November 2025 Recap
Every year there comes a time when the novelty of a new school year has worn off, but the end is not yet within sight. Instead of passively allowing the darkness to infiltrate the psyche of staff and students, we actively lean into this time to make the most out of the opportunity.
Student athletes at Wy’East have been pushing their limits and logging new tricks at training all month long. Skiers like Sullivan are spinning trip cork 1800s, while snowboarders like Joe, lyric, and Canyen push each other with different variations of 1440s. Students, like Sean, who were working on 360s when they first arrived in September are now training multiple double corks. Our skateboard team took a wonderful trip to Paris to work with local skate brands and visit universities in the City of Lights.
As our 24 seniors prepare for life after Wy’East, college acceptance letters have started to arrive along with impressive scholarship offers. In addition to volunteering in the local community, our student government attended a Sandy City Council meeting where they were treated to dinner by the mayor.
Every Thanksgiving, we take a small group of students who stay on campus on an off campus trip to Portland and Seattle. They enjoyed a Thanksgiving Dinner Cruise and a weekend whale watching cruise in the Puget Sound. I can confidently say that this was a successful November and am excited for the final weeks of the semester!
-Mike Hanley, Head of School
Student life
November was our longest and most activity-packed month of the semester, and our students made the most of every moment! From community service to seasonal adventures to hands-on learning, our community stayed fully engaged throughout the month.
Students kicked things off with a visit to SacreGrounds, a multi-haunted-house experience that delivered plenty of thrills and laughter. They also volunteered twice with Oregon Special Olympics, supporting athletes at swim meets, and enjoyed additional outings, including a bowling night, a trip to the driving range at Sah-Ha-Lee, an afternoon at Topgolf, a movie excursion, a high-dive practice at the Tualatin Hills Aquatic Center.
Our student Government representatives also attended a Sandy City Council meeting, where they observed how local government operates, how work sessions are conducted, and how decisions that shape the community are made. It was an excellent opportunity for them to see civic engagement in action.
To round out the month, we brought 13 students on a multi-day Thanksgiving trip to Seattle. Trip highlights included a Thanksgiving Day cruise aboard the Portland Spirit with beautiful views along the Willamette River, followed by a whale-watching excursion with Puget Sound Express. Students also enjoyed skateboarding, homemade meals, sightseeing around the city, and quality time together before returning home.
November was full, meaningful, and memorable—and we’re proud of the curiosity, enthusiasm, and spirit our students brought to every experience.
Academics
Our Academic Department is working hard to support students through a strong finish of the term. Teachers are focusing on meaningful learning experiences, personalized support, and academic growth across all grade levels. We’re also celebrating our seniors as the first round of college acceptances begins to roll in—congratulations to all! Families are encouraged to stay engaged by checking in on assignments, celebrating successes, and reaching out with any questions. We’re proud of the hard work our students are putting in and look forward to continued learning and achievement in the weeks ahead.
Athletics
We are soaking up that last little bit of fall weather winter has been slow to begin this year. Luckily, a slow start to winter has not impaired the progress of our snow athletics because they can train daily on our new landing bag and our skate and mountain bike teams have benefited greatly from the warmer, dryer weather. Fall is a great time to maximize training on campus and the surrounding areas!
FOCUS OF THE WEEK
Week 1: Strength and conditioning
Week 2: Landing bag reps, Mountain bike shuttle days, and a surf trip.
Week 3: Skate in Paris! Landing bag reps.
Week 4: Rest and reset over Thanksgiving
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MONTH
The skate trip to Paris
Mountain bike front flips
Sean P unlocked a double cork 1080 on the landing bag
Snowboard surfs up!
Freeski
Everyone is pushing one another in every venue that we are showing up to on campus. We ran a great mock event with everyone and had such good engagement from the kids. A rising tide raises all ships and that is reflective in our training blocks.
FOCUS OF THE WEEK
Week 1: Train at a consistent level harder than that of competition. Competition scenarios with added elements of pressure and distraction.
Week 2: Develop a social media engagement routine that can be executed daily to grow following. Quality focused trampoline, bag, & flat ground sessions.
Week 3: Promote strengths and remediate areas for development. Do goal setting for late Fall On-Snow Camp. Revisit goals, to see where everyone is, using that as motivation to continue working hard.
Week 4: Building consistency training harder than you compete. Continue building strength. Hone in on snow camp in Ruka to give time constraints. Quality focused trampoline sessions, keeping jumps concise, working directions and variety of take offs for all priorities. Adding weight/Reps in the gym.
HIGHLIGHTS
Every kid is grinding from our youngest to our oldest. We also have had some great alumni engagement as they return to hit the landing bag with our kids.
