As each candle was lit, Chaplain Mike Moffitt read the following statements in alphabetical order explaining its significance.

Bodhi Day: Buddha statue and candle
This day marks the time when Siddhartha Gautama, a spiritual teacher and founder of Buddhism, positioned himself under a tree and vowed to remain there until he attained supreme enlightenment.  All Buddhist traditions agree that upon the rising of the morning star, he had experienced enlightenment and attained Nirvana.

Chinese New Year: Chinese lanterns
Chinese New Year is an all East and South-East-Asia celebration. In China it is known as “Spring Festival.”  It marks the end of the winter season, and the festival begins on the first day of the first month in the traditional Chinese calendar. It is a reflection on how the people behaved and what they believed in the most.

Christmas: Advent Wreath
Christmas is the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, believed to be the Son of God and Savior of the world.  Christmas traditions vary worldwide, and the day is often celebrated in prayer and song at church services, and gifts are often given to represent the gifts that Jesus received from the three kings, and the gift that Jesus is to the world.

Diwali: Diyas
Diwali gets its name from the row of lamps that Indians light outside their homes to symbolize the inner light that protects us from spiritual darkness.  Diwali originated as a harvest festival that marked the last harvest of the year before winter.  Indians celebrate with family gatherings, glittering clay lamps, festive fireworks, flowers, sharing of sweets, and worship.

Hanukkah: Menorah
Chanukah — the eight-day festival of light — celebrates the triumph of light over darkness.  More than twenty-one centuries ago, a small band of faithful Jews defeated the mighty Syrian-Greek army, which sought to eliminate Jewish religion and culture, and drove the Greeks from the land.  They reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the service of God.

Japanese New Year: Wreath and candle

New Year is the most important holiday in Japan.  Families typically gather to spend the day together.  Each new year is seen as providing a fresh start. Consequently, all duties are supposed to be completed by the end of the year, while parties are held with the purpose of leaving the old year’s worries and troubles behind.

Kwanzaa: Kinara
Kwanzaa is an African American and Pan-African holiday which celebrates family, community and culture. Celebrated from 26 December thru 1 January, its origins are in the first harvest celebrations of Africa from which it takes its name. The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase “matunda ya kwanza” which means “first fruits” in Swahili.  Kwanzaa was established in 1966 in the midst of the Black Freedom Movement and thus reflects its concern for cultural groundedness in thought and practice.

Yule: Candle
Yule marks the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and celebrates the rebirth of the sun in the Norse pagan tradition.  The modern day, western Yule festival contains a large blend of celebrations, leading back to multiple cultures and religious practices.  Practices include decorating a fir or spruce tree, burning a Yule log, hanging mistletoe and holly branches, and giving gifts.

By Ann Vogel, CWA Parent

Hugs, smiles, and bittersweet tears ended a two-week summer visit of girls from the Mukogawa Junior High as they said goodbye to Charles Wright faculty, student assistants, and host families last week.   

For the past 26 years, CWA’s Japanese language instructors and students have partnered with the Japanese sister school to provide students from both countries with unique language and cultural immersion experiences.   This summer, 46 Japanese girls spent two weeks at University of Puget Sound in classes taught by CWA faculty and staff Jim Dempsey, Dr. Dave Adams, Mike Moffitt, and Todd Richie, and assisted by six CWA students who stayed with the girls in the dorms.

“The highlight of the girls’ visit is the weekend home-stay with CWA families and friends that occurs after the first week,” said Program Director and CWA Japanese teacher Stephanie Glenn.  “The girls return so motivated to learn more English and to practice speaking.  They have a terrific time with their host families, some of whom host year after year.”

The longtime relationship is reciprocal.   During the annual summer program, CWA students serve as teaching assistants while honing their Japanese language skills and making close friends in the dorms.   CWA’s Winterim trip to Japan includes home-stays with Mukogawa families, and CWA senior girls have the opportunity to do their three-week internship at the Japanese school.

