, principles and values.

ACS Athens provides a student-centered environment where individuals excel academically and develop intellectually,

socially and ethically to thrive as healthy, responsible members

of global society.

Dear Mrs.Daley, Many congratulations to you as editor of the Ethos magazine of our school. Congratulations to the production team and to the contributors, too. The magazine as a whole is really a product of very hard and inspired work. Collaboration among the contributors is also apparent and recognized. A number of impeccable ideas made this publication impressive and remarkable: • The name of the magazine • The purposes of our School and the Head’s vision and goals being presented in the very first pages • The target of giving parents and friends the opportunity to under- stand and appreciate the high standards of the work, which is done by all members of our school, being explicit everywhere in the magazine • The involvement of people who had something vital and relevant to say. • The vivid language and presentation employed throughout the magazine. Moreover, I would like to highlight your idea of devoting a section to the Staff ’s professional development, which gave us the opportunity to come across interesting and helpful publications, like Mrs.Pelonis’ book «ΥΠΑΡΧΩ-ΑΛΛΑΖΩ».Finally, I found the idea of Alumni and Behind the Scenes sections re-markable, revealing your sensitivity and intrinsic, humane feelings.

With best wishes,Barbara Georgiadou-Kabouridis

ACS Athens teachers and Administrators often receive notes from parents or students who want to share their news. Pidgie Lawson is the mother of Lili (2003) and Dimitri (2005) and sent this email message to the principal of the Academy, Mr. Medeiros at the end of the school year.

Fri Jun 22 4:05Subject: American Community Schools of Athens: gratitudeFrom: Pidgie Lawson <usagreece1@hotmail.com>Mr. Medeiros, you may remember Lili and De Papadimitriou_my chil-dren. Lili was among the first group of HS/IB scholarship recipients in 2000, and De followed 2 years later. Now as Lili graduates Uni of Bath, England, with a “first” (something like an honorable cum laude recog-nition) in her major (business) and a good job lined up in a graduate leadership program in which she was one of 5 grads picked out of 1200, I can only thank the powers that be once again. ACS opened her doors and allowed Lili to enter and thrive, and she was given the opportunity to reach her potential and be the best she could be. De, now enter-ing his junior year at Brandeis in the fall, is immersed in theater arts, a Dean’s list student. He, as well, would never be where he is without the benevolence of ACS. What a wonderful gift they were given 7 and 5 years ago respectively. ACS gave them their future.

From UNESCO: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. . .COLLABORATIVE LEARNING - when learners work in groups on the same task simultaneously, thinking together over demands and tackling complexities.

Letter from the EditorLETTERS

Letter to the Editor

The second issue of the ACS Athens Ethos is set to go to press and I have yet to begin writing the Letter from the Editor. Actually, that’s not quite true – I have begun writing quite a few letters. One used Walt Whitman’s A Noiseless Patient Spider as the underlying metaphor; one returned to Purr-puss and her kittens with a vague idea of giving them all names that I could use in the magazine; one even used sudoku strategies as a means of connecting ideas on collaboration. None seemed appropriate. Finally, with the deadline looming, it dawned on me. If I want to focus on this issue’s theme, collaboration, I have only to look at the process of producing this magazine.

In September 2006 the community response to our first Call for Articles with innovation as the theme was overwhelming, and resulted in twenty-three articles, long and short, with a focus on renewal and change. That first issue of the ACS Athens Ethos surpassed all our expectations and was certainly successful in its purpose of conveying the essence of our beliefs and values as educators. Yet it was the heartening response from you (our diverse community audience) to our first publication that encouraged and inspired us to continue with this second issue’s theme collaboration.

Collaboration: the act of shared creation and / or discovery.

When the second Call for Articles went out last June, I had no idea of the magnitude of the response I would receive; not only in the number of col-leagues willing to share their experiences with collaborative learning, but also in the depth and scope of the articles submitted. Within the pages of this magazine you will find thirty-three articles, long and short, all with a focus of working together, tackling complexities, meeting challenges and discovering the joy of shared experience.

From art installations to athletics, from the ‘combo class’ to UNESCO, from the Klondike to Kokinia, you will read about collaboration and colla-borative efforts with other schools, other disciplines, even other countries. Our Cover Story is the account of scientific inquiry through collaborative learning that culminates in the Middle School Science Fair. The Elementary School looks at collaboration class by class, and the Arts Center highlights our special collaborative relationship on campus.

In Short Subjects we revisit several programs and departments and in Spe-cial Events you’ll find exactly that: special occasions throughout the spring and fall that all emphasize the spirit of collaboration. The Professional Development section will give you added insight into the ACS Athens faculty, while Alumni Affairs, prepared by Marianna Savvas, highlights the recent Alumni Reunion.

These are the sections of the magazine that you can see. What you can’t see within these pages are my colleagues who created the articles. From JK to 12th grade and across the disciplines, we have worked together to meet the challenges and tackle the complexities of publishing this issue. I didn’t need Whitman or Purr-puss – in the process of working together we have discovered the joy of shared experience… through a collective vision and collegial collaboration.

Marca A. Daley, Editor04

2. This issue of the ACS Athens Ethos focuses on collaboration. Please comment on the value of collaborative efforts at ACS Athens.

In the past two years we have ‘pushed’ the upgrading of the technology infrastructure at our institution and using new technologies in teaching and learning. The only way to make a significant difference in this area is for our faculty to gain ownership of this initiative and this can be done through collaboration. Colleagues have the opportunity to help each other by collaborating in after-school sessions, as well as during common preparation time, to share their expertise in use of blackboard, smart boards, and other innovative technologies. Teachers helping teachers is one of the most valuable collaborative efforts at ACS Athens this year and is an excellent leadership example for students to follow.

Stefanos Gialamas

Collaboration is a concept that must be resident in any organization if that organization is to become successful. Collaboration allows for an increased flow of information, it enables and can create a “synergistic effect” where the sum of the parts is greater than the individual parts themselves, and it facilitates team building. All of these elements reside in highly successful, efficiently run organiza-tions.

When people are working together for a common goal, when everyone is focused on a common target, contributing what-ever they can to the cause (be it little or great), there is nothing that cannot be accomplished. Strength in numbers, efficiencies, and force multipliers are the result of collaborative efforts. Collaborative efforts allow everyone to be on the “same bus,” going to the same destination, arriving at the same time, and having a good time in the process. This is something we need to strive continually to achieve and cultivate within all members of the ACS family.

Steve Boukedes

Q & A with the Head of Schools and Board President

1. The first issue of the ACS Athens Ethos focused on innovation and change. From your perspective, what are the most significant changes that have occurred in the past year?

One of the most significant changes was realized during the Middle States Ac-creditation process. As you know, we went through an intensive self-study last year, and one of our three objectives was learning through service. This is the goal of civic responsibility. We have always had some faculty and staff fully engaged and involved with some students, but through the accreditation process the focus on civic responsibility has been in-stitutionalized. We have entered a new era for our community and we will see more and more involvement in learning through service. It is an institutional commitment that all of our students (and I hope all of our faculty) will engage in significant civic service.

Stefanos Gialamas

From my perspective, some of the most significant changes I have seen over the past year to the start of this year is an overall increased level of enthusiasm among everyone at ACS; par-ents, teachers, administrators, and students. There is an increased level of communication across the board with a seemingly genuine desire to improve the school in every respect. There is a “buzz” in the air at ACS that exudes confidence, that this year will build on the improve-ments from last year and set the stage for future success. Aside from the obvious structural changes (new windows through the school) and population increases on campus (as a result of increases in enrollment), I have noticed an attitudinal change that change is good, that it allows an organization to grow and improve, that change is nothing to be feared but embraced, and through change, an organization can realize and fulfill its potential. We are embarking on a major effort this year to address Governance and Leadership that will lead to changes in the way the School Board governs the school. I am confident that this effort or change will greatly improve ACS, that it will enable ACS to focus and at-tain it mission, goals and vision, and set the foundation to allow ACS to continue for another 60 years as being the premier international school in Athens.

Steve Boukedes

Collaboration is an act of shared creation and/or discovery.

I asked our Head of Schools, Stefanos Gialamas, and Board President, Steve Boukedes if they would mind if I posed some questions for this issue of the maga-zine. Both agreed. Thus, Q & A came into being. The focus is, of course, on the themes that are central to our collective vision. Here are my Questions and their Answers.

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Letters 4Q & A with the Head of Schools and Board President 5COVER STORY Middle School Science Fair Christina Bakoyannis 8 FEATURE ARTICLES Faculty Leadership & New Academic Administrators Stefanos Gialamas 10 Collaboration – the Key to the Combo Class Dave Nelson, Nick Mouchtouris, Julia Tavlas 12 The Dome Installation: Sharing Experience Cim Thomakos 13 Collaboration in the Elementary School Dina Pappas 16 From the Klondike to Kokinia Janet Karvouniaris 18 The Odyssey of Two Student Teachers Louesa Polyzoi 22 Beri’s Bridge Patty Green 24 OTHER ARTICLES Athletics & Civic Responsibility Annie Constantinides 26 Nurturing Learning through Collaboration Nia Donas-Voulgari 28 The Principal’s Page – the Academy Steve Medeiros 31 The Arts Center at ACS Poly Chryssanthakopoulos 32 UNESCO – Schools in Athens Collaborate Sonia Kormaris 34 Practical Arts – Hands-on Training Jim Koulyras 35 The Parent Teacher Organization Kristal Alley 37SHORT SUBJECTS Habitat for Humanity Ellen Froustis Vriniotis 38 The Summer Institute – IB Prep Course Lykourgos Hristakos & Sana Kassem 39 The Summer Institute – International Relations Course Eugene Gerogiokas & Nicholas Nimara 41 Technology & Self-Esteem Angela Kiki Spiliot 41 ACS Athens Summer Camp Annie Constantinides 43 Notes from the Music Department Athina Mitsopoulou 43 What’s New in Audio Visual? Jim Koulyras 43 What’s New in Student Services? Peggy Pelonis 44 Lifelong Wellness at the Elementary School Stavroula Salouros 44 The Information Technology Department Mary Manos 45 The House System at the Elementary School Stavroula Salouros 45 SPECIAL EVENTS Middle School Greek Play: Aristophanes’s Ornithes Tonia Firigou & Anastasia Symeonides 47 Grand Opening of the Stavros Niarchos Learning Center The OM Team 48 Academy Musical: A Chorus Line Elaine Seremetis & Megan Zoumaya 49 The Windows Project Steve Kakaris 50 Collaborating to Argue – Summer Debate Camp Zen Zambakides 51 Donations to Victims of the Summer Conflagrations Will Seremetis 53 12th Annual Golden Wreath Awards Marca Daley 53 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 54 Conferences Further Education Faculty Art Exhibitions SNAPSHOTS OF STUDENT LIFE 57ALUMNI AFFAIRS Alumni Profile: The Dynamic Demos Family Kathleen Jasonides 58 Alumni Reunion Marianna Savvas 60 Grapevine Marianna Savvas 62IN THE SPOTLIGHT – Our Contributors 64HOW TO CONTACT US 66

Table of Contents

Collaborate: Work together for a common purpose.07

Middle School Science FairScientific Inquiry through Collaborative Learning

The teaching of science lends itself to many collaborative efforts. Science is about answering questions that arise from our natural world. The science classroom engages students in the art of asking questions that can be answered through research and applied through the scientific method. Students hypothesize, research a problem, plan experiments, interpret their results and draw conclusions as they take part in the active learning process of the science classroom. Middle school students are in the developmental stage of formulating their own ideas of the world around them and are full of enthusiasm when taking part in minds-on and hands-on ac-tivities. One such project that capitalizes on middle school students’ questions and curiosity is the Science Fair.

At the ACS Athens Middle School, students are guided by their science classes through a Science Fair project in grades 6-8. The Science Fair process lasts from 5 to 8 weeks and requires stu-dents to work collaboratively with their group members as they attempt to plan and meet the deadlines of the project. Science Fair is an open-ended project whereby students independently or in groups choose a topic of interest and formulate questions that can be answered through experimentation. Students choose partners who share topics of interest to work collaboratively on the project.

Students first brainstorm possible topics of interest and as a group agree on one they would like to focus on then formulate their question. Students are given time to research in the library and take notes as well as seek advice from experts. The question is then narrowed down to a ques-tion that can be answered through scientific investigation. Students then develop a hypothesis or a statement that is clearly substantiated by evidence and based on the knowledge and facts they are acquainted with so far. Students also plan the scientific investigation by first thinking about how they can develop a fair test by clearly explaining the relationship between their variables; that is, what they are testing, what they are measuring, and how their experiment can be con-trolled. In a collaborative work environment, students write their own experimental procedures and list the materials they will need.

Once the planning of the experiment is discussed with the teacher and suggestions for improvement are noted, students start conducting their ex-periments; in this way, good data is collected and multiple testing is recom-mended. Students collect data in an organized chart or table, take pictures, and make drawings and observations. In the end, students state their con-clusions by explaining what happened and use their data to state whether their hypothesis was right or wrong. They later evaluate the experiment and suggest further research on the topic.

Science Fair is a collaborative effort between students and the teacher. The teacher is the advisor to the group. The group discusses the shortcom-ings and problems that they encounter along the way with the teacher who suggests other areas that need to be researched and improvements in the planning of an experiment. The teacher is also present while students perform experiments. Academy science teachers also act as advisors to the students and are present to discuss and judge the science fair projects during the Exhibition.

Science Fair is also a reflective process where students reflect on their progress in a log explaining what was done and what were the problems en-countered. This also helps students to remain focused and organized, while also allowing the teacher the opportunity to advise along the way. At the end, students reflect on what they learnt through this process, how they and their partners worked together, what their major contribution to the project was, what the best moments were and what could be done better

next time.

Christina Bakoyannis, Science Dept. Chair

Science Fair is a collaborative effort between students and teacher.

COVER STORY

In their final reflection process, students who worked in a group setting admitted that they worked productively because they divided the workload, were organized and worked hard together on all areas of the project when they met. Their main reasons for liking the Science Fair project was the freedom to choose a subject of interest, perform-ing the experiment, researching their topic, creating their poster display and working with other students. Students identified that the Science Fair was a good learning experi-ence as they learnt more about their topic and question, learnt to meet deadlines, helped their organizational skills and improved their lab report writing.

The culmination of the project leads to Science Fair Day where students exhibit their work. The project is presented to the ACS community: parents, teachers, administrators and students from other grade levels who visit the Sci-ence Fair, discuss the topics, ask questions and learn more about science. Along the way, the groups are judged for their knowledge of the content, their hypothesis develop-ment, the description of the procedure, their data collec-tion, diagrams, conclusion and summary, their enthusiasm and preparedness. Students are eager to share their knowl-edge and to present the details of their projects during the event which allows students to communicate their findings to the public.

Some past questions and topics of collaborative group projects consisted of the fol-lowing:

• How does the DNA of onions, broccoli and green split peas compare in size, shape and color? In this project, the history, importance and structure of DNA was researched and the students also created a model of DNA to exhibit its molecular structure.

• How can the mass of an object on an inclined plane be determined using New- ton’s Second Law?

• What wooden structure would withstand an earthquake and for how many shakes? The group designed an earthquake simulator in order to perform the experiment.

• How do the calories in homemade chips compare to commercial chips? The group designed a calorimeter to take measurements. • What liquid substances affect tooth structure the most? The group recorded

their observations as well as photographed the changes in tooth structure. • How do the shape, material and length of the blades of a windmill affect the spin rate?• Which oil-based soaps clean stains best?? The group produced their own soap bars along the way.

We are looking forward to more wonderful project ideas from students. This project builds the self-confidence of middle school students and motivates them to expand on their science knowledge. It allows them to take initiative in problem-solving, decision-making, research skills and experimental work and makes them life-long learners.

COVER PHOTO: 2007 7th Grade 1st Place Winners - A study of DNA. Alexander Apostolides, Alexander Kazakeas, Nassos Abuel Basal.

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In an article which integrates his ideas from three previous publications, Dr. Gialamas presented strategies to new academic administrators in the area of faculty leadership which he defined as, “the continuous act of leading faculty in accomplishing the mission of the institution, and in achieving their own professional growth and development.”

In his introduction Dr. Gialamas asserts that social, political, economic and educational trends are rapidly changing the nature of teaching, learn-ing, scholarship and managing people, and that furthermore, academic institutions have become more complex organizations with increasingly complicated decision-making processes.

In particular, he stresses that over the years academic administrators have progressively assumed multiple types and levels of responsibilities, and that today academic administrators must also be faculty developers leading them in professional growth and development, arranging teaching assignments, and conducting performance evaluations. Academic admin-istrators set long-term direction and create the vision of the academic unit they lead by determining how the curriculum should be modified or improved in order to fulfill the needs of students, the workforce, and society. Simultaneously, they must also effectively represent their faculty internally and externally. He also maintains that the faculty of an institu-tion are essential in the institution’s efforts to develop a good reputation for teaching, scientific advantages, services to the community and inno-vative practices. Faculty are, Dr. Gialamas avows, the most valuable and expensive asset of an institution and their commitment to the students and to their institutions must not be weakened.

What follows are the key ‘points’ of the article which may be read in its entirety by contacting the editor.

Faculty Leadership

Academic administrators are expected to exhibit faculty leadership, and the article identifies six major components:

-Mission, Vision and Strategies -Faculty Recruitment -Faculty Training -Faculty Professional Development -Faculty Professional Growth -Faculty Performance Evaluation

The author goes on to say that certain identifiable characteristics are catalysts for a person successfully to achieve these objectives of faculty leadership. These characteristics include being an open-minded person, a good listener, a life-long learner, a problem solver, a person who believes in the power of collective minds, a person willing to take chances with people, a person who is willing to share power, delegate responsibility as well as authority, and a person who is a kind human being. Particular points follow:

1. Vision and StrategiesThe administrator should partner with the faculty to shape the future of the institution by clearly and precisely defining its mission. The leader should also identify strategies for carrying out the mission and vision. 2. Faculty RecruitingIn collaboration with faculty, the academic administrator must develop a strategy to ensure that the recruited faculty not only have the identified qualifications needed to accomplish the mission, but also are dedicated, enthusiastic and able to work effectively as a team.

FACULTY LEADERSHIPand New Academic Administrators

Stefanos Gialamas, Head of Schools & Marca A Daley, Editor

FEATURED

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The Faculty Leadership Praxis Matrix

The following specific action steps are strongly recommended to any new academic administrator:

1. Make sure that all faculty understand, accept and internalize the mission, vision and strategies for the institution.2. Identify faculty needs and recruit the appropriate faculty. 3. Provide comprehensive training to new faculty and a developmental plan for continuing faculty.4. Educate and prepare faculty to embrace the mission and purposes.5. Prepare faculty for their duties. 6. Identify needs and opportunities for faculty development and growth.7. Establish and complete the yearly faculty appraisal form.8. Establish strong and consistent feedback to accomplish the goals of the yearly faculty appraisal form.9. Remind faculty in advance about the deadlines for submitting their self-evaluation forms.10. Train personnel to review and analyze all submissions in support of an evaluation.11. Before the official final deadline for the evaluation, meet with the faculty member to eliminate any misunderstanding and to provide feedback to the faculty member.12. Give the performance appraisal on time and include planning for next year’s goals.

