The WRSC has made very important changes to the process of their upcoming class Olympics.

Originally the WRSC planned on having trials after school  for the six events they are sponsoring: trivia tournament, art contest, math bee, free throw contest, Jenga contest and spelling bee.  The top competitors from each grade would then compete in the finials of the  Olympics during the last week of May.

Now all events for the Olympics will be held after school during the last week of May. There will no longer be trials for the events, just finals. At these finals one competitor will be crowned the winner in each event.

On Tuesday May 28th the Trivia contest will be held in the Auditorium and all art work for the art contest should be submitted to the WRSC. On Wednesday May 29th the free throw contest will be held in the Gymnasium and the Math bee will be held in the auditorium. On May 30th the Jenga contest will be held in the Gym and the spelling bee will be in the auditorium. The annual WRSC ice cream social will be held on Friday May 31st, where Olympic champions will be honored.  Woodlandstock, where bands and solo artists will preform,   will be held after school that day as well.

“By combining trials and finals the Olympics will be much more efficient and faster,” said Senator Mary Vlamis, who is co-running the event with Senator Lindsay Rodorigo.

There are slots still available in some of the Olympic events. If you are still interested in participating in the games stop by the WRSC office located on the second floor next to room 235.

Senior projects are a requirement for graduation at Woodland, but junior Casey Stevens is getting a head start by holding her senior project this year. Her project, Woodland’s Got Talent, is an attempt to engage students and to bring together the whole community.

With permission from Principal Arnold Frank, Stevens was able to begin working on the event.

The idea came about from Prospect Youth Services (PYS), where Stevens volunteers. PYS holds two or three events each week for students attending Algonquin School and Long River Middle School. Each year a talent show is held for these younger students.

Stevens has been hoping to find a way to get Woodland more involved and to bring the students together. With the PYS, Stevens began to plan a talent show for Woodland students. After viewing all the work that Stevens had already put into the event, the PYS suggested that Stevens use the talent show as her senior project.

After getting approval from the senior project committee and filling out the appropriate paperwork, Stevens was prepared for the task.

“I want this to be a way to bring Prospect and Beacon Falls together,” said Stevens.

Woodland’s Got Talent will have four judges—representatives from Prospect Youth Services, Prospect Parks and Recreation, Prospect Public Library, and the director of PYS.

“They are the ones helping me run the event,” said Stevens. “They are in full support of the project and want to be a part of it.”

In addition, Matthew Gregis, Woodland senior, will serve as the DJ for the event.

One of Steven’s goals is not only to bring Prospect and Beacon Falls together, but also to allow the school to get involved.

“Although there’s sports, choir, fine arts night, and ways to get involved, there isn’t another opportunity for Woodland students to show off their talents,” said Stevens. “Now kids can show off their talents if they so wish.”

Also, Stevens has consulted with Woodland’s culinary classes, who will be making and selling food items at the concession stand the night of the show.

Along with the concession stand, there will also be gift baskets being raffled off. All of the money brought in from the event will be donated to a charity called Stamp Out Childhood Hunger.

“The great thing about this organization and the funds I collect is that I can specify the location of where the funds will go,” said Stevens.

Stevens plans on donating half of the money raised to Beacon Falls and the other half to Prospect in order to help people having a difficult time.

“This is pretty cool because usually you just hand off the money to most charities,” said Stevens, “but this gives you the opportunity to see where the money has gone.”

Students performing in the talent show will attend the registration date on May 28^th, and the actual event will take place on June 10^th.

Months preparing all for one day, all for one exam, and all for one exemption—at least students hope.

AP classes are a great way for high school students to receive college credit for work done while they are still in high school.

No matter what AP class a student takes, it takes a great deal of perseverance and self-motivation to get to that May exam day.

After months preparing and late nights studying students await for the exam day with excitement for the fact that all the work will soon be over, and hopefully will pay off.

In celebration of the hard journey the students have endured AP teachers at Woodland often have an AP breakfast the morning before the exam.

The breakfast is intended as one last stress relief before the exam and also to make sure the students all have energy before a rigorous three hours.

However, AP breakfasts are not the only tradition at Woodland when comes to AP classes.

A tradition that seems to have lasted just as long as the AP breakfast is the AP class shirts.

AP Lit shirt 2012-2013

At Woodland it has become a tradition over the years that AP classes design a shirt every year to then wear the day of their exam.

AP Lit shirt 2012-2013

“I think the tradition of AP shirts started as a way to celebrate the accomplishment of working through a very rigorous curriculum,”   said Lisa Olivere, AP Psych teacher at Woodland, “[It also] show[s] unity—that the students were in it together.”

