Red & Blue Review 1/12/23

Head of School Review

BY DR ANDY GRAHAM

What a wonderful week we have had on campus with academics, athletic contests, and even a spelling bee! While I was watching the spelling bee on campus, it reminded me of my participation in a county-wide spelling bee as a child. My mother, during her elementary school days, had won the Kentucky State Spelling Bee, and I remember hoping to follow in her footsteps. So, I studied diligently each night and somehow managed to win the grade-level spelling bee at my school.

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The championship match was to be held at another school on the other side of the county, and I was so excited. I anxiously awaited my turn to compete, and I remember boarding a school bus on a hot spring day to travel to the competition. After a pretty long drive, we arrived and prepared for the start of the event. I well remember having butterflies in the pit of my stomach as I prepared for the first word. To this day, I cannot remember what the word was, I only remember spelling the first word incorrectly. I spent the rest of the day disappointed as I sat and watched the other students spelling words I was sure my mother would be so disappointed in me. But, when I arrived home and told her that despite my preparation, I had missed the very first word, my mother said “I’m still proud of you because you studied hard, and you did your best.” This year at the spelling bee, we had a group of wonderful young people who put themselves out there and competed with each other. There were some really difficult words and some of them, like me, left the event disappointed. But, I am proud of their bravery to participate, their diligence in studying the words, and as my mother told me “I am proud of them for studying hard and doing their best.”

Have a great end of the week and as always, thanks for sending us these wonderful young people

Upper School Review

BY STEPHANIE WEHRER

I pray that all of our upper school students, families and faculty had a wonderful Christmas holiday, and a restful time with family and friends. While I enjoyed my break with my family immensely, I was excited to return this week and welcome our students back for the start of a brand new calendar year! We have a lot of exciting things coming up this semester, and I am looking forward to getting to share some of those with you throughout the remainder of the year as they occur. Welcome back this new year, and as always thank you for allowing us the privilege of working with your children each and every day at TRA Mrs. Maddux’s 7th grade PreAlgebra classes had to calculate scales to create mini-me drawings of themselves this week. I don’t know about you, but I think they did a pretty good job!

Students, in Mrs Vego’s Tennessee History class, are learning about the various maps of our great state. To learn the physical map, students created the state out of salt dough. They will be including all of the state’s landforms in their illustrations of Tennessee.

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Tuesday, students in 4th grade through 8th grade competed in the TRA school spelling bee. Students had previously competed at their classroom level, to determine representatives, and those students then faced off on the PAC stage! Meteorologist Spencer Denton, from Action News 5, joined us as the guest pronouncer for the competition At the end of several rounds, our spelling bee champion was Edward Lague from the 6th grade! Congrats Edward, we are so proud of you!

Next Tuesday, middle school representatives that have been already selected to represent their grade and our school, will compete in the AMC-8 Math Competition, on campus. We wish these students good luck in competing!

Finally, I want to congratulate 8th grader Delia Sigler for placing 3rd in her age division (grades 6-8) in the Tennessee Secretary of State Civics Essay Contest! Delia was 1 of 12 Tennessee students who placed out of 3,841 students from across the Volunteer State who participated in this year’s essay contest. Delia will receive a TNSTARS 529 College Savings Program scholarship and a trip to the State Capitol this spring! Way to go, Delia!

Lower School Review

BY SUSAN CRANFORD

Welcome back and Happy 2023! We are so excited to be back in school, and it is so good to see all of our sweet, smiling little faces. I think all of our teachers and our students are happy to be back together this week.

We are starting 2023 off with a bang! Our preschool STEAM classes had “SNOW” much fun examining snowflakes through magnifying glasses and then creating snowflakes of their own with Qtips Our kindergarteners made lots of new year goals! Our first graders enjoyed the book Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats, while learning about opinion writing and telling which weather they like best. They wrote a journal entry about their favorite weather and did a super cute art project to go along with the book. Third graders enjoyed making a “snapshot” of winter break that told all the fun things that happened while they were out of school for the holidays. Our PreK-2 students made snowflakes and talked about how snowflakes are like us in that they are all beautiful and no two are alike.

Our fifth graders came back to a “dino-mite” experience Wednesday Mrs Amy transformed her room into an amazing Jurassic Park scene. Students are paleontologists this week and are completing all sorts of dinosaur activities based on reviewing Reading standards.

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Chapel last week was led by Mrs. Allison Phelps. Our theme for the beginning of the year is prayer. Mrs. Allison talked to our students about talking to God daily and praying throughout the day. She led the boys and girls in reciting The Lord’s Prayer and explained what each verse means This week Mrs Samantha continued our theme of prayer and taught the children about prayer and how prayer connects us with God, who is all powerful, and about faith while praying: Faith that God will do what He says He will do. We love our Wednesday noon worship time, and it is so good for our souls to sing and worship our Lord together each week. If you have a chance to join us, please do!

We had a special treat last Friday! The Tunes and Tales program from the Memphis Symphony came to visit us and performed music along with storytelling. It was such an amazing event for us! We all enjoyed it immensely! Thank you to Mrs. Samantha Pence for arranging that visit for us!

Our Spelling Bee was held Tuesday and our very own fourth grader, Braiden Bowes, won second place! Congrats to Braiden as well as all the boys and girls who competed in the bee PLEASE help us with our morning carline DO NOT let your child out of the car UNTIL one of our car line assistants opens the door for him / her. We have had several almost accidents due to parents allowing students to exit the car without an assistant’s help and supervision. The students run between the cars, and it is not safe. THANK YOU for making sure you allow our assistants to guide the exiting of the cars Our concern is only to make sure your child is safe!

As we enter into this second semester, I would like thank you again for allowing us to share daily in the life of your child. We do not take this lightly, and we are honored to be a part of your family.