A VALENTINE FOR HAITI

Science teacher Sally Hair writes: Student and community musicians raised money for Haiti relief in a variety show on February 12th in the HHS auditorium. The student-run a capella group Hilights are shown in the photo. HHS's "A Valentine for Haiti" has raised $4,000 (so far) for the medical group Partners in Health, through a raffle with prizes donated by local businesses; bake sales; and direct donations to Partners in Health. Click here to donate on the "A Valentine for Haiti" page on the Partners in Health website.

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HHS DEBATE CLUB WINS BIG AT VERMONT STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS (VIDEO)

HHS debaters won several awards at the State Championship Tournament held at the Vermont State House in Montpelier. Katherine Chen and Annelise Brinck-Johnson were State Championship Finalists and won the 2nd Place Overall Team Award and 1st Place Novice Team Award. All three teams fielded by this brand-new HHS club successfully advanced through the qualifying rounds.

Katherine Chen won the 1st Place Speaker Award in the tournament and John Gehlbach received the 4th Place Speaker Award. Click here for the WCAX-TV Channel 3 news story and a short video on the tournament.

Congratulations also to Katherine, Annelise and Amanda Washington for winning many team and speaker awards at regular-season tournaments.

The Debate Club meets every Friday activity period in Ms. Cluff’s room 203. Everyone is welcome for snacks and extemporaneous mini-debates on fun topics. For more info, please visit the Club’s website at www.hanoverdebateclub.org and watch this video blog by Katherine Chen and Amanda Washington.

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HHS STUDENTS HELPING RESCUED DOGS

Seniors