It’s Time For Goin’ Buggy!

Ladies and Gentlemen!  Bugs Everywhere!

Raise Your Antennas and Lend Us Your Ears!

Come Join Us For

Goin’ Buggy

Wednesday, May 13^th at 6:30 p.m.

West Sedona School Multipurpose Room

Presented by the Second Grade Class

Directed by Mrs. Spokes & Mrs. Zaun

Goin’ Buggy is a charming, whimsical, musical revue about our country’s largest constituency – the insect population! They air their grievances, point with pride at their accomplishments and demand rights that are long overdue.  If you are alumni of the Goin’ Buggy Musical, we would love to have you attend and be recognized.  The students are very excited to perform in front of a live audience so come on out and have a “Buggy” of a time!

WSS 6th Grade Presents “The No-Sit List”

Where: Sedona Red Rock High School Theater
When: THURSDAY, April 23, 2009
Time: 4:00 p.m. & 7:00 p.m.
Cost: $5 per student; $10 per person; $8 for Film Sedona Members

Sedona Film Festival and West Sedona School 6th Grade team up to present sneak preview of “The No-Sit List”.  See a great family film, meet the writer/director and producer and help raise funds to send students to science camp.

The Sedona International Film Festival and the West Sedona School sixth grade classes are proud to present a sneak preview of a new family comedy “The No-Sit List”. The film event is a fundraiser for the sixth grade class to attend Camp Colton, a science camp in Northern Arizona. There will be two screenings of the film at 4:00 and 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 23 at Sedona Red Rock High School Theater.

The star of the film (Trenton Rogers) as well as the writer and director, Douglas Horn, and the producer Joe Lorenzo will be here to host the screenings and conduct Q&A discussions after both screenings. This marks Horn’s third time back in Sedona with a film. He directed the award-winning short film “Full Disclosure” and the audience favorite comedy feature “Entry Level”, both of which were featured at past Sedona Film Festivals.

More Information

2009 Summer Activities Fair Scheduled

The 2009 Summer Activities Fair will be held on Wednesday, May 6th from 4 to 6 p.m., in the WSS multipurpose room. This PTSA sponsored event is free and open to the entire community. This will be the 11th year that the fair has provided information on a wide variety of summer activities for young people up to age 18. Organizations offering art, athletics, drama, dance, outdoor activities, classes, and more will be present. Come pick up flyers, ask questions, and sign your children up for summer activities.

If you are an individual or business that caters to youth and would like to take part in the Activities Fair, call Corin Athenour at 282-2863.

Pat Pfeifer a Nominee for Teacher-of-the-Year

Pat Pfeifer, fifth grade teacher at West Sedona School, has been selected as one of 3 Nominees in the Grades 4 – 8 category of the Yavapai County Education Foundation’s 15th Annual Teacher-of-the-Year Awards.  She will be the Foundation’s guest for dinner and honored with a plaque during the Awards Ceremony and Banquet on Friday, May 8, 2009 at 6 p.m. at the Prescott Resort.  Congratulations!

Donuts for Dads at WSS

On Friday. March 6th, the WSS PTSA would like to invite all dads or that important male that makes a difference in the lives of your children to “Donuts for Dads”. This event promotes quality time to honor that special person. Service is from 7:30 to 8:30 am and will feature donuts, coffee and juice. Ms. Carroll will provide the entertainment to help you relax and enjoy your morning. Children will be admitted with an adult only. This is a Bashas’ sponsored event. Hope to see you there!

Celebrity Artist To Speak At Local Schools

One of the most renowned glass artists of our time, Christopher Ries, will be speaking at both Red Rock High School and West Sedona School to art and science students.  Ries is known internationally for his unique control of reflection and refraction in creating illusions of art in pure glass.  Sondra Myers, of the National Endowment for the Arts is quoted as saying, “The compelling beauty of Christopher Ries’ glass sculptures gives an eloquent expression to the ideals of excellence…” he is in a category of his own.  He will be at the schools on Friday, February 6^th.

Ries began his career at Ohio State University where he built the school’s first “hot shop” and taught glass blowing as an undergraduate. As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Ries was the research assistant to the Founder of the American Studio Glass Movement, Harvey K. Littleton, under whom many of today’s masters of glass art have studied. It was this affiliation that first prompted Ries’ journey into the relationship between optics and glass art.

As Ries puts it, “Harvey explored innovative uses of materials”. Consciously or not, Ries followed the masters lead, though as Ries worked in cold glass to make stands for Littleton’s sculptures, he puzzled over the way light is deflected or absorbed by glass impurities.

Turing aside the temptations of color and extravagant forms that the other masters followed, Ries focused on carving glass into handsome shapes and finding ways to essentially sculpt light by dictating its path in and through the glass. “I have chosen a pure material and pure form,” Ries declares. “It is analogous to singing a cappella. Few singers have such a pure voice that they rivet you in time and space, but it can be an even more powerful experience than singing with accompaniment and embellishment.”

To achieve his goal of purity, Ries had to find a glass free from impurities. In 1982, his quest brought him to Schott Glass Technologies, where he found LF5, a glass so refined and homogenized that as light travels through it, only 0.2% of its photons are absorbed, as opposed to the full 30 % that gets absorbed by ordinary glass.  Ries experimented with many glass types produced at Schott and in 1986 their “Artist-in-Residence”, a unique status which provides him the ability to create glass art no other artist can achieve.

Over the years Ries has created art forms of varying sizes and shapes with some weighing thousands of pounds.  His work is highly sort after and collected by private collectors including well known celebrities, politicians, and even an astronaut.  His work is also found in museums and corporations around the world.

“Having Christopher Ries come to Sedona is a real treat” says Zachary Richardson, owner of Gallery of Modern Masters, which is sponsoring his trip. He went on to say, “we usually do not have artists of this caliber volunteer their time for our schools, and we are very appreciative.”

The Gallery of Modern Masters in conjunction with Fork In The Road restaurant is having a reception for Christopher Ries at the gallery located at Hillside Sedona on Friday February 6^th from 5PM to 8PM as part of the Sedona Gallery Association First Friday of February event.  Catch the Trolley at Hillside.  For information, call Gallery of Modern Masters at 928-282-3313.

Sedona Teacher Attends Inauguration

Jeanie Carroll, a music educator K-8, West Sedona Elementary School documents her experience at Tuesday’s Presidential inauguration. Click here.

WSS Middle School does NAU Ropes Course

West Sedona Middle School students recently participated in the Official Ropes Course at NAU. Click here to view photos of the trip. Students did a lot of team building and are prepared to do more. The trip was part of a grant written by Dr. Lisa Hirsch for closing the social and achievement gap for the middle school students and was sponsored by the Sedona Community Foundation.

Theme Baskets Ready To Raffle

Come to the Fall Apple Festival on Friday, October 24 and get chances to win any number of amazing theme baskets!  West Sedona School teachers and students have been working hard to assemble these baskets full of wonderful prizes.  All you have to do is come to the festival and buy tickets to put in the basket raffle buckets of your choice.

Some of the many basket themes include Sports, Chocolate, Music, Movie Night, and Travel Games.  All money raised at the Fall Apple Festival goes directly to fund important programs for our students and teachers.

For more information on the festival, visit Fall Apple Festival Site.

Legos Theme Basket

Fall Apple Festival Set for Oct 24 at WSS

The Fall Apple Festival is an extremely important annual fundraiser put on by the West Sedona School PTSA. Money raised will go to our Engineering Enrichment Program, to teachers for their special supplies and equipment, and the new Technological Program to purchase SMART boards and computers.  Fall Apple Festival Site