Mason IB Awards Recognize Class of 2009

By SCOTT TAYLOR
Falls Church Times Staff

January 8, 2010

Family and friends gathered at George Mason High School Thursday evening to welcome home the International Baccalaureate students from the Class of 2009.  It was finally time for their IB awards ceremony, the first attempt on December 21^st having been canceled as the city dug out from under twenty-plus inches of snow.

“The 2009 IB diploma recipients are the highest performing group to ever walk the halls at Mason,” Asheesh Misra, the Mason IB Program Coordinator proclaimed from the stage in the auditorium.  “This is the third class in 15 years to achieve a 100 percent IB diploma candidate success rate; they had the second highest average exam scores over the past 15 years (both diploma and certificate recipients), and they had the most students ever participating in IB at Mason.”

For the Mason Class of 2009, 32 students were awarded an IB diploma and 85 earned the IB certificate.  IB awards are not presented during the annual Mason graduation ceremony, because the results from the May IB exams are not available until mid-summer.  Approximately 25 of the recipients were available to attend Thursday’s ceremony.

In her introductory remarks, FCCPS Superintendent Dr. Lois Berlin acknowledged, “When you enter the IB program, you take on a challenge that is monumental.  We know what you take with you from the IB program will benefit what you are going to do in the future.”

The class nominated Alissa Stein (nee Mears), a Mason IB English teacher, to deliver the keynote address.  During his introduction of Stein, Misra expressed the students’ sentiments when he spoke of the personal connection she had made with each member of the class.  Her first year teaching at Mason was their ninth grade year, so she became a Mustang when they did and was present for all four years of their academic and personal development.

If there is a first among equals in Mason’s storied IB history, it is Lou Olom – the man who effectively brought IB to Mason in 1981.  The gold medal presented to all Mason IB diploma recipients since 1996 is named in memory of his son, Jonathan L. Olom, whose brilliant life and career were cut short in 1984 at the age of 34.  Olom was in attendance Thursday, reminiscing about 28 years of IB at Mason, and as he met some of the award winners at a reception following the ceremony, he expressed great satisfaction.

“Look at what we’ve achieved here in our city… I mean, really, does it get any better than this?”

In December 2009, the Falls Church Times published an extensive overview of the IB program at George Mason High School.

The next IB information night for parents is Thursday, January 14, 2010.

George Mason High School Class of 2009 IB Diploma Recipients

Christopher Jihoon An
Anthony William Armstrong
Janine Marie Baumgardner
Daniel Alexander Benn
Melissa Carolyn Ben
Jack Bartol Brorsen
Jack Edward Cashin
Mayssa Chehata
William Joseph Cunningham
Drew William Davies
Taylor Christian Demeter
Margaret Elaine Fortenberry
Johanna Ching Garg
Taylor Harvey
Timothy Collia Koning
Christian Lopez-Flores
Taylor Hennessey Moot
Amelia Katherine Nemitz
Laura Elaine Peppe
Benjamin Smith Petersen
Alexa Joy Peyton
Natalie Pinnoi
Kassim William Rahawi
Jeffrey Harrison Ralph
Michelle Suzanne Repper
Mariagracia Estrella Rivas Berger
Nick Frederick Settje
Brian C.L. Sham
Sarah Masumi Van Buren
John Anthony Vroom
William Thomas Walton
Nicholas Werner Zaccor

Midnight in the Garden of Knowledge and Red Bull

By SCOTT TAYLOR
Falls Church Times Staff

A “Mustang Birthday” marks the tenure of a George Mason High School teacher, and Asheesh Misra spent his first Mustang Birthday — July 31, 2009 — preparing for another year as the school’s International Baccalaureate Program Coordinator.  While the date itself was perhaps just another Friday during the waning days of summer vacation, it was quietly observed with optimism by many parents and students for whom the IB program is the acme of academic opportunities available within the Falls Church City Public School system.

The quip heard through the halls at Mason over the previous years was that the IB Coordinator position was akin to teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, the school of witchcraft and wizardry in author J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series.  The analogy was the result of exceptional turnover among incumbents to the position –  just as the Hogwarts students were introduced to a new professor each academic year due to the previous character having been dispatched through some mysterious, sinister plot twist in the preceding book. Read more

OPINION: The Man Who Doesn’t Believe in Art

By SCOTT TAYLOR
Falls Church Times Staff

Our dog’s name is Daisy – a reference to Charles M. Schulz’s Daisy Hill Puppy Farm – and her weekends wouldn’t be complete without a Saturday morning walk from our house to Cherry Hill Park and the farmers’ market.  This morning, encouraged by the sunshine and towed down the sidewalk once again by a golden retriever eager for some new scents and sounds, my wife and I made our way to the vicinity of the farmers’ market where we secured Daisy in one of her favorite spots.  She has only experienced the market from a distance due to the sensible prohibition on walking dogs through the lanes between the stalls.  I am certainly no “retriever whisperer” yet I don’t believe the expression on her face is one of despondency as she looks down on the teeming marketplace. Read more

Today’s Lesson: Irresistible Force Meets Impervious Object

Part 3 in a Series

By SCOTT TAYLOR
Falls Church Times Staff

Wordsmiths, what do you think: “Impervious surface effectiveness demo project”?  The words just trip off the tongue, don’t they?

