Your Old Mobile Phone Can Make a Difference

by Lane Lubell, 8th Grade

ALL: If a child drops his books, the unwritten laws of integrity say that one should help him by picking-up the books. In other words, the right thing to do is to help clean-up the mess.

As you read this, thousands of barrels of oil are leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, closing in on the Mississippi River Delta. Considered part of the Atlantic Ocean, this large body of water is being destroyed.

Whilst cleaning up the mess isn’t as easy as picking up a book, we can do things to protect what remains, and prevent further destruction.

One way to do this is to recycle. Another is to round-up other nasty chemicals, for example, mercury (Hg), which can ultimately ruin the oceans’ ecosystem. This round-up will ward-off improper disposal of these nasty chemicals into the environment.


Here at CCS, being environmentally friendly is something that is taken very seriously.

The support and success of the Acts of Green campaign, which ran in conjunction with Earth Day, not only realized over 800 Acts of Green within the school, but it also encouraged us to believe we should participate in a completion called March to a Million.


The basis of the competition is to collect as many old cell phones as possible. The winning school will receive $5000 towards a party, and a performance by the famed band, Hey Monday! (Sorry, girls. I guess Justin Beiber just isn’t as eco-friendly, or maybe his people just don’t have connections with the sponsor.)


Cell phone collection and recycling is very important. In an average cell phone, there are precious metals like gold (Au), silver (Ag), and even platinum (Pt). In addition to the precious metals, there are also multiple ounces of mercury (Hg), which is a metal in a liquid state. When thrown into a landfill, cell phones leak mercury, which can seep into the groundwater and contaminate our oceans. In fact when mercury meets the ocean, it can be more toxic than the petroleum (CH4) that is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico!

So what does this mean to you right now? Well, it means you have the opportunity to make a difference by gathering old cell phones from your homes, from your coworkers, from your family members and bringing them to the collection boxes at school. Mobile phones can be donated through the end of the month, and will be turned over to the March to a Million campaign, which will coordinate the proper disposal of these phones.
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High School Admission Results

by Kate Anderson, High School Placement Counselor

MS: Our fabulous 8th grade students have done it again: another year of terrific high school acceptance results to celebrate! All twenty-eight of our students have received offers to rigorous programs throughout the Chicago area, and we are thrilled to report the following high school highlights for our soon-to-be-CCS-graduates:

• This year, we had our first ever acceptance to Northside Prep! 
   Good Job Lane Lubell

• Four acceptances to Walter Payton and seven acceptances to Whitney Young; the highest number to date for both


• Three of our eighth graders earned perfect scores on the Selective Enrollment Placement Exam!


• Eight acceptances to Lincoln Park International Baccalaureate program; out of seventeen test takers, almost half were invited to continue

• 21 out of 25 students were accepted into one of the top five CPS Selective Enrollment high schools

• 25 out of 28 (about 90%) students were accepted into one of their top three school choices

• 79% private school acceptance rate; however, this does not include wait-listings, which could still result in ultimate acceptance at this time

• This year, we celebrate our first ever CCS recipient of the prestigious and highly-coveted Daniel Murphy Scholarship Award!

With all these offers to choose from, where will our eighth-grade students be going? Four students have accepted places at the Latin School, and two at Francis W. Parker School. Four students will be attending Walter Payton, five students will be attending Whitney Young, and three students are headed over to the Lincoln Park High School Double Honors magnet program. Two students will be attending St. Ignatius College Prep, and three more will be traveling up to Winnetka to Loyola Academy. Two students have accepted places at St. Scholastica Academy and one each at St. Patrick High School and Lyons Township High School. One student will be moving internationally at the end of the school year.


Congratulations, 8th graders! We are so proud of you!
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Lane Lubell, spearheading Catherine Cook “Acts of Green” Phone Project.

Students and Staff Caught Green-Handed

ALL: As shared previously, Director of Facilities Bob Riccardino and Learning Support Teacher Anne Russell championed “Acts of Green” and “Get Caught Green-Handed” efforts in conjunction with Earth Day, which was last Thursday.

