TA News

Dear TA Families,

Garden Fun (and Work and Learning)!
This week we officially shifted into fall with the autumnal equinox, and it seems like a fitting moment to feature the bounty of our school garden, which is bursting with vegetables and flowers and has seen a bustle of activity during the first month of school. The new wash-pack station, built by the timber frame class last semester, is a practical (and beautiful!) addition to the garden’s resources – serving as a gathering space and classroom, in addition to its key role in processing produce.

Here are a few spotlights of classes that have integrated the garden into a recent unit of study:

• Jennifer Gernhard’s culinary classes have been doing weekly harvests and using the produce in their recipes – everything from salsa to spring rolls to eggplant parmesan, crabapple jelly, and pasta primavera. The pasta primavera was featured as a dish to share with all students in the cafe for lunch!
• Melissa Friel’s advanced biology class gathered a variety of vegetables to use in a lab testing for lipids, carbohydrates, and proteins.
• Scott Ellis’ outdoor stewardship PE class contributed their physical labor (and problem-solving skills!) to garden infrastructure upgrades this week, taking down the old fence and making way for the new one to be installed soon. 
• The amazing flowers are getting their share of action as well! Karyn Neubauer’s painting class did still life watercolors of bouquets, and Gretchen Czaja’s yoga class did a mindfulness activity picking flowers and creating bouquets on site. It was so fun to see students walking around campus holding their individual bouquet in a jar throughout the day.
• On Thursday afternoon, a few different classes came together at the garden for a big cider pressing session, not letting the rain get in their way! 

Woods Trail Run – Oct. 4
On Saturday, October 4, Thetford Academy will host the Woods Trail Run, a cross country invitational meet that attracts teams from throughout the region and New England. Rain or shine, it is always an amazing day celebrating sport and community. The event is volunteer-powered, and we welcome new and returning volunteers (adult and student) to get involved. If you are not yet signed up and want to volunteer, contact Director of Athletics & Activities Bri Barnes ([email protected]). 

Community Forum on Act 73 – Sept. 30
We hope that many of you, especially those who live in Thetford, can attend the last in a series of community forums on Act 73 hosted by Orange East Supervisory Union on Tuesday evening at Thetford Elementary School. Read more about Act 73 and ways to engage and advocate in our recent news post and in the email I sent to all families on Sept. 23.

Happy Autumn!

Carrie Brennan, Head of School