December 17, 2009

Winter Program Photos

Thank you to all who participated in this year's Winter Program.

Check out pictures of our talented students in our SmugMug gallery here.

Password: please ask

Tuition Assistance Information

This is a reminder that applications for tuition assistance for the 2010-2011 school year are now available. Below are important dates to remember.

December 7, 2009 -- January 15, 2010 Go to http://sss.nais.org/parents to apply for tuition assistance for the 2010-2011 school year.

January 15, 2010 Application due to SSS (Remember to print a copy for yourself and CAIS before hitting the 'submit' button if you are applying online). Or, if you are applying through the mail, applications must be postmarked by January 15.

February 11, 2010 Copy of the application to SSS and all tax forms for 2009 (returns, w-2's, 1099's) due to the CAIS Business Office.

If you have any questions regarding the tuition assistance process, please contact Ina Stahl in the Business Office or call her at 861-7666.

Meet the Development Team

To many, development and fundraising are synonymous. Many equate the CAIS development office with raising money, pure and simple. To some extent, of course, that is correct, but such a limited definition of development fails to capture the full measure of what this office does. We want to give you a snapshot of what the CAIS development team does and how it fits into CAIS and affects each member of our community and helps maintain the high quality of education offered at CAIS.


The CAIS development office consists of team members whose jobs do not directly involve raising money. Rather, they provide related services, including prospect research, database management, gift recording and processing, grant writing, volunteer cultivation and coordination, special events planning and oversight and donor and alumni relations. The team reports regularly to the Board of Trustees on fundraising strategies, Annual Fund updates, grant proposals and prospecting.


Development looks not only to CAIS families to raise the money that's necessary to bridge the $1.025 million gap between tuition and operating costs, but also relies on grants, corporate funding and sources outside of our community. It's an important function that's fulfilled by a small, but hardworking team that works primarily behind the scenes, but fills an important function that keeps our community in a good financial position.


Betty Shon


In the absence of a Development Director and in addition to her Interim Head of School duties, Betty oversees the development team and meets with them regularly to implement strategies and oversee workflow. She works closely with the Board of Trustees development committee and helps members make and fulfill fundraising commitments.


Always committed to raising money for the school, Betty has been known to train for and run a half marathon in order to get face time with potential donors.


Virginia Cheung - Annual Fund and Events Manager


Virginia works with the development team, board and the parent community to help close the financial gap between tuition and actual cost of operations. She coordinates the army of parent volunteers for the ShowCAIS gala as well as the Annual Fund campaign.


Her enthusiasm for planning and organizing events stems from her volunteer work coordinating large-scale events for NextAid, an organization that raises money to support socially and environmentally sustainable projects for AIDS orphans in Africa.


Virginia lives by the Nelson Mandela quote, 'Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.' She believes that she can make the most difference by helping children achieve their greatest potential. She loves the intercultural approach to education at CAIS, as well as the commitment to diversity and the supportive community.


JP Lor -- Development Associate


JP Lor attended CAIS for Pre-K in 1988-89 and has returned two decades later to support his former school. In his role as Development Associate, JP is focused on prospect research on individual donors, foundations and corporations -- providing the headway that enables the development department to make informed decisions about its fundraising efforts.


Incorporating his love of writing and graphic design, he has taken on the creation of a lot of the communication pieces for the department, including letters, invitations, e-mails, grant proposals and reports. He also provides general support for the Annual Fund, events and database management.


JP is excited to work at CAIS because he values bilingual education, which had a profound influence on him growing up in the Bay Area. JP graduated from Bard College with a degree in Anthropology and comes to us having worked in development at Habitat for Humanity East Bay and Magic Theatre.


Recently, he participated in the National Novel Writing Month contest and successfully finished a 50,000-word novel within the month of November 2009.


Esther Lee -- Development Associate


The team's newest member, Esther Lee, has joined the development team as Development Associate. She brings with her a wide range of professional skills and community experience that have had a great impact on her ability to raise money for causes she believes in. There were many candidates for this newly filled position, however, the team felt that with Esther's strong fundraising background, community organizing skills and database management experience, she would round out the team and help them meet their goals.


She has managed donor databases, organized major fundraising events and secured private and major donor investments for nonprofit organizations, political campaigns and for the SF Giants ballpark campaign.


What excites Esther about working at CAIS is the ability to invest her professional qualities in a place where her family makes a personal investment, where the best education is offered to her children. Her son, Christopher Chun is in his second year at CAIS in Pre-K gold.


Like many CAIS community members, Esther is a self proclaimed foodie and has recently started a blog that focuses on the lunches she packs for Christopher, Foodie Lunch Box.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays from all of us at CAIS. It's certainly been an eventful year, thus far. We have all been busy preparing for the holiday season and December has been full of activities including the PA Holiday Faire and Winter Program. We wish you and your families a wonderful break from school and work and we'll all be ready to welcome your children back to school on January 4.

We would like to wish our Assistant Head of School, Wendy Zacuto, a speedy recovery from her surgery. Special thanks also to all of our wonderful middle school faculty and other staff members who pitched in during her absence to make sure the students experienced minimal disruption. We look forward to welcoming Wendy back on January 4.

