Volume 9: January 31st- February 11th

Director's Message

Dear Community Members,

We wish to thank all of our parents for the diligence which they are maintaining at home and away to assist us in keeping CAS open and as COVID free as possible. Although we had only four (4) positive cases discovered during the Antigenic tests held last Friday, additional cases were reported to our Nurse amongst those students who did not come for the in-school testing. Depending upon the overall results of our next testing session, we shall decide upon the further periodicity of our Antigenic Testing strategy.

We will be holding our next Evacuation Drill on Wednesday, February 23rd. This is an announced drill! We will be holding at least three (3) drills at school this year to make sure that we comply with all school safety standards in anticipation for any emergency.

We have created a new section on our What’s Up Cobras, entitled Flash news. Please make sure you scroll down to view it.

I would like to finish this message to recount a tragic incident which occurred this weekend resulting in the death of little Rayan in the region of Chefchaouen, North of Morocco:

This past weekend was full of emotions as the whole world watched LIVE the tremendous, but unfortunately in vain efforts which Morocco made to extract one of its own children from a well where he fell 5 days ago. Indeed, Morocco practically tore down a whole mountain to reach the 5 year-old who, upon discovery, had already passed away.

It is our duty, all of us, to ensure that everyone is safe and that any unused wells are capped off or active ones surrounded by barriers to prevent accidental falls. It is normal for children to explore their environment and to do risky things, however, it is the responsibility of all adults to make sure that there is nothing which could cause harm to be ignored. On behalf of our Community, I present our sincere condolences to his family and to all Moroccans in general for this horrible event.

Sincerely,

John Randolph

School Director

Academics

From the US Principal

Last Friday, February 4, we administered Antigenic Tests for grades 7,8,9,10 and 11. We are happy to announce that the test results show zero cases among upper school students. We are asking families to continue the effort to reduce the risk of contamination.

Thank you for your involvement to keep CAS a safe place to be.

Simohamed Sarhane

From the LS Principal

Thank you to all Lower School community members for their support and flexibility as we returned to on-campus learning as of last week. As always, we hit the ground running with F&P testing and will soon begin other assessments to track your child's learning progression. As you know, we did not hold Parent-Teacher conferences last week as originally scheduled. We believe your child's education is grounded in school-home partnership. Do not hesitate to reach out to your child's teacher at any time.

Elizabeth Phillips

It's happening in Mr. Agarwal's Grade 9 class. The experiment is about finding the velocity of an object using photo-gate and drawing velocity-time graph to calculate acceleration.

IB Mocks: DONE!!!

The IB Mocks are over!

Congratulations on a very successful complete session IN PERSON for the first time after 2019. During six school days, 63 exams took place. One more time, CAS proves that it does everything necessary to offer students the best conditions for their education. Thank you, Mr. Randolph and Mr. Sarhane, your support has been crucial.

As we stayed strong in our belief that it is essential to have students sitting for the IB mocks, their attendance was almost 100%.

Many thanks to all of you who acted as invigilators. Many thanks also to all who helped keep the silence in school or make sure rooms were ready or solving technology issues. We couldn't have done it without your support; your help is greatly appreciated.

More updates on the IB program at CAS are detailed in IB - Where we are.

For any questions related to the IB program, contact the IB Coordinator, Ms. Alina Zamfirescu, at azamfirescu@cas.ac.ma.

Alina Zamfirescu

IB DP Coordinator

College Corner

FLASH NEWS

Special Guest

We had the pleasure last week to welcome Mr. Amine Zariat, Founder & President of TIBU Basketball Academy. This visit is a premiere and will be followed by more important ones as CAS is looking forward to developing Sport partnerships, such as Basketball.

We thank Mr. Zariat for his visit and to the following Community Members for being present:

Mr. Omar Laafoura: CAS Board of Governors President for initiating and being present to this visit

Mr. Rachid Chaoui: Board of Governors vice-president

Mrs. Asmae Chaoui: PTC Chair

To know more about TIBU, please visit the following site: https://tibu.ma/

Strategic Planning Committee

CAS Board President, Mr. Omar Laafoura, met CAS Faculty to talk about one of the Governance Committees and the recent action plan its members have put together: The survey to all Stakeholders. We thank the Strategic Planning Committee, composed of the following members, Mr. Faycal Chraibi, Mr. Ali El Alaoui, Mr. Omar Laafoura, Ms. Kenza Mounir, Ms. Fatima-Zahra Oukacha and Ms. Elizabeth Phillips for their tireless efforts and for their valuable contributions.

