During the week of March 25-29, LTS 8th grade student Ivy Batmale was invited to Washington D.C. to attend a special conference on childhood cancer. This once-in-a-lifetime experience was made possible due to Ivy’s work on her 8th grade exhibition project. The Lake Tahoe School 8th Grade Exhibition provides an opportunity for students to engage in a capstone educational experience. It is a student-driven enterprise that involves parents, teachers, advisors and community members in a multi-faceted, performance-based and year-long project. Centered on and inspired by an essential question, the Exhibition involves three main components: a research paper, a hands-on project, and a multi-media presentation. Ivy shares her experiences on the trip and her Exhibition work below.

My Visit to Washington D.C to Meet U.S. Senators and Representatives
By Ivy Batmale, LTS 8th Grader

Last week, I attended the Alliance of Childhood Cancer Action Days, in Washington D.C. along with the Northern Nevada Children’s Cancer Foundation. On Tuesday, March 26th, we attended a conference that would prepare us for our meetings with our United States Senators, Representatives, and their staffers. On Wednesday, March 27th, we met with Senators Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto at the Battle Born Breakfast held in the Hart Senate Office Building. We then had meetings with their staffers later in the day. There were also meetings with Representative Dina Titus’s staffers, and then we enjoyed a meeting with Representative Mark Amodei. In the meetings we discussed funding for the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the STAR (Survivorship, Treatment, Access and Research) Act, and to pass a bill for Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act (PCHETA.) This was a remarkable experience that I will go into more detail with at my 8th grade Exhibition presentation on ‘The Emotional Health of Families Affected By Childhood Cancer’, on May 7th at Lake Tahoe School! I hope you all can make it! Thank you!