Smithtown Bowl-A-Thon is a Smash Hit by John Vincente

After a day of strikes, spares, gutter-balls, and a lot of fun, the Bowl-A-Thon held at our local Smithtown AMF bowling lanes, on Sunday November 14, was a major success. After constant promotions, Smithtown West DECA reeled in over $2,500 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and gave donating to a cause a new meaning. This fundraiser showed that people in our community can get together, have fun, and promote a good cause all at the same time. The 95 bowlers that showed up at the event did just that. The tickets to this event were $15 for each person and that was their ticket in for unlimited bowling for 2 hours and the price included the shoe rental. DECA managed to raise additional funds for the Make-A-Wish through a 50/50 raffle, a Chinese raffle, and by having people at the event willingly donate directly to Make-A-Wish with no incentives. Being a member of DECA, I must say that this event was very well organized and a lot of fun for people of all ages. We shared a lot of laughs as we watched our friends get multiple gutter-balls or get a convincing strike. And all at the same time, raised money for this great foundation and did something great for the Smithtown Community.

Smithtown West Student Organizes 5K Run in Honor of Fallen Coach By Anthony Aprile

            Smithtown School District teacher Patrick Harmon, or simply “Coach” to many, passed away on July 17^th after a long battle with brain cancer.  He had a huge impact on many students, athletes, and faculty members across the district, and he will be remembered on October 10^th at the 1^st Annual 5K Run/Walk in his honor.  All proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society for brain cancer research.

Mark Valentino, a senior at Smithtown High School West, created this 5K run to honor Harmon, his former coach.

            Harmon was a gym teacher and JV football coach at the Smithtown East campus, and a winter and spring track coach at the West campus.  He was respected and loved throughout the district and was a symbol of courage and fortitude as his bouts with brain cancer continued to worsen over the years.  His loss was felt equally on both campuses, and he was a major influence and motivation for countless people.

            “What made Coach [Harmon] so special to me was the fact that he never gave up on us, no matter how bad things got during the season,” said Matt DeCicco, a 2-year football starter under Harmon at Smithtown East.  “He would always pour his heart into making us a better team, and more importantly, better people.”

Chris Ingram, a Smithtown West track runner, added, “He always put his players first.  It was about the team as a collective and the individuals in it more than anything else in the world.  It would always seem to bear more on his mind if a kid hurt his hamstring than him having to go in for chemo[therapy] that night.  He put the team above his illness no matter what, and I feel like that’s why people tended to gravitate towards him.”

            Valentino, a cross country and track standout, took it upon himself to honor his former coach while raising money to help find a cure for the disease that took his life. 

            “The reason I wanted to do this run is because Coach Harmon was such an amazing and dedicated coach,” Valentino said, “who, through his disease, never missed a practice or a meet for anything.  He was always there for us.  Some people [on the team] thought of him as a father figure.  I thought I would do something special to honor him and everything he meant to us.”

            Valentino is responsible for organizing the street closures, finding sponsors, creating flyers, setting up online registration on active.com, and all other aspects of the race.  He did so independently of any assistance from parents or other adults, a difficult task.

Valentino’s online registration page uses the slogan, “We can make a difference, one stride at a time.”  The creation of this race is doing just that.

            “I think that Mark is doing an awesome job with the race and he’s honoring Coach [Harmon] in a really special way,” said Patrick Harty, a standout sprinter for Smithtown West.

            The 1^st Annual 5K Run/Walk for Pat Harmon will go off at 9:00 on the morning of Sunday, October 10^th.  Online registration at www.active.com/running/smithtown-ny/5k-runwalk-for-pat-harmon-2010 is $18.25, and closes on September 30th.  Day-of-race registration is $20, with all of it going to support brain cancer research.

Safe Halloween: A Night of Fright (And Candy) by Delia Brengel and Marisa Sehested

“You there, off with your head!!” 

It only took a few seconds to realize that this place was a walk through Halloween horror.