Dr. Gialamas concludes the article by stating that new academic administrators must not only understand and internalize the magni-tude of their influence in faculty development and personal professional growth, but must also realize that in so doing, they shape the mission and the vision of the entire institution.

3. Faculty Training, Professional Development, and Personal Professional Growth

A large number of faculty members enter the teaching profession with teaching preparation that does not reflect the needs of our global society. Certain critical aspects of an institution’s environment can also create an enhanced demand for a better-prepared educator, such as a diverse student population and new delivery formats. Dr. Gialamas believes that while content expertise is necessary, it is not sufficient to provide the best educational experience for students. “What we teach is important, but how we teach is even more so for maximizing our students’ learning. This is especially true for an international academic institution.”

Administrators must establish strategies for developing faculty in the areas of teaching, services, and scholarship, broadly defined by Boyer (1990) as the scholarship of discovery, integration, applications and of teaching. In addition, a leader should always be willing to identify poten-tial for Faculty Personal Professional Growth (FPPG) (Gialamas 2001), and provide motivation, support and guidance to achieve the goal.

The article goes on to discuss the critical factors and strategies a leader must consider if (s)he is to be successful in promoting and supporting fac-ulty personal professional growth. Providing motivation and support for faculty members to pursue their personal professional growth requires a leader to be competent and to enjoy the confidence and support of his or her faculty. Furthermore, he must have the desire to serve the faculty and provide them with high quality opportunities for professional growth and development instead of policing and controlling.

There is great value in demonstrating such support for faculty, including enhanced morale, lower turnover, and the subsequent inherent benefits to students.

4. Faculty Performance Evaluation

Dr. Gialamas points out that one of the most frequent sources of con-flict between the administration and a faculty member is the lack of clear communication to the faculty regarding faculty accountability and the criteria for performance evaluation. Transparency, honesty and open-ness are essential elements in faculty performance evaluation. To achieve productive and effective faculty performance evaluations, he strongly suggests some particular strategies including: yearly faculty accountabil-ity and performance evaluations that take into account the criteria for measuring success in the areas of teaching, services and professional ac-tivities, the prior year’s performance, the faculty self-evaluation, student class evaluations, class observations, and other relevant material that are used to develop insights in the progress and proficiency of the faculty member in distinct areas of accountability.

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Collaboration: the Key to the 10th Grade Combo ClassDave Nelson, Nick Mouchtouris, JuliaTavlas

The “Combo” class came to fruition in September 2001 when American Studies teacher Mr. David Nelson and American Literature teacher Mr. Wil-liam Papatassos joined their disciplines to create a theme-based study of American History and Literature. Their goal was to create a course that broke down the barriers between their classes in order to make the content more interesting and relevant to students. Merging their curricula, the teachers explore themes that include: the origins of American values, constitutional law, the cost and benefits of expansion, the definition of success in the 1920s, the changing face of America after World Wars I and II, the foreign policy implications of the Cold War, and the development of social consciousness during the civil rights struggle. Year after year, the course has evolved, benefiting from the teachers’ common planning time and their sharing of ideas. Highlights of the course include the Constitutional Debate, Presidential Elections, the 1920s Radio Show, and the Truman Trial. Six years later, the “Combo” continues to be a favorite class of graduating students.

Notes from former Combo Student, Nick Mouchtouris, Class of 2008As a new student at ACS who was used to strict-boring-pointless courses in the Greek public school system, I took the “Combo” class in 2005 without having had any experience in the American educational system. I was really impressed by the innovative methods Mr. David Nelson and Mr. William Papatassos used in order to combine American History and American Literature into one course, making the two disciplines complemen-tary, with each teacher explaining and adding to the other. What was very interesting was reading works of literature, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920’s classic The Great Gatsby, which shared the author’s personal experience of the historical events we were simultaneously studying. I was surprised to see that the two teachers succeeded in attracting everybody’s attention. All students participated by contributing in the class regardless of their academic standing or how much they had studied. This interdisciplinary course and the interaction of multi-national students established a creative atmosphere that gave everybody the opportunity to enjoy school and learn even more!

Thoughts from former Combo student, Julia Tavlas, Class of 2008Whoever says ‘doing too much at once accomplishes too little’ was definitely not a “Combo” student.Although the 10th grade Combo class is known to be a combination of just English and History, it is actually much more than that. It is a class that incorporates unlikely things together. Besides English and History as the basic subjects of study, Combo combines theater, debate, experiments, riddles, art, court trials, radio hosting, surveys, music, speech making, and role-playing all into one class. The incorporation of so many different activi-ties and subjects is not a disadvantage to the class, as some might think. Instead, it is the course’s most beneficial element. The Combo class does not only offer the students a number of diverse activities and the opportunity to see different points of view, but it also has a long-term effect on its students. The collaboration of so many subjects, activities, and events, not only makes the class unique and loved by all students, but is also helps students develop into a group of open-minded, opinionated, and critical thinkers. Combo’s integration of limitless activi-ties and a variety of subjects helps the students grow into a group of active, accepting, and helpful young adults who think “outside the box” and recognize the importance of team work. The Combo class has a curriculum that has broken away from convention. The success of the class has proven that combining art, science, literature, history, and downright fun into a single lesson is a wonderful and advantageous experience that helps students grow into mature, cooperative, well-rounded people.

Students develop into a group of open-minded, opinionated, and critical thinkers.

FEATURED

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The Dome Installation Sharing Experience Cim Thomakos, Academy Art Teacher

After school on February 14, 2007, seven IB Visual Arts students hauled bags of dirty old balls from a storage closet to the Elementary School Li-brary. For some of them, revisiting the dome brought back childhood memories of reading and being read to inside the safety and comfort of the semi-spherical enclosure.

They were hesitant. They had a problem to solve, but they didn’t have a plan. They simply had to begin. They placed random balls here and there, wedged others in place beside them, attempting to completely fill in one of the many open triangles that comprise the dome.

Ideas incubate with time. Unbeknownst to the conscious mind, the sub-conscious goes eagerly to work, pushing thought up against thought, ex-perimenting with combinations of possibilities. With luck, it might hit on an inspired notion. When that happens, the idea pops up like a ball held under water and then released. The concept arrives all-at-once, holistic, and intact. When analyzed, a logical framework of thought appears to emerge.

The ACS Ball Project collects used and found balls and reuses them to make art. The Project needed a great site for a new installation work. The oppor-tunity to collaborate on building an authentic piece of installation art would be an enlightening experience for IB Visual Arts students. Most of them were studying architecture, and across campus in the Elementary School Li-brary sat an engaging engineering phenomenon; a blue wooden-frame model of R. Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome.

The dome’s curving frame of conjoined triangles vaulted high overhead. The art students worked together as a single body in a close bunch. They filled the base of a triangle with a row of balls, starting from the corners and working towards the center, then added row upon row until they reached the top. The pressure the balls exerted on one another created equilibrium, holding them in place. The kids needed helping hands on both sides of the open space to apply pressure and prevent the balls from rolling. Some stu-dents became concerned with aesthetics, wanting to exchange one ball for another so the configuration would look more pleasing. Others did not want to risk making a change and having all the balls fall down.

The longer they worked, the more efficient they became. They began to wonder about the top sections of the dome where the angles of the triangles became more parallel to the floor. What role would gravity play in holding the balls in these spaces? If they filled the entire surface of the dome with balls, what would happen to the light within the space? Did they have enough balls to fill all of the triangles?

Creative and scientific works have much in common. They emerge from questions that generate ideas. Both are experimental and outcomes are frequently unpredictable. Both physically experiential endeavors are guided largely by intuition. “Children are born true scientists,” Buckminster Fuller said. “They spontaneously experiment and experience and experience again. They smell, taste, bite and touch-test for hardness, softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness: they heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush and try to pull things apart.”1

The elementary students could barely contain their excitement when they walked into the library and found balls all over the floor. The urge to kick, throw and play was irresistible. Inside the Geodesic Dome they looked up at the balls suspended over their heads and wondered how they got there, how they stayed in place, and what would happen if they all fell down on their heads? When Librarian Kathy O’Donoghue invited grades 1-5 to fill in the triangles with balls, the kids didn’t hesitate for an instant. They threw themselves into the task with wild abandon. It was chaos.

Creative work necessitates an open attitude to the perceptions of others, faith in unexpected outcomes.

FEATURED

Yelling and laughing, they scrambled for balls. They pounded them into the corners of the triangles with their elbows. They discovered that putting a ball in one place might cause all of the others to fall down. Some kids inadvertently ‘cheated’, using a wall behind the dome for support. The younger the students, the more quickly and naturally they solved the problem. Some kids wanted to keep trying every time they came into the library. Others were interested in seeing what would happen if they knocked it all down.

After the activity session, each class sat quietly on the floor inside the dome and talked with Mrs. O’Donoghue. They learned that the structure they sit inside every week was designed by Buckminster Fuller and that he used only triangles, fit together in a complex network, to create its curved surface. They discussed the way pressure holds an arch in place and the way pressure holds the balls in place in the triangles. They discussed weight and gravity. They wondered why some balls fall from part of a triangle while oth-ers stay in place.

The elementary students wondered how long the balls would stay up. They wondered how many balls there were. They were amazed to think that there were high school students who were tall enough to reach the top of the dome. And they noticed that as the triangles filled up, it was getting darker inside the dome.

“A lot of people think or believe or know they feel (experience)…but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling (experiencing). Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel (experience). Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel (experi-ence), you’re nobody but yourself.” (R. Buckminster Fuller)2

Dave Nelson jumped at the chance to bring his Theory of Knowledge classes into the dome installation. “TOK students learn best through doing, experiencing, witnessing,” he said. They had been studying science and scientific method and Mr. Nelson was fascinated because his students would be presented with a problem and be asked to solve it creatively. Inside the dome, some groups began to hypothesize with the intent to test their model. Other groups just jumped in and played around using trial and error to find a solution. Others spent time reminiscing about what it felt like to be so big in the elementary school where they used to feel so small. Later they gathered inside the dome to reflect. One student wondered, “Are pieces of installation art successfully completed based on the artist’s scientific knowledge and his/her ability to apply it or is it based on intuition and artistic skill?” Another concluded, “It’s a lot easier to think how to do something than it is to actually do it.” The most surprising thing that trans-pired was a discussion of the feelings generated within the space itself. Sitting inside the Geodesic Dome, students felt tranquil, safe and pleasantly isolated from the distractions of the outside world.

R. Buckminster Fuller was fascinated by natural and manmade structures composed of smaller similar parts that rely on one another to make up the whole. He studied fishing nets, bee hives and other ‘networks’ where the stress of the overall structure is evenly distributed to all its members.3 Fuller understood that human beings must work together “as a crew” in order to survive on this planet.4 He had great faith in the creative potential of mankind.5

After school on April 19, eleven IB Art students and their interested friends hauled the last bags of balls from storage to the elementary library to construct the final installation. They estimated there were not enough balls to fill all of the triangles. They discussed ways to design the installation to create a balance of positive (filled) and negative (empty) spaces. They decided the small smooth plastic balls were too slippery and should be left out.

It was crowded inside the dome. The floor was carpeted with big plastic garbage bags and hundreds of balls. The students moved in tables and chairs to stand on. They worked closely side by side filling in sections from the top of the dome and moving downward in several directions. The open-work design evolved from an organized plan into something more organic. Experienced students guided and advised their novice friends. There were friendly arguments, teasing, and encouragement and support. Their efforts were serious and playful. One student passed a soccer ball to another by rolling it up his arm. Another spun a basketball around on the tip of his finger.

The installation went up quickly and efficiently. There was time to spare. Sitting together under the dome, the students looked up and all around at the impressive results of their effort. They attempted to count how many balls they had actually used. Suddenly, one of the top sections caved in, and the balls, to the surprise and delight of the kids below, came raining down on their heads.

Students often make connections that educators do not envision.14

Creative work is messy. It demands a tolerance for chaos. It requires flexibility, agility and the ability to cope with anxiety. Creative work necessitates an open attitude to the perceptions of others, faith in unexpected outcomes. It requires the ability to see mistakes as op-portunities and the perseverance to work through failure.

Every day for two months, instead of picking up books, Kathy O’Donoghue picked balls up off the library floor. Looking back she admitted it had been “…a unique adventure. Learning comes in many ways and from unexpected places,” Kathy said. “This project offered such a variety of concepts, problems and solutions. It was not only educational and fun but students experienced the project in an area that does not do hands-on learning: the library.”

TOK students talked with Mr. Nelson about how moving from the traditional learning environment cleared their minds and made it easier to think. They discussed the limits of scientific method and the creativity of process. “We need to take advantage of the teachable moment,” Mr. Nelson said. “When asked openly to solve problems, students become more creative and resourceful. Students often make connections that educators do not envision. We need to provide op-portunities for students to experience the curriculum.”

In her book The Roots of Thinking, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone asserts that our sense of the world and the origin of our thinking come from our tactile-kinesthetic experience of living in an animate human form.

In the same way, Nietzsche described “thinking with the body.” Buckminster Fuller’s “feeling (experiencing)” seems to be about this same innate ability to be aware of how we perceive.

Ultimately the purpose of art is to share experience. Packing the Geodesic Dome with balls transformed the structure into a startling and impres-sive new form. The invitation to interact allowed participants to get into playful and surprising relationships with a structure they only passively assumed before.

In the process of its creation, The Geodesic Dome Installation took on a life of its own. When perceived, it intensified awareness and stimulated a heightened state of consciousness. Antic and unpretentious, its presence offered fresh ways of seeing, unencumbered by preconceived notions of what-to-expect or how-it-should-be. It was genuine Experience.

To learn more about The ACS Ball Project, visit our website: http://ballproject.awardspace.com

1Moncur, Michael, and Laura Moncur. “R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes.” The Quotations Page. 27 July 2007 <www.quotationspage.com>.

2Craven, Jackie. “Richard Buckminster Fuller.” About.Com. 27 July 2007 <www.architecture.about.com>. 3Davies, Andy. “The Development of the Geodesic Dome.” Design-Tech.Org. 27 July 2007 <www.design-tech.org>.

4Craven, Jackie. “Spaceship Earth.” About.Com. 27 July 2007 <www.architecture.about.com>.

5Davies, Andy. “The Development of the Geodesic Dome.” Design-Tech.Org. 27 July 2007 <www.design-tech.org>.

ReferencesSheets-Johnstone, Maxine. The Roots of Thinking. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1990. 15

Elementary Students Collaborate to Make a Whale of a Difference

Dina Pappas, Elementary School Principal

Collaboration is the key to success. It is a partnership that is modeled for students by our teachers in the elementary school in order to achieve the best possible results in learning. This teamwork is cultivated at a very young age and slowly becomes a lifestyle as our students mature into adulthood.

There are many ways one can witness collaboration in the elementary school. It is not only taught, but also seen throughout the school. Through group effort, teachers educate students to be responsible for themselves, for each other, and for their environment.

As early as Junior Kindergarten, students learn about the various animals and their habitats in the ocean and land. This foundation is created and built upon each year as the students grow and develop.

Recycling starts in our school as early as Kindergarten. Recycling bins are available in every class and students are trained to separate paper from garbage. Through their unit on Recycling, Kindergarten teachers educate students how to reuse materials. One project is the recycling process of paper. Teachers believe that actually making their own recycled paper is the best way to learn, so using newspaper, a blender, water, a big square pan, a piece of window screen, and a flat piece of wood, students learn hands-on the recycling process. When they discover how easy it is to make recycled paper, students realize they all can help save trees and reuse paper instead of throwing it away. Little by little, every piece of paper makes a difference.

“Jobs” are taught from the 1st grade to a couple of students at a time by the teacher and then those students are responsible to teach the next couple of students after their “job” is complete in a few weeks and then they move on to another “job.” Students are also introduced to Animal Rescue Help. Students learn about various animals and even have turtles in their classroom. By having turtles, students are taught to care for them and feed them properly which heightens their awareness of other animals. Caring for animals helps foster empathy towards others.

In the 2nd grade, students learn to become even more responsible for themselves and each other on a daily basis. Good manners are practiced and students are rewarded by table based on the premise of teams. “United we stand, divided we fall.” Teachers teach the ocean habitat in depth and create awareness through lectures, discussions and research of the endangered life of animals. Studying the continent of Africa, students study various animals and their habitats and even go to the zoo as a field trip to see the animals live and to converse about the idea of caged animals. This hands-on experience touches the hearts of all our students and teachers.

Teachers educate students to be responsible for themselves, for each other, and for their environment.

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In their Pigeon Creek unit, the 2nd grade students build a community through collaborating together. As two classes, the students cooperate with each other and confer on how to best build a community and what the various aspects of community are involved. From building homes to build-ing schools to planting trees and obtaining water, students work hard to create their community all the while working together as a team. As the second grade teachers, Ms. Mantarakis and Ms. Sianis put it, “Together we can make a whale of a difference, but it takes every fish in the sea.”

The 3rd grade is starting a new concept this year: Adopt an Animal through WWF (World Wildlife Federation). Students will elect as a class to adopt an animal. First, they will research the various animals available for adoption and then choose one that best represents our school. In order to raise money for the adoption, the 3rd grade will have bake sales and use the money earned from them towards this cause. Students will have to collaborate with each other to decide what to sell, how much items should be sold for, and what goal they want to reach. Our math specialist, Irene Soteres, is excited about this project and plans to have students graph their profits. Teachers in the 3rd grade, Ms. Polideras and Mr. Pilleris, came up with the idea of adopting an animal because they felt that students needed more opportunities to give. Giving is something we should do throughout our lives no matter what our age. In the grand scheme of things, giving is the ultimate level of humanity as it shows our love and care for our world and ourselves.

4th grade is a treat in terms of civic responsibility. Teachers introduce a fascinating unit on the carbon footprint or reducing energy. Students are shown various ways of saving and caring for the environment, even such simple actions as turning off the water when brushing teeth or shutting off the lights when leaving a room. Students also partake in a Simple Machines unit in which they learn about hybrid cars and other innovations that will change the world. Students then become the creators and invent their own machines that could have a positive effect on the world. As the 4th grade teachers put it, the underlying thread throughout the 4th grade experience is, “Anything positive you do in life comes back to you. Our aim is to make children aware they are responsible for their world.”

Knowledge and know-how starts at home, is reinforced in school, and is carried out to the community which affects and shapes our global commu-nity. Everyone can make a difference. The 4th grade teachers, Ms. Donas and Ms. Pap, encourage students to take on leadership roles; “Kids become leaders in everything they do because they are supported to act upon their knowledge.”

Last year, Ms. Donas and Ms. Pap committed their efforts to the marine environment and support of the Project AWARE Foundation. Project AWARE (Aquatic World Awareness Responsibility Education) is a diving industry’s leading non profit environmental organization dedicated to tak-ing care of the underwater world through education, contacting people and action. Through the expertise of diver David White, students studied coral reefs, sharks and dolphins, kelp, sea turtles, and ecological problems with the sea. Students were made aware of what pollution does to our underwater friends and of how each one of them could help the ocean. Since “70% of the world’s oxygen comes from the oceans,” protecting our underwater forest is protecting ourselves. Our students have the know-how to clean up their beaches, Greece and the world and they act on it.

