cassie tant illustration

Teenage Dick and Jane love to text. Dick and Jane love to drive. Dick and Jane love to text and drive.

Dick and Jane love to crash.

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As part of thespian fundraiser requirements, senior Alyssa Gourd and sophomore Jay Jacobson came up with the idea of a murder mystery dinner theater. During dinner the audience becomes a lead role in a sudden death mystery.

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Junior Anna Strait has run track since she was in fourth grade.

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Senior Michael Neal is diagnosed with a rare disease known as Legg and Calve Perthes Disease (LCPD). LCPD prevents blood flow to the joints and deforms the ball in the joint. He was first diagnosed in seventh grade.

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“Many people come through these walls when school isn’t in session and their only impression of us is what is on the walls. It would be nice to improve upon that impression,” Stevens said. 

Student body President Cody Sargent oversees and delegates all jobs in order to accomplish the goals that they have set out. 

“It’s good to know I can help people, I can try to make things better,” Sargent said. 

Sargent recognizes the importance of School activities and is always willing to help groups and clubs get started. 

Despite all the stress of putting together assemblies Sargent enjoys the responsibility. 

“If you stay on track, you never get ‘overwhelmed’,” Sargent said. 

Sargent believes that they should be more involved with school policy, but in a way feels limited to what they can do. 

“It’s really to bad; I really feel that we should be involved. I mean, if someone has an idea they should be allowed to share it,” Sargent said. 

Student council has not given an opinion or been informed about any changes being made to the building over the next few years. 

“We are pretty limited in what we can do. I do know we can make a difference, but a little more involvement in policy development would be good to help establish more of a stake on what is happening at Hoover,” Stevens said. 

Vice president Katie King is not worried about their involvement in school policy, geared more towards the tasks at hand king tries to be as efficient as possible. 

“I want to see less horse play, staying focused is a problem. I mean, we get things done but without the messing around we would get things done more efficiently,” King said. 

King steps in for Sargent when he is absent and assists in making executive decisions on assembly agendas and themes for dances. 

“We can definitely make an impact on the spirit of the school, there is nothing better than when an assembly goes well and students are all pumped up,” Stevens said. 

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“I think they were in disbelief we were doing anything like this,” Hoepker said.

Two years ago Hoepker was invited to be a guest director at Hoover’s sister school in Kofu, Japan, and considered the idea of returning with his students. The idea officially became an effort on the part of the band in November 2008.

Freshman Tyler Gilbreath was among the students who saw this idea as an inside joke from the director, and is now ecstatic for this trip.

“I’m really excited to do this, to go to Japan again and play music with my band,” Gilbreath said.

In total, the trip cost $135,000, which was paid for by numerous grants the band made and by students selling anything from sushi to candy to fruit.

The commission song is an original composition written for their performances and made by one of the musical writers for the movie Spirited Away.

As the band prepares for this trip to Kofu, Hoepker hopes they get everything out of it they can.

“The kids will have a great opportunity to travel and experience another country,” Hoepker said.

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kira herron illustration

The district has to make up eight snow days. The school board had an online survey that asked community members what should be done to make them up. They decided to add 30 minutes to the school day starting Apr. 5.

Science teacher Eric Hall thinks that this is the best option.

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The journey to state speech contest had started about six weeks earlier when the IHSSA speech contest groups had been posted on the drama board. I eagerly peered through the list for my name; it appeared with three others- Cassie Tant, Drew Davis and Kayleigh Wren- performing a scene called He said and She Said. Rehearsals soon began, and we quickly realized how twisted the plot of our scene was. Just reading through the script made me stop to try and comprehend what was going on. The scene was centered on a friendship between two women, Enid and Diana, that was manipulated by an older woman, Mrs. Packard, who spent her days gossiping about others’ personal affairs. The scene gets twisted when Mrs. Packard accuses Enid’s husband, Felix, of secretly having an affair with Diana. From there it becomes a story of exactly what the title says- he said, she said.

One of our first tasks was to map out our character’s life, even before the script began. I had to know Diana’s past, her relationships and her outlook on life. In other words, I had to become Diana. I spent 3 hours reading through the script, looking for hints of why she said every word she spoke- where it was coming from.

