headlines

summer program 2010

Looking for something fun and educational for your child to do this summer? Sea Crest School’s week long sessions allow students to customize their summer school experience. Click on the links to read about the wide variety of classes or download a registration form.

seeking auction donations

Sea Crest School is seeking donations to help make our 12th annual auction a success, helping to fund educational programming for our students, professional development opportunities for our teachers and tuition assistance for our families. All donations are considered tax deductible. Please complete the donation form and return it to Cathy Greenwald at your earliest convenience. For more information, contact lynn.marrs@mac.com.

auction registration

Tickets are now available for this year's auction, March 20th, and family preview event to be held after school on March 19th. Click on the link to make your reservations online.

Head of school blog

january 2010

As we come off the holiday season, the season of giving, I continue to be amazed by just how giving the Sea Crest families are toward the school and the community in general. Parent volunteerism makes the school hum and our recent efforts providing long lists of holiday gifts for 15 local families through Coastside Hope's Adopt-A-Family program demonstrate the large heart of our school.

This adult generosity serves as positive role modeling for our students. One of the pillars of the Sea Crest program is teaching students the importance of giving back to the communities we inhabit. From supporting each other in the classroom to helping solve global issues, Sea Crest students learn that they should and can make a difference.

Over the last several years, Sea Crest has adopted a service learning model. This model calls for students to band together and do something related to an issue they have learned about in class. 

The 8th grade students have led the way in these efforts with their study of hunger and poverty around the globe, as they organized our recent Adopt-A-Family efforts and continue to serve at local food banks and soup kitchens. Last year, the 6th and 7th graders looked at environmental issues and then led the school's efforts in recycling and local coastal clean-up days. The 6th graders continue these efforts this year, while the 7th graders have been studying about the importance of literacy and are volunteering their time as reading mentors at the Half Moon Bay Library.  They have also adopted a rural K-8 school in Tanzania by becoming pen pals with its students and organizing the recent drive for books which are so desperately needed by that community.

The efforts of our middle schoolers have inspired our younger students into action. This past spring, during a math unit on the value of money, the kindergarteners visited a local grocery store to see what they could buy with their limited dollars and then donated their purchases on a trip to Coastside Hope where they helped organize the food supplies. Similarly, the first graders donated all their proceeds from their own Farmers' Market, totaling over $1000, to our local Second Harvest Food Bank after studying the whole cycle of food "from seed to table."

This year, all nine grade levels are making connections in the community in the context of their social studies and/or science units.  During their sandy beach and harbor study, our second graders learn how pollution impacts the ecosystem of our waterfront areas.  The third graders work to understand and protect the fragility of local wetlands.  Fourth graders study endangered species and educate our community about them through a feature article writing unit.  As our fifth graders study the history of slavery in the United States, they simultaneously explore contemporary issues of child labor around the globe.  And, rekindling an old Sea Crest tradition, our kindergarteners build intergenerational relationships with our Lesley Garden neighbors as part of their study of family.

Nothing builds character like developing empathy and thinking outside ourselves. Sea Crest students are asked to do just that in myriad ways. Clearly, our students are living our Guiding Principles: "We are each other's keepers" and "I leave it better than I found it."

Click on the link to read the blog archive.