This is what Patricia Samora, a professional engineer who recently moved from the City of Falls Church, and her associates titled the City’s 2007 grant proposal to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.  It is perhaps a title only an engineer, landscape architect, or policy wonk could love but whatever you think about those five words – one adjective leavening four nouns – they worked and brought $93,000 to the City from VADCR.

The City’s entire proposal – the four-page application, the five-page narrative – was one of 73 received in Richmond and among the 37 selected for funding by the Virginia Water Quality Improvement Fund.  Right up front in the application, VADCR wanted to know who else had skin in the game; how much was the City going to bring to the table?  $114,000, thank you very much.  Everything came together to create a real opportunity for water quality improvement except nobody was really sure what came next.  Concepts and good ideas had carried the day but there were no projects both designed and sited. Read more

TJ’s Rain Gardens: Art, Education and the Environment

By SCOTT TAYLOR
Falls Church Times Staff

Part 2 in a Series

Don’t know if you’ve heard the tragic news.  Jack (he’s a dog) was washed into a storm drain – “eaten by the drain” if you listen to EZ talk (he’s another dog) – and the Fairfax County storm water management division isn’t quite sure where he’ll surface between Falls Church and the Chesapeake Bay.

Jeanette, EZ, and Rosie are truly concerned and feel they can rescue Jack by tracing his route from Tripps Run to the Potomac then on to the Chesapeake Bay.  The Tripps Run watershed drains two-thirds of Falls Church City, after all, so it sure makes sense to start looking there.

You haven’t heard this story yet?  Then you must not have a fourth grade student at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School where a project to mitigate the impact of storm water runoff through the installation of rain gardens has been transformed into a multi-faceted, interactive educational component of the fourth grade science curriculum. Read more

Love and Loss in Tree City USA

By SCOTT TAYLOR
Falls Church Times Staff

Neighbors always notice, and thankfully so for Bob Hand and Erika Schlager.  It was a recent Friday at 11 a.m. when Hand received a phone call in his Capitol Hill office from a neighbor who was peering out the window at Falls Church City first responders gathering in front of the Hand-Schlager house on Seaton Lane.

Hand returned home within the hour to find one of the neighborhood canopy trees on his property, a northern red oak, lying down the length of the driveway and across Seaton Lane.  The tree had fallen almost perpendicular to the street, missing his house, but crushing one of the family cars and a Japanese maple growing at the front of the property.

“You have to accept the fact that with large trees, there are some risks,” Hand said.  ”It also has to be an accepted reality that a tree dying may not necessarily be visible from the exterior.”

Conscientious environmental stewards, Hand and Schlager installed a 1,100 gallon cistern in 2002 that captures rainwater runoff from their roof and have had their trees evaluated by an arborist over the years.   The red oak in particular had a natural lean, so they kept an eye on its health. Read more

Post Office Adapts to Today’s Consumers, Economy

By SCOTT TAYLOR
Falls Church Times Staff

It’s Friday and as you finish your lunch you go over the list of errands that will consume the afternoon.  Get to the bank and the Post Office before they close.  Drop a request for reference books by the library so your daughter can start on her term paper next week.  Pick up the airline tickets at the travel agent.  All this and make it home before 5 p.m. so you won’t miss the phone call from the landscaper who wants to drop by Saturday morning.

Wait, something’s not quite right.  You turn the list over in your hand – this just doesn’t make sense.  Unless there was some hiccup in the space-time continuum you missed, it isn’t 1989 and everything on your list can be done by turning on your laptop, picking up your mobile phone, stopping by an ATM, and now – in the Post Office lobby at 800 West Broad Street – stepping up to the Automated Postal Center (APC) which is open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

“The Automated Postal Center is a  self-service kiosk that allows  customers to buy stamps or mail  letters and packages in a self-service  environment,” Falls Church  Postmaster Donna Bradley wrote in  an e-mail to the Falls Church Times.  “APCs support up to 85 percent of all possible retail transactions, including the purchase of additional services such as Delivery Confirmation.  Customers can purchase stamps or mail letters and parcels using debit or credit.”