By the time a student graduates to the 5th grade, he/she is involved in another unique experience. Students in both 5th grade classes jointly write a play. With the help of their expert teachers, Ms. Sexson and Ms. Kynigou, they are guided to string their paragraphs into a masterpiece of a play. After the written work is complete and edited, students choose what other area they will shine in, whether it be making costumes, working on the lighting, composing lyrics or creating dance moves. The entire progression is a process of development. Students learn to get along with one another even if they don’t necessarily agree with each other. They learn to respect their peers, handle day-to-day problems, and manage to see the bigger picture. By show time, students have discovered what it takes to be a success and understood they all need to work with each other. No matter how big or small the role, everybody makes a difference. Nobody says it better than our students. The most recent play the 5th graders created was entitled The Navigating Nincompoops. This is what some students had to say about the process:“When you live something you learn something from it. I will remember the play till the day I die.” Irinna “I learned that if you don’t cooperate you will never get anything done. It was fun but tough. I would like to do this again.” George “I learned to share things with others and that if you want to make the best play you have to spend a lot of time on it!” Anran “In the play, the thing I had a problem with and I had to manage to stop was that I managed to stop talking behind the wings. The most important thing I learned is how to work with other people in a team.” Vangelis

“Together we can make a whale of a difference, but it takes every fish in the sea.”“I learned that if you don’t cooperate you will never get anything done.”

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From the Klondike to Kokinia A Model of Investigative Historical Research

Janet Karvouniaris, Academy Humanities Teacher

Around every corner, in the metro stations and even in a friend’s backyard, the keen observer can find bits of history - little known remnants of the past - ripe for exploration. Having come to Athens from the US over 30 years ago and settled here, I have come to know it as a city full of pleasant and interesting surprises. Perhaps because of my long association with ACS Athens as history/humanities teacher, I am always especially interested in stories about the collaboration between Greeks and Americans, so when the US Embassy installed the statue of George C. Marshall on the embassy grounds in 2000, I was fascinated by the exhibition documenting the cooperation between Greece and the US during the war-ravaged 20th century. Shortly after this, while searching for a friend’s house in Nikea, I came upon a street called “Odos Amerikanidon Kyrion”- The Street of the American Ladies. Stopping to ask directions at the kiosk, I noticed a white marble bust statue of a woman nestled in the corner of the grassy triangular plateia. Closer inspection revealed this simple inscription in Greek: American Citizen Esther Lovejoy DoctorMy curiosity was piqued! Thus began a compelling personal investigation of this woman and the other “American Ladies.” I returned to the area on a quiet Sunday morning to take some pictures and walk the street of the American Ladies hoping to find someone who could give me some insight into this intriguing connection between the US and Greece. Only the man at the kiosk told me that up the street there was a school and this had been the site of the American Women’s Hospital which had existed during the first half of 20th century. At least it was a start. I took some pictures and returned home to begin my research, starting with the internet. I also phoned a rela-tive of my husband who has a business in the area. She would prove to be a valuable primary source. The initial internet search yielded many “bytes and pieces” of information about Dr. Lovejoy and opened possibilities for print resources that might further inform the topic. I discovered that the historical archives of the Oregon Health and Science University contain articles, correspondence, photographs, manuscripts and biographical data about the life and work of Dr. Lovejoy. Among the honors she received is the Gold Cross of the Order of King George I from the Greek government. The general overview of Dr. Lovejoy’s life and work on the OHSU website helped me formulate a question for further investigation. Esther Pohl Lovejoy was born in her father’s Washington Territory logging camp Novem-ber 16, 1870. She is best known in the state of Oregon where she was the second woman to graduate from the University of Oregon medical school (in obstetrics and gynecology) and would become the head of the Portland Health Department from 1907-1909. In this capacity, she installed the first school nurse in an American school and implemented broad reforms in food hygiene. During the gold rush, Dr. Lovejoy provided medical care for the women in the mining camps in the Klondike, the first woman physician in this wilderness territory. Throughout her long life, she advocated for women’s health and women’s suffrage and wrote several books; but most significantly, Dr. Lovejoy dedicated herself to “care of the sick, the healing of wounds and rebuilding of human lives,” bringing emergency relief to the “suffering noncombatant populations, particularly women and children in war-stricken countries” (Lovejoy, p. 4). Her efforts through the Red Cross in World War One and as the President of the American Women’s International Medical Association from 1919 to 1967 brought aid to hundreds of thousands of sick, destitute and displaced people in many parts of the world. Her legacy is little known in the US and abroad, but if one knows where to look, tributes to Dr. Lovejoy’s humanitarian work may be discovered in unexpected places. One such place is in the working class area of Piraeus, Kokinia (today, Nikea). How did Dr. Lovejoy find her way from the Klondike to Kokinia? Who were these “American ladies” that the residents of Kokinia esteemed so highly that a street still honors them? Answers to these questions no longer seemed so elusive. I was gaining an historical perspective that suggested the answers “might be covered by the universal answer to difficult questions, employed in France between 1914 and 1918, to wit, ‘C’est la Guerre’ ” (Lovejoy, p.3).

The modest statue of Esther Pohl Lovejoy in Kokinia

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With the involvement of the US in World War I, many Ameri-can women physicians volunteered to join the military medical corps but were refused. These women from around the country formed a War Service Committee to lobby the War Department (it became the Department of Defense in 1949) for military commissions for women doctors. This committee became the American Women’s Hospital Ser-vice (AWHS) and though their offer was refused by the government, the Red Cross accepted and sent hospital units overseas. “Over a thousand women physicians registered with AWH during the first year, and in ac-cordance with the provisions of a special agreement, a large number of these were certified to the Red Cross for service in France, Italy, Poland and the Balkan States” (Lovejoy, p.6). Dr. Lovejoy served with the Red Cross in WWI working in many places in Europe. In her first book, The House of the Good Neighbor (1919), she describes her experiences in France during the war where the first American Women’s Hospital (AWH) was established in the village of Neufmoutiers near Paris in July, 1918. These hospitals multiplied and continued to provide medical assistance in Britain, Greece and the Far East, expanding into 30 countries after the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Esther Lovejoy and the other “various noble and charitable American ladies” (A. Pertev in a letter of gratitude to AWH, cited in Lovejoy) arrived in Greece by way of Smyrna. She had been tending to starving Armenians in the Russian Caucasus and was taking a rest in Europe when on Sept. 13, 1922, she learned of the fire in Smyrna (Housepian, p. 174). Dr. Lovejoy went directly to the city to join other American relief officials in arranging the immediate relief and evacuation of refugees. She was the only American woman on the scene and one of three doctors. This was disaster relief on a major scale. Eventually, 250,000 homeless refugees crowded the waterfront for two weeks enduring barbaric conditions. “Ev-ery surviving Armenian and Greek in Smyrna became a refugee” (The Near East Foundation. www.neareast.org, 2/10/2001). Ernest Hemingway recounted the tragedy in his short story, “On the Quai at Smyrna.” Dr. Lovejoy took great pains in her second book, Certain Samaritans (1933), to relate her experiences in Smyrna in detail, “because,” she writes, “my confidence in history has been so shaken by the misinformation circulated…” (Housepian, p. 192). By all accounts, her efforts during the last fateful week of the evacuation were heroic. Her own life was endangered on many occasions but on many more she was able to use her medical training and her wits to save the lives of others. On the night of September 29, 1922, Dr. Lovejoy boarded the Litchfield to return to the US to raise funds for the American Women’s Hos-pital Services, the only organization preparing to set up relief medical facilities at the crowded Greek ports where disease was already a critical problem. Personnel of AWH were posted to the Greek islands and mainland to receive the thousands of refugees pouring in from Turkey. With the $500,000 she raised, AWH was able to assume all medical responsibility for orphans and Near East Relief work in Greece. They paid the salaries of doctors and nurses, and covered the cost of medicine and supplies. Later in November of 1922, when the Great Powers met at Lausanne to settle the peace terms of WWI with Turkey, a new chapter in the ongoing humanitarian crisis began with the adoption of a plan for the compulsory exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey. The Red Cross continued to provide emergency aid to these populations in the short term but, “in March 1923, the American Red Cross gave notice that it was withdrawing from its emergency work in Greece, making it plain, however, that a state of emergency continued and Greece could not be expected to handle the problem alone” (Housepian, p.206). Thanks to Dr. Lovejoy and the AWHS, Greece was not alone. In conjunction with the Near East Relief Foundation, relief efforts continued vigorously in Greece. D. Doxiades, Minister of Hygiene and Public Assistance expressed the gratitude of the Greek nation to AWH in a letter dated March 9, 1923:

The sign for the “Street of the American Ladies”

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UNDERGRADUATE ADMISSIONS: 7 - 9 Ypatias Street, Mitropoleos Square (behind the Athens Cathedral), Athens 105 57 • Tel.: 210 32.39.740, 210 32.39.785, 210 32.36.647 • Fax: 210 32.48.502 • Undergraduate Programs e-mail: info@uindy.gr

CULTURAL CENTER & LIBRARY: 5 Markou Avriliou / 2 Kiristou & Lysiou Street, Plaka, Athens 105 57 TRIPOLIS CENTER: 20 Dariotou & 1 Apostolopoulou St. (behind the Municipal Building)

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“Yourorganization,representedinGreecebyDr.EstherLovejoyandDr.MabelElliot,hasreallybeenattheheightofaverydifficultsituation….Greeceowes a debt of gratitude to the AWH who crossed the ocean to put the spirit of method and organization, as well as the generous heart of the great American women at the service of more than a million distressed refugees” (Cited in Lovejoy). In the late 1920’s, Kokinia (Nikea) became the focus of the collaborative work of AWH. The emergency needs in the outlying areas of Greece declined and the nursing school that had opened in Thessaloniki in 1923 but interrupted its operation, re-opened at the American Women’s Hospital in Kokinia. The students were refugee women many of whom had been educated in English or American schools in Turkey so Greek was their third language. The first class graduated in 1929. The medical center, outpatient service, many clinics and nurses training school would be the enduring work of the AWH in Greece. The nurses would prove to be very useful to their country since they had been taught to work properly under primitive conditions. By this time, the community of Kokinia was a bustling town of 70,000 refugees living in two-room cottages that were beginning to look and feel like home. In Dr. Lovejoy’s words, “Around and around on its axis the world continues to move, and while the archaeologists are busy digging up the old marketplace, the Agora at Athens, which was developed during the Golden Age, a present-day agora of the concrete, oil and tin age is beginning to function at Kokinia, six miles away” (Lovejoy, Chapter 37). Today, the ancient agora has been uncovered to reveal memories of the past civilizations and few of the present-day residents of *Kokinia remember AWH as a unique expression of collaboration between a dedicated group of American women and the refugees who built their lives anew in Greece. My husband’s cousin, Eleni Paresoglou, who was born at the hospital in the early 1940’s still recalls the semi basement maze of many rooms still operating in the 1950’s under the leadership of Kyria Marika, known as “I atsida” (the capable one). She spoke to a “giagia” seated outside her door on Odos Amerikanidon Kyrion, who remembered “to Amerikaniko” or “to Ksilino” (the wooden building) as a source of medical care and sustenance during desperate times. In 1933, as Esther Pohl Lovejoy prepared to tell readers the story of the AWHS’ work in the Near East, she reflected:

“AsahumanitarianachievementtheAmericanWomen’sHospitalsholdsauniqueplaceinthefieldofforeignrelief.Thisserviceisbestknownbythosewhohave been sick and in distress, and unfortunately, few such people write for newspapers and periodicals. We have never been rich enough to maintain a publicity department, at home or abroad, for the purpose of keeping the details of our work before the public, and hereby hangs many a tale untold—many a thrilling story of heroism, and many an interesting item, which might have been added to Associated Press dispatches and cabled around the world to our advantage” (Lovejoy, Chapter 1).

What had begun as my serendipitous field study resulted in retelling the compelling tale of Dr. Lovejoy and these “noble and charitable American ladies of the 20th century,” a little-known but significant chapter in the epic of Greek-Ameri-can collaboration.

*Dr. Lovejoy’s description of the area and Athens in the late 1920’s is par-ticularly touching to today’s Athenians—the view from mount Aegaleo when seated on the Seat of Xerxes, looking out over the Bay of Eleusis and the Gulf of Aegina. “The seat of Xerxes is a good place from which to view the pageant of the ages…”in an effort to gain perspective on the tragedies of the past.

Sources CitedChanging the Face of Medicine. Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy.

www.nlm.nih.gov. 6/5/2007.History of the AMWA. www.amwa-doc.org 6/3/2002Housepian, Marjorie. The Smyrna Affair, HBJ, New York, 1971.Lovejoy, Esther Pohl. Certain Samaritans, 1933, out of print. Available in its

entirety online. www.ourstory.info/library.comStewart, Matthew. “It was All a Pleasant Business: The Historical Context of

‘On the Quai at Smyrna,’” The Hemingway Review Fall 2003, provided onlineby ProQuest Information and Learning Company. 6/5/2007.

“Turmoil in the Near East.” The Near East Foundation, www.neareast.org.2/10/2001.

Personal observations of the site in Kokinia; Color photos taken by the author.Telephone conversations with Eleni Paresoglou, Nikea 6/10/2001.

A school now stands on the site of the American Women’s Hospital of Kokinia

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The Odyssey of Two Student Teachers Collaboration with the University of Winnipeg

The Unfolding of a Greek Odyssey: Exploring New Cultural and Pedagogical Landscapes - Dr. Louesa Ployzoi, Amy Nikkel, and Dana Arpin[This article was originally published in The Education Students’ Anthology, Volume 10 2007, University of Winnipeg. It has been excerpted here for the ACS Athens Ethos]

The adventures of Odysseus, the mythic Greek hero, provide a series of stories which hold insights and guidance for our own current-day life jour-neys. Odysseus’ winding travels brought him great wisdom and unlocked creative possibilities in his quest to return to Ithaca. This article is about the unfolding of another Greek Odyssey, a journey taken by Dana Arpin and Amy Nikkel, two of our University of Winnipeg students in the Faculty of Education. In the spring of 2007, a new partnership was formed between the University of Winnipeg and the American Community Schools (ACS) of Athens. The previous year, I (Louesa Polyzoi) was on research leave at the University of Athens and had the good fortune to meet and work with Steve Medeiros, Principal, and Marca Daley, Vice-Principal of the Middle School/Academy at ACS where my two sons attended Grade 10 and 11, respectively. I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of teaching, the nurturing student-centered philosophy, and the enriched programming offered at that school. ACS welcomed the opportunity to serve as an alternate international internship site for our University of Winnipeg senior education students. In April 2007, after screening fourteen applicants, two successful candidates, Dana and Amy, were selected to travel to Greece to complete their five-week teaching block. Their experiences are shared here in the form of reflective journal entries. Their insights, their enthusiasm, their professionalism, and their genuine willingness to explore new cultural and pedagogical landscapes, are evident in their reflections.During their five-week teaching block, Amy Nikkel and Dana Arpin had an opportunity to observe numerous classrooms and work with teachers who were clearly gifted at their craft. We are indebted to: David Nelson (Grade 10 American Studies/Grade 11 IB Theory of Knowledge) William Papatassos (Grade 8 English Literature), Margarita Gournaris (Grade 11/12 IB History of Europe), Janet Karvouniaris (Grade 11/12 IB Topics in World History), and Kathy Jasonides (Grade 12 IB English Literature). What follows are [excerpts from] Dana and Amy’s journal entries.Dana - April 26, 2007: Her Grandfather Worked with Fidel Castro

A passing acquaintance with the academic rigor of the IB program did not prepare me for topics that sounded more like University course work than Grade 12 History. I marveled at the unique vantage points, as I realized that all the students had an intimate connection to their chosen topic. One student was researching Cuban history because her grandfather worked with Fidel Castro and she had access to numerous private, primary resources. Children of various foreign diplomats and ambassadors researched topics that they too had direct links with through the work of their parents. I was overwhelmed by the historical consciousness of students who viewed current events as active participants, and I began to ask myself how this would affect my instruction. …Amy - April 16, 2007: A Willingness to Take RisksI had been at ACS for a few days before meeting the Grade 8 classes in which I would spend the next month teaching. The students had recently finished reading a series of utopian/dystopian novels (e.g., The Giver by Lois Lowry; Brave New World by Aldous Hux-ley; War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells) and my host teacher was explaining the process they would follow to write a constitution for creating their own utopian school. The next day, I anticipated that the assignment would be re-explained and that I would then see the assignment in progress as students determined the general course and shape of their schools and begin planning particular clauses in their constitutions. Instead, the students came to class with rough drafts of their utopian schools, some as long as eight pages! I instinctively recoiled from this, not only because I am unaccustomed to students com-pleting so much so quickly, but also because I felt that as a teacher I had missed out on a significant part of the learning process. Throughout the next several weeks, as I adapted to this unique teaching environment and learned to assign significant portions of work to be done at home and then build off of that work in more creative ways in class, I felt powerless as I saw distinctly where my responsibilities ended and the responsibilities of my students began. I noticed that my students were far more willing to take risks and try new things than I was accustomed to even when uncertain about their own abilities to succeed. … Dr. Louesa Polyzoi, David Nelson, Amy Nikkel, William

Papatassos, Dana Arpin, Margarita Gournaris, Janet Karvouniaris, and Kathy Jasonides

Dr. Louesa Polyzoi, Univ. of Winnipeg, Faculty of Education

...students were ...willing to take risks ... even when uncertain about their own abilities to succeed...

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Dana - May 10, 2007: My First Evaluation

Mrs. Jan Karvouniaris, the Head of the History/ Humanities Department, observed my teaching today. It was my first evaluation at ACS and I was filled with apprehension and anxiety. … When the class ended she thanked me for inviting her into my class, and we arranged a time to talk about the evaluation. … When I met with Jan, she presented me with eight pages of notes and observations and another page of sug-gestions. [We] went over the notes, and she and I both worked in praise, contempla-tion, and suggestions. This was such an enjoyable and rewarding process. There was a heady exchange of ideas as we challenged or expanded on one another’s insights and reflections. My observation had not been a test, but a learning experience, and I had not passed or failed—I had learned. This happened because at ACS, excellence is not an end point but a continual process, and it is a process that both teacher and student is committed to. Committing to a process of excellence is how we as educators can invite our students into the learning process. If we encourage learning by lowering the bar so there is no barrier to participation, we only succeed in diminishing the quality and the value of learning. On the other hand, insisting that anyone who commits to excellence can learn is an open ended invitation to legitimate and rewarding participa-tion. And one always has the opportunity to learn if they realize they will never get there: they will never be excellent, because excellence is an approach not a destina-tion. It is a vicious cycle. Today I learned to focus not on what I can do, but on how well I can do it.

Amy - May 10, 2007: Aspiring to Excellence

Throughout my teaching practicum at ACS, I have seen social pressure work in con-structive and fascinating ways throughout both the student body and the community of teachers and school staff. Students are encouraged by their peers to challenge themselves in an academic environment, and the prevailing atmosphere is in accord with the goals of the school. … As a teacher I feel an almost tangible force pulling me along with the momentum of the school itself, and although I am accustomed to decrying the dangers of peer pressure, perhaps there is cause to recant.