As we were discovering our characters, my group, along with our coach, Chelsea Cunningham was starting to bond as well. I didn’t really know my group members before this experience, but I came out of it with three people I can call good friends. We would spend more time talking about the scene than we would actually run it. We would get caught up in our characters and have continued dialogues, past the written script.

I remember leaving our districts center so ecstatic and just overwhelmed after one of our best performances to date. The icing on the cake was our perfect score of one-automatically qualifying us for state.

The two weeks I spent at rehearsals after districts, I think I learned more about acting than ever before. Cunningham had pages full of notes after repeatedly watching our scene. We were now focusing on the details that would separate our performance between good and pure quality.

We had to build to a climax and we had to actually listen to each other, like living the scene instead having it memorized in our head. We were bringing life to the scene. I could feel the intensity rise in the room as the highest point in our arguments was expelled.

There was a point in which it really hit me that we, as a group, were truly committed to this scene. There was a point in the scene in which Enid and Diana (Kayleigh and I) had a final, desperate plea to save their friendship. We had run the scene dozens and dozens of times, but this time there were tears in Kayleigh’s eyes during that moment. That’s the moment that I realized that we had taken a script, written 90 years ago, and made it ours.

We were set to perform at 11:15. The scene had to come to us naturally, because once we hit that stage, everything went blank, and it was up to us to have the instinct to know what our character would do. What we would do.

We spent the next fifteen minutes giving a performance that had been dissected and analyzed, and had been turned into our own.

I remember leaving the room ready to burst. We quickly came together in a group hug, one that felt so familiar.

By then, scores meant nothing. A number could never represent the feeling I had after our state performance; a feeling of accomplishment that I got to share with four really great people.

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Within NCLB, all public schools are set at a standard in which they must improve their test scores and proficiency ratings gradually every year until the year 2014 where 100 percent of the students will be performing at 100 percent levels.

This law has set up every single student for failure in their education because now all teachers don’t care about teaching their lessons; they care about teaching the test and nothing less.

NCLB has also meddled with every fine arts department and extra curricular activity because most funding is put toward mathematics and English departments.

Another problem of NCLB is the fact that not all students are treated equally. What that means is that the student who attends Central Academy also receives the same test as the refugee from another country who does not read a bit of English.

Not only that, but even the children with disabilities are required to be at the national set benchmark. NCLB violates another law allowing disabled students to take their own tests at their own level under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

For instance, a blind student who cannot read the test under IDEA may listen to the teacher read the test out loud. But because they cannot read, the blind student therefore fails the reading portion of the test and from there fails at the national level.

NCLB is fully and one hundred percent unfair to require all students at different levels to compete with each other.

When schools do not meet the requirements or do not improve their scores, they receive a punishment. Those punishments can range from firing the principal to denial of money grants to closing the school for good.

When all schools lose the money they were promised, private schools will benefit in enrollment and their own development of their schools.

Overall, the result of privatizing all schools where each school budget can pay for their own education and diminishing the spending on public education from the government is in effect.

It may have sounded like a great idea with the title of the act, but the politicians needed to do their job and read the actual context of such a failure for all students.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 does not benefit free public education. It destroys it. It does not boost test scores. It lowers the quality of education and sets up every student for failure.

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The plot is difficult to follow at points, as it tries to blend many different stories, from teenagers aiming for their “first time” to accepting a failed marriage proposal and forgiveness after an affair.

All of these elements come together into a film that’s bittersweet at times, but simply hilarious at others.

Romantic comedies are something of a staple of a date night, and I’d strongly recommend this one to any couple, young or old. There’s enough content and hilarity to appeal to practically anyone.

The many stars include Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner as best friends struggling in their own love lifes, Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner as a teenaged couple and Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper as friends on an airplane out for something more. These are just a few in the huge all star cast that made up this hilarious comedy.

The movie was not lacking in its different kinds of humor either. There were sex jokes, intelligent jokes and cute love jokes.

Despite never taking itself too seriously, the movie brings several messages of forgiveness, being patient with the people you care about and respecting the nature of love itself. There’s not a lot to learn from this movie, but you may take home some tips anyway.

The only problem with the movie is its struggle to keep consistent and prevent the different stories from becoming too choppy. This is recurring and makes it difficult to connect to the characters early in the film, but more than makes up for itself later.

After two comedic hours, I was left just wanting more of this charming and hilarious comedy.

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