CWA’s first Japanese teacher Yasuko Wada started the sister school program nearly three decades ago and established the summer program.  She is now retired, but has a fourth grade grandson at CWA.  Wada was Stephanie Glenn’s Japanese teacher at CWA, volunteers monthly in her classroom, and remains her “mentor for life.”

Until recently, Khoe Tyner ’11 expected to be cheering in the stands for the Huskies’ football team along with her parents, both alumni of the University of Washington. Although she was accepted at UW and nine other schools, she’s instead heading from her home in Poulsbo to St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where ice hockey rules.

“St. Lawrence is a better fit,” said Tyner. “The size of the school is important to me, and I think I’ll have more friends and fewer distraction from studying at St. Lawrence, which is in the middle of nowhere. Plus, it has amazing study abroad programs.”

The school is located in the St. Lawrence River Valley, near the Canadian border. The fact that many of the school’s graduates find employment right after graduation and that it maintains close ties with alumni also factored into Tyner’s decision to choose St. Lawrence. “I just really felt welcomed and at home there,” she added. Like Charles Wright, the university has small classes and just 2,300 undergraduate students.

Tyner plans to double major in modern languages and economics. She has yet to find a language she does not like and has studied Spanish, Italian, and French. She also picked up a little Japanese on a Winterim trip. Tyner spent her junior year in Italy and is already planning to study abroad with St. Lawrence. As part of her major, she’s required to learn German, and she hopes to pick up Portuguese somewhere along the way. To hone her French skills, she’s signing up for a St. Lawrence program abroad to study dialects in France, Montreal, and Senegal.

The seed for Tyner’s love of languages was planted in Charles Wright’s Beginning School and kindergarten. “I remember learning the names of animals in French, and thinking that was really cool,” she said.

For the remainder of her elementary years, she attended independent schools in Poulsbo and Los Encinos, California, where she learned Spanish. She returned to Charles Wright in the eighth grade then spent the summer Middle and Upper School studying in Argentina.

Although languages come easily to her, Tyner says math has always been a real challenge for her. “It’s never been easy for me and so I’m really grateful to Mr. (Leon) Phillips for all the help he gave me. For a long time, he met with me every Saturday and one entire summer to make sure I could stay in the comprehensive math classes. Mr. (Jeremy) Stubbs helped me, too. I really wanted to stay in algebra II and I couldn’t have done it, or made it into and through pre-calculus without their help. In fact, if I need help with math when I’m at St. Lawrence, I’m think I’m still going to call Mr. Phillips!”

She also has a shout out for her advisor, Mr. (Bill) White, for helping her navigate her way through the Upper School. “He was a great advisor and I wasn’t always the easiest student. He always tried to advocate for me and help find the best outcome for everyone.”

During her senior year, Tyner applied to 14 colleges, and was accepted by ten, including Bard College, UW, Mt. Holyoke College, Mills College, University of Colorado Boulder, and Syracuse University.

“At first, I wanted to go to Barnard, but now I’m happy I didn’t get in. It would have been too much pressure and the city would have been too distracting. In hindsight, I probably applied to too many colleges,” she said.

Tyner got excited about St. Lawrence when Paul and Laura Reynolds, parents of her friend Parker ’11, suggested their alma mater because of its study aboard opportunities.  The Reynolds took Tyner out for coffee to discuss their experiences at the school and she was sold when the school flew her out for a visit. “I had the best time there,” Tyner said. The school also offered her an attractive scholarship package.

Tyner said she’s certain Charles Wright teachers and curriculum prepared her well for college. “I’m not nervous at all about the workload,” she said, “but I don’t know anything about hockey, since I thought I’d be wearing purple and gold and watching football. Now, I’ll be wearing scarlet and brown and I do need to learn something about hockey!”

Her advice for future applicants: “If I were going through the process again, I’d do more research about each school, and then I’d visit the ones I like best while classes are in session. Also, I’d try to meet students, especially seniors, who are not doing the tours for the admissions offices and ask them questions.”