Dr. Louesa Polyzoi - May 30, 2007: A Gift

Upon entering the school grounds of ACS, one immediately senses the spirit of that institution’s unique school culture— it is one of respect, responsibility, creativity, and enthusiasm. Amy and Dana’s reflections are a testament to this culture as they navi-gate for us as it were, in real time, encountered. It has truly been a privilege to have coordinated this international initiative. This article is not only a reflection of the pilot project’s success but also a celebration of the many friendships that emerged over the course of Dana and Amy’s internship. In reflecting back on our collective experiences, I am reminded of the Greek word Χάρισμα. It means gift. The American Community Schools of Athens, through their generous sharing of time, resources, and expertise have left Dana and Amy with an incredible gift—an experience that has been life-changing. This has been their Greek Odyssey. I hope it has brought them wisdom and a myriad of creative possibilities as they return to their homeland, Canada. Ευχαριστώ και καλή αντάμωση! (To read the article in its entirety, contact the editor)

Harry S. Truman “On Trial”

Amy Nikkel and Dana Arpin

... excellence is an approach, not a destination.23

Beri’s Bridge:One Class Collaborates to Learn and Pass on a Story of Genocide

Patty Green, MS English Teacher

For Beri Nachmia, #76859who has said “YES” to life and who today enjoys a good game of bridge despite the dark

heart of history and all those who deny it.

“And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story.” Hamlet, William Shakespeare

A bowl of fruit, a glass of water, an open window, a room with a view, the horizon – the 21st century…. We can travel to the moon, walk on it and be back in no time. We no longer die from the common cold, yet we still wish our neighbor dead because his skin is a shade lighter or darker than our own; we still wish him dead because his political, social or sexual orientation veers in a different direction from ours…We blame that which we cannot understand, that which we feel threatened by, that which is different. On the streets and in the jungle, the weaker of the pack gets the short end of the stick. In kindergartens, universities, factories, shopping malls, the law of the jungle applies to my sons, your daughters. It happens to those of us who, minding our own private business, go about the daily job of life. Genocides take root in the simplicity of the everyday, the banal: personal myths and superstitions passed down from generation to generation, warped and reinvented historical contexts, historic ethnic hatred, stereotypes, ethnic jokes, sensational media reports, images on the television fed by narrow world views, hatred, envy, jealousy…. Maybe the greatest sin of all is believing that we hold THE TRUTH, THE ONLY TRUTH. “Genocide - noun. The deliberate extermination of a race of people. From the Greek, genos: race and the Latin, caedere: to kill.” (Longman’s English Larousse Dictionary) The past century has had its ugly share of such crimes. Terms such as “death march,” “final solution,” “racial purity,” “ethnic cleansing” and “tribal historic hatred” all have their dark niche in world history. In the European wars of the twentieth century, we can count over 13,000,000 victims of genocide. And Darfur? 400,000 to date and the gruesome statistics are not complete yet. These souls add up to a population greater than that of Greece, Belgium or Holland. As a teacher, I cannot control the media. I cannot be at the dinner table of every family in the world, but I CAN bring the awareness of my students to task. I DO have the power to bring to their attention report cards on humanity such as the one above. I DO have the potential and the energy to bring to them real people with real stories. The 9A2 World Literature Class is designed to include, in its course of study, a variety of literary genres while keeping the needs of second language students in mind. Each quarter is guided by a theme; the guiding theme for [the last] quarter [of 2007] being “Loss and Hope.” The main text of the quarter was Wiesel’s Night. Students also examined other genres, including Dillard’s essay “The Deer at Providencia” and other articles, the most lyrical being Laura Akgulian’s “Fountains and Flowing Rivers Before the Mourning.” We also analyzed newspaper articles, official reports and documents on Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur as well as poetry of the dispossessed. We watched and critiqued Alain Resnais’ documentary Night and Fog. As a field study component for the quarter we visited the Jewish Museum of Greece in Athens where we met Ms.Beri Nachmia, a survivor of Auschwitz, the notorious concentration camp in Poland. Her talk was based on the questions that students posed. Every answer, a story unto itself. Two students served as translators, a difficult task considering the level of the questions and the length of each story-response. The success of the day was the result of the collaborative effort of all the people involved in the project. The cooperation of the museum, the student translators, the students who generated stories through their questions, the volunteer student photographer and student cameraman, all these elements were crucial in adding to the sense of accomplishment and completeness felt on that day. I am also indebted to my colleague, ACS Academy history teacher Dave Nelson, who came for the first-hand, primary source experience, he was inspiring and a good critic of the day. And, last but not least, Beri Nachmia, the center and heart of the project, who crossed Athens on a rainy day, from her home in the northern part of the city to tell her story to us so that it might be passed on. The force bonding all the people who were involved in this process is the vow to accept historical reality, no matter how dark, and to listen to its lessons so that our collective memory may serve as witness to the past.

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24The success of the day was the result of the collaborative effort of all...

The students’ voices:

“When I first saw the tattoo on her arm, it really scared me because I was faced with the truth of what really happened.” Josephine

“Although sad, it was important to hear what happened.” Brianna

“We heard many stories….I was very surprised by her strength.” Joon

“Telling her story makes her an even stronger person.” Cathy

“She has found freedom in the memories in the stories she tells, the stories that kept her alive.” Lydia

“If I could tell her one thing, it is that I will keep the promise I made to her, by telling her story.” Sandrine

These, the voices of my students, who reflecting on the day, hold the power to pass on the story. By listening to the voices of those who survive the odious irrationality of racism, we, in our small way can make a differ-ence by simply passing on their story. We might, just might, make a dent on the humanity of people. Maybe…. We will meet people whose intent is to deny the story, the witness….We may NOT have the power to change their opinion, but we CAN insist on the story that was told to us and know that no matter how broken a spirit may be, joy eventually returns and can be found in the sim-plicity of the every day; in a game of bridge, in the beauty of a bowl of fruit, a glass of water, an open window, a room with a view, the horizon.

Team Work Makes a difference!

10th Anti Drug Basketball Boys and Girls Tournament – February 2007

For a number of years The ACS Athens Athletic Department has been a leader in promot-ing the value of civic responsibility and its role in a school community. ACS Athens is an institution that strongly believes in the value of service and its role in shaping today’s youth and there are many opportunities for our students to think, look and act “out of the box” thus reaching out not only to our own but to others as well. Last February, ACS Athens celebrated the 10th year of an Anti Drug Campaign, known as the Anti Drug Basketball Tournament. There is quite a bit of history behind this event and one can easily see that it has evolved a great deal.

Ten years ago, a parent from the ACS community approached us with the idea of organizing a girls’ basketball tournament with one main message: SAY NO TO DRUGS. The goal was to invite a number of schools from the Athens area and to organize a quality tournament for its participants with the main message being say no to drugs; eight girls basketball teams (including ACS Athens) participated and the event was embraced by the greater Athens community as well as our very own! After a couple of years however, people were asking: “Why only girls? Don’t we want to make our point to everyone?” Good questions one might say, so soon enough the tournament included both genders with four teams of each participating in what everyone thought to be a more “balanced” event. Every year the invitations would vary thus allowing schools from outside the Athens area to join us; Anatolia College from Thessaloniki has been an avid supporter of our cause and one year a school from the

Czech Republic made its appearance!

After a number of years, as educators wanting to provide the best possible tools for our youth in order to be able to make sound choices, we decided to add other facets to this tournament – we did not want this to be perceived just as another sports event! So we called upon the entire school community to join us and to see how we could make this more meaningful; people were creative and we found a great deal of support!

One year, our parent body provided the funds to print a six-page brochure on information about substance abuse. The content material of the brochure was provided by the ACS Athens counseling office and the brochures were given to all the participants and were also made available to everyone in our school offices. Another year our Academy talent show was the “opening” event prior to the first game and all the partici-pants watched our students perform; all ticket proceeds were then given to a local organization devoted to educating youngsters about substance abuse.

Eventually, the basketball tournament was the culminating event of a whole week of school-wide instructional activities. Last year in our 10th year celebration, for the first time ever, the entire student body was involved in a number of educational activities. The Elementary School learned about staying healthy through a variety of activities and lectures. The Middle School students were involved in substance abuse awareness lectures and activities with NIFALI, an organization devoted to educating youngsters about the destructive effects of substances. Finally, Academy students met with members of KETHEA, a state organization, also active in providing information to adolescents regarding substance abuse. In addition, an art contest took place in the Elementary and Middle Schools and the winners were recognized on the final day of the week by our event sponsors and a group of ACS Middle School student dancers performed in front of their peers and families before the final game in a collective effort to contribute to this message.

Athletics and Civic ResponsibilityCollaborating with the Community

Annie Constantinides, Athletic Director

SAY NO TO DRUGS – We can make a difference.

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Professionals also joined us to educate our parent community about drug and alcohol abuse and discussed various other related issues during special seminars that took place during the week in the evenings.

Finally, for a number of years, a celebrity basketball game including professional sports players, politicians, diplomats, media personalities and en-tertainment celebrities has been a culminating and festive activity. Last year the celebrity game took place on the final day in a gymnasium full of spectators with standing room only! Ambassadors, professional basketball players and coaches, media and entertainment celebrities joined us to emphasize the need to SAY NO TO DRUGS – We can make a difference.

An event of such magnitude cannot materialize without the hard work, dedication, support and collaboration of many constituents: administration, counselors, classroom teachers, athletics staff, athletes, coaches and officials, students, parents, private corporations and media.

TEAM WORK REALLY WORKS!!!

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Nurturing Learning through Collaboration

Nia Donas-Voulgaris, 4th Grade Teacher

The Children

“Hey, why don’t we…” “I’ve got an idea!”“Yeah that would be great…………”“I’ll be the recorder…do you want to report after to class?”

Watching a group of students working together, trying to create and demonstrate an exhibition of learning always reminds me why I got into teaching in the first place. It is definitely a challenge, but most rewarding. It is the process of collaborating on a group project that makes the task more meaningful.

“What are you doing; We have 15 minutes left?”(Timekeeper)“Wait, it’s not your turn yet” (Timekeeper)“If you don’t stop talking and listen I’m going to tell the teacher” (Leader)“Sh, let’s listen to what he is saying; that sounds great!” (Leader)“Okay, I wrote it down, let’s continue…” (Reporter)“Today my group made the following decisions together…” (Reporter)

Collaboration requires loose but stable structures that guide children to focus on the goal they are trying to achieve, without telling them what to produce. The ideas and the sequence of what they are creat-ing are their own. This then empowers children to take responsibility for what they put together as a group. The teacher is the facilitator that constantly asks questions and reminds children that they are ac-countable for how and what the group will create.

“I like the way you listen to each other’s ideas. Have you decided how you are going to get your message across to the audience?”

“That’s a great idea. Where do you think you should include it? Try it out!”The most powerful tool a teacher has in reinforcing the collaboration process is encouragement: acknowledging something the group is doing well and then making sure they stay on track, keeping in mind the goal in sight. Last year fourth graders prepared an end of year production that demonstrated their learning in a creative way. All 48 students (both classes) were asked to sign up for one of the six PYP Units of inquiry covered in class. It was based on interest and the only condition was eight children per group.

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Once children signed up for a group, all together we looked at the groupings and began to make sure children were happy with their choices and made any changes before finalizing them. Students then assumed the roles of1. recorder in their group journal2. leader, encouraging others to share, making sure everyone honors the task at hand3. reporter, sharing what they did with the whole class 4. time keeper, making sure the group works within a timeframe

These four roles were rotated in the group of eight, allowing each child to have had a chance to take on that role at least four times. The nature and importance of the roles tend to become more relaxed and flexible as the production pieces become more organized. Children then assume the role of what they are work-ing on in their performance. The fruit of collaboration is seeing it all fit together like a puzzle. It is the satisfaction of then sharing the achievements made and progress gained with others that brings closure to the collaboration process.

“That was so much fun! Can my group do it again?

For a teacher, the feedback children give about the success of their own perfor-mance is the ultimate reward.

The Parents

Teachers are very fortunate to have parents to collaborate with. “Tell me, how I can help…”“Would you like…”“I’ve got an idea…”I’ll ask A to come in and help……”I’ll come in tomorrow to help finish off the props…..”

Drawing on my personal experience it is the parental input and support that set positive examples of collaboration for children to follow. Children become more enthusiastic and interested in what they are collaborating on, when their parents not only their peers become their audience. The sense of accountability is heightened and the process of collaboration more meaningful.

“What time is my mom coming in again to help?”“Can I call my mom to make sure she’s coming in today? We need her…”

It is fascinating to see children relying on parents to see the collaboration pro-cess work. Parents, children and teachers all linked together make the process more productive and effective. Collaboration is the key to nurturing learning and makes students feel a sense of completion and success.

The Teachers

Collaboration is an extremely important feature of the life of any teacher. Teach-ing is such a personal experience, you need others that feel passionate too about children and how they learn. It allows you to share ideas, expectations, thoughts, and plan with others and make life within the school organization better. I could not imagine myself not collaborating with my colleagues, planning together, shar-ing, deciding, and changing to make it all happen for our children. Collaboration in the elementary school is a given. It is when it is stretched out to include middle and high school that makes it a greater challenge. Collaboration is a challenge that strengthens the culture, ethos and organization of the school culture. It’s a win-win situation.

The fruit of collaboration is seeing it all fit together like a puzzle.29

According to Principal Steve Medeiros, this is a special year in the Academy. In several public assemblies he has asserted that this year’s senior class is the ‘dream class’ of any high school principal. He has also asserted that their behavior and attitudes have had a transforming effect on the entire student body. There is a prevailing attitude of seriousness, of commitment to learning and to the school community, and a sense of joy throughout the Academy. Reprinted below is a letter that he and Peggy Pelonis, Director of Academic and Student Services, have written to include with every senior application to North American colleges and universities. It speaks for itself.

October 19, 2007

Dear Admissions Officer:

Thank you for considering the application of this ACS Athens student to your institution. We have always taken pride in supporting the applications of our students to colleges and universities that we feel would be a good match for them. This year, we have the pleasure of presenting candidates who are members of the most extraordinary senior class to have passed through our school in at least two decades.

During the past five years, ACS Athens has been engaged in a concerted school improvement effort. We have revised curriculum and upgraded standards at all grade levels and in all disciplines. We have embarked on a major program to enhance civic responsibility and community service in all areas of school life. To expand opportunities for our students and others in the Athens area, we have introduced a number of programs to foster school and university partnerships, chief among them The ACS Athens Institute for Critical and Creative Thinking, which has brought academic lead-ers in their fields from North American Universities (Williams, Tufts, York) to work in collaboration with our teachers and students in an innovative Summer Institute. We have also forged a number of partnerships with local and stateside universities to establish ACS Athens as a training site for new teachers and counselors. In 2006, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation recognized ACS Athens’ innovative work with students with learning differ-ences, by making a major financial contribution to the school to establish the Stavros Niarchos Optimal Match Center on campus. Since then the Center has sponsored two international conferences on teaching students with learning differences that have attracted presenters from around the world. As a result of all of this activity, the word is out that ACS Athens has become an educational leader in Southeastern Europe and the Near East.

There are many students in Greece who wish to take advantage of the opportunities that our school offers, but who do not have the means to attend. A number of benefactors have taken note of ACS Athens’ growth and have stepped forward with generous gifts that have allowed talented local students to attend our school. In 2005, one of our benefactors made a donation to the school, which truly transformed our school community. He provided full three-year scholarships to ACS Athens to fifteen Greek high school sophomores who were top in their respective schools and who dreamed of pursuing their education at a premier American/International school that would open doors to university study in the United States. In 2007, a second benefactor provided funds to create a scholarship program that allowed another ten exceptional scholar-athletes to become mem-bers of the ACS Athens learning community. As news of these initiatives spread, additional outstanding local students filed applications to attend our school. Thus, the class of 2008, suddenly counted among its members 16 - 20 potential valedictorians. No event in our school’s history has ever raised academic standards so immediately and so evidently. The presence of our scholarship group raised the bar for all, and the wonderful thing is that so many of our students rose to the challenge, not only in the classroom, but in all areas of school life.

This year’s graduating class includes the highest percentage of IB Diploma candidates in our history. Even among those who have chosen not to follow the IB Diploma Program, members of the Class of 2008 have demonstrated a commitment to academic excellence by enrolling in record numbers in individual IB classes for certificates. A good number of these students have enrolled in four or more higher level IB classes. This year also sees the highest enrollment in some time in our honors-level eleventh and twelfth grade Humanities program as well as in our Higher Level Mathematics and Honors Computer Programming courses. Participation in co-curricular activities, which currently involves 90% of our students in grades 9-12, is at an all-time high. All members of the school community this year will be involved in a partnership with residents of a fire-devastated village in southern Greece, as we begin a three-year commitment to help them rebuild their homes and schools.

Because the performance of so many of this year’s seniors has been exemplary, class rank designations do not really represent their individual per-formance and successes. A review of the most recent GPA and class rank list shows that clearly 33% of this year’s graduating class is performing academically at the level usually achieved by our top 10-15% of students. We ask that you consider their applications in this context.

This year’s seniors have truly transformed our school. We know that they have the potential to do the same at your institution.

Peggy Pelonis Steven W. Medeiros Director, Academic and Student Services Academy Principal

The Principal’s Page - Academy

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Steven W. Medeiros, ACS Athens Academy Principal

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Arts Center at ACS – A Diamond in the Heart of the American Community Schools of Athens

Poly Chryssanthakopoulos, Executive Director, Arts Center at ACS

TheArts Center at ACS, a state-of-the-art center, was inaugurated in May 2004 as a venue for hosting cultural, conference and sports events of high standard and is run by the non-profit association “American - Hel-lenic Arts Center of Halandri.”

The complex features a 550 seat theater and the The Four Seasons Club, a sports center with indoor heated swimming pool and gym. Situated on the campus of the American Community Schools, the Arts Center is sur-rounded by a green belt and sports facilities covering an overall surface of 10,000 square metres.

The Arts Center at ACS has already hosted, to great acclaim, dance and theatre performances, concerts of classical and modern music, art exhibi-tions, conferences and seminars for the wider public and the ACS com-munity. We have had the chance so far to produce and present, among others, very exciting spectacles such as the concert of the Orpheus Cham-ber Orchestra, the performances of the internationally acclaimed dance groups Dance Theater of Harlem and The Complexions, the speech of Dr. Daniel Goleman, the renowned author of Emotional Intelligence and the concert of Dave Holland, one of the foremost contemporary jazz musi-cians.

The Arts Center facilities welcome many ACS events, including drama & dance classes, student talent shows (The Chorus Line by last year’s IB students was a hit), PTA bazaars, art exhibitions, after schools activities at the swimming pool and summer youth camps. Students have the chance to be taught, rehearse and perform in a professional theatre, equipped with the latest audiovisual technology with the support of the Arts Center specialised technical staff.

This season we were the venue for the art exhibitions of two ACS Ath-ens educators and long term faculty members: Cim Thomakos’ Retro-spective Exhibition 1977-2007 (September 24-October 5) and Jeff Bear’s Arcuda Art (October 22-November 2). Plato’s “Apology Project” was also performed in English by the Emmy nominated actor Yannis Simonides

for the purposes of the ACS Athens fundraising program (No-vember 15).

