A School Divided Teacher Student Bonds Life Is Plastic: It’S Fantastic
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
56 1 6 EDITORIAL A Thin Line Crossword 8 FEATURES Unstable Structure A Year Without a Leader Natalie Hampton The Forbidden Fruit Dismediation Living What We Stand For Fluent Language Learning 22 NEWS A School Divided Teacher Student Bonds Life is Plastic: It’s Fantastic 33 OP-EDS Community Day Trying Vegan A Meshuggah Calendar New Campus, Who Dis? across 40 REVIEWS down 4 Tributes to the Seniors Music and Meaning by CHLOE 5 The School was so quiet on this May 3rd from 5:30-8:00 PM 1 day Become a mentor, be vetted ex- 2 44 ARTS AND LETTERS 6 Avenues and Grace Church tensively collaboration School within a library librarian 3 Sylvia Plath and Snapchat NO MORE CLASSES 7 9 Queen of Design Challenges Misery Loves Company Who LOVES maps? 8 The Chronicles of Detention 11 Rice and Beans Junior Prom Locale 10 13 You thought you would fail her Wikipedia, nuff said 12 HUMOR class. You were right Our very own Tiger Woods 13 50 Senior Prom Locale 16 An Honest Response 14 The one club you’ve heard about, Horoscopes but still don’t really know what it Headliners does Crossword 15 Mr. Hudson’s favorite Netflix show 17 Created a Global Journeys Trip Cover by Brandon Bunt 2 55 Managing Board Editor-in-Chief ................................................................................ Isabella Simonetti Senior Managing Editor..................................................................... Lucas Horsnby Managing Editors.............................................................................. Jackson Ehrenworth .......................................................................................................... Sabrina Sternberg .......................................................................................................... Sophia Koock Editors Junior Editors..................................................................................... Eva Hwang .......................................................................................................... Grace Franco Creative Directors............................................................................... Clare Maleeny Section Editors.................................................................................... Caroline Yu .......................................................................................................... Noah Shamu Staff Writers and Artists Sydney Judge..................................Roxana Gosfield..................................Sam Boyce Edwin Shen.............................Jaden Schapiro.............................Elizabeth Acevedo Brandon Bunt..............Oren Schweitzer..............Jean Li Spencer..............Kavin Chada 3 A Thin Line Between Love and Hate By ISABELLA SIMONETTI EDITORIAL Photo by Elizabeth Acevedo 4 AS STUDENTS NEAR the end of their time in high stretch of high school. Although the work assigned in most school, they will often “play with fire.” It is common for stu- classes is not reflective of this, teachers agree that the work dents to test one or more of their teachers’ limits, as they ask assigned to seniors could have more flexibility. themselves: “why should I continue to do work for you if our In 12th grade English, students have been able to find time is all too soon coming to an end?” After all, it can feel meaning in their final assignment, the senior memoir, which useless to carry on spending hours studying grueling mate- has afforded them the creative space and agency them to re- rial, composing essays, and even conducting science projects flect on meaningful events in their lives. when college decisions have come out and the importance of “[Students have been] more engaged with like personal things grades declines. going on….in English [we are] writing personal memoirs…. Some students choose to answer these questions by casu- most have been really engaged with it because it matters and ally strolling into class late – if they even show up at all – it’s not sort of extra work,” said 11th and 12th grade English taking buzzfeed quizzes and going on Facebook when they teacher Kristen Highland. should be working, and handing in assignments at their earli- Work like the senior memoir offers an opportunity for est convenience rather than when they are due. Others con- students to do something that matters to them. Perhaps the tinue to slog through their work even though it feels mean- answer for seniors is not to lower the expectations, but instead ingless. Many feel that they owe it to those teachers that have engage in a different kind of work than 9-11th graders. been supportive of them, or they are simply too particular, “I think you could make an argument for some sort of perfectionistic, or paranoid about their transcripts. Regard- internship program, but I don’t think it should be any less rig- less, the phenomenon widely referred to as “senioritis,” hit the orous. I think that when students are allowed to fall into pat- 2017 seniors with a blow. terns where a school lower the rigor because students aren’t Numerous teachers of the class of 2017 have reported a willing to work, that sets them up for failure in college,” said recent drop in work ethic. “I’ve seen less energy and motiva- Mr. Widelec. tion in class, more missing homeworks, more missing papers Although senioritis is a contentious topic within the Av- and late papers and less engagement in discussion,” said Av- enues community, it is clear that teachers and students can enues history and senior seminar teacher, Ron Widelec. agree that seniors should have taken part in more meaningful The tension exists most between students who want to work in all subjects. enjoy the ends of their high school careers, and teachers who Senior year is centered around the future. College ap- want to continue challenging students in their classroom. plications and decisions consume most of the year, and the Spanish teacher Carrie Meatto said, “You know, I have a only time students have to enjoy the end of their high school sense that some students are shocked that their teachers have experience is the spring. given them real meaningful, substantial, senior level assign- However, the class of 2017 at Avenues spent much of ments in these last few weeks.” their time frustrated by the type of and quantity of work that Yet, while many teachers feel that the work they are as- was being assigned, while their teachers remained upset by signing is important, students remain frustrated by its volume their lack of enthusiasm and initiative. and substance. In retrospect, it was wrong for students to treat teachers “I think a lot of students are stressed out about the work- and their classes with such explicit disrespect. Teachers have load, and feel that teachers don’t understand. I don’t share that been some of the biggest allies of students throughout their experience as much, but I know a lot of students are strug- time at Avenues. Many even wrote recommendations that gling right now,” said senior Christina Kopecka. helped seniors gain acceptance into colleges of their choice. In a survey sent out to the upper grades, it was reported While the disappointment that teachers felt towards that on average, students have 4.05 projects to complete dur- their senior students may have felt like hatred, it was rooted ing the final two weeks of term four, most of which are related in the love and passion they devoted to the class of 2017. Ul- closely to the wrapping up each class’s respective curriculum. timately, they deserve the attention and compassion they put However, many students want to pursue a different type of into their students. work. What is more, learning should not have stopped when “I was hoping that we would be able to do more of that students were admitted to schools; the sole objective of an mastery type of work or like internships and things like Avenues is not college admission. Sure, the end of the year that….I just thought it would be more time to work on per- could be used to hone some of the practical skills Avenues sonal things and not the same things we’ve been doing for the values through internship or job opportunities. But we are last four years,” said senior Clara Leverenz. educated to be respectful, model citizens, and students who It is difficult for students to be motivated by assignments really care about their education will keep on learning even that are not of much interest to them, particularly in the final when their may not be a tangible reward. • 5 UNSTABLE STRUCTURE By Jackson Ehrenworth WHEN ENGINEERS FIND cracks in the foundations of bridges or buildings, they worry. They picture in their minds the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, its initial tremble only visible in minor cracks, until it began to vibrate and pieces broke off. They know to pay attention to small breakages. Sometimes they’ll even x-ray foundations, to make hairline fractures visible. It’s the same way that avalanche scientists dig snow pits to see what’s under the sur- face. Everyone wants to avoid calamity. ¶ In “The Real Data Rev- olution,” Brandon Busteed, an executive director at Gallup, ana- lyzes the classic economic indicators nations have used to measure health, such as GDP. Busteed shows that in the years leading up to the Arab Spring, GDP was rising in Egypt and Tunisia. 6 Features The percentage of time felt per feeling on a scale of 0-1. E.g. 0.52 = 52% of the time that feeling is felt in school. Error bars represent 90% confidence intervals. These statistics were collected in a survey given to upper school students in March, 2017. This survey