Making Blackberry-Powered Solar Cells













On November 18, Mrs. Drurey's Chemistry Honors class participated in a daylong visit by scientists from Beyond Benign, a green chemistry education nonprofit based in Wilmington, MA. Our Gateway 10th grade students undertook an experiment in which they built small solar cells sensitized by the dye of blackberry juice. And they worked (albeit on a small scale)!

Thank you to Mrs. Drurey and the staff of Beyond Benign for providing our students with such a cool laboratory experience!

Addressing Current Events in SAT Prep - Turtle Edition














In another SAT Prep weekly foray into current events, we learned about ordinary citizens who have invested extraordinary efforts into protecting the breeding grounds of sea turtles. The creative wrap-up to this reading activity was a timed challenge for our students to master a moderately difficult origami turtle design. It was not so easy, but a number of our students successfully hatched their origami turtles!

Addressing Current Events in SAT Prep

In this year's Gateway 10 SAT Prep experience, we are interspersing our Princeton Review classes with selected readings of current events articles from the New York Times and creative responses to those articles.

This week, we read about the "bacha posh" children of Afghanistan and explored the medium of political cartooning. Here are two of the finalist entries in our quick-draw political cartoon competition, submitted by the teams of Patrick Joseph and John Paul (above) and Candice Gonzales and Lom Thaing (below).



More Scenes from Orientation...



Grasshoppers, Great-Horned Owls, and other Mystery Animals - Oh My!

Here are some opening scenes from this year's Gateway 10 Orientation, in which our students are gamely participating in our "Gateway Creatures" icebreaker activity. Many thanks to Headmaster Sullivan for joining us in our opening fun and games (see the very distinguished-looking Great-Horned Owl in the third photo below).