“Charles Wright Academy emerged as the right choice because I knew I would be working with the right people. The welcome I received during my time with you continues to warm me to this day, and my excitement grows with each passing moment,” says Ford.

Before joining the CWA community, Ford served as Head of Middle School for Dedham Country Day School in Massachusetts and worked at three other independent schools. He graduated from Williams College and has done graduate work at Loyola College in Baltimore.

In a letter to parents shortly after his appointment, Ford shared this story about his approach to leadership:

“I recently had the pleasure of attending the home opener of Dedham Country Day’s Middle School baseball team. As I approached the field, a 7th grader turned as he heard whispers from his teammates that I had come to watch the game. ‘Thanks for showing up,’ he said with a smile that turned to a laugh as I made a face at him.

“I sat at first among the parents who had gathered on the bleachers—taking time to exchange greetings, field a question or two, and quietly assure a mother that her son had done fine after having been out sick the previous day. A member of the faculty drew me into a conversation about the rehearsal schedule for the upcoming 6th grade play, and a father whispered confirmation of our meeting later that week to talk about his daughter. I spent the final inning sitting on the bench with the team—cheering as our pitcher got out of a jam by turning a double play, sharing sunflowers seeds with the boys, talking with two of my students about the upcoming math test, and making an appointment with another for early morning extra help the next day.  The game ended shortly thereafter, and DCD had earned the first win of the season. I left knowing that my time at the baseball field had been the most important hour of my workday—and the type of hour that brings my greatest joy as a school leader.”

On a personal level, Rudy enjoys singing, playing the guitar, golf, and tennis. He has been a Boston Red Sox fan since 1984.

As the name indicates, the objective of this Tower of Defense-style game is fairly straightforward: destroy the broccoli at the end of each level. As the product description advertises: “Drag the missile through the block designs in all almost-impossible 15 levels and destroy the broccoli at the end. There are other vegetables along the way; run into those and get points. Run into the broccoli and get 10,000 points. Use the points to buy multipliers multiply the score you get when running into the small vegetables. You still get 10,000 points from running into broccoli.” The game is rated for users age 4 and up.

Howell describes himself as “not a big fan of vegetables” but says he originally planned to use Justin Bieber’s head as the main target. Once he realized that he could be sued for use of an individual’s image, he turned instead to vegetables. The unlucky broccoli does not have the same legal protections as the young pop star.

Howell has been using a computer for as long as he can remember, certainly well before his first lessons in the Charles Wright computer lab in first grade. He has long been the kid his friends’ parents called upon to fix their computers. He could solve a Rubiks cube puzzle in fourth grade and has been playing in chess tournaments since kindergarten, so he has developed strong critical and analytical thinking skills.

When his dad mentioned that he had built his own arcade games as a youngster, Howell thought it might be fun to try his hand at programming. Neither of his parents writes code, nor does anyone else he knows, so Howell got a few books and some software and starting teaching himself.

“I believe that kids can do most of the stuff that adults can do,” he says nonchalantly, noting that aa nine-year-old from China has published on the App Store and an eighth grader created one of the most successful games sold for the iPhone.

“I started about a year ago with Basic, then JavaScript, then C++,” he explains. “At first I just made the computer count to certain numbers, or created programs that would ask the user a set of questions, but then I got into more advanced graphics. Four or five months ago, I started working on this game for the iPhone, so I had to learn a new language, Objective-C Programming.”

Objective-C is an object-oriented programming language used to create software for Mac operating systems. Charles Wright students with an interest in programming typically learn how to write code as high school students in the Advanced Placement computer science course. Howell also used Adobe Photoshop to create two-dimensional and open-source Blender software to create three-dimensional graphics for the game.

“Making the graphics was the most fun. I played around with a lot of effects to make the vegetables look more realistic,” says Howell. “Typing in the code was kind of boring at times, but the most challenging part was problem solving whenever there was an error. It was hard to find online programming advice so sometimes it took me up to a week to figure out what was wrong.”