Bradley emphasized that the Post Office employees are ready to assist any customer interested in learning to use the APC.  “It’s a quick and easy alternative to standing in line in the inner lobby,” Bradley wrote.

The Falls Church APC was installed on July 15, 2009, and is one of 2,500 kiosks distributed across all 80 USPS districts.  City residents may remember an APC that was installed for a time at the Post Office’s former location.  Its unexplained disappearance several years ago produced grumbles of frustration from patrons who were left with no alternative but to stand in line waiting to speak to a clerk at the counter.

“APCs can help shorten lobby lines, assist during busy lunch periods, and allow you to focus on assisting customers with more complex mailing needs,” according to guidance distributed to employees by the USPS.  “The APCs will also make us more competitive by providing customers, especially those who use alternate shipping options because our hours are not convenient to their schedules, with expanded access to postal services.”

You can consider yourself a customer with complex mailing needs not supported by the APC should you need to ship packages internationally, conduct registered mail or money order transactions, or apply for a passport.  You can consider yourself a member of the demographic forcing changes to the USPS’s business strategy – changes that include the installation of APCs – if you e-mail more than you put pen-to-paper, conduct business transactions over a secure internet connection, and use FEDEX, UPS, or other competitors for your shipping needs.

Today, the 650,000-plus employees of the USPS deliver mail to a residence in the US for an average annual cost of about $235 per residence.  Ensuring the future viability of the USPS, an agency specifically authorized by the US Constitution, will involve more than annual first class postage rate hikes and increased automation.  Legislative changes to the Postal Reorganization Act signed by President Nixon in 1970, collective bargaining terms and conditions for unionized workers, whether or not all residences qualify for home delivery, and the number of days home delivery will be provided are examples of the numerous issues under consideration.

Just as your 1989 “to do” list doesn’t make sense in 2009, the Post Office of a generation ago is slowly being transformed in response to the realities of today’s consumers as they maneuver through an early 21^st century economy.

TJ’s Outdoor Classroom Goes Global

By SCOTT TAYLOR
Falls Church Times Staff

It has been observed that with a plan, a map, and some courage, any person can achieve some level of success as they press ahead through life pursuing their dreams. For the students about to begin their school year at Thomas Jefferson Elementary, dreams for the future are abundant, most of the plans are a little fuzzy, courage levels vary from Wonder Womanesque to the Cowardly Lion, and there is a brand new map of the world in which their dreams will play out one way or another.

The large map – a twenty by thirty-six foot Mercator projection of the Earth – was finished over the Labor Day weekend thanks to the efforts of the City of Falls Church Elementary School PTA and a handful of young cartographers.  Painted with acrylic latex paint on the asphalt adjacent to the playground and ball fields, it is one of the latest additions to the Falls Church City Outdoor Classroom initiative supported by the PTA and the Education Task Group of the Falls Church Environmental Services Council.

“We’re hoping it looks like this tomorrow,” Lynn Wagner, a parent volunteer on the PTA outdoor classroom committee, said gesturing to the map.  She had returned to TJ to finish the project Saturday morning only to find bicycle tire marks across several areas of the map.  “It took us five hours to stencil this before we could begin painting,” Wagner said.

“You put orange cones up around it and for kids on bicycles, it’s an open invitation” to run a course through the cones, observed Matt Grund, Wagner’s husband.

While Wagner and Jen Cipriano provided materials and oversight, the students who will continue to benefit from the outdoor classroom concept provided a significant amount of brushwork and artistic judgment.  Lydia and Siri Grund, ages nine and six, joined Olivia and Emilia Cipriano, also ages nine and six, for the holiday weekend work effort.

“Siri and Emilia did Greenland,” Lydia was eager to point out as she and her sister surveyed their shared accomplishment.  Almost as if to demonstrate the academic value of a project of this scale, there was suddenly a spontaneous flurry of pointing followed by a name and a place.  “Kazakhstan is right there, it was painted by… see that’s Ethiopia…I painted Poland.”

The principal PTA fundraiser that supports establishing outdoor classroom resources is the spring Falls Church Home and Garden Tour.  “It won’t finance everything, but we have done a lot,” Wagner admits, pointing out the recently completed outdoor amphitheater adjacent to the school’s playground.  “And, we are still looking for a volunteer to coordinate the home and garden tour this year.”  Other examples of outdoor classroom spaces at TJ are the Three Sisters Native American Garden, the pumpkin trellis, and the fern and fossil garden.

As Lydia and Siri helped their parents pack up the paints and head to the car, Wagner remarked, “Looks like I’m headed off to talk to the paint guy – we need some type of sealer.”  Two hours later, she was methodically working her way across the globe, protecting each nation not from regional hegemony or terrorist infiltration, but from the equally senseless damage caused by spray paint and skidding bicycle tires.

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