Just like the classes and the students change yearly, so do the shirts colors, ideas, and designs. Olivere teaches three sections of AP Psych and each class designs their own separate shirt.

This year her E Block class used the quote, feel the fear and do it anyway on their shirts. Her F Block class also used a quote on their shirt that said: it’s not a spring it’s a marathon, in order to reflect the rigor of an AP class. And Olivere’s B Block class choose something different by designing an ink blot on the front of their shirt, because that is something psychoanalysts use as a test.

AP Psych F Block shirt 2011-2012

While some classes like Olivere’s do something different every year some classes keep the basics and sometimes will add something else to it. AP World History is one that keeps it similar every year.

“The AP World shirts are purple and on the front it has the golden wreath with AP World History and the year in roman numerals,” said AP World teacher, Chris Tomlin. “On the back it has our motto: 10,000 years in 80 days and this year we added underneath, Veni Vidi Vici, which is Latin for I came, I saw, I conquered—which is what Julius Caesar said.”

Shirts ranged from inside class jokes like the AP Lang shirts this year with I’m pathetic to kiss my ethos, all the way to the AP Biology shirts that depict a picture of a virus because students were intrigued with learning about that chapter. AP Lit made an allusion on their shirts to a  J. Alfred Prufrock poem by quoting Dare to disturb the universe, and then the students names on the back surrounding a peach to allude to when he writes Dare to eat a peach. 

“I think [AP shirts] is one way that they [students] get to be acknowledged and recognized for their hard work,” said Olivere. “It’s kind of life wearing a team uniform. It takes a lot of hard work to make a varsity team, well it takes a lot of hard work to be in an AP course, and not just enroll in it but survive it. It’s a sense of pride and honor.”

AP US History shirt 2011-2012

Blankets for Kids

Each year the Interact club makes blankets for different organizations that help with kids. The Interact club gets all the volunteers together and makes tie blankets. “The tie blankets are a relatively easy craft that warms the hearts of the children we donate them to,” said  member, Casey Stevens. Casey and her mom have been the leaders of this club putting many hours in. The club is a community service based group,  that does all types of  service in order to help others.

The tradition of the creating blankets came from the woodland alumni, Rachel Conti. As a senior in the interact club they have to come up with a new community service idea for the club to do. Rachel’s original idea was to make and bring the blankets to the Ronald McDonald house. The Interact club continues to make the blankets each year but changes the location and organization at which they are donated to. Giving other children in different situations a chance for a moment of happiness.

This event has turned into one of the bigger community service activities they do, drawing in other students who are not normally involved in the club to help.

Stevens said,  ”Giving the kids the blankets puts the biggest smile on [our] face.”

Each November in the week leading up to Thanksgiving, the Woodland Regional Student Council holds their biggest events of the    year–Spirit Week and Homecoming.

After that week, the WRSC usually focuses on more service based activities and less on school spirit. However, this year that is about to change.

“The WRSC has been looking for a good way to continue  spirit activities throughout the year,” said WRSC advisor, Chris Tomlin.

In hopes to do this class of 2016 Senators, Mary Vlamis and Lindsay Rodorigo decided to hold a Class Olympics competition.

“Students from all grade levels will compete in trial rounds for six different competitions,” said Vlamis. “They have a choice of a Jenga competition, a free throw contest, a math contest, a spelling bee, a trivia contest and a visual art expression contest.”

After all the trials are completed the top boy and girl from each grade, and  in each category, will compete against each other during the last week of May.

“The finals will be held during advisory on May 28, 29 and 30^th,” said Rodrigo. “The top boy and girl in each category will be honored with a medal and recognized at the annual ice cream social held in June.”

The WRSC hopes that the Olympics will be a good event to bring the student body together at the end of the school year and Tomlin said, “I’m hoping that the Olympics will become a new school tradition that encourages school spirit.”

For the second year in a row, two members of the Woodland Regional Student Council (WRSC) decided they wanted to host an idea forum in the Woodland media center. Senior, Makenzie White and Sophomore, Nicole Buckley decided to invite a number of different student councils from across the state to come to Woodland to share their ideas on Thursday, May 25th.

Last year the student council hosted the idea forum and White and Buckley felt it was such an insightful experience last year they wanted to do it again this year.

“The purpose of this event is to bring together student councils from across the sate and allow an opportunity for students and advisors to talk about their programs and experiences,” said White. “The ultimate goal is to learn new ways or ideas [other student councils] can take back to their schools.”

Although, the WRSC invited twenty-eight schools and were hoping for a big turn out only three of these schools were able to attend. The student councils from Wethersfield High School, Pomperaug High School, and Fairfield Prep were those who attended.