All through fifth grade, Howell came home from school, finished his homework, and then got to work on the computer. He found that he often had to wait through long downloads, so he used that time to run outside and play.

All that hard work paid off in July when Howell’s program was accepted by the App Store. “I had to wait for a certificate to publish and for a provision profile and App ID,” he explains. “I converted the game project to a dot-app file, then compressed it to a zip file and uploaded it. It took a month or two to get it up at the App Store. I was at camp the week it went up and every day I went to the camp computer lab to check. I knew it could take years for Apple to check the code, make sure the game works, and verify that the price and rating are appropriate, so I was really excited when I saw my App was finally for sale.”

Howell’s parents supported his entrepreneurial endeavourer and his dad let him use his iPad to test the software, but the project was all Logan’s. “When he first came to us and said he wanted to sell a game on Apple’s App Store, we asked him, ‘Can a kid really do that?’” recalls his mom, Jodi. “He said, ‘Oh yes, I already researched it.’ He took all the initiative.”

Vegetable Blowup now sells for 99 cents. Apple keeps 29 cents of each sale to cover their administrative fee and taxes. Howell gets 70 cents. He is putting 90 percent of his profits into a savings account for college tuition, his first car, or another major investment of which his parents might approve. The other ten percent he can spend now and his top priorities are getting new programming and graphics software.

Howell has his eye on Autodesk’s Maya, high end 3D animation, visual effects and compositing software. The program runs about $4,000 so while he hopes to get it “someday,” he will make some smaller purchases along the way. “I can’t afford most of the stuff adult programmers use to build games,” he says. “They get all fancy with their expensive software. That’s why I decided to sell my game as an app and make money so I can buy better software and make better apps.”

Howell describes his first 24 sales as “average performance for the first week or two out.” He hopes that as people buy and play the game, they will talk to their friends about it and generate more sales. He’s not committing to a career as a computer programmer just yet, but says he’d “like to see how far he can get with it” and if he “hits it big” in the App Store he’ll “stick with it.”

Some of Howell’s friends have shown interest in his programming and he is happy to show others how to get started, but when they realize how hard it is to learn programming languages, most give up. “It’s a really big commitment,” says Howell. “It takes lots of studying.”

Check out this YouTube video of Wadleigh conducting the choirs from Holy Names Academy (where he worked for the past 11 years) and Bishop Blanchett High School. His choir was invited to sing with Spike and the Impalers a Seattle cover band.

Wadleigh and his family live in Tacoma but his long commute to Seattle was not the only reason he was interested in the position at CWA. “The moment I stepped on to the Charles Wright campus, I saw a palpable spirit of pride and vigor in the faces of the students, in the beautiful grounds, and in the faculty and staff who seemed thrilled to be at work,” says Wadleigh. “I decided very quickly that I wanted to be part of that feeling.”

Wadleigh grew up in Eastern Washington in a theater family. He spent his summers performing in Pullman with his mother and sister, under the direction of his father. “I grew up in a pretty small town, so being the son of a couple of artists was both a blessing and a curse at times. Advertising for my mother’s dance studio in a bedazzled top hat with my tutu-clad sister amid my friends doing the same duty for their fathers’ welding shops was… character building…”

Wadleigh graduated from Western Washington University with a degree in choral music. “I went to school intending to be a jazz guitarist, but somewhere along the way got drawn into the choral department. The feeling of performing a piece with 60 impassioned voices is something that everyone should experience. It brought me back to my musical theater days with my family and my many turns as gawking townsperson No. 11, singing our hearts out for that final number. It is visceral electric, and its something that you can’t recreate with an instrument. My goal as a choral educator is to shepherd my students toward that sense of elation and emotional abandon that occurs on stage with a choir of like-minded musicians all striving for the same feeling. It’s magic!”