In accordance with the ACS Athens educational goals to build upon each student’s unique talents and abilities, during its an-nual program of events, the Arts Center offers workshops with eminent artists and scientists to ACS students. The multi awarded, London-based contemporary dance group Random Dance Company, the up and coming Greek jazz musician Dimitri Vassilakis, the Danish hip-hop group Pivot have already shared the stage with ACS students. Following this tradition, on Oc-tober 11 at 4 p.m. the hip hop crew HAVIKORO, famous for the collaborations with Destiny’s Child, Limp Bizkit, Coolio, and Black Eyed Peas, taught ACS students the secrets of break-dancing, rap and hip hop.

The Arts Center is looking forward to enhancing its relation-ship with ACS Athens by hosting more events and welcoming every member of the ACS Athens community.

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Photo by Harris AkriviadisThe Arts Center Lobby

Some recent Arts Center events

-Ballet “Ruth” by the American Company “Ballet Magnificat!” September 22 & 23-Puppet Theatre “The Stork Man” by the renowned Spanish company “Los Titiriteros de Binefar” September 26-Bazaar for the purposes of the Radiomarathon for children with special needs, organised by Marfin Egnatia Bank October 7-Hip Hop & Break Dancing Group HAVIKORO, with the support of the US Embassy in Athens. October 10 + 11-Visualize – the Beauty of science, a live science demonstration show, October 13 +14. With the support of the British Council-Congress Dr. Ken Blanchard “Leading at a higher level”, November 6-Exhibition “Spanish Comic 1975-2005”, November 6 – December 20. With the support of The Cervantes Institute-Plato’s “The Apology Project”, November 15-Contemporary Dance, Vertigo Dance Company “Power of Human Relations”, November 23,24,25-Children’s play “Agisilagos”, narration by Antonis Kafetzopoulos, December 26-30

33The Complexions

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Chloe Dimitriadis, ACS Student Photo by Isidora Fouskari

UNESCO – Schools in Athens Collaborate in a United Nations Symposium

Sonia Kormaris, Modern Greek Language Coordinator

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UNESCO SYMPOSIUM

UNESCO is an Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization of the United Nations which promotes relevant issues in all the countries/members of UN. Since 2000 UNESCO Associated Schools have organized a Symposium held on the last Thursday and Friday of February, under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Education and the Hellenic National Commission for UNESCO. Teachers from the associated schools who advise this event meet once a month from the beginning of the school year in order to define the theme of the Symposium, to inform their partners about the participating students (not more than 15), specific subjects relevant to the general themes they are working on, the kind of the artistic presentation they are preparing and other procedural issues.

The school which is voted to host the Symposium is in charge of: • combining 6-8 students from different schools in group discussion committees according to their chosen subjects • defining a President for each committee who facilitates the discussion and a Secretary who writes down electronically the resolution of each group • preparing the facilitations asked by all the schools for their artistic presentations • offering a lunch and a dinner on the first day • organizing a party for students and teachers at the end of the first day

It is important to mention that among the 20-22 participating schools there are 3-4 Greek public schools (from Agioi Anargyroi, Neo Iraklion, Psychico, Lavrion) and 2-3 from Cyprus whose participation is remarkable. Furthermore, it is a ‘tradition’ to have 2-3 committees in the English language which usually consist of students from ACS Athens, Athens College, Psychico College, Arsakion and St. Catherine’s.

On the morning of the first day Associated Schools perform their artistic presenta-tions which have to be inspired by the theme of the Symposium and not overrun the allotted time of 10 minutes. Each presentation is usually a dance, a video, a power point, a painting, a poster or a short play prepared by students who might not participate in the group discussions. After lunch, students begin to work in groups, separated according to the specific subjects they have prepared, in order to form a resolution accepted unanimously by the ‘debaters’ and which must be written down by 9:00 p.m. Teachers should not intervene in the whole process. The first day closes after a dinner and is followed by a party.

The second day of the conference begins with the announcement of the resolutions by the president of each committee in plenary session. Two or three questions may be addressed to the president by the audience (not the teachers) and then the resolution is adopted or not by the students’ votes. This part of the Symposium seems to be the quintessence of the young people’s participation: the members of each committee, mainly from different schools, are strongly interested in supporting their president as his announcement is their own ‘product’ in which they believe while the argumentation of the speaker in answering the questions addressed is usually of a high level in order to persuade the audience. The resolutions adopted are included in the record of Congress proceedings which are published for UNESCO and other organizations. It is worthwhile to men-tioning that the proceedings of the plenary session are attended by the President of the Hellenic National Commission for UNESCO and other state delegates.

ACS Athens students are usually very enthusiastic about their experiences at the Symposium: they enjoy meeting students from the other 20-22 private and public schools, making new friendships, exchanging opinions concerning school life, and familiarizing themselves with institutions of democracy. At the same time they realize their advantage of being bilingual as they are able to communicate in both Greek and English. Finally, the Class of 2005 still remembers the titan work of our school which undertook the organization of the UNESCO Symposium that year for which it gained dithyrambic critiques!

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Practical Arts Hands-on Training for Students in Multimediaand Audiovisual Applications.

Jim Koulyras, AV SpecialistThis course, apart from being a learning experience in technology, offers students hands on experience of what it is like working in the real world as they are guided and taught by the audiovisual specialist and given specific tasks to perform.

Students quickly learn that professionalism and teamwork or collaboration is necessary in order for them to have a successful and profitable work experience. Once they have gained some knowledge and experi-ence, students work in partnership with other individuals on a variety of projects.

These projects include:

•Taking digital photos, downloading and editing on a PC•Converting video to DVD & reproducing CD’s & DVD’s on a PC•Setting up a sound system and operating the sound mixing board for performances•Video taping performances and producing multiple DVD copies for staff & parents•Assisting in the classroom in a technical capacity•Setting up and operating digital equipment for presentations•Recommending DVD titles for staff and/or for student research projects•Assisting in the maintenance and care of equipment

An example of collaboration in action was the IBO Conference in October 2006 hosted by ACS, which catered to over 500 teachers from around the world. Students assisted in the preparation and set up of multimedia and technical equipment. Everybody commented positively about the excellence and profes-sionalism of our technical support and equipment.

Students were also involved in multimedia and audiovisual setup at the 2nd Annual Conference of “Cel-ebrating Learning Differences” in May 2007. Some of the tasks included video taping presentations, digital photography, and assisting the guest speakers with the operation of audiovisual equipment. In both instanc-es, students collaborated to ensure the success of both conferences.

Students readily learn to collaborate well with their peers and teachers! Students are asked a vital question in their semester exam “How does your work benefit others?” One student commented that his work made other peoples’ lives easier! In fact, the work of the student benefits the whole school community: the student, the teacher and administrators, the parent and of course the AV department. Another student commented that helping others by cooperating and providing assistance made him feel good. Feeling good about helping each other and achieving a common goal is what collabora-tion is all about here at ACS Athens.

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The Parent Teacher Organization of ACS Athens

Kristal Alley, PTO Vice Chair

The PTO (Parent Teacher Organization) is a dynamic aspect of the ACS Athens Community. At the heart of the PTO are parents who care about central issues involving their children’s school and want to give of themselves to make the school as good as it can be. We bring together parents, teachers, students, and administrators to work together for this common goal. There is no membership fee. We invite every parent of an ACS Athens student to attend our meetings, take part in our activities, and give of their time and talents to this very worthy cause.

During 2006-2007 academic year, the PTO had a number of noteworthy accomplishments. First and foremost, with the input of our members, we decided to give some specific direction to our fundraising efforts. Now when the PTO holds an event, a candy sale, or other fundraiser, you know where the money is being spent: on interactive white boards for the Elementary school, upgrading of science labs and new lockers for the Middle School and Academy, and campus landscaping.

In addition, we voted in an updated set of bylaws, purchased new gas grills for our many BBQs, purchased new books for both libraries, held a wine tasting event, sponsored the annual Staff and Teacher Appreciation Luncheon, as well as sponsoring the annual Senior Brunch. We also supported a number of school-wide activities such as the ACS Campus Clean-up Day.

This year is shaping up to be even better than last year! The PTO sponsors several ‘anchor’ events each year including the “Welcome Back BBQ,” the “Holiday Bazaar,” the “Elementary Santa’s Workshop,” and the “International Spring Fair.” In addition, we hold candy and novelty sales for many of the traditional holidays and festive occasions such as the Halloween sale, Valentines Day sale, Mothers Day plant sale, and Easter sale.

The Holiday Bazaar is a lively and festive gathering. Not only do we have many outside vendors offering jewelry, crafts, art and more, but we have a wonderful raffle full of top-notch prizes, cheerful Christmas carolers and lots of festive food to get everyone into the Holiday spirit! And this year, Santa and Mrs. Claus will return to visit with children, hear Christmas wishes, and have their pictures taken. Don’t forget to pick up your hand-decorated cookie house, which has been a PTO tradition for years here at ACS Athens. Separately, we organize the Santa’s Workshop in the elementary school. The workshop gives younger children a chance to think about the process of gift giving and pick out some inexpensive gifts for friends and family.

The International Spring Fair once again brings everyone together, with the crowds gathering at the International Food Festival, a favorite attrac-tion for all. Every culture is invited to create its own special table of food and cultural items. This year, we will once again hold the YEIA or ‘Young Entrepreneurs in Action’ where students, clubs and classes can come up with their own product to sell.

But it’s not all about fundraising and socializing. We actively address key issues as they are raised by interested parents. Recent issues include changing the Board of Education by-laws to allow for the possibility of removing someone from the Board of Education, foreign language classes, the quality of the cafeterias and the dress code.

The PTO Board is a welcoming group of volunteers and we invite everyone to get involved. Our general meetings are held the 2nd Tuesday of every month in the Confer-ence Center at 10:00 am. Look for these meeting schedules on the calendar on the ACS Athens website.

Your PTO Board includes: Jennifer Ananiadis-Chair; Kristal Alley-Vice Chair; Renee Tsi-pouras-Treasurer; Georgia Alvertos-Secretary; Patti Deme-Elementary Representative; Tassy Economopoulos-Middle School Representative; Mary El Choufani-Academy Rep-resentative; Areti Stassis-IB Representative; and Vera Davison-U.S. Embassy representa-tive.

Mark your calendars with these important dates!December 7th: Holiday BazaarDecember 14th: Elementary Santa’s WorkshopFebruary 14th: Valentines Day SaleApril 16th: Easter SaleMay 17th: International Spring FairOnce again, we invite all ACS Athens parents and caregivers to get involved. It is fun, educational, and vital to our community!

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Habitat for Humanity Collaborating for a Brighter Community

Ellen Froustis-Vriniotis, Academy Counselor

In any community, collaboration is characterized by groups of people with a shared interest who come together to work toward a common goal. In an age of competition and personal achievement, opportunities for community service allow people to slow down, focus and re-

flect on equally important values such as teamwork, group effort and the common good of a community that we all share, either locally or globally.

The student chapter of Habitat for Humanity was part of a collaborative effort organized by Friends of Habi-tat for Humanity–Athens to brighten the surround-ings of more than 80 children at the Hatzikyriakeio Orphanage in Pireaus. More than 150 volunteers from the entire community of Athens came together last fall and early this summer to paint the bars and walls that surround the entire, square block estate of Hatzikyriakeio, replacing the gray, graffiti-sprayed sur-face with fresh white paint.

Interestingly, collaboration occurred on many levels in the community. IB CAS students from schools all over Athens painted side-by-side while exchanging stories on community service experiences and CAS hours. U.S. Embassy families joined this concerted effort to brighten the view on Hatzikyrikeio avenue by donating paints and brushes and lending countless strokes for the perfect white-washed look. Many young men from the Mormon Church also came from afar to share their painting skills and sheer love of helping others. Even several people waiting at the bus stop on the street didn’t hesitate to grab a brush and paint a few bars before the bus came or give expert advise on how to paint the wall without dripping on the sidewalk! Youth from the orphanage gladly helped to lay down newspapers, pass out water and help with the clean up, too. Each of these groups came together be-cause of a shared interest to brighten the environment that 80 children call home.On an ACS level, collaboration on the paint project started in the spring when the recent ACS Athens graduate, Jerica Elmacioglu (’07) who founded the student chapter of Habitat for Humanity at ACS Athens, handed over the reins of power to her younger classmates. Stacy Stassis, Will Seremetis, John Nikas and Korina Gougouli became the new members of the governing committee. The group of four committed themselves to be leaders and role models in their community. The students raised funds for the orphanage paint project at the Spring Fair by selling water and raffle tickets to buy needed trays and brushes. They also set up a booth to inform the ACS Athens community about the extensive work of Habitat and upcoming projects that they might like to participate in. This collaborative effort to paint the Hatzikyriakeio Orphanage by Friends of Habitat for Humanity, ACS students and parents and members of the local community reflected civic responsibility.

Editor’s note: Soon after the painting was completed Ms. Vriniotis received the following letter. We share it with you.June 21, 2007 18536 Piraeus, Greece Tel: +30 (210) 418-2251 Email: hfhgr@ath.forthnet.gr Dear Student Friends of Habitat for Humanity,

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Habitat and the Hatzikyriakeio Orphanage, we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks for your participation in this very important project.For some the significance of the effort may seem minimal but to the residents of the orphanage we beautified their home and bettered their quality of life! We made a difference in their lives by putting smiles on their faces and helping to instill pride in their place of residence. It is a blessing to see how many young people, ACS IB students, truly uphold the meaning of the Spirit of Volunteerism, not only with words and kind thoughts, but with initiative and action. Once again, thank you for your continued support. BRAVO! We look forward to seeing you again during the fall working alongside us on another Habitat project.Sincerely,

Dr. Connie BurkePresident HFHGR

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Civic Responsibility and Collaboration….coming together to give, share, teach and learn how to build a more productive and caring community.

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The Summer InstituteThe IB Prep Course

Lykourgos Hristakos & Sana Kassem, Academy Science TeachersFor the second year in a row, ACS Athens offered a three-week Summer Institute to Academy students inter-ested in taking either a college course or an introductory course to the International Baccalaureate program. This year fourteen students took part: seven in the course on International Relations taught by Tufts University profes-sor Dr. Malik Mufti, and seven in the IB Prep course taught by ACS faculty members: Steve Medeiros, Peggy Pelonis, Lykourgos Hristakos, Sana Kassem, Marca Daley, and Julia Tokatlidou. Following are some student and teacher observations.

IB Preparation Course

The summer institute which took place a few months ago at ACS was not a typical IB prepara-tion for potential IB students. The small number of students and the a-typical set-up of the particular programme gave everyone, students as well as fac-ulty, the possibility to be much more flexible in their educational approach.

From the student point of view, it was a relaxed at-mosphere where the hunt for grades and rewards was absent; this facilitated a participation which aimed at understanding for the sake of understand-ing.

Teachers who traditionally teach different topics (i.e. chemistry and physics), shared their time and attempted to unite their topics into a unified course thus allowing and enabling the students to dis-cover the common ground that unites all different topics. A novelty which further enhanced this style of approach was the morning talks. In these daily breakfast sessions, different faculty presented different topics to all students and faculty, topics that they found interesting and appealing. This gave everyone the opportunity to discover personal areas of interest that were or were not, linked to their particular area of specialisation.

Moreover, students were able to distinguish what triggered interest from the faculty’s point of view. This was a novelty as it proved that what teach-ers teach, is not just a concrete block of knowledge, but a living entity that oftentimes moves and spreads to realms that have little to do with their field, at least when viewed from a traditional point of view. This very effect was helpful for the students so that they realise that whatever they choose to do is linked to everything else, the interlinking of topics.

During the summer institute students visited the National Archaeological Museum and the archaeological site and temple at Aphaia, Aegina. The effort was to study these places from a variety of different windows, ranging from the historical, the social, the philosophical, the political as well as the scientific point of view.

How much can be said about the history of a country when observing a historical site, but simultaneously what wealth of information is also present when one studies the architectural details and the science behind building a monument (statue or temple) that has survived for thousand of years, and this in a single visit!

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Mornings started with presentations of interesting topics, ranging from poetry to politics, and from truth to perception. Actual IB lectures in many different topics followed up to lunchtime.

After that, recreation was also an important aspect of the daily programme. Students had the option to swim with their teachers during lunch or entertain themselves playing other sports. This gave them the opportunity to see the teachers from a different perspective, that of friends rather than peers.

The afternoon continued with many demonstrations as well as practical laboratory work. Students actively participated with hands-on activities. What was previously presented during a lecture they now had the opportunity to test using equipment.

An attempt was made this summer to embrace knowledge, learning, comprehending, exercising as well as inquiring. And it was a success for every-body.

Dr L. Hristakos

According to Webster’s dictionary, “to collaborate” is a verb with two meanings: The first is to work jointly with others. The second, to cooper-ate with or assist an enemy force occupying one’s country. For many years, I have associated the word collaboration exclusively with the second, derogatory meaning of the word. Being a Palestinian, I have seen, first hand, the suffering the collaborators caused my people. To this day Palestine is plagued with this disease that has spread mistrust within the heart of Palestinian society.

I was fortunate enough to experience the first, constructive meaning of collaboration, when I was given the opportunity to collaborate with, among others, Dr Hristakos in teaching a combined Chemistry and Physics, IB preparatory course. This course was designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills needed to fulfill the expectations of an IB course. The students were introduced to the scientific method through chemistry and physics oriented investigations prepared by Dr Hristakos and me. It was important for us teachers and for the students to see that knowledge is holistic where all different disciplines form the connected links of a chain.

Another example of the constructive results of collaboration was illustrated in a psychological experiment exemplifying the productive aspects of positive reinforcement. This activity was prepared by Ms Daley as part of her TOK class. Dr Hristakos and I collaborated with Ms Daley by teaching the students the scientific approach to this experiment, by guiding the students in order to recognize the importance of any scientific experiment including the aforementioned one, such as: coming up with a problem, defining the independent, dependent, and controlled variables, observing and processing data and finally using the data to draw conclusions.

I feel very privileged that I was able to collaborate with so many people during my experience at the ACS Athens Summer Institute. I am particularly pleased that I have now seen, first hand, the constructive meaning of collaboration. Too many people of our world have not had this privilege. They are not able to reap the benefits of collaboration. It seems that certain governments in our time have forgotten the constructive meaning of this word and refuse to work and talk to one another to find a peaceful solution to our present problems. This inability to collaborate has not only cost the lives of the people of our world, it has caused them to suffer, and it has cost people like me a right to a homeland. It is endangering the future of our only planet. I hope that one day collaboration amongst all mistreated and oppressed people of the world will bring our world forward, leaving behind the injustice and unfairness that so many people have had to suffer.

Ms Sana Kassem

I have now seen, first hand, the constructive meaning of collaboration.40

Technology and Self-EsteemAngela Kiki Spiliot MS Information

Technology Coordinator

TECHNOLOGY CAN ASSIST both educators and parents in building positive self-esteem in our children. Children naturally achieve the goals they are given in technology when their positive self-esteem is pro-moted. Positively encouraging any effort made by our children to ac-complish a task will surely build “Techno-Titans” (as Greek mythology has taught us about their size and strength). These students will have the confidence, independence and willingness to try new concepts, and they will apply their skills more readily.