Have a wonderful, restful and safe holiday season.

Parent Education Series Speaker – January 6

We will kick off the New Year by hosting JoAnn Deak, Ph.D., as our parent education speaker. She will speak to our parent community on January 6 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Lower Cafe. Child care will be provided, please contact Kevin Lee, Director of Auxiliary Programs to make arrangements for child care.

Dr. Deak, psychologist, educator and author has spent more than twenty years helping children develop into confident and competent adults. Her professional career focuses on working with parents and teachers in their roles as guides for children.

The focus of her presentation to us will be about the differences between girls and boys in relation to how the brain is asked to work. Dr. Deak's research concludes that brain imaging shows that female and male brains are wired quite differently. These differences lead to a variation in the way girls and boys approach almost everything: from learning to loving, from communicating to consoling. She will talk specifically about educating both boys and girls in a dual-language immersion program.

Dr. Deak has written three books, contributed to two and co-edited one. Her latest "The Brain Matters: A Middle of the Road Guide for Parenting and Teaching", discusses the implications of brain research on parenting and teaching young children and adolescents.

We are very excited to have Dr. Deak speak on January 6. We hope to see you at this important educational event.

CAIS 13th Annual Talent Recital Scheduled for March 13

For its 13th year, the CAIS Talent Recital will showcase the individual talent of Kindergarten through eighth grade students at the beautiful Saint Aidan's Church. It will take place on Saturday, March 13 rather than in May, as in previous years. New this year, all students who participate must have their performance material memorized. Registration and details will be announced in the Thursday Flash in January.

Holiday Shopping at CAIS

CAIS apparel makes the perfect holiday gift for your children, show your school spirit and order something from the CAIS online boutique in time to get it under the tree for the holidays.

Make someone's holiday brighter with the gift of a CAIS logo product. Start shopping now!

Upcoming Important Dates

Half Day - Noon Dismissal
December 18

Winter Break
December 21 - January 1

School Resumes
January 4

ERB Testing (third through fifth)
January 5-15

ERB Testing (sixth through eighth)
January 5-8

Parent Education Series - Speaker JoAnn Deak
January 6

Parent Health Education Evening (fifth through eighth)
January 11

Please check our school calendar for details and additional upcoming events. The calendar is updated through the 2009-2010 school year.

Double Your Impact!

From now through Feb 15, a group of anonymous parent donors will match every gift to the Annual Fund! If you make your gift now, each of your dollars will be doubled. Please join the families who have made their gift in support of the school. Help us reach our $500,000 goal!

It's easy to donate online, simply click here.

Please Return Winter Program Costumes

Our costume bank is an essential resource for future programs, so all third through fifth graders, please re-bag those costumes from last week's program and return them to your classroom teacher ASAP. We will wash them at CAIS, but we need them back immediately.

Lower School ERB Testing Schedule

The ERB testing schedule is as follows:

Third through fifth grade - January 5 through January 15, 2010

Please make sure your child goes to bed at a reasonable time every night and has a healthy breakfast each morning. If you need to schedule any medical appointments, please schedule it after the ERB testing period.

Thank You from Chinese Music Teacher Jean Zhu

Within a short period of time, first and second grade students created, practiced and performed musical pieces at the Winter Program, demonstrating their music and art talent.


Thank you to all the parents who supported and helped with the performance. Special thanks to Julie Mak, Jennifer Yeh, Lisa Tam and Ariana Han for making the snowflake costumes, Irina Kenderova for making the beautiful Tibetan aprons, Cecilia Tan for selecting the flowers and Billy Shen for editing the music.


It was a beautiful evening that showcased our students' talents.

Peer Conflict Managers

Our deepest gratitude to our Peer Conflict Managers: Jared Rivera, Robert Leachman, Jeanne Peabody, Erica Wong, Michelle Morgan, Micayla Chow, Sheridan Lim and Sachi Papov. For the past two months they had given up their recess period once a week to help their peers on the playground.

The PCMs not only have taken up the leadership role to help students mediate conflicts, they are also committed to stop bullying at school. During trainings they learn the different types of bullying and how to intervene when bullying happens. Knowing bullying is not tolerated at CAIS, the PCMs will not be a bystander and will report any questionable behaviors to teachers.

As we thank our PCMs for their hard work for the past few months, we welcome new a new PCM team which includes Alvin Cai, Fefe Chen, Samantha Chesson, Eric Garcia, Giana Gillelen, Mirei Golding-Powers, Tyler Kwok, Zoe Lee-Divito and Olivia Price to training after the winter break. The first session will take place on January 8.

New Lower School Art Currently On Display

Look for colorful, collaborative murals depicting rainforest scenes by the third grade classes. These murals were created as an integration project with the third grade English rainforest social studies unit. Also on display are clay sculptures by the first grade classes. These displays are located on the first and second floors.






