Hello Lovely Humans,
This last newsletter of the 23/24 academic year is packed with celebrations of our seniors and end of year accomplishments.
The MSA class of 2024 is an impressive lot! Check out the long list of seniors and the programs they explored below. During our MSA Award Night last week, we not only awarded certificates and draped our seniors in their hand-made graduation stoles (thanks to our awesome Shannon Morgan Miller!), we also announced our student and adult Sparky awards. This annual set of honors is always hard for our staff to bestow given the incredible pool of creative and hard-working students and generous and talented adults in our community. We honored the student Sparky to Victoria Salazar for the way she has served both the all-NHS community as well as the MSA community. When Tori is given an opportunity, she not only says YES!, she also brings in her peers to write a poem for a fundraiser or facilitate peer circles—anything to actively make our culture stronger. The adult Sparky went to Tom Holmes, a parent who worked behind the scenes to make all our kids sound better—literally!—he’s been our go-to sound engineer. Thank you, Tori and Tom, for modeling the best of MSA in all of us.
We also turn our attention to “hot off the press” news of national honors for a few of our younger MSA artists. We have two writers who received a National Medal in this year’s Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Sky Smulewitz (’26) received a Gold Medal & Sofia Gil Mbugua (’25)received a Silver Medal! This is a huge accomplishment! Sky is only the second writer in the program to receive a National Gold Medal. Kudos to them both!
Our community is made up of so many wonderful humans—young and <ahem> older. As we close this year, I remind us that honors and celebration are mirrors of ALL of our efforts and what we do day in and day out. After a nice relaxing break this summer, I look forward to more creativity and community in the new school year.
With so much love for all parts of our communities,
Michelle Cortez