The most powerful tool we have is encouragement. While our students are performing a task, it is up to us to use words and phrases that focus on their positive individual qualities. We can clearly show our students that we believe in them and in their ability to succeed. In my classes I use a technique I call, “THE CIRCUIT ROUTE” to help students develop both self-confidence and computer skills.

In class, there is a great deal of peer collaboration. I take a step back and allow students to become leaders and peer educators. The first step of the “circuit route” is to acknowledge a student’s achievement of a goal in class. Then, when another student needs assistance, the first student will be ready to help him. The second student will assist another student that needs help when the time comes, and so on.

I have been using this technique for 16 years and have found it enhances self-esteem and confidence. By helping each other, students become proud of who they are and what they know. If students go home and teach their parents what they have learned, they further reinforce their positive self-esteem. In addition they get to share quality time with their parents.

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The summer course for International Relations was interesting and en-tertaining as well. The class did not require much work, and it was nice to have a more ‘laid back’ feel to it. Further, there were no grades to worry about so we had the opportunity to be carefree and to discuss further certain topics that we found interesting. Not only did we have a chance to discuss various issues dealing with international relations, but the actual things we were taught and learned were all very thought-pro-voking. We saw how countries work in relation to other countries and how much of an effect the leader of a country can have, not only on that leader’s country, but on others as well. Also we were taught about the policies America had in the Middle East at various periods of time. With a combination of interesting subjects that have the ability to spark many discussions and questions, and the feeling of relaxation to bask and freely address any curiosities, this course was a very enjoyable experience in which I learned from my own wonderings.

Eugene Gerogiokas, Senior

The summer course on International Relations was a bit of an adventure for me. Although I went there slightly apprehensive as I thought it would be a boring talk on politics, I ended up enjoying it greatly. I loved the atmosphere. It wasn’t a rigid lecture, but an open discussion on the un-derlying forces that drive the international politics of countries. We ex-amined together as a group cases in history from multiple perspectives, and analyzed the situations that Dr. Mufti presented to us. We touched on history, philosophy and diplomacy. By the end of the course I felt my thinking and understanding of the worldwide scene had gained powerful new insight because I learned to think politically and to appreciate politi-cal thinking. It is because of this class that I am now seriously considering studying in the field of Political Science.

Nicholas Tudor Nimara, Senior

The Summer InstituteThe International Relations Course

Eugene Gerogiokas & Nicholas Tudor Nimara, Students

Dr Mufti & his students Ms Spiliot & students 41

Summer Camp Bigger than Ever!

Annie Constantinides, Summer Camp Director

Who says there is no life on campus in the summer???

The 2nd Summer Youth camp surpassed everyone’s ex-pectations with over 250 participants!

Once again ACS Athens opened its doors during the summer to a num-ber of young participants, who despite the heat waves, joined us to learn and have fun at the same time! For the second summer in a row, our school provided a youth program in which children 5-14 years old were given the opportunity to learn and practice a variety of activities: English, Computers, Geek, Art, Karate, Tennis, Basketball, Soccer, Dance, Racket Sports and Swimming.

From June 25th until July 13th, our experienced instructors provided a fun and safe environment for everyone while new friendships developed among the participants. Our faculty and student body joined us from different parts of the world thus making up a truly international setting!

On the last day of our youth camp we all left with one thing in mind: to meet again with familiar and new faces in the summer of 2008 with more energy and ideas for yet another successful Youth Camp!

Notes from the Music Dept.

The ACS Athens Music Department is preparing for a fantastic year of music making. In addition to the existing Grade 6 Music, Beginning In-strumental Music and Intermediate Instrumental Music Classes offered by our program, a new Choir class has given our young singers the op-portunity to participate in authentic performance experiences. These classes, together with our co-curricular Orchestra and Jazz Band ensembles will be performing at the Middle School and Academy Festive Music Night, Thursday, December 13th at the ACS Athens Theater Arts Center. The Music Student Council has joined the Music Department family! Student representatives who were elected from all music classes and co-curricular ensembles in early September will be working together to meet the growing needs of our department. The council’s first project was to celebrate and promote International Music Day on October 1st. Bravo Music Students!

The Audio Visual department is going through a transitional stage, say-ing “goodbye” to old technology such as: cassette players, video play-ers, and overhead projectors, as new digital technology becomes fully implemented.Our ultimate goal is to have an LCD projector installed in every class-room while the computer will take over most audio visual tasks. Several teachers are already using their computers to play CD’s in conjunc-tion with an LCD projector and screen, play DVD’s, project lessons and notes, including sites from the internet. Several smart boards will be installed in specific classrooms where this type of interactive technology will improve teaching efficiency to the benefit of the students. We are in the process of converting most of our video collection into DVD format and some outdated videos are being replaced by new DVD productions.

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What’s New in AV?

Athina Mitsopoulou, Music Teacher

Jim Koulyras, AV Specialist

What’s New in Student Services?

Peggy Pelonis, Director, Academic & Student Services

What’s new in Student Services? The name for one. Most of you knew it as the Office as Academic and Student Affairs. It has now been changed to Academic and Student Services to include most programs that service students beyond academics. The Student Services Office now houses the Couseling K-12 program, the Counseling-Psychology program, the College Prep program, Optimal Match, Student Activities, The Institute for Creative and Critical Thinking, The Internship Program and the Adopt a Village Project. It is a point of reference for information, coordination of events and projects. It is where it all comes together and from where information is mostly disseminated.

This year Student Services has been working on a number of collab-orative projects. Collaboration with local universities has lead to an exchange of programs. Interns from local university psychology pro-grams are conducting their internships at ACS and providing ACS with their services. Collaboration with universities abroad has also begun to include student teachers, who would like to experience what its like to work in Greece in a state of the art institution.

The Hellenic American Institute, USA is working with ACS to develop internship programs with professionals in the medical, legal and other professions, for alumni of ACS who are currently studying in the USA.

Furthermore, ACS has taken the initiative to work with the municipali-ties of Ilia and Evoia (two major fire stricken locations) in order to develop a three year project which will provide services to rebuild their school and community.

In our local community, ACS continues to develop relationships with local professionals who are willing to provide services when necessary. The result is a comprehensive Community Referral Network list with qualified top notch professionals.

Our relationship with Colleges/Universities in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and other European countries continues to develop and numerous events will help build on an already strong relationship. This will include workshops at the European Council for International Schools, where numerous universities from Europe, Canada and the USA come together to share information with college counselors, as well as a visit to our school from College Board representative (Nov. 5th) to inform students, parents and teachers about the newest trends in applying to colleges.

Finally, the Learning Differences conference in May will house profession-als from all over the world who will share their knowledge and expertise with our own professionals at ACS and with the community at large.

So, something is definitely happening in Student Services! Our goal? To make life for students at ACS as efficient and enjoyable as possible!

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Lifelong WellnessA Focus at the Elementary School

Stavroula Salouros, ES PE Teacher

This year, the physical education program in the elementary school is taking on a “new” perspective. A program called “Lifelong Wellness,” which emphasizes health and fitness education, will be emphasized and incorporated within the physical education program. “Lifelong wellness” will promote and exhibit a physically active lifestyle. It will propose and demonstrate various ideas on how one can achieve and maintain a health-enhancing level of physical fitness. It will also demonstrate re-sponsible, personal, and social behavior in its different physical activity settings.

In every grade, students will be learning about the principles of exercise and nutrition and why plenty of physical activity and good nutrition are important to their health throughout their lives. Students will develop and maintain their own personalized fitness education portfolios and all will participate in physically active, kinesthetic, fun activities. Some of these activities will include swimming, dodgeball, broomball, rhythm and dance, etc.

“Lifelong Wellness” will model life-long physical activity through a variety of collaborative activities and sports. Students will learn the importance of making healthy choices in all aspects of wellness. They will be supplied with information needed to increase their self-esteem, increase their communication, change their attitudes, and influence their behavior. Fur-thermore, “Lifelong Wellness” will demonstrate an understanding and respect for differences among people, and it will demonstrate an un-derstanding that physical activity provides opportunities for enjoyment, challenge, self-expression, and social interaction.

“Collaboration, collaboration, we are a model healthy elementary school-nation!”44

The IT department has been busy this year! Some of the initiatives com-ing from the IT department include:

• New ID Cards for Administrators, Faculty, Staff, Students • Checking out of books from the bookstore is completely auto- mated. Students check out books using their ID cards. • Blackboard courses for Middle and High School have been created and teachers are uploading course syllabi, documents, weblinks, assignments and announcements. • Students now have ACS email accounts for communication with their teachers. Student email address: last name first initial last two digits of graduation year @ stu.acs.gr (e.g. smithj10@stu. acs.gr • Progress Reports electronically mailed to parents – all parents with an email address will receive progress reports sent to their email address. Parents are asked to inform us of any changes in email addresses.

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The IT Department The House System Now in the Elementary School

We are currently collaborating with the Middle School and Academy to start the “House System” in the Elementary School.

The “House System” is a wonderful concept that bonds the whole school community, encourages school spirit, and builds a sense of be-longing. It consists of four houses, Athenians, Spartans, Corinthians, and Trojans, and once a student is assigned to one of the four houses, he/she is a life-long member.

Every elementary student, JK-5, every teacher, every administrator, and every staff member is currently being placed in one of the four houses. All families and siblings/cousins will be placed in the same house, and so will faculty/staff members and their children.

As soon as the “House System” is in place, faculty can incorporate it into their lessons by using it as a means of creating groups, setting up teams, splitting up classes, etc. Students can also start to earn points for their houses by being part of after school activities/sports; being a student council member; being “student of the week;” getting first place in a tournament; getting special recognition awards; etc. Faculty and staff members can also earn points by coaching; advising clubs; participating in student activities, etc. The points will be tallied and posted in the el-ementary school library, and the house with the most earned points will be presented with a plaque. Furthermore, students who have earned the most points for their houses will be presented with “School Spirit” certificates at the end of the year.

The “House System” is a great concept that promotes collaboration by uniting all the schools and involves the whole community. Let us all unite and promote and support the spirit of the “House System.” Hip, hip, horray!

Lots of Smiles, Stavroula Salouros, Elementary Physical Education/Health Instructor

Stavroula Salouros, ES PE TeacherMary Manos, IT Coordinator

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Middle School Greek Play: Ornithes

FEBRURY 25 2007 – ACS Athens 6th Graders perform Aristophane’s Ornithes

As Greek teacher of Language Arts class 6th grade last year, I’m very proud to announce that on Sunday February 25 we went with all my 6th grade L.A. students to participate in the Multi-Cultural Educational Fair (Diapolitismikotita) with our successful play Ornithes.

I really feel very excited because our participation was very successful. We were all there at 10:00 in the morning, the students were excited for the play and the parents were very supportive and positive for this participation. We had worked very hard and everything was very well organized; there was an excellent cooperation among students parents and myself. Our school ’s presentation that I had prepared and presented based on our school’s profile, as well as the research I had done about DIAPOLITISMIKOTITA and the cultural diversity, was very interesting, providing information about the quality of learning offered to our students. At the end of this event we had a small reception.

I feel proud of all my students, they were great, dynamic, motivated and excited…. they didn’t only perform but they had also prepared two power point presentations and we also had classical music by two students.

Finally, Ms.Kouri and Mr.Karamberopoulos congratulated ACS Athens, our students and me for this excellent participation. Most important was that our students had the opportunity to better appreciate the meaning of cultural diversity, which will serve them in the future to be responsible and global citizens.The students who participated were:

Tonia Firigou, Modern Language Dept. Chair

Kassandra KarydasAthanassios KosteasAnastasia SymeonidesJason ThomopoulosVassilios Trafalis

Pantelis VagionasNikolas KalantzakisIoanna KapatouAnna Petrakos

Marta AharonianDimitris AntoninisDaphni ApostolidesMichael DragoumanosNikos Efstratudakis

Anastasia Symeonides, a 6th grade performer, wrote on the behalf of the Greek LA 6 class.

We are proud to announce that the Greek LA 6 class has accomplished something that we are very content about. This class made up of sixth grade girls and boys performed an ancient Greek comedy, Ornithes. It was organized and supported by our very own Mrs.Firigou the Greek LA teacher. The play was written by the famous ancient comedian Aristophanes, who produced over forty-four ancient Greek comedies. The students worked through even their free time to pull off this small play. After it had been performed in the Conference Room, it was so successful at ACS that a very exciting proposal came into the picture. The object offered was the chance to present the small play in the Athens College Theater! That week, the teacher announced that there was a large surprise at hand, and the students couldn’t sit still. The prospect of great things that would make them famous loomed in their minds. What could it possibly be? When the cat had been let out of the bag, the class erupted in cheers. The event took place on Sunday, the 25th of February. The class was very excited and the anticipation boiled over like too much water poured in a jug. What an opportunity! It turned out to be a very victorious skit, and everyone came back satisfied. During the show, for once, the students backstage kept quiet. Everything worked beautifully. The narrators in the beginning of the play enunciated their words correctly, and the articles flowed smoothly. The stunt men had done their job well in tumbling on the stage floor. The birds fluttered in with a happy attitude and a petite feel. Stepping primly over the fallen guard, the birds gave their ending speech. The comedy was enjoyed to the extreme, and it ended up being a very memorable experience. And even though the play took place on a Sunday, no one was absent and even if some of the actors were late, the show went on! The curtains finally went up! The birds fluffed their feathers, humans primped their hair, and the goddess quickly looked in the mirror to see if she was presentable. They stepped onto stage, and in modern Greek, gave the audience a chance to glimpse a world of ancient Greek comedy. We would like to thank our teacher, Mrs. Firigou, and all the parents that volunteered their free time to help out with our play. Chaperoning and helping with make-up, they lent a hand to make our performance possible.

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Grand Openingof the Stavros Niarchos Learning Center

Saturday, May 12, 2007 marked the official Grand Opening and Ribbon Cut-ting Ceremony of the Stavros Niarchos Learning Center in conjunction with the 2nd Annual Conference “Celebrating Learning Differences.” The event took place on the ACS Athens campus. The turnout was successful thanks to the hard work and dedication of those involved. Over 230 people at-tended to further their knowledge on learning differences. The participants varied from special educators, psychologists, counselors, parents, students, and those in the community who share an interest in this field.

The Conference was a success, as professionals from many disciplines of education attended the various lectures. The speakers came from around the globe to share their experiences and expertise with all those attending. The topics presented covered many different aspects of education, such as Sensory Integration, Accommodations for Successful Learning, Understand-ing ADD/ADHD, and others.

The Ribbon Cutting ceremony was organized by the parents of students who receive services at the ACS Athens Optimal Match Center. Members of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, created in memory of the late Stavros Niarchos, were present to celebrate the success of the completion of a hard year’s work. Mr Niarchos’ dream was to improve the quality of life for people in Greece and around the globe. The Foundation provides funding for unique and innovative programs in the field of education and was keen on being part of the existing Optimal Match Learning Center. Therefore, after much hard work, a whole floor of the school was completely renovated. The Foundation provided the funds for new computers, furniture, software programs and books, in order to help the Center succeed. Dr Gialamas, the Head of Schools at ACS, along with the representative from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, officially cut the ribbon right after the keynote speaker, Dr Duncan Rollo, of the Centre Academy in London, gave his opening remarks. Pictures were taken, congratulations were given and a good time was had by all.

The Optimal Match team is headed by Ms Christiana Perakis, and consists of Ms Anna Liasides, Ms Renee Koutras, Ms Sarah Kaldelli and Ms Marialena Kalyvas. The Stavros Niarchos Learning Center offers support to students with mild learning difficulties or special learning needs. The aim of the Optimal Match team is to facilitate the learning process in order for students to be successful in school. “The quality of the program was superb and the turnout was im-pressive” stated one of ACS’s Academy teachers. A parent also professed her gratitude for the awareness ACS is spreading in the community. “Thank you so much for Saturday’s conference. I really got a lot out of it. It’s interesting how it helped me in multiple ways.” Gratitude for the center has been proclaimed by many and one person stated that the “Athenian community is truly lucky to have such a wonderful service available.”

The Optimal Match team is looking forward to the rest of the school year (2007-2008) when it will build on last year’s successes and provide further services to all those in need of them.

The Optimal Match Team

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A Chorus Line

Elaine Seremetis, Parent & Megan Zoumaya, Student

In June of 2007, ACS Athens students in IB Theatre Arts I (juniors) performed A Chorus Line for the ACS Community. Presented as the final project of the first year curriculum, it was the culmination of a collaborative effort by those involved. The students, their teacher, Ms Barbara Gray, ACS Administration, the staff of the Arts Center, and parent volunteers all came together to create this successful musical performance.Thoughout the school year, the students had undertaken shorter performances in the classroom setting, usually in small groups. These smaller projects created the atmosphere of bringing together the stu-dents’ ideas and creative energy toward a larger goal. Thus, when work began on A Chorus Line, they were prepared to work well together as one large group. However, a collaboration of this magnitude was a new experience. The integration of music, theater, and dance is a lengthy process and, at first, the amount of time and effort demanded of the students was difficult to absorb. In time, however, as the musical took shape, it was very exciting and motivating for all. The final preparations for the performance included technical rehearsals involving the sound and lighting technicians from the Arts Center. It was a unique learning experience to observe these technical experts do their work and see the powerful effect sound and lighting had on their show. The final reward of such a huge collaborative effort was a feeling of accomplishment by all those involved and a wonderful lesson for the students on and off the stage.

Megan Zoumaya was one student who came into this production at the same time that she entered ACS as a transfer student from the states. Here are her thoughts on being a part of A Chorus Line.

Coming to a new school and having to start all over is difficult for any student. I was lucky enough to come right at the beginning of auditions for the show A Chorus Line performed by the Theater Arts I class. Putting together any sort of production takes team work and stamina. It is an excellent way to make friends by working together to create something wonderful. The beginning process was slow. It consisted of reading the script over and over until we became famil-iarized enough to start memorizing the story as well as our lines. Once we became comfortable with the script we began blocking, dance practice, and singing practice. It can be very difficult to get a group of busy students together after school but we managed to do it. Over time and much needed practice we became in sync with our dancing and mastered the timing of our lines. The night of the show came and the adrenaline was high. It was time to perform. The stage was pitch black as we walked on to perform the first number. I couldn’t help but smile at the relationships I had created with such amazing, talented people. That night we took a story off paper and turned it into something fabulous. Our time working together on A Chorus Line was priceless.

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The Windows Project A summer of dust and debris

Steve Kakaris, Business Manager

During the summer break, ACS Athens replaced all outside windows in the remaining five of the seven ACS campus buildings: Middle School, High School, Administration, Library and Annex. The other two buildings, Ele-mentary School and Theater/Athletic center already had new windows. All in all, we replaced about 250 windows plus many doors and wall panels.

Most of the old windows were the original iron-made frames from the time the buildings were constructed. The new ALUMIL windows have modern aluminum frames with double glass to help save energy in winter and summer.

Based on a study from the University of Athens, which photographed the buildings with infra-red camera to measure heat losses, the new windows will improve the overall energy consumption by about 23%. We will save about 232,47 MWh of thermal energy or 19,5 tn of heating oil per year. Accordingly, the environmental benefit from the reduction in fossil fuel burning will be significant.

The cost of this project was funded from the ACS capital fund. However, one third of the total cost will be reimbursed from the Greek Ministry of Development, through the European Community funding program 6.5.1/B, (Energy Savings).