Fourth Grade Collage Project: "A Significant Place"

On the second floor is a display of the fourth grade project entitled "A Significant Place." This unit was designed to encourage students to represent an autobiographical story with a variety of media including collage and oil pastel. As part of this unit the students viewed and discussed the work of Carmen Lomas Garza and Romare Bearden; two American artists who depicted places significant to their personal histories and cultures. The learning goals of this lesson included depicting the illusion of depth through the following methods: depicting foreground and background, using relative size (objects in the foreground appear larger than objects in the background) and overlapping of materials. In this art unit, learning about and using these formalist principals is combined with creativity and self expression to give students an artistic experience that is educational, supports creative thinking and expands students' repertoires for depicting their life experiences and values. Stop by the display to view the work, learn about the artists the students studied and to read the students' artist statements that describe their work.

Parent Health Education Evening for Fifth Grade Parents

Parent Health Education Evening is scheduled for January 11 from 6 -7:30 p.m. in MPR4 on the fourth floor for all fifth through eighth grade parents. Childcare will be provided, however, parents need to provide dinner for their children.

Please RSVP to Sarah Berman or 865-6013.

Middle School ERB Testing Schedule

The ERB testing schedule is as follows:

Sixth through eighth grade - January 5 -- January 8, 2010

Please make sure your child goes to bed at a reasonable time every night and has a healthy breakfast each morning. If you need to schedule any medical appointments, please schedule it after the ERB testing period.

Parent Health Education Evening

Parent Health Education Evening is scheduled for January 11 from 6 -7:30 p.m. in MPR4 on the fourth floor for all fifth through eighth grade parents. Childcare will be provided, however, parents need to provide dinner for their children.

Please RSVP to Sarah Berman or 865-6013.

Basketball Season in Full Swing

Basketball season is well underway with four CAIS teams playing in the SFAL league this season. We have our fifth grade boys team (JV gold) with a 1-1 record so far. JV boys red (sixth and seventh) are 2-0; girls JV are 2-1; and girls Varsity are 0-1. (Win-loss) GO FIREDRAGONS!

There will be a lot of home games in January so please come and join in the excitement, bring your cheering voice, and join the CAIS parent basketball band. No talent required!

Be sure to get lots of exercise over the break. Healthy holidays!

Basketball Open Gym Starting in January

Starting January 6 there will be basketball open gym for all students wanting to get in an extra practice. Coaches will pick up fourth and fifth grade players from extended day at 3:40 p.m. and meet the middle school players on the front steps of Oak Street campus at 3:45 p.m. Open gym practice/scrimmages will end at 5 p.m. There is no charge!

Firedragon Basketball Wins on Monday

The J.V. Firedragon basketball team defeated San Francisco Friends School on Monday with a 18-12 victory. The players that led us to the victory are Adri Denbroeder, Gabby Wong, Baily Lanman, Kelsey Rasmussen, Mirei Golding-Powers, Samantha Chessen and Emma Ng. Thanks to all that watched and cheered us on!

Our next home game January 6 at 4:45 p.m. against Lycee.

Scholastic Book Fair

Thank you to all the parents who helped Warren Wright set up, take down and helped work during the Scholastic Book Fair. A special thanks to Susan Tse, who was there most days and helped with the teachers' wish lists.

We are in process of counting the profits and distributing books to the teachers. They are always happy to be able to add to or freshen up their classroom libraries. While English sales were lower this year, Chinese book sales were steady.

Be sure to check out the Spring Book Fair starting May 20, 2010.

First CAIS Families San Francisco Food Bank Volunteer Date

The SF Food Bank volunteer shift on Sunday, January 10th from 12:30 -- 3:30 is full! We hope to have another date in March. More information will be coming soon. You can also volunteer on your own. Check out SFFoodbank.org for more information about the food bank and volunteer opportunities. Contact Veronica Reilly with any questions.

Diversty Groups Update

As mentioned previously in the Flash, this year CAIS would like to encourage the formation of one or more diversity groups for the school community. A diversity group in this sense is envisioned as a group that comes together around a shared interest or topic of common interest. It creates space for people to discuss issues related to that topic, build community, create fellowship, and become more able to support their children and roles as parents. They are primarily a means of support for community members who are interested in such support. The interest groups will be open to all members of the CAIS community, including families, staff and faculty. Currently there are a few groups forming.

Thanks for Supporting the Holiday Faire!

Our village of dedicated committee members, middle school volunteers, parent helpers, CAIS staff (special thanks to Warren Wright and Betty Shon) and of course, our enthusiastic CAIS families all came together to create a memorable event! It was an action-packed day of gingerbread houses, face painting, yummy treats and creative games to burn off those sugar highs.

Our goal was to produce an event that would attract the larger community, and your participation exceeded even our most optimistic expectations! It was particularly satisfying to see so many families of different ages perfecting their sour power roofs, dodging nerf pellets, showing off freshly blotted tattoos and just plain hanging out together. Thanks to our fearless photographers, Ed Lukowski, Stoyan Kenderov and Bohpany Huot, you can check out some of the day's highlights at our SmugMug gallery.


Password: please ask


From the entire PA Council, we wish you a happy, healthy, holiday season.