Posts in 🧑‍🚀NSA Culture
Wildlife Encounters of NSA Faculty

It is time for another wildlife adventure! Last year, I highlighted the wildlife encounters of the students of NSA. But, now it is time for the wildlife encounters of NSA’s faculty to shine. So, prepare yourselves to embark on an adventure around the world to visit the places where NSA’s faculty had some of their most notable wildlife encounters.

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NSA’s Courses: Serving Up Staff Insights

Here at the Navigator, we work to create enjoyable publications full of a wide variety of articles, from the informative to the humorous. But, we are still students, so we have other classes we must work on as well. Let us get a glimpse of the school lives of the Navigator staff by investigating their favorite high school courses, which are as diverse as toppings on a pizza.

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Tears of the Kingdom: Is Nintendo's Latest Legend of Zelda Game All It's Cracked Up to Be?

2023 has been an excellent year for video games. With many extremely popular and well-made releases such as Lethal Company by Zeekers, Spider Man 2 by Insomniac, or Baldur’s Gate 3 by Larian, gamers have been spoiled by the wide variety of high-quality video games that have been coming out this year. However, Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (or TOTK for short) has been hailed by some as the best game of the year. But what makes the game so good, and does it have any flaws? 

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Exploring Student Council

At NorthStar Academy, there are a variety of outlets for students to follow their individual passions and practice valuable skills.  Examples include clubs, online chapel meetings, and esports teams.  However, these outlets would not be able to continue functioning the way they do today without the student council at NorthStar Academy.  While a council of students might at first seem barely related to the workings of NorthStar Academy’s student body, its members do quite a bit for the student body behind the scenes.

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Visual Arts Club Contest Winner

The first ever NorthStar Academy Christmas Art Competition is officially over! We’ve kicked off the first competition with so many wonderful art submissions. They were everything we wished for, and more! We were overwhelmed by the number of entries we received – each one creative and inspiring in its own way. Ultimately, there was one submission that stood out from the rest and had earned the judge’s hearts. Never the less, the large amounts of creativity that we were able to see in each art submission, was astonishing. This was a tough decision to make, to which had sparked some debate between the judges. 

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Seeds4HOPE: Building Resilience

Depression is “a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest” (Mayo Health Clinic). “Approximately 280 million people in the world have depression” (World Health Organization). Anyone can get depression. It can come after the death of a loved one, anxiety from school, or other external circumstances. However, depression is not the end of the road. It can be battled with hope and resilience.

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Christmas Around the World

Do you and your family have specific traditions you do every year around Christmas? For me, my family and I always go to the tree lighting on our square and go look at Christmas lights. Just like this tradition is unique to my family, so are other traditions to other countries. For example, France, Germany, and Australia all have different practices. Those countries will be our main focus. All of these countries have unique customs surrounding Christmas. Some of these practices are unique to one country or shared by many.

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Visual Arts Club Contest

NorthStar Academy's Visual Arts Club provides students with hands-on art experiences through hands-on activities and artist sharing. It promotes diverse creative genres such as pottery, painting, illustration, digital art, charcoal, chalk, sculpture, and printing by encouraging innovation and competition participation. Students interested in the visual arts make up the Visual Arts Club. The Visual Arts Club's mission is to promote the arts by participating in different art contests, meetings, and events.

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The Culture of Communication

In ancient Egypt, Egyptians used a form of writing known as hieroglyphics - carved pictures and images that represented things or ideas. In the Western world, we do not often think of pictures as a form of writing. While some Eastern languages use symbols to indicate words, Western languages use a series of letters to make words, each of which has a unique meaning. But, as technology has continued to develop, we can now communicate with people worldwide electronically. With the rise of texting, instant messaging, and social media, it seems that a new form of modern hieroglyphics has surfaced - emojis!

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Star Life: How NorthStar's Minecraft Survival Multi Player Server Works

Have you ever been curious as to how you start a Minecraft server or ever wanted to know more about maintaining one? This article contains the answers to both questions. The owner and manager of NorthStar's very own Minecraft SMP (Survival Multi Player) Server, Alexander M., has advice and information regarding his server and the skills and resources needed to create and maintain it. 

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Zooming In on Minecraft Esports

The Minecraft esports at NorthStar Academy have skyrocketed over the last two school years due to the actions of NorthStar Academy’s Dean of Students, Scott Berggren.  He started the first NorthStar Minecraft esports team at the start of the spring semester in 2023, after he was informed that NorthStar students had a high interest in Minecraft through a poll conducted by Chuck Deitch, who is the Administrative Director of School Programs at NorthStar Academy.  This team created by Berggren would successfully get to the championship round at a CompMC tournament between multiple different schools based all over the United States. 

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The History of the Navigator

The NorthStar Navigator, affectionately called the “Nav,” was established in 2006. Ever since then, it has continued to serve the student body by bringing stories of intrigue and interest to students across the globe. As NorthStar’s school newspaper, the Navigator shares the latest news about NorthStar happenings, student life, global issues, and so much more. However, the Navigator has evolved substantially as a school newspaper since 2006. So, the Nav Staff has decided to dig deep into old article archives to bring you the history of the Navigator.

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The Melody of the Mind

I’m sure that anyone reading this has, at some point in their lives, been trying to study and had trouble trying to focus. If this happened to you, I’m sure you were told, or maybe you found out on your own, that music helps people focus. I’d even be willing to bet that you were told classical music helps make you smarter while studying, but how much of this is true? Why does music help us when we study? Are certain types of music better or more helpful to people who are studying? Let’s make a deal: you keep reading, and I’ll answer all those questions above. 

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