2025.6.18 – Saxe Weekly (#290)

June 18, 2025

Dear Saxe MS Family,

Well, that’s a wrap on the 2024-25 school year! The expression, “the days may be long, but the years fly by,” certainly feels appropriate right about now… Some days were longer than others, but this year seemed to move close to light speed at times. With that being said, we accomplished much and celebrated often. Thank you to every member of our school community for a truly amazing year. As you scan through the most recent Saxe Weekly, I hope you are able to reflect on the year and feel a sense of pride for your own personal accomplishments, no matter how big or small. You should all be proud!

This week in the Saxe Weekly, we take a look at summer (woohoo!), the Grade 8 Promotion Ceremony celebrating the Saxe MS Class of 2025, the final Saxe News episode of the year, Saxe Hawks podcast, team celebrations, “STEM for Social Good” project, building community all the way until the end of the year, summer reading, some national champs!, PTC sponsored events, spreading joy, and much more. Thank you again for everything, and have a wonderful summer!

Be Well,

Dave Gusitsch

Principal, Saxe Middle School

Upcoming Noteworthy Dates:

Happy Summer!

*Quotes that resonated with us this week:

“No one is perfect. That’s why pencils have erasers.”-Wolfgang Riebe

“You can learn, something new everyday if you listen.”-Unknown

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced”-Søren Kierkegaard

Saxe Jokes:

Why did the art thief’s van run out of gas as he drove away from the museum? Because he had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh

How did the barber win the race? He knew a shortcut

What is a math teacher’s favorite season? Sum-mer!

Happy Summer!

Image credit: Saxe PTC. Thanks to our tremendous PTC for all they do for our entire school community, all year!

Saxe MS Grade 8 Promotion

We did it! Today was a wonderful celebration of the Saxe MS Class of 2025, and what a special group it was to honor! Congratulations and best wishes as the new NCHS Class of 2029 – we wish you nothing but the best!

To check out the Promotion Ceremony, please feel free to do so, here:

A couple of notes:

If you would like to read the transcript of Mr. Gusitsch’s message to the Saxe Class of 2025, with a focus on “life lessons” and “being present”, you are welcome to check it out, here.
A special thank you to Mr. Tony Psenicnik for capturing the ceremony and all the setup, editing, and break down that goes along with it!
The formal pictures that were taken by the photographer will be shared out as soon as they are available – thank you for your patience 🙂
- Update – here they are! Enjoy and a huge special thanks to M. Gould for capturing EVERY student’s special moment!

Below are just a few moments that captured some of what made today special!

To check out some more pictures from the Grade 8 Promotion ceremony, please check a few more in the shared Google Photos Album!

Saxe News

Check out the final episode of Saxe News for some great reflections from our students on the school year!

Note: the NCHS Dome was a big hit this year!

Saxe Hawks Podcast

A few weeks ago, we shared that we debuted yet another medium in which to get a snapshot of all that goes on at Saxe MS each week. With some AI assistance through Notebook LM, each edition of the Saxe Weekly is able to be converted into a podcast format that is brief (approximately 12-15 minutes), informative, and fun and easy to listen to! Interested in checking it out? Check that last couple, here:

8 Green

The 8 Green Team closed out the year with fun activities including team yearbook signing, sharing our favorite memories from the year, and the 12th annual green team Oscars. Some Oscar categories included Best Aha Moment, Strongest Theme, Best Cinematography, and Best Overall Performance.

STEM for Social Good Project

Office redesign, complete! This year, our STEM for Social Good students took on a year-long challenge: redesigning our building manager’s office to better suit his needs. Using the design thinking process, students interviewed stakeholders, took measurements, and created digital 3D models of their proposed redesigns. They developed a full plan and budget, which they presented to school administrators. We’re proud to share that the redesign was completed just this week. It was an incredible real-world accomplishment that combined empathy, creativity, and problem-solving.

Community

8Blue was team building and strengthening their “team community” all the way up until the final days of the 2024-25 school year! Here are a few pictures of students enjoying each other’s company, and matching wits, with a little “Catchphrase” and “virtual bingo”.

Ms. Campbell’s Social Studies classes also made the most of the closing days of the school year!

Summer Reading

To access the incoming Grades 5-8 Saxe Summer Reading website, you can (1) click the link here, (2) look for the image above on the Saxe website, or (3) refer to the email sent on Monday, June 9. Each incoming grade level has a page dedicated to the assignment on the website, and the “Need a Good Book” tab provides recommendations. Please note that some documents need to be opened with an NCPS account. We hope you will read many great books this summer, and we look forward to hearing all about the characters, adventures, and conflicts you read about when you return to school in the fall! Happy reading!

Saxe in the News

Saxe 8th-graders Charlotte Edwards and Roxi Goodwin, of Maritime Rowing, won the National Championship in Women’s U16 coxed quadruple sculls in Sarasota, Florida on Sunday June 15. Also racing was Tanisha Kansal, whose team came in second in the B finals, 10th overall.

A big shout out to Abby and Sophia for being the “Voices of Saxe MS” as our consistent morning announcers throughout the year – thank you!

Below are photos and phrases that were included on our Saxe Middle School page (@SaxeMS) this week. Enjoy!

One of the marquis moments of middle school – yearbook signing! 8th-graders got to take a moment to do so during the Bagel Breakfast on Monday. Thank you to our PTC for this fun event!

The weather may not have cooperated for all of our outdoor end-of-year activities, but we still made the best of it! Following the 8th-grade Promotion practice on Tuesday, students and staff were treated to a delicious lunch courtesy of our PTC. Thank you, yet again! Below are a few pics from the morning…

Who celebrates the end of the school year best? Saxe Health teacher, Ms. Orlando! She was ready to make every student who walked through the door at drop-off feel special with a dose of confetti on their last day! Some of the students weren’t quite sure what was happening and some of the responses were priceless… Thanks for spreading the joy, Ms. Orlando!

And, one more congrats to our former students who celebrated as the NCHS Class of 2025 on Monday. Best wishes to each and every one of you!

Have a great summer, see you in August!

Thank you to all of our Saxe Weekly contributors! Each weekly edition is an example of collaboration in action. A special thanks to Melissa DiMeglio for the continuous stream of positive, optimistic quotes!

Saxe Resources (live links)