On May 18, twelve Cambridge students in third through fifth grades participated in the third annual Hunter Family Music Memory Countywide Finals at the Birch North Park Theatre. Each student took home a gold ribbon, a difficult and rare achievement for such a challenging competition. In addition, the Cambridge fifth/sixth grade team was one of only three teams to score 100%.

Music Memory is a nationally recognized program that is designed to give students in grades 3 through 6 a life-long love of music. A committee of elementary music education experts selects works from the Renaissance through Contemporary periods, and the students identify each work after hearing several measures played with varying instruments. In the most difficult part of the competition, students try to identify the work after hearing a single chord.

Through their participation in the Music Memory program, all Cambridge third, fourth, fifth, and (starting next year) sixth graders memorize not only the melodies of great works of music, but also study musical terms, instrumental and vocal tone colors, musical form, and the historical and cultural significance of the music. As the Cambridge music teacher, Lyudmila Rockett explains: “Our students’ hard work over the course of the year enabled them to successfully identify the major themes of musical selections as well as the secondary themes, middle sections and endings. I am very proud of them!”

On March 26, 2011, one hundred sixty guests were transported to the lost city of Atlantis at The Cambridge School’s fifth annual Auction & Gala, held at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla at Aventine. Upon arrival, the guests descended a marble staircase to an underwater world marked by gargantuan Greek columns, elegantly draped tables, and the music of classical harpist, Dr. Vanessa Sheldon. As a sign of the marked generosity of the San Diego community, guests could bid on more than 200 goods and services that had been packaged together for the Silent Auction!

The Cambridge fourth graders escorted the guests to their dinner tables in the “underwater pavilion,” poolside at the Hyatt Regency. Led by their teacher, Mrs. Rebekah Kennedy, the fourth graders treated the audience to a recital that demonstrated their knowledge of ancient and medieval history, rocks and minerals, Latin, and music.

Following the fourth grade appearance, the Live Auction featured twenty items, including seven class baskets fetching between $400 and $1,000 each, as well as an exclusive, luxurious art collectors’ tour of China, a $19,000 value.

The program also included the announcement of the Jean Kim Tuition Assistance Program, which will provide a Cambridge education to more students in San Diego and was named in honor of the founder and former Head of School. Jean Kim spoke to the audience and reiterated her dream to provide an education to San Diego children that is both spiritually robust and academically vigorous, one that will nurture a love of learning in the students and encourage them to live a life of intelligence, eloquence and purpose in service to God and neighbor.

“The Atlantis theme was appropriate for the mission of our school, which is to recover the ‘lost tools of learning’ – the classical model of education that was first used in ancient Greece and as recently as the nineteenth century,” said auction chair Ally van den Herik. “Just as archeologists have worked tirelessly to recover the city of Atlantis, which, by the way, may recently have been discovered off the coast of Spain, The Cambridge School seeks to recover the classical tools of learning that had been so effective for centuries.”

Altogether, the raffle, Silent Auction, Live Auction and Fund-a-Need donations totaled more than $100,000 for the Jean Kim Tuition Assistance Program and the Language and Fine Arts programs at Cambridge.