Mountain Bike
The team is continuing to work hard in every opportunity that they get on and off campus. Our big focus is on strength and conditioning and we are capitalizing on the good weather windows. We are finalizing details for the big New Zealand trip that they have coming up to start the winter semester.
FOCUS OF THE WEEK
Week 1: Reflection phase. The team still has the opportunity to work on tricks while the weather is nice, but we are taking time to reflect on how things went so far this semester.
Week 2: Progression Phase. Getting a couple of days this week to train outside on the big bag. Continue with gym workouts in the evening while we're training outdoors so when we get back indoors soreness does not affect sessions as much.
Week 3: Reflection phase. Using Thanksgiving Break to think about what we're thankful for. Spending time on the bike with shuttle days just getting laps in for fun. Taking a little break from the time we've spent training on both the indoor and outdoor bag. Getting back to the basics.
Week 4: Progression Phase. Come back from Thanksgiving ready to finish the semester stronger than we started.
HIGHLIGHTS
3 new frontflips from the team in 2 days! The weather has been epic so they have been taking full advantage of it.
Skate
Our skate team had a fantastic trip to Paris, France. Paris delivered on all things culture and skating! The team played tourist on rainy days to the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the Louvre. They skated every street spot that they could find and went on missions to find gelato between skating street spots.
FOCUS OF THE WEEK
Week 1: 100 kickflips during athletic block, academic push prep for Paris.
Week 2: Trip to Portland to skate and hit board shop in preparation for trip to Paris, big academic push to be ahead so minimal need to do school while abroad.
Week 3: Skate Paris - visit local shops w/ industry connections, 2 clips a day from street spots, college tour.
Week 4: Utilize Bob and nice weather back on campus. Catch up in academics for anyone needing this focus.
HIGHLIGHTS
Every part of the trip to Paris from pre-trip excitement to getting creative on the long travel days to practicing hello, good bye and thank you in French. Photos don’t do it justice!
Snowboard
The team has done a great job balancing out training hard on campus along with taking advantage of everything that the PNW offers with a few surf trips to the coast before winter truly sets in. Some new double and triple variations for the kids on the landing bag and everyone's rail game continues to progress.
FOCUS OF THE WEEK
Week 1: Utilizing Team Coaching to enhance performance. General Motor Abilities/Cross train to promote physical robustness. Dry Slope focus for repetition. Social media engagement for everyone.
Week 2: Reflection from Progression & Execution. Profile mental skills and behaviors as athletes AND individuals against Psychological Characteristics of Developing Excellence.
Week 3: Competitive mindset week. Hosting small contests throughout the week in different areas to engage competitive spirit with incentives.
Week 4: Focus on weakness areas with repetition and review. Switch riding, unnatural rotations, upper & lower body disconnection.
HIGHLIGHTS
Surf trips out to the coast are always amazing, they are a mission of a day but they keep coming back for more! Joe and Boden are working on triple variations.
CULINARY
We had a great time this month making food for the students and staff. Kellen blessed us with his famous wings, pizza and stromboli. The flavors of his wings were lemon pepper, barbeque, buffalo and traditional. Some of the wings were even smoked on our Traeger.
Joe Stanberry in the morning has been creating an amazing breakfast and lunches. He has done a great job in stepping into this role and taking ownership. Some of the dishes Joe has made are Chicken and Waffles for breakfast, breakfast tacos, with the usual fares of everything else. For lunch, he made taco bowls, loco moco (a favorite on campus), fettucine alfredo with chicken.
Joe Lingle, an evening cook, has brought something new to the table: Smoke Meatloaf. When I saw him making this, I thought the meatloaf would fall apart on the smoker. I was wrong for sure! It is great to see him start coming up with new ideas for the students.
For me, the Culinary Director, I have had the privilege to start something that has been on the back burner for a while: Cooking Club! This has been a dream come true and I know it is the beginning of something awesome to come. This is the concept that I told our first group of students – “This club is to prepare you for the real world. Like the mission statement of Wy’East Mountain Academy, “Life improvement through people, place and passion”. I want the cooking club to improve your life in the kitchen of the real world. Through the people who work in the kitchen every day pouring their passion into food you eat in the café.”
I am hopeful that this club becomes even more down the road once other students become more aware of this and how it could improve their lives in the real world.
Travis Gibson, Culinary Director
Alumni Spotlight
Forrest Blaire, a 2023 Wy’East Graduate, is attending Montana State University – he’s in his third year. He’s participating in Air Force ROTC, and this year he was given a full scholarship for his remaining time at MSU. This past summer he went to 3 weeks of basic training for the Air Force and also spent 6 weeks on a fishing boat in Alaska for work. He’s doing great – we’re so happy for him!
