For our students who have been matched up with peer mentors, and for our students serving as mentors, come join us Tuesday at lunch in the library for a bunch of desserts, discussion, and a few board games. We want to check in on how the year is going for you all so far and make sure we check in on the effectiveness of our mentorship program since it is new this year, we are always looking to grow and improve!

On December 4^th and 5^th all academies will be in the library all day to lead an academy scavenger hunt for each 9^th grade advisory to come in and learn all about the life of the academies to help them consider joining our academy families next year! We are looking to 3^rd and 4^th level students to volunteer for a period or two. If you are interested, please contact Ms. McClure and she will follow up with more information.

December 6^th is our annual Engineering Expo (more info on this event below). In order to help support our engineering students, we are looking to Biomed and IT students to help us run this event and ensure is beautiful and successful. These students will be greeters, guides, set-up/take-down, snack crew. Keep an eye out from a link in the Remind from Ms. McClure tomorrow to sign up.

For our biomed students, our partnership with George Washington University's Urban Health Projects is back! This is open to biomed students and counts toward the work-based learning requirements to graduate the academy. Please come to the college and career center during lunch on November, 30th! Their mission is to promote public health education. Their sessions include snacks and are highly engaging and interactive and run by graduate students.  For more information about this series, please check out their webpage:

Come see our engineering students showcase on December 6^th from 6:00-8:00 as they display their current class projects in this evening event where we welcome judges and community partners in the field of engineering to come judge and give feedback to our young engineers. For the second half of the evening, our judges and students trade places and our judges present their latest projects, research, and 'day in the life' and our students have the opportunity to network.

We are always looking for more judges to support this Expo especially since the size our engineering academy has blossomed and we want to make sure all of our students get feedback. If you or anyone in your network would be willing to serve as a judge, please fill out and/or share this landing page link with more detailed information about the event as well the sign-up link. Ms. McClure will follow up with those who sign up to schedule a judges virtual call in advance of the event to ensure clarity (and excitement!)

Amazing opportunity for IT and engineering seniors; Students can use this link to apply to a 40,000 Amazon scholarship. Seniors, please review the eligibility requirements and get to it!

In September Ms. McClure sent out an email about academy requirements and expectations. Below is a 'prettier' version (shout-out to one of our academy parents for greatly improving the formatting) of those requirements for you to check in and see your progress on these expectations toward graduating from the academy. Ms. McClure will be pushing into classes starting this week (starting with level 4 classes first and then working down the list) through December to clarify any questions and help students log onto their NAFtrack accounts (where the requirement-tracking is recorded).

Information Technology:

For current eligible juniors (and seniors who have not yet completed a Career-Ready Internship), an email with the application link and all of the steps for the CRI paid summer internship opportunity through the academy was sent out three weeks ago. If you believe you are eligible, but have not received an email with this important information, please check your spam. If it is not there, please let Ms. McClure know so she can check into it...it went to whichever email is in aspen and I know sometimes there are changes there. Once you have applied (deadline January 5th), the next step is to complete the Tenacity course that will appear on your Canvas in the next couple of weeks-we are just waiting for Central to load it-more detailed instructions will come from Ms. McClure once loaded. Ms. McClure will be reached out last week if you have not applied yet and are eligible-don't limit your options, at least apply.

Our biomed students had a wonderful time at the FBI headquarters! Students got to learn about the different career options within the FBI world, tour the facility, and ask all their questions and curiosities about the FBI-in particular, the world of forensics.

This past Tuesday, Keira, one of our equity officers facilitated the Diversity Listening Session discussion through rooting her discussion prompts with the holiday theme of family and community and by asking students to decorate sugar cookies that relate to this theme (we also found out through this activity that we have two students who actually have a business decorating cakes in their spare time!) Students gave feedback and ideas of how to create more opportunities for academy students both within their academy and across academies to come together and build connections and friendships. We'll be working on making those ideas a reality! Our next session will be December 12^th for those who want to join in!

Enjoy some photos from our engineering trip to Morgan State University to meet with GWWO architects who were hired to design Tyler Hall, the new state-of-the-art building on Morgan State's campus. Check out our Instagram (@jacksonreedengineering) to see video footage as well!

Do you have other ideas for fieldtrip experiences for our Biomed, Engineering, and IT students? We know that our academy families are well-connected to amazing opportunities in the DMV area. If you have a connection or idea for a fieldtrip related to the world of health sciences, we would love to hear form you! go to https://scimatech.org/connect/ and just click the box that says 'Lead a tour/host a fieldtrip within your field.'