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Living our 6 Cs through Interim Week

Interim Week is an integral part of each student's educational experience at The Gregory School. During these days, we suspend our more traditional portion of the school year, very intentionally, to build on leadership, team-building, and relationship building skills. Interim Week activities embody the authentic application of our 6 Cs: communication, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, community and compassion. Whether demonstrating their entrepreneurial and teamwork skills in developing and delivering an actual restaurant concept in three short days or kayaking and hiking in the great outdoors, the experiences planned by faculty are purposeful, impactful, and playful. 

Following is how each grade level at The Gregory School spent Interim 2021!

Surviving the Oregon Trail

5th grade

Working in ”family groups,” students learned the skills needed, solved the problems encountered, and explored the lifestyle and community experienced by pioneers on the Oregon Trail. Activities included creating supply lists, orienteering, making resources such as candles, soap, and butter, spinning wool, panning for gold, baiting fish hooks, archery, and more.

Maker Showcase

6th grade

On the first day of Interim, students rotated through a series of mini-maker projects to learn foundational skills such as circuit making, basic ceramics, and tool use. Students then divided into groups to work on a project based on their interests and spent the remainder of Interim working on their group project and meeting local Tucson makers who gave presentations on campus. The experience culminated in a Makers’ Showcase.

Restaurant Wars

7th grade 

Students worked in teams that were each charged with creating a restaurant concept, planning, budgeting, shopping for, preparing, and serving a multi-course meal, judged by a team of judges. A separate team created a movie of the entire process.

Urban Research and Sense of Place 

8th Grade

Students took a variety of day trips in the Tucson Basin in conjunction with the University of Arizona Sky School. The experience focused on the natural and cultural history of the Santa Cruz River and the Tucson Mountains and included  a variety of hands-on experiments and research

Building Community through Outdoor Adventure

9th Grade

Students traveled by bus to Friendly Pines Camp near Prescott, AZ. On the way there they kayaked on the Verde River. Once at camp, students worked together on team building activities including ropes courses, hiking, ziplining, climbing walls, games and more.

Exploring the History and Culture of New Mexico

10th grade

A 10th grade tradition, students on the New Mexico trip explored national parks and monuments in our neighboring state as well as the Georgia O’Keefe Museum and other important landmarks.

Hiking & Shakespeare in Utah

11th Grade

An 11th grade tradition, students attended the Southern Utah Shakespeare Festival, where they saw two plays: Shakespeare's Cymbeline, and also a farce, Comedy of Terrors. The group also hiked in two of Utah’s beautiful canyons, Zion and Cedar Breaks. Our juniors also had plenty of time to relax, bond, and have fun, forming an even more cohesive group to head into senior year together.

12th Grade

Our seniors used Interim Week for independent college visits, research, essay writing, and standardized testing. They are looking forward to their senior trip in the spring semester!