Efforts were embraced throughout the school, which made an immediate impact and we continue to “Get Caught Green-Handed” doing “Acts of Green” in our classroom, in our school and in our homes.

Mr. Beights reported in the school assembly today that the school has collectively completed over 800 “Acts of Green” in conjunction with Earth Day. He explained that if we continue at this level, we could reach over 20,000 in one year.

One way to get us to that number is to participate in a project 8th grader Lane Lubell is spearheading. In our assembly today, Lane explained that there are precious metals like gold, silver, and even platinum inside cell phones. Through proper recycling, these precious metals can be harvested, and even more importantly, the mercury in cell phones can be disposed of properly.


While this project won’t officially launch for another week, we’re encouraged to set-aside old cell phones for future collection, as we have the opportunity through this project to compete for $5,000.

More details will be provided as the project nears its launch date.
Thank you, Lane!
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The Head of School Award - Lane Lubell

Dr. Michael B. Roberts
Head of School

Wilfred Peterson, author of the "Art of Living" series of books which sold millions of copies around the world advised his readers to "Champion the right to be yourself; dare to be different and to set your own pattern; live your own life and follow your own star." Lane Lubell has certainly taken Mr. Peterson's advice to heart and in the process has stolen the hearts of all who know him. One of Lane's teachers shared, "we are so proud of how far he has come in his years at Catherine Cook. We feel his story is a success story that we all can feel a part of. He is highly creative. He is liked by all students and teachers." Lane's greatest gift is in his ability to see the world from another's point of view and to honestly respect those viewpoints. Consequently, significant gains in his academic and personal success and positive contributions to the school have been remarkable.

Global Ethics Website

From Head of Middle School
Imagine this: small groups of middle school students sit together at round tables, engaged in animated discussions about how they can help build a school culture of integrity and how they will know integrity when they see it. Students draw and doodle as they think and talk, and a visual practitioner captures the flow of conversation, recording words, phrases, and images in a colorful mural as the dialogue moves along.
This past Tuesday, that's how CCS Middle School students spent part of their afternoon, immersing themselves in a Values Café to deepen their understanding of one of the core values they identified earlier in the year. But this work has deeper roots: it grows out of a conversation that middle school students and CCS staff have been having all year long.
It began with a thought experiment: you have a block of stone for the front of the school in which to carve five words that will capture the values that CCS strives to cultivate. You have room for only five words, so they must be chosen carefully. Faculty and staff started this process in the August pre-planning days, when we closed down the front office, put the room preparation, curriculum planning, and floor waxing on pause, and gathered in the gymnasium to begin this work together. After school opened in September, each of twelve middle school advisory groups went through a similar process to identify five values, then came together in larger and larger configurations, debating and refining the lists until the whole middle school came to agreement. This culminated in an October discussion between staff and student representatives where, through lively and respectful debate, adults and students came to agreement about the five main values that underlie our work together: Respect, Responsibility, Compassion, Integrity, and Diversity.
Since then, the conversation has taken many forms, from small group activities in advisories to help students connect the values with their everyday school experiences, to whole staff work to develop norms for professional interactions and ways to deal constructively with differences.
Along the way, many people have shared responsibility for moving the work forward. An advance team of three teachers attended the Ethical Literacy planning conference in June to learn from other schools who have taken on this work. A team comprised of thirteen middle school teachers and administrators from throughout the school received Ethical Literacy training last August and created an action plan that will drive the process over the next several years. The Tuesday sessions and summer training were led by Institute for Global Ethics facilitator Don Proffit, who also facilitated faculty discussion and planning sessions and met with trustees.
The bottom line is that the work of building a school culture of integrity belongs to everyone. No one has a lock on ethics and no one handles tough decisions perfectly every time. But by making this an intentional process, we empower our students, and our staff, to handle complex "right vs. right" decisions more effectively their whole lives long. We invite you to learn more about this work by viewing the photographs of our Tuesday sessions, visiting the Global Ethics website, or asking us-middle school students, staff, or trustees. We are eager to share what we are learning.
Warmly,
Cory Stutts
Head of the Middle School