Future Leaders Project

Two grade 5 students presenting their non-profitable project to Mr. Randolph. To be a future leader, you start working on it as soon as you can!

Special Spontaneous visit

Xena Aouita, daughter of Moroccan Legendary Athlete Said Aouita paid CAS a short visit with her mother, Ms. Khadija Skhir,this Thursday, February 10th. Said Aouita's daughters, Soukaina and Sarah, attended CAS for 3 to 4 years in the early 90s before moving to the US with their parents. Home of the Cobras will always attract Cobras!

TRIVIA CORNER

Ms. Lydon, our ELL LS teacher. It's not a secret, but Ms. Lydon always wears 2 masks for extra protection. Thank you for contributing to make CAS a Covid-Free school. Who else wears two masks in our Community?

Guess who visited us last week?

Community News

Mazagan 2022 Rate for CAS Community

People-To-People Project

Recently, a new People to People project has been created and led by me (Rayan Raad) and Shreeshee Agarwal called "Art for a Cause". This project is simply about donating art supplies to orphanages and other organizations in order to allow kids the opportunity to explore and create art to their content. To begin collecting donations we have set up boxes around the school for people to openly donate any art supplies that they feel aren't being used enough and may have better use in donations to kids in need. These boxes will be up starting today, February 3rd, until Friday, February 18th. Donations of any art supplies are accepted as long as they are in usable condition.

Save the Date

Who's who? Guess all Cobras in the poster and win tickets to the play!

First 3 correct entries / emails sent to Ms Sarhane Halima have tickets guaranteed for the contestant and a plus 1!

Sabina Sitoianu

US Drama Teacher

Admissions News

At CAS, we have started processing admission applications for the 2022-2023 school year. Screening dates for Nursery and Kindergarten applicants will be shared shortly. It is our pleasure to inform our community, as well, that some expatriate applicants have already been accepted in our Upper School Division.

The home of the Cobras is also the home of the Cobras' siblings. Therefore, please start the Admission process for 2022-2023 as soon as possible to secure a seat for your Cobra-To-Be Child provided all Admissions Criteria are met.

Thank you for your interest and feel free to contact me at speters@cas.ac.ma with questions about the admissions process.

Samira Peters

Admissions Office

Congratulations again to Nezha Ababou, mother of Taha and Samia (former CAS Students) for the beautiful piece of Art.

If you have not seen our new faculty and staff biographies you can find them here. A link to this page is always available at the end of our what's up cobras.

Alumnus in the Press

Amine Belyamani, Class of 2002

Congratulations to our Alumni, Amine Belyamni (Class of 2002) that has been featured in National Geographics! Amine created at World Map Covid19 website that allows one to access key statistics regarding the pandemic per country worldwide. Updates are live and one can now use this website to assess where they can safely travel during this pandemic. Per country, it tracks vaccination statistics, number of cases, number of deaths and tests.

"The pandemic has been particularly rough on the live music scene, so I’ve had the time to steer my focus to my web development and coding work. As I’ve been trying to make sense of all of the coronavirus related statistics internationally, often totally overwhelming, I created this site, a tool to help us see those numbers contextually, in a global perspective."- Amine Belyamani

You may read his feature on the National Geographic article here.

Amine is a computer scientist and a musician !

We are currently working on updating our Alumni page on our website. Please stay tuned for it's official publishing soon to find out more about our Alumni!

Lost and Found

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Lost and Found items will be displayed by the back gate EVERY Friday, from 2:00 to 3:00 pm. Please take the time to claim lost items .

KEY DATES

IB Mock Exams

February 3rd- February 11th

February Break

February 28th- March 4th

Shout out to All Alumni!

We seek to share information on our Alumni to our community and it is also an opportunity for the Alumni to stay in touch! Please email us pictures and updates and we would be happy to share them!

We are eager to hear from you! Email us at the following email address: alumni@cas.ac.ma

What's Up Cobras