We would like to thank many of our parents who helped us in advancing the project. Especially, Mr. Hilentzaris of Synthex Ltd. who prepared the study for the Greek Ministry of Development, Mrs. Paulina Apostolides who helped us acquire the construction permits from the Greek authori-ties and Mr. Mantzouranis of Arcon Constructions who did the construc-tion work.

SPECIALevents

Collaborating to Argue – Summer Debate Camp

Zen Zambakides, Debate Coach & Academy / MS Teacher

From the 28th to the 31st of August, students from the private schools of Athens were invited to join the 2007 Debate Camp which took place at St. Catherine’s school. About 65 of them heard the call and decided to give up the last days of their vacations, as did faculty from these schools who agreed to help. Remarkably, alumni debaters of these schools, now in Universities in Britain and the U.S. also offered their assistance, their fresh perspectives and their expertise. So, in the highly competitive world of debate, rivalry was put aside as faculty came together to teach students of all schools how to argue better as students helped each other to improve. It is on this collaboration of ideas, perspectives and disciplines that this article will focus.

On the simplest level, students had the opportunity to be tutored by coaches other than their school coaches and benefit from new approaches on the various elements of debate, giving them more holistic answers to clas-sic debating issues and the ability to judge for themselves which approach they find more useful. Being one of the five coaches that were finally chosen, I coached the Beginners Group and I also found extremely valuable the amount of knowledge that students conveyed to each other. As students were placed in groups, the phrase “this is how we do it; how do you?” could be heard amongst those students that had even the most rudimentary understanding of debate. And as common ground was met, this exchange of perspectives soon drifted away from explicitly debating issues to thoughts on note taking, creative thinking and structure. This process took place seamlessly, often going unnoticed by the students themselves.

The coaching of the Beginners Group (as well as the other groups) was also collaborative in nature as I was joined by Anita Akabalos, a 21 year old debater, fresh from the University World Championships which took place in July. The coach and the practitioner, teaching together. As I focused on conveying information on style , structure and format in an appropriate manner for students of this age and experience level, Anita added her own thoughts on these and shared examples of what she had seen recently and tricks which seemed to have worked. This led to a very well rounded understanding of the issues and gave energy to the lesson. A nice moment was when after eight grueling hours at the end of the second day, most of the students ignored the final bell and continued to bombard us with questions on why China was a better case study than India in regards to private universities and why the education vs. vandalism argument should not be used in the next day’s tournament; both arguments had come out of me and Anita throwing ideas at each other as we strived to answer

student questions.

Finally, there was also a collaboration of disciplines. On the second day, Effie Gianakouri, Kalina Basli and myself (the lawyer, the political scientist and the economist) gave speech-es relating our areas of expertise to debate and giving suggestions on how these can be used to create better arguments and more complete cases lines.

Did this process lead to miraculous improvement of debating skills or to fledgling debaters speaking confidently and without pause for the 8 minutes allocated to them? No. But the beginners did stand tall at the tournament of the third day (many beating the intermedi-ates!) some of the intermediates visibly improved and the expert debaters had the chance to clarify details and clear up misconceptions. Also law and economic based arguments were heard on the last day as an effort was made for theory to be put into practice. As for ACS students, Dorelina Spiliopoulou won the Cup for the Most Improved Speaker and she as well as Stefanie Xintara, Natalie Amarin and Jackie Cremos found their way to the Top 20 Speaker list.

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Donations to Victims of the Summer Conflagrations

Will Seremetis, StudentSeptember 9, 2007 On September 8, 2007, a group of 22 parents and students from ACS traveled to the Peloponnese in order to deliver donated provi-sions to the victims of the fires in that area of Greece. This collabora-tive effort was initiated and organized by Kelly and Bobby Mitropoulos, ACS parents. At 10:30 am, the bus left Politia Square with the group and a plethora of items, including food, water, clothes, linens, and toys. The five-hour drive through many mountainous regions affected by the fires was, at times, depressing. Most of the trees, which had once created the scenery full of beautiful shades of green, were now lifeless yellow and black skeletons. The group’s first stop was Nea Figalia, a town in the Zaharo region of the Ilias Province. While there, we met the mayor. He was grateful for the assistance, although he informed us of another village that had a greater need for the particular items that were brought (their most pressing need is for food for their animals). Therefore, the request was made to go further into the Zaharo Region, higher into the mountains to the village of Tripiti, not far from Ancient Olympia. As the bus ap-proached Tripiti, the landscape was even more ominous, as if something had sucked the life out of the world. When the group reached its des-tination, it was met by the priest, Father Odyseus Liris, who services several villages in the area. Many people remember him from initial news reports on television while he and the townspeople were fighting the fires that were closing in on them. He was begging for help from the government. He confirmed to the group that his people were in immediate need of everything. After the provisions were unloaded, it was unbelievable to see just how much had come off the bus! The few people remaining in the village came out to see what all the activity was about. They were extremely surprised and grateful. We were humbled by this, realizing the only difference between them and us is their terrible fate of bad luck. Certainly a lesson learned here is that so much time is spent on thinking about what we don’t have, instead of being thankful for what we do have. The village of Tripiti had 200 people, but about 100 have been either killed or displaced by the fires. Those that lost their homes are now dis-persed throughout the region, some of them living in tents. The people of Tripiti made their living from their production of olive oil. Now, with the olive groves burnt, they will have no money with which to buy food and other necessities of life. As winter approaches, their situation will become even more serious. They, and all the citizens of these mountain villages, are in great need of non-perishable food items. As the immediate aid from Greek citizens and others worldwide slows down, these people cannot be forgotten. What this small group (and others from the school who donated goods) was able to accomplish in one day can be a lesson in how easy it is to make a difference in the lives of those in need.

The 12th Annual Golden Wreath Awards Talent Show came early this year! Academy students pulled the performance together in a record ten days (!) to accommodate the Alumni Reunion and provide entertain-ment for the visiting alums prior to their big dinner on Monday, October 8th. Although the Monday afternoon performance at first seemed a lia-bility (when do we have the dress rehearsal if the show’s at 4 o’clock?!?), students soon turned this disadvantage into a new performance, inviting all Academy students and teachers to join them in their ‘dress rehearsal’ – in essence, their first show!

Mistress and Masters of Ceremonies Maria Alafouzos, Will Seremetis and Kostas Zafiriadis provided the audience with wit, charm and quick think-ing while introducing the fourteen acts which included vocals, dance, piano, instrumental, juggling and drumming!

Congratulations to the winners:

3rd place: Peter Hovenier, drum solo 2nd place: Angelique Coulouris, vocal solo 1st place: Anna Maria Dimitratos, dance solo

12th Annual Golden Wreath Awards Talent Show

Marca A. Daley, Academy Activities Coordinator

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Balogh, AllisonDimitrakopoulos, PeteDimitri, AnnaDimitropoulos, AngelosExintavelonis, GeorgiaGialamas, StefanosGomarakis, HariGrigoropoulos, AlexiaJasonides, KathleenKakaris, SteveKaldelli, SarahKarayianni, ChristinaKarvouniaris, JanetKatsiyianni, MatinaKefalinou, LouciaKokkali, KorinaKotsiani, AthanasiaKoutras, ReneeLiakos, HelenLiasides AnnaMakropoulos, CathyMantarakis, JaneMikros, VasilisMitsopoulou, AthinaMonahogios, MariaMonahogiou, IoannaNelson, DavidO’Donoghue, KathleenPappas, Dina

NESA Conference

The Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools hosts a confer-ence each year. Last spring (March 31-April 2) the conference was in Athens. Educators from throughout the region convened for the 2007 Spring Educators Conference. Over 750 delegates enjoyed three days of professional renewal and personal reconnection. Many ACS Athens teachers attended, not only participating in, but leading workshops in their areas of expertise.

Participants:

One of the goals of the faculty of ACS Athens is to encourage our students to become life-long learners, and what better way to promote this ideal, than to model it. Our faculty and staff are busy outside of school as well as in the classroom, participating in conferences, taking courses, leading workshops, serving on committees, publishing articles… Each issue will focus on some of the learning experiences of the ACS staff.

Mary Ann AugoustatosAllison BaloghChristina BirbilGeorgia ExintavelonisStefanos GialamasHari GomarakisKathy JasonidesJan Karvouniaris

Sana KassemHelen LiakosCathy MakropoulosPauline MamouzellosRannelle McCoySteve MedeirosDavid NelsonDemetri Pelides

Christiana PerakisSue ProtopsaltisJulia TokatlidouMary TsotsisAngelique VellisEllen VriniotisKanella ZaralidesKonstandina Zorba

Pelidis, DemetriPelonis, PeggyPerakis, ChristianaPittas, EvelynPolideras KonstantinaRontogiannis, LabriniSarantes, HelenSavvas, MariannaSiani, Eleni Skouri, EleniTokatlidou, JuliaVellis, AngeliqueVriniotis, EllenZambakides, Zen

The 2nd Annual Conference Celebrating Learning Differences, under the auspices of the Ministry of National Education, was held on May 12, 2007. The conference was organized by the Optimal Match Program at the Stavros Niarchos Learning Center and the Office of Academic & Student Services of ACS Athens, in collaboration with the Hellenic Center for Dyslexia. More than 20 sessions of seminars, workshops and panel dis-cussions were offered, with education specialists from Greece, Europe and the U.S. presenting issues and action plans that have been imple-mented in the best domestic and international institutions. ACS Athens faculty and staff were involved not only in organizing the event, but also attended as participants in the workshops and plenary sessions.

Participants:

The 2nd Annual Conference Celebrating Learning Differences

PROFESSIONALdevelopment

•MARY-ANN AUGOUSTATOS – MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL - was a member of an accreditation team that visited “The Universal American School” in Dubai, UAE in January 2007.

•CHRISTINA BAKOYANNIS – SCIENCE DEPARTMENT CHAIR & MID-DLE SCHOOL SCIENCE TEACHER - completed the MASTER OF EDU-CATION programme at La Verne University in June 2007. The topic of her thesis was Environmental Education: Teaching for Sustainability.

•VALIA EFSTATHIOU - ASSISTANT TO THE ATHLETIC/PE DEPARTMENT – received a Master’s in Sports Marketing & Communication from Ca ‘Fos-cari University of Venice at La Ghirada Sports Campus in Treviso/Venice, Italy in July 2007, sponsored by Euroleague Basketball. Valia also participated in a real life sport experience, writing a case study of the Final Four Athens 2007.

•TONIA FIRIGOU – MODERN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT CHAIR & ACADEMY FRENCH TEACHER – organized a series of seminars for staff development in February 2007 for members of the Foreign Language De-partment and others (see related article).

•PAULINE N. MAMOUZELLOS, M.PH. – ACADEMY SCIENCE / ACADEMY & MIDDLE SCHOOL GERMAN LANGUAGE TEACHER - presented at the NESA Conference focusing on training in the teaching and laboratory work involved with AP Biology. Over the three day conference Pauline made models, did lab demonstrations, shared best practice, and provided infor-mation on important sites, texts, lab manuals, etc. She also exhibited her Aghiographia work.

•RANNELLE MCCOY – MIDDLE SCHOOL HUMANITIES TEACHER - took graduate level courses towards a Master’s of Education (six courses from Dec. 06 – August 07) at Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana. Rannelle also attended the NESA Conference.

•PEGGY PELONIS – DIRECTOR OF ACADEMIC & STUDENT SERVICES & SENIOR COUNSELOR - conducted a week long workshop on “coping with life changes that women face” to a group of professional women in Clonmel, Ireland, July 2007. Peggy also attended the University of Bath, UK, in July to work on her doctorate degree with courses in Culture and Language.

•CHRISTIANA PERAKIS – DIRECTOR OF STAVROS NIARCHOS LEARN-ING CENTER & OPTIMAL MATCH COORDINATOR - co-chaired the conference on “Celebrating Learning Differences” in May 2007. Chris also wrote an article for Nesa News Spring 2007 and attended the NESA Con-ference.

•NATASHA STRATOGLOU – MIDDLE SCHOOL & ACADEMY GREEK / FRENCH TEACHER – began work on a masters degree at the Greek Open University. Natasha’s focus was Management of Cultural Units.

•KONSTANTINA ZORMPA (NADIA) – ES GREEK TEACHER - took a course entitled Adult Education (Sept. – June) at the Open University of Greece as part of a second Masters Degree in Education. Nadia also at-tended the NESA Conference.

Staff Development 2007Modern Languages Dept.

More Professional Development

In February 2007, as Chair of the Modern Languages Department I orga-nized for our department a staff development addressed to all the mem-bers but also to all those who were interested to enrich their knowledge in Greek.I invited a very distinguished sociologist and ethnograher, Mr.Georgios Lekakis to ACS Athens to give three sessions for all of us who teach Greek language, to enrich our professional knowledge, under the um-brella of staff development. These sessions were given in February and were offered after school to the participants.The content of these sessions included:• History & Humanities• Culture & Mythology• Approaches to Learning through roots of Greek words• Connections with codes of Greek Language

The content of these sessions served to help all of us to develop in-terdisciplinary connections with other departments but also offered us a variety of new creative ideas which were easily adapted to our cur-riculum, in order to enhance the Greek program. I strongly believe that these sessions were very valuable for all of us who participated to pro-mote our goal for strong, powerful quality of learning!

Tonia FirigouModern Languages Department Chair

PROFESSIONALdevelopment

Finding Wellness in the Waters of ACS. Three mornings a week ACS Athens faculty and staff can choose to arrive at school early to take advantage of the pool facilities with an early morning swim. To support this program, four ACS Athens staff members participated in a life saving course at the ACS pool in June, earning life guard certificates in order to help super-vise the morning swimmers. Marca Daley, Jim Koulyras, Vasilis Mikros and Peggy Pelonis are the most recent life guards on campus, joining Athanasia Kotsiani and Angelo Dimitropoulos.

Faculty Life Saving

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CIM THOMAKOS earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Skidmore College. She received graduate credits in Art from Texas Tech University, the Aegean School of the Arts, the University of the Arts, and in the Teaching of Writing from the Uni-versity of California, Berkley. She received a Teacher Fellowship for graduate work in the Summer Six Program at Skidmore College. On four occasions she received grants to support her work as a Resident Artist at the Vermont Studio Center. Cim designed and constructed puppets for the Children’s Theater Group of Ath-ens. She worked as an illustrator and graphic designer for Research for Better Schools in Philadelphis, PA, and apprenticed as a Master Potter in Jackson Hole, WY. Cim has been teaching Visual Arts at ACS Athens since 1979. She held the position of Fine and Performing Arts Department Chair from 2004-2006. As a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant, Cim conducts classroom based research on learning and the creative process and has led teacher training workshops on inte-grating the writing process across the curriculum. In 1998 Cim created Boxes and Other Possibilities, a research study investigating the potential of poetic thinking and collaborative creative enterprise. In 2002 she initiated the ACS Ball Project, a community activity whereby students build site-specific art installations comprised of hundreds of used, found, and recycled balls. (http://ballproject.awardspace.com). See related article in this issue.

In 1977, following a major solo exhibition of her work in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cim Thomakos came to Greece in search of new directions. Her work reflects a diverse aesthetic and cultural inquiry into her adopted homeland. The drawings, paintings, etchings, monoprints, handmade books and boxes in this exhibition were selected from an extensive body of work that the artist created over the last thirty years.

JEFF BEAR discovered two things at Faulkner Street Elementary School in New Smyrna Beach, Florida: he was an artist and he wanted to teach art. At the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, he found that he had a talent for caricature and cartooning and he also learned to write. During four years at Wesleyan University in the 1960’s, he discovered that sculpture and welding were fun.

For three years Jeff taught and exhibited in Florida before moving to New England. For the decade that he taught in the greater Boston area, he became more interested in photography and painting as he discovered that sculpture was neither portable nor profitable. Portability became even more relevant when he took his first teaching post outside the USA in 1981.

During work and residence in Indonesia, England, Spain and Jordan, his personal artwork was mostly photography and drawing. Upon a return to Greece, and ACS, he entered what he thinks of as his “doodle period.” These drawings featured high contrast patterns and whimsical, intricate subjects. Most recently, besides writing poetry, Jeff has discovered his computer scanner as an art medium.

Jeff enjoys playing with words and images and savors the serendipitous epiphany of the “little aha!” that the creative process provides. His philosophy of art is simple: If you enjoy the process of cre-ation, perhaps you will produce something others might enjoy.

Retrospective Art ExhibitionsPROFESSIONALdevelopment

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Cim Thomakos, Jeff Bear

Snapshots of Student Life

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ALUMNIaffairs

When John Demos first arrived on the ACS campus in 1969 as an aide in the math classes, he began a relationship with the school that has developed over the years into a family affair. His innovative teaching over 17 years shaped a range of courses in the high school, including Honors Humanities; IB Theory of Knowledge; and courses in art history, studio art and photography. When, in 1986, he decided to concentrate on pursuing his other career as a professional photographer, the family connection continued. His wife, Bernardine, presented her own portfolio of work and was hired to take over John’s photography classes. In the meantime, the couple’s three children---Iason, Ianthe, and Daph-ne--- were beginning their education at ACS. During a recent conversation with John and Bernardine at the Aghia Paraskevi office of Apeiron Photos, the photo agency that John founded in 1988, we reminisced about his years at ACS. Among the highlights was the creation of Honors Humanities, a course with an innovative curriculum that is still going strong after 35 years. As one of the current teachers of this class, I found it exciting to hear how John and former ACS English teacher Doug Young deve-

Alumni Profile: The Dynamic Demos Family

Kathleen Jasonides, Academy English Teacher

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Daphne, Iason, John & Ianthe

loped this interdisciplinary, team-taught course, inspired by the humanities program of John’s alma mater, the University of Chicago. Another course that John introduced to ACS was IB Theory of Knowledge. After attending training seminars at Atlantic College in Wales, a prototype IB school, he became the first one to teach it at ACS. Later, while on sabbatical, he gave TOK seminars at Atlantic College. However, art and photography were never far from his mind. With a B.A. in Art History (1966) and an M.F.A. in Painting and Photography (1968) from the University of Chicago, he says that the studio art, art history and photography courses he developed were “what really suited me tremendously.” During a major building program on campus in the mid-1970’s, John assisted in designing the art room complex and later designed a new dark room for the photography classes. In addition to his classroom teaching, John was Model United Nations advisor for several years, his teams winning first place two years in a row, representing the U.S.S.R. and South Africa. In the 1980’s he also was a dynamic President of ACSTA, the ACS Athens Teachers Association. During these teaching years, John pursued a parallel career as a professional photographer, exhibiting his photographs internationally and publishing in a wide range of books and magazines. His stunning black and white photographs of traditional life in Greece have been published in two monographs, The Greece That Is Passing (1976) and Shadows of Silence (2002), and his work has become part of major collections such as those of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Art Institute of Chicago; and Centro de Arte Moderna, Gulbenkian, Lisbon. He and four other photographers also founded the Photographic Center of Athens in 1979, with the goal of promoting photography in Greece and encouraging young photographers. He continued with this endeavor for four years while exhibiting widely and raising a family. Eventually, John’s photography career left no time for teaching. As he says, “For me, I do something, do it the best I can, and move on.” The next challenge was to start his own photo agency. Apeiron Photos began in 1988 by representing the international agency Magnum in Greece. Gradually Apeiron has become the Greek representative of more than 40 international agencies and photographers, including Corbis, one of the two biggest international photo agencies in Greece. Although Apeiron was not the first Greek photo agency, John explains, it broke into the edito-rial field, providing photos for stories in magazines and news publications. Four years ago, Apeiron became associated with the European Publishers Photography Award. Among other prizes, the winning photogra-pher each year has his work published for free in seven languages. Apeiron publishes these books in the Greek language. John’s commitment to promoting photography in Greece is also apparent in other endeavors. As artistic director of the Photographic Center of Skopelos from 1995 to 1999, he organized major summer exhibits in cooperation with European museums. He also organizes photo exhibitions for the Rizareios Founda-tion, and designed the Rizareios Exhibition Center in Monodendri, northwestern Greece. Currently, John is working on a new exhibition of color photographs that he took during several visits to Albania when the border opened in 1990 – 91. It is scheduled to open in July 2008 in Arles, France. Another project planned for next year is a Retrospective of the works of the

“ For me, I do something, do it the best I can, and move on.”

