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January 28, 2010
Nicole Doan and Brian Jeon
ASB organized an assembly for ninth graders to bring the class together and to encourage students “give back to the school” by doing well in finals and STAR testing. The assembly also promoted the upcoming Sadie Hawkins dance, Feb. 6, which the freshman ASB officers organized.
“We want you to succeed academically. We want you to succeed socially,” Small Learning Communities (SLC) coordinator Brynn Osicka said. “We want you to be number one.”
To strengthen the assembly’s message, ASB members and freshmen engaged the audience with two performances.
Freshman Fabian Gutierrez rapped about the Sadie Hawkins dance, while freshman Steve Gonzalez accompanied him by beat boxing. Freshman Ian Tambagahan break danced during their performance.
Freshman Nathan Trutner, seniors Kimberly Chatterjee, Sean Chadha and Seth Neumann performed a skit to inform freshmen about STAR testing.
Once again, the school has set a goal to reach at least 801 for the API score. If achieved, students will receive an Up Yours lunch, an extended lunch period in which ASB will provide food and various activities. In this case, “up yours” refers to increasing test scores. If students do not reach the goal, the school will be in danger of losing elective classes. In turn, administration may take away events such as dances.
“I really want to have a party. It sounds fun,” freshman Akshita Taneja said. “[The assembly] definitely motivated me.”
ASB increased involvement in encouraging the freshman to do well on their STAR testing. In reaction to the school’s unchanging API score in 2009, ASB decided to start the campaign much earlier in the school year than before. Due to schedule constraints, the freshman class officers are not enrolled in leadership class, but organizing the assembly helped them become a larger part in leadership activities.
Ninth graders were seated with their assigned “families.” The three families are K-9, Mad Dawgs and Alpha Pack.
The SLC program creates families so groups of freshmen can share the same schedules of English, science, and health or computer classes. These classes contain a smaller number of students to allow teachers to focus on more individual students. Teachers then communicate with each other more easily to reinforce integrated learning or a cross-curriculum teaching. In addition, teachers can discuss what they need to do to assist individual students.
The freshman assembly went smoothly without problems despite being the first of its kind.
According to ASB member senior Drew Jordan, ASB plans to hold similar assemblies for sophomores and juniors in the near future.
“We won’t be able to do them this semester but definitely the next,” Neumann said.
This article originally appeared in print on Jan. 26, 2010. It has been modified to correct grammatical and usage errors.