Wadleigh previously served as the music director for a private girls school in Seattle for 11 years. It was there that he realized his love of rock and roll did have a place in a high school music curriculum. “I have always kept one foot in the rock music world, and was thrilled to realize that there was a need for a bridge that rock music could fill between academic music in the classroom and the music that students were actually living with outside of school. I created a course at my previous school called Modern Music Ensemble that was essentially a rock band that met five days per week. When students realized they could take this class for credit, they were over the moon. What I found was that writing and performing the music that they felt close to was as rigorous and valuable as any course work in Baroque or Classical music. I try to keep each side of that coin alive in all my musical adventures with students.”

The quartet went two and two in the competition. Their first loss was at the hands of the team that eventually won the tournament for their age bracket. They all look forward to playing basketball together throughout Middle and Upper School.

Steve Daniels retired in June of 2011 and was presented with this Lifetime Teaching Award and the annual faculty/staff appreciation event.

For 41 years, Steve Daniels taught and coached at Charles Wright, always striving with humility, dignity and grace to help each student achieve his or her full potential. For so many years, and through so many changes, Steve was a steady rock in our community. He set high yet obtainable goals for his students and made sure they understood his expectations. His great consistency allowed growing minds to learn how to be good students as they fine-tuned their study strategies and built foundations for knowledge. He never gave up on anyone and always held all those around him accountable to themselves and the Charles Wright community. He modeled for all integrity, honesty, kindness and generosity.

Even at the end of his career, Steve was always looking for new ways to improve his teaching technique and frequently sought advice from his colleagues. As one fellow teacher pointed out, “He was willing to listen to my ideas, even though he had been teaching since before I was even born.” His unwavering support taught everyone how to be a better teacher, colleague and friend. So deep was his respect for those with whom he worked that he always willingly supported decisions made by the Middle School faculty, even if he did not always agree with them fully. In the classroom and on the field, he led by example, always demonstrating as much respect for and commitment to his students as he asked from them.

Although he taught physics, chemistry, environmental science, algebra and geometry in both the Middle and Upper Schools, he will forever be remembered for his long tenure as the teacher of eighth-grade earth science. Steve tirelessly worked to help students understand astronomy, oceanography and geology. He spent many hours in the lab helping students learn to identify rocks and minerals – and write poems and limericks about them. He helped students prepare to compete in Science Olympiad and a variety of science and engineering competitions. He brought to the classroom unbridled enthusiasm for drumlins and alluvial fans, plate tectonics and magma, dimensional analysis, dichotomous keys, and the Mohs scale of mineral hardness.

Steve was also a great coach. He brought the same committed and persistent attitude that he showed in the classroom to his role coaching football, baseball, track and field, basketball and rugby. For a time he also served as the Director of Athletics, while still teaching and coaching. When he wasn’t leading the team, Steve could always be found on the sidelines cheering, or up in the announcer’s booth calling out the names of the students engaged in each play.

Day after day, year after year, Steve demonstrated Tarrier spirit through his commitment, involvement and care for the whole community. In all, he taught more than 2,500 students at CWA. Each spring, the Middle School faculty has adopted a tradition of selecting three words to describe each eighth-grader’s spirit. One of Steve’s colleagues selected the following words for Steve as he graduated from his career at Charles Wright: dedicated, steadfast and granite-like.

With gratitude, the Charles Wright community honors Steve Daniels with a Lifetime Teaching Award for exemplifying all of those characteristics for so many years.

“I always knew I wanted to go to school on the East Coast because I lived in Massachusetts and Connecticut before moving to Tacoma after sixth grade,” says Harper. None of the schools to which she applied were more than 170 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Within that region, she was also looking for a school where she could continue to pursue many of the passions she developed at CWA.

After trying soccer in the fall of her freshman year, Harper discovered she loved running and ran seven seasons for the CWA cross-country and track teams. She made several trips to state and placed in the top 14 both her junior and senior years, including a 7th place finish in the 3200m this year.

“I don’t want to feel like I’m only a runner, because I’m not,” she explains of her approach to college athletics. “I knew I didn’t want to run competitively at a school where I’d have to take specific classes for athletes instead of participating fully in academic programs, so I started looking for NCAA Division III programs where I can be a student and an athlete.”

Harper’s coach, Ryan Johnson, helped her identify schools in the Northeast that would be a good fit for her as an athlete. Last year the Colby women’s cross-country team won the Maine State title for the 10th time in program history. Colby also finished in seventh place in the NCAA New England Regional and sent two seniors to the NCAA meet. “The email I received from the coach when I was accepted made me feel like I was already a member of the team,” says Harper.

Journalism is another passion Harper developed at CWA. “People and cultures really interest me,” she says. “I could just listen to people’s stories all day long.” In addition to serving on the staff of The Academy Times for four years and serving as an editor for the publication her junior and senior years, Harper participated in National History Day as a freshman and sophomore. She collaborated with classmate Nicole Fannin to craft a video documentary for the contest about Carl Wilkens, the only American who stayed in Rwanda during the genocide there more than 15 years ago. The film was shown at the Tacoma Film Festival and is now used by Wilkens’ nonprofit organization to educate students all over the world about the events in Rwanda.

Although she is not planning a career in journalism, Harper wants to continue writing throughout college and finding a school with a good student newspaper was important to her. The Colby Echo fit the bill. Like the cross-country coach, the editors of the newspaper sent her a personalized letter when they learned she was interested in their program.

The seeds of global interest were sewn many years before Harper arrived at CWA. She is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Ireland and lived there for several years when she was young. “I’ve been really privileged to travel abroad through programs at Charles Wright and to visit family members who live all over the world,” says Harper. She has hosted students from the UAE, Japan and Italy and made a Winterim trip to Japan during her sophomore year. During her summers, Harper has traveled to Ireland for a writing course at Dublin City University and the University of Iowa for a website design course in journalism in order to help facilitate the CWA transition from print to an online newspaper. Last summer she returned to Japan on a Youth For Understanding scholarship for a full six weeks, to advance her language skills. As her interest in Africa grew, she realized it would be very helpful to learn French. She completed Japanese 500 and French 200 before graduating.

Harper wants to study abroad in college and was pleased to discover that 70% of Colby students do just that. The school has one of the most popular study abroad programs of any U.S. college or university. She hopes to travel through Europe, Asia and Africa and is exploring summer internship opportunities with a Japanese bank in Hong Kong and World Bicycle Relief in Zambia. Because she would like to become fully fluent in Japanese, Harper specifically looked for schools with Japanese language programs.

In addition to these core interest areas, Harper has participated in a wide variety of activities at CWA. She helped start the Upper School’s Human Rights club. She was a member of the cast of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, The Wizard of Oz, and two One Acts. She has taken piano lessons on campus from Ilona Norins, a CWA piano teacher, playing in the Joy of Piano Trios Festival and the University of Puget Sound Orchestral Recital Series. In addition she has served as senior class community service rep. “Name a CWA club and I’ve been to one of their meetings,” she jokes.

Harper took a total of eight Advanced Placement exams – Calculus AB, Chemistry, European history, U.S. history, English language, English literature, Japanese language and culture, and psychology – showing the breadth and strength of her academic preparation for a college as rigorous as Colby. She was also named a National Merit Commended Scholar based on her PSAT scores.

“Like Charles Wright and the Montessori school I attended before that, Colby is a very small liberal arts school. Fewer than 500 students graduate each year,” reports Harper. Because she is confident she wants to attend medical school, Harper did not want to finish college with a heavy load of loans. The package Colby offered her was very generous, with a merit scholarship specifically awarded for her academic achievements.

For Harper, the unique combination of an ideal location, strong academic and athletic programs, and plenty of interesting extracurriculars was just the right fit. She’s spending the summer with her family, running, and enjoying the Washington weather before she begins her trek 3,000 miles eastbound. Like most fall sport athletes, however, it will really be just a few short weeks before she reports to college. “I’m excited that so many CWA students are going to schools on the East Coast this year,” she says. “I’ve really enjoyed my experience here and I look forward to being friends with many of my classmates for a long time.”