The young Demos family

College in Aghia Paraskevi, as well as at ACS, where Ianthe got her start in theater as a high school student director. The OYL production of Oresteia was based on a new translation and adaptation by Yannis Papatheodorou and Iason Demos. Recently OYL has been taking up summer residence in Papingo, where John and Bernardine bought a house in 1973 and where the family has spent their vacations ever since. There the acting group rehearses for the upcoming New York season and stages full performances for the local residents. After this whirlwind discussion of the Demos family’s activities and accomplishments, I wondered aloud: “How do you do it all?” John’s an-swer: “Bernardine.” He describes her as the hard worker, the practical person who does what needs to be done from “top floor, to bottom floor, to basement.” With Bernardine he has done what he loves professionally and still reaped the joys of a very happy family life. He adds emphatically:

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John as a new teacher

internationally acclaimed Czech photographer Joseph Koudelka. John is co-curator of this exhibit, which will open in September 2008 at the Benaki Museum on Piraeus Street. The Retrospective is timed to coincide with the publication of the Greek edition of Koudelka’s book, which has already been published in French. John credits Koudelka, a long-time friend, with inspiring him to pursue photography as a full-time career. These days John works mostly on special projects, while his son, Iason, handles the day-to-day busi-ness as General Manager of the agency. A 1993 ACS graduate, Iason has a Bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth in Comparative Literature and earned a Master’s degree from King’s College London. His wife, Aurelia, is also part of the Apeiron team. Iason’s two sisters also graduated from ACS, Ianthe in 1996 and Daphne in 1997. Daphne earned a Bachelor’s degree in Wild Life Biology from the University of Vermont and a Master’s degree in Wild Life Management and Conservation from the University of Reading in London. She and her husband Demetri live in the village of Papingo, where they breed horses and own the White Pegasus stables, offering trail riding in one of the most beautiful wild-life environments in northwestern Greece. Daphne also supervises interns from the University of Vermont who travel to Papingo for three months of practical experience in animal science at her stables. The couple has a six-month-old daughter, Nefeli. In New York City, Ianthe Demos works as Tour Production Manager for Columbia Artists Manage-ment. When she isn’t traveling the world managing tours she devotes herself to One Year Lease, a theater company she co-founded after graduating from Vasser College in 2000. The non-profit theater group is “dedicated to revitalizing classic texts” and performs in off-Broadway theaters as well as internationally. As artistic director, Ianthe has forged close ties between the theater group and Greece. In June 2007, the group presented Death and the Maiden in the Teatro Imeras in Athens. The play is part of a trilogy by Ariel Dorfman which made up the company’s 2007 season. In 2001 OYL presented Antigone at Theatre Technis in Athens, co-sponsored by Apeiron Photos and ACS. In 2002 the company presented the Oresteia at Deree

“There is no way I could have shifted from one thing to another the way I did without this person.” Will John Demos ever slow down? “I am pulling back, slowly,” he says. He spends more time working in the large garden of their home in Kapandriti. He and Bernardine both love gardening and have friendly quarrels over who should wear the “Head Gardener” t-shirt and who the shirt that says “Under Gardener.” However, John has developed a new passion; he has turned their old garage in Kapandriti into a “dedi-cated music room.” He says he spends any money that he makes on his “incredible” stereo equipment. This is where he enjoys his collection of LP records; 5000 LP’s --- and counting. “I collect LP’s everywhere I go,” he says. “World music, classical music, jazz....”

Note: John Demos would like to offer his book Shadows of Silence (2002) to ACS alumnae at a special price. If you are interested, please contact him at Apeiron Photos, jdemos@apeiron.gr

ALUMNIaffairs

“Traveling Down Memory Lane” Marianna Savvas, Alumni Affairs

A group of 35 Alumni and guests who attended ACS Athens from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s and who now permanently reside in the U.S. gathered on Monday, October 8, 2007 on our school campus to celebrate a very special Homecoming Reunion. Of the 35 Alumni, some had not returned to their ACS Athens “home” since graduation. ACS Athens local Alumni were also invited to be part of the celebration and we were happy to see them.

The 2007 Alumni Homecoming Reunion was an initiative by a team of graduates who have kept in contact with our school and the Alumni Af-fairs Office and decided to organize their return in combination with a week’s stay in Athens.

This very successful day at ACS Athens featured a tour of the school campus and its ‘new’ facilities, followed by visits to the classrooms that brought fond recollections of their “golden years” at ACS (back then known as the “American Academy”). Following the tour was a talent show, the 12th Annual Golden Wreath Awards, put on by the Academy stu-dents and dedicated and presented to the alumni. Soon after, one by one, the call of names and graduation years of our Alumni attendees was announced. This elicited feelings nostalgia as it reminded them of being inside a classroom and having the teacher take attendance. The event in the theatre concluded with a slide show presentation of photographs beginning with our very first yearbook in 1953 and combining music from each decade.

The evening finished not only with a Greek BBQ dinner, dance and music from the golden decades in the atrium of the Arts Center, but also with a promise—a promise that we will see each other in two years here in Athens.

It was a great pleasure to have been able to meet Sheri Hunnicutt Mon-day afternoon on October 8, 2007, as she and her husband along with the rest of our Alumni from the U.S. arrived in Greece to celebrate the Homecoming Reunion with us. No doubt all Alumni present that day had a story to share with us, but Sheri’s story is something that we strongly advocate when it comes to facilitating the learning process for children with learning differences.

This is how it began...After leaving ACS (known then as the American Academy) as a sophomore in 1958, Sheri finished High school in Lan-caster, then Millersville, Pennsylvania, and went on to Gettysburg College to study math. When her parents moved to New Mexico, Sheri followed them for graduate school, and earned an MA in math at the Univer-sity of New Mexico. After a one-year tour helping her first husband do research in Bolivia, she worked as a mathematician before moving to Boston. There Sheri studied computer science and linguistics at MIT and then worked in a research group there for ten years, working with the linguistic aspects of developing synthetic speech. Sheri eventually moved to Stockholm in 1981 when she was asked to work at the Royal Insti-tute of Technology (KTH) where she also received her PhD in speech technology in 1988.

“I had been working for 10 years at MIT on linguistics aspects of speech synthesis (computer generated speech) when I was asked to work at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. The two men I worked with in Stockholm, who had previously worked with us a year at MIT, had begun using speech synthesis as a communication aid for non-speaking persons. One day a teenage girl who had been using synthetic speech for commu-nication came in. She had cerebral palsy, and was not able to speak well enough for most people to understand her. My colleagues had devel-oped a communication aid for her whereby she could type in words and they would be spoken out by the computer voices. She told us that what had been happening was that when she typed a word (very slowly), that her friends guessed what the word would be after she had typed just a few letters. But she had to continue typing out the whole word so that the speech synthesis would say the whole word. I said to her that I thought I could write a program that could do the same thing that her friends were doing, and that was the birth of word prediction.”

Profile of Sheri Hunnicutt“Everybody has a story to tell”

Marianna Savvas, Alumni Affairs

In 1982, Sheri developed a word prediction method that she could not get any company to sell, and so she set up her own company (Hon-eySoft-short for Hunnicutt Software). The word prediction method as Sheri explains is “achieved by an algorithm (a strategy) that accepts one or more letters as input (the beginning letters of a word), and using a large lexicon or dictionary (in which words are entered with informa-tion regarding their frequency of use, and perhaps their part of speech and other data) gives as output a list of words that begin with the input letters. This list is usually in an order reflecting the probability that the word is the intended word. This could be based on word frequency in a large number of other texts (several million words of running text, at least), on its grammatical context in the text being written, and on its most recent use in the text (how long ago since the word was previ-ously used). The word prediction method can be of help to people with motor disabilities or dyslexia. It does not often speed up the writing process, but rather reduces the effort for the user and often improves the resulting text.”

Sheri is now working on developing communication aids in a number of languages. “The word prediction system that my co-worker and I de-veloped in my company is called Prophet. Word prediction in Prophet is available in American and British English, Swedish, Norwegian, Dan-ish, Finnish, French, Dutch, German and Russian. Recently a version has been developed in co-operation with a British company, Maxess, which is called Wizkeys (it uses a wizard rather than a prophet as a trademark).” One other type of communication aid that Sheri is working on besides word prediction is a module for a computer program called Symbol for Windows developed by the Handicom company in the Netherlands. “Its function is to take a string of symbols chosen by a user, usually a non-speaking person with cerebral palsy, and to output correct text. In this work, I develop screen interfaces that help a user choose symbols and I also develop lexicons labeled with information about how words are inflected (given endings for plural, past tense, etc.), and also develop rules that determine the grammatical structure of the sentence to be produced (something like diagramming sentences) and then put the cor-rect endings on the words. This particular module can allow a person who uses symbols for communication to write email and to access and use other Internet services. The linguistic component of Symbol for Windows for symbol-to text conversion is available in English, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, German and Russian. These communication aids are used by persons who need to expend a great deal of effort to write and for persons who cannot speak well enough for most people to understand them. These are mostly persons with cerebral palsy. The word prediction can also be used for persons with dyslexia.”

For Sheri, ACS Athens was one of her best educational experiences, as it played an important role in her decision to follow her profession. “This profession has given me a rich atmosphere of talented and caring col-leagues who are involved in improving communication for persons who have difficulties in that area. What’s more important to a person than communication?”

As the plane was touching the Athens runway, I had this overwhelm-ing feeling that I was “coming home.” It had been over 30 years since I left Athens and I was excited that I would be showing my husband and daughter all the wonderful places I had been telling them about.Shortly after our arrival, I called Marianna to schedule an appointment to visit the ACS campus. “Take the train from Athens; when you arrive at the Halandri station, it’s a short walk to campus,” Marianna told me. 129 Aghias Paraskevis; I remembered the address instantly. The moment I realized we were at the campus, I was surprised to find a security guard at the gate. We gave him our US driver’s licenses and we received visitor badges in return. It was my first step onto the campus since graduating in 1974. Memories of my 4 years at ACS came flooding back-the TROJAN House, the Taverna (yes, I hear they still make the best omelet sandwich-es), the Lancers, pep rallies and the pride of being an ACS student.

Marianna took us on a tour of the campus and I was delighted and a little melancholy about seeing the changes. “My” gymnasium, where I spent a great deal of my after school hours practicing and playing basketball and volleyball, had been renovated. I loved that gym and some of my best high school friendships and memories were made there. There is a new indoor pool and auditorium—wonderful new additions. We walked to the field in back of the school where we used to play softball and foot-ball and where most of our track and field events took place. I was voted most Athletic in 1974—no wonder I was so excited to see this part of the cam-pus! During my senior year, Donna Boyd was crowned the Home-coming Queen during half time of one of our football games. Mike Burlingame was her escort. As we walked back to the front of the building I noticed the House shields on the wall. Trojans, Athenians, Corinthians and Spar-tans; it was a terrific, friendly (most of the time, anyway!) competi-tion.

Visiting ACS was a high-light of our trip; I’m thrilled I was able to re-turn to my alma mater!

“Keeping Memories Alive”Nancy Sammons Piccoli

ALUMNIaffairs

ALUMNIaffairs

GrapevineDear Alums,Welcome to the Alumni section of the second issue of the ACS Athens Ethos. To submit your information in the next issue, please send your email to alumni@acs.gr. We are always very excited to hear from you! Please visit our website at www.acs.gr, and log on to the Alumni direc-tory under Community, Alumni, so that you too can get updated on news and events.

Marianna Savvas (98)Alumni Affairs Officer

The 70’s…

Jim Litsas (73) I continue to live in Queens, New York where my family settled after we left Greece in 1973. I spent my first two years of college attending Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, then transferred to NYU where I graduated with degrees in Math and Computer Science. This past June I celebrated my 30th anniversary working for IBM. I’ve been a project manager working in ibm.com for a number of years, and I am fortunate that I am able to work from home. My wife Nancy and I were married in 1981, our oldest daughter Stephanie is a freshman in college, our youngest daughter Diana is in 7th grade. Life in the Litsas household is hectic but fun.

Parthenon Huxley (74) aka Rick Miller said goodbye to his pals in the group Orchestra to spend more time with his family in Washington DC. For those who did not know it, Parthenon took the Place of Jeff Lynne in the band that was once known as Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). The band changed its name and has been playing concerts in places like Sophia, Bulgaria, Belarus, and the Sands Casino in Atlantic City NJ. Par-thenon has always been a critic’s favorite, meaning great reviews but low sales, and has a number of excellent CD’s at: www.parthenonhuxley.com

John Nicholas Peters (76) is a Master Voice Teacher in Philadelphia. He has been running a full-time private studio since 1984 teaching all styles of singing from rock to opera. His web site is: www.Vocaltechnician.com

John George (77) & Suzanna (Waldrop) George (79) Together we’ve been married going on 22 years, facing those teen years now with Nicholas, 15, and Sophia almost 12. The kids keep us very busy with school basketball & now volleyball. We travel to Greece when John’s schedule and all the sport schedules permit. Want to shout out a hello and our love to all our ACS friends & family.

John is beginning his 19th year as a California Highway Patrol Officer. He has received many awards including Officer of the Year. He is a certified Drug Recognition Expert in the CAHP area and representative for his Placerville office.

Suzanna was elected as a school board member with the Rescue Union School District in November 2006 to serve a 4-year term. She also serves on the local high school district’s master facilities planning com-mittee and the site council at Ponderosa High School.

The 80’s…

Katrina Andreadis (86) My husband’s and my latest project has been very successful: the birth of our son, Alexis! I work as a Tour Director for groups of American high school students visiting Greece and Italy. It puts me in an environment that brings back memories of the unique Humanities class.

Nick Komninos (88) received his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Stud-ies from Deree College (Greece) in 1992. Soon after, from 1993 to 2001, he worked for Turkish Airlines as an airline Representative at Athens Hellenikon Airport as well as Eleftherios Venizelos & Heraklion airports. From 2001 to 2006 Nick worked for Swissport as a flight dispatcher at Eleftherios Venizelos & Heraklion airports. From 2006 to present day Nick is working for Group RCI as the Account & Sales Manager for Tur-key & Cyprus. On May 12, 2006 Nick married Emine.

WHAT are we doing NOW?

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ALUMNIaffairsThe 90’s…Athanasia Savvas (97) attended Sterling College after graduation from ACS. She completed her degree in Elementary Education in 2001. Athanasia married Thoma in October 2006.

George K. Spanos M.D. (97) After graduation from ACS, George at-tended Duke University in Durham, NC. He completed his degree in Psychology with distinction, and played lead guitar for his college rock band that opened up for Run-DMC, Guster and Jump Little Children. After graduation from Duke in 2001, he took a year off doing research with transgenic mice, traveling throughout Greece, and interviewing pro-spective Duke students. In 2002 he attended Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. There he also had a rock band and played at various ven-ues in Texas including the South by Southwest festival in Austin in 2006. While at medical school he met the love of his life Brooke Hansen. After graduating from medical school in 2006 he moved to Santa Monica, CA. George married Brook on September 1st 2007 and is now completing his residency in radiology at USC in Los Angeles. His wife is completing her residency in Psychiatry, just down the street at UCLA. George is now looking to start yet another rock band.

In Memoriam Michelle Balfoussia

Pidgie Lawson

A little over 7 years ago, Michelle and I met at ACS—two mothers of daughters who were the first lucky recipients of IB Scholarships. Throughout the three years that our daughters attended ACS, Michelle was an active participant in so many facets of the school—secretary of the PTA, high school representative, and enthusiastic fundraiser. She was always involved in anything where she could provide assistance. She was energetic and cheery—my spunky friend. Because of the distance between my home and ACS, as well as my work schedule, I was never the active volunteer she was but she kept me informed concerning every-thing I needed to know (and perhaps some things which I didn’t…!)

She raised 2 beautiful and gifted daughters; Danai Balfoussia was saluta-torian of the class of 2003. Michelle was a wonderful and positive influ-ence in my life as an ACS mom and a supportive and dear friend. Michelle passed away on June 12. She was well loved, and is dearly missed by those who knew her well.

Teacher News from the 70’s

Del Thompson

Rome Campbell

Ron Davenport

Bill Price is teaching in South Burlington, Vermont.

Joanne Lund just retired from the Brookline, MA public Schools.

Ron and Elizabeth Davenport are retired and living in NC.

Joe and Marina McCarthy are living and working in Boston.

Rome Campbell is teaching in NJ.

Del and Lydia Thompson have retired from Bay Area school districts and moved to Oregon.

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In the Spotlight

Our Contributors...

Stefanos Gialamas Dina Pappas

Poly Chryssanthakopoulos

Jim Koulyras Steve Kakaris

Jan Karvouniaris Steve Medeiros Marca Daley Will Seremetis

Julia Tavlas

Patty Green Stavroula SalourosNia Donas Peggy Pelonis

Kathy Jasonides

Kiki SpiliotNick Nimara & Eugene GerogikasElaine SeremetisAnnie Constantinides

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Athina Mitsopoulou Dave Nelson Megan Zoumaya Cim Thomakos

Sonia Kormaris Tonia Firigou Nick Mouchtouris Marianna Savvas

Zen Zambakides Sana Kassem Louesa Polyzoi Mary Manos

Christina Bakoyannis Ellen Vriniotis

Lykourgos Hristakos The OM Team

Kristal Alley

Office of the Head of Schools ext. 201Office of Enrollment Management & Community Relations ext. 263Office of Alumni Affairs ext. 264

Business Office ext. 202, 207Cashier ext. 208Bookstore ext. 214Transportation Office ext. 239Health Office ext. 217Security ext. 240 Cafeteria ext. 236Academy Office ext. 241Middle School Office ext. 261Elementary School Office ext. 231

Office of Academic and Student Services ext. 225, 226IB Office ext. 247Optimal Match Center ext. 237Media Center / Library ext. 219, 220Athletic Office ext.327 Theater Office ext. 331

CONTACTS

How to Contact Us

American Community Schools of Athens

129 Aghias Paraskevis Αγίας Παρασκευής 129 Tel.: 210 6393 200GR 152 34 Halandri 152 34 Χαλάνδρι 210 6016 152Athens, Greece Αθήνα, Ελλάδα Fax.: 210 6390 051

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