However, all other attractions aside from the haunted houses at Smithtown High School West’s annual Safe Halloween event were simply the opposite: a walk through a candy-crammed, fun-filled, decked-out Wonderland. 

The evening of safe trick-or-treating for young children is an annual joint effort by the extracurricular clubs at West, organized by the Leadership Club and their head honcho, Mr. DeMatteo.  The admission ticket to this fun night is not only a cool costume, but also the donation of canned food to help our community. 

Among the dozens of clubs who generously donated their time and effort into creating various booths with different activities for the trick-or-treaters to engage in, the most popular seemed to be the “Interactive Candy Land” run by the National Honor Society. Other different activities were the National Media Art Honor Society’s cool green screen, the yummy crêpes and toppings from French Honor Society, and the unique fortune-teller booth set up by the Sophomore Class Council. This year we even had a human dartboard from the Math Honor Society.  Penumbra and English Honor Society teamed up to help kids create crafty bookmarks while SADD made a station for cookie decorating. Along with visiting the tables, kids could listen to the distinctive style of the Jazz Band ensemble.  These areas were the most crowded, and by the end of the night, the messiest. 

Even so, the biggest attractions, as always, were both of the haunted houses.  The National Art Honor Society created an “Alice in Horrorland” themed haunted house, which, if nothing else, showcased some killer artwork made by hard working and dedicated student artists. Thankfully we didn’t need to fall in a hole or drink weird potions for this attraction. Positive Edge put together a dark, bloody house in E cafeteria serving three levels of scariness. All three were crowded throughout the three-hour event.  Kids expressed fright before entering, but most exited with a smile and a handful of candy. After viewing several reactions, it seems that Positive Edge definitely won the “scare factor.”

“We came last year with all of her [her daughter’s] friends,” stated one mother who brought her daughter, Princess Aurora, to Safe Halloween.  “We come here to have fun.”

 “This year was definitely high quality,” Mr. Solomon, one of our assistant principals at West replied when asked about Safe Halloween. After seeing all the booths and haunted houses, every student must agree with him. The previous weeks of hard work each club took to create such entertaining and festive booths most certainly paid off. “It’s great to see students help the community,” he adds happily.

Seniors Escape with a Victory at Junior-Senior Sports Day by Anthony Aprile

     

            This year’s Junior-Senior Sports Day took place on Tuesday, and the seniors once again pulled out a close win over the energized Class of 2012.

            The annual event brought in over 200 juniors and seniors to participate in the one hour activity.  Several athletic contests were held, and pizza was served afterwards.

            The event began with Mr. Sill firing up both classes with a spirit yell.  The Class of 2012 was awarded points for the louder cheer.  The juniors continued their strong start with a victory in the Push-Up Contest.  Just as the junior class began to gain some momentum, the seniors began to fight back.  They took the Mummy Wrap, the Wheelbarrow Race, and the Three-Legged Race to quickly put pressure on the juniors.  Unwilling to back down, the tough juniors fired back with a compelling victory in the first game of Dodgeball.  After that, the Class of 2011 seemed to put it out of reach with impressive wins in the second and third rounds of Dodgeball and a completely one-sided sweep of the girl’s and boy’s Tug of War.  However, the juniors finished the way they started, taking the Dance-Off in dominant fashion.

            Despite this small slimmer of hope for the junior class, it wasn’t enough to pull out the upset.  At the close of the final event, Mr. Sill announced the winner, “by knockout,” as he phrased it, to be the seniors.  The senior class, no matter how narrowly, retained their bragging rights over the juniors, but it is safe to say that next year’s juniors will have big shoes to fill once they enter the competition.