Through the coming together of these three high schools, along with Woodland’s student council members a lot of information about how each organization is run was shared. Some of the things that the WRSC brought to the forum were their ideas of to utilize parliamentary procedure and a constitution.

“In respects to the [parliamentary procedure and our constitution] we had a lot to share with the other schools,” said White.

Overall the event went very well. All of the schools were able to benefit from the experience and it helped to bring a new perspective to all of the student councils. Each of the schools were able to take information and are hoping that they will be able to utilize it in order to improve their student councils.

Although, this was only the second year that the WRSC hosted an idea forum it was so successful that they plan to continue it in the future. As of right now the idea forum will be hosted again next year.

“I ran the idea forum this year with the help of Nicole Buckley,” said White. “Next year she is planning to run the event by herself.”

Not only did White feel the event was successful, but she also learned a lot from running the event.

“This event gave me a lot of knowledge and experience in running an event as this was the first even I ran beginning to end,” said White. “I learned a lot about logistically running an event and I found it be an incredibly rewarding experience.”

On Tuesday, April 30th Woodland Juniors and Seniors took time out of their B Block class to attend a presentation put together by Whitney Stow for her senior project.

“I did a texting and driving awareness,” stated Stow. “I also had a guy from Survive the Drive come and give a presentation. Then I have a video I made and I have a pledge that people can sign.”

On Tuesday, Bob Green, a representative from Survive the Drive came to talk to Woodland students. Survive the Drive is an independent  non-profit organization that attempts to educate drivers of all ages.

According to the Survive the Drive website, “He focuses the students on the detrimental activity of texting, reading, drinking, phoning and any other activities that remove conscious understanding of the ever-present operational hazards of heavy, moving equipment.”

Stow thinks that this is an important thing to do for students. “I don’t really have a touching story or a real reason [to do this as her senior project], I just feel like it is really important because too many people do it, and like the stupidest thing you could do is text and drive.”

Green hoped that by sharing his own personal experience with distracted driving he would be able to make a difference for someone.

“It really opened up my eyes,” said Junior Taline Agamy. “It made it more real.”

Senior Eric Meir admitted, “It was a good opportunity to tell people why they shouldn’t text and drive.”

Senior Erin Wester also had some things to say after the assembly was over. “He was very passionate about what he did. I thought that it would definitely show that the people care about what they do in their work. It also showed that we really shouldn’t be distracted when driving and that it can cause a lot of damage.

In just one year drivers aged 16 to 24 were involved in 28 percent of all drunk-driving accidents. However, people aged 16 to 24 only make up 14 percent of the nation’s overall population. In an attempt to make teens more aware of the risks of drunk driving senior, Makenzie White has made it her senior project.

On the afternoon of May 3, White will be hosting her senior project at Woodland. Her project is going to be a mock car crash, which she has been planning since the end of the 2011-2012 school year.

The mock car crash is a tradition at Woodland and is usually done as a senior project every two years. On the years when the mock car crash is not done Woodland Student Council puts on a “Day of the Dead”.

During this day student council members volunteer as victims and every 42 minutes the bell rings indicating one of their deaths. When a death occurs the students face is painted white in order to make it obvious to other students. At the end of the day all of the victims stand in the front lobby, so the students exiting school are impacted by their presence.

The purpose of White doing her senior project on May 3 is because it is a week before prom. An important part of Woodland’s prom is making sure that students do not put themselves at risk by drinking and driving. However, since prom is not until May 10, part of White’s project will also be to make a Public Service Announcement the day before on May 9.

Around prom the number of accidents among high school students increases and White is hoping her senior project can help prevent these accidents from occurring.

“The purpose of the mock car crash is to bring attention to not drinking and driving, at prom specifically” said White.

The reason White feels it is important to also do a Public Service Announcement is because only juniors and seniors have the ability to attend the mock car crash. However, junior and seniors are not the only students who attend prom and White wants to ensure that all students are aware of the dangers of drinking and driving.

White is hoping that by showing students the dangers of drunk driving and the real life affects that it could have students will think twice before drinking and driving. Aside from White, nine other students will be helping act out the mock car crash and they will also be involved in the Public Service Announcement. Cal Brennan, is helping White to get the firefights, police officers, and life star involved all of which will be present during the mock car crash.

Although it would be beneficial to students to have the mock car crash every year, it is a lot of work to put together and it hard to get everyone committed to doing the project each year.

“The mock car crash is really just to help kids and make them think before they make a mistake,” said White. “I hope that my senior project can bring awareness about the true dangers of drinking and driving and will encourage everyone not to drink and drive, especially on prom night.”