Waking Up Early Takes a Toll on Students’ Grades and Attendance by John Vincente

BEEP! BEEP! There goes your alarm clock and once again it’s very early on a Monday morning and you have to be up and ready for a class that starts at 7:20 am. You are not alone. In fact, according to a New York Times article published in January 2010, there are over 17 million high school students across America that are waking up for school so early that they are barely awake enough to get little to nothing at all out of their first class, especially if this class starts earlier than 8 am. A new sleep study done by researchers from the University of Rhode Island has shown that the amount of sleep that students get, correlate to their grades and attendance records. Therefore, what exactly is the reason for waking up that early for a class in which students are constantly dozing off and are unfocused for? There actually is no educational reason at all to be up that early for school as it takes a toll on student attendance and grades.

                        For many years there has been a false impression that waking up early for school helps students stay more focused on their school work since people have said that the mind is more focused and opened up more to learning bright and early. This couldn’t be farther from the truth as most would agree. According to the New York Times article, teenagers have different body clocks and their sleep schedules are very different from younger kids and even adults. Teenagers on average usually fall asleep at 11pm which is when their bodies produce the sleep inducing hormone called melatonin. When school districts across America force students to wake up as early as 5 or 5:30am, they prevent the students from getting the full 8 hours they need of sleep.

                        Can you imagine if we could have all those 8 precious hours to ourselves? Well the researchers from the University of Rhode Island took on this idea to test how the time change would affect the students of a New England boarding school. They conducted this test by bumping up the time the first class started from 8am to 8:30am; just a small half hour of a difference. This small difference had a positive impact on the students and the even teachers. One teacher from this boarding school commented on the matter and said,

                         “On a more personal note, I have found the 8:30 start to be the single most positive impact to my general quality of life at [the school] since I started 12 years ago.”

                        The Rhode Island researchers found that the grades and attendance improved slightly, not enough to make a huge impact, but they still improved. Although grades and attendance improved, there were still a large number of students who got less than the recommended amount of hours of sleep. As a result of this, 66% of students said they became drowsy while doing their homework, 18% continued to fall asleep during morning classes and 36% relied on naps to get through the day. Now, what if the time of the first class was 9:20am perhaps? I think it’s safe to say that grades and attendance wouldn’t just improve slightly, they would improve GREATLY.

Secretary of Education Supports Twelve Hour School Days by Emily Doveala

Though most people in the United States are disagreeing on political matters these days, most people can agree that the election of Barack Obama to the presidency has caused many changes in the political world. One of the more influential changes on people in the U.S. is Obama’s appointment of Arne Duncan to the position of Secretary of Education. Duncan’s thoughts on education reform may soon have many drastic impacts on us kids. Duncan told the Daily Caller that he believes, “schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days of the week, 11-12 months of the year.”

For high school students, this sounds like their worst nightmare come to life. Smithtown High School West student Shannon Elari said, “It’s too long. Students will not be able to concentrate. Our brains will be on overload.” High school students spend 30 hours a week at school and approximately 10 hours a week or more on homework. All this adds up to a 40 hour work week, which is equivalent to the average full-time job. The above average students also dedicate about 10 hours a week to afterschool sports and activities. Adding another 30 hours to school per week would give the average teenager practically no time for anything other than working.

Secretary Duncan’s opinion is that 12 hour school days would allow students to be more successful later on in life and would keep them off of the streets. Duncan grew up in Chicago, where some kids that lived on the streets were killed in gang disputes. His firsthand experience with this definitely influenced his perspective on education. However, twelve-hour school days wouldn’t stop the small percentage of kids in Smithtown from doing drugs.

Another problem with Duncan’s plan is that the funding for this would be tremendous. Teachers would either work double time and receive a double salary, or new teachers would have to be hired. For either option, schools would need double the amount of money for teacher’s salaries and would most likely require more funding. This funding comes from the taxpayers, who, during our current economic situation, can’t afford to pay more taxes.

An alternative to Duncan’s drastic idea would be to use school funding for new technology or programs. Smartboards could be installed in every classroom; new instruments could go to the music department; equipment could go to sports teams; and funding could provide the means for electives for every interest of every student. Getting students more involved and enthusiastic in school could be the solution to give students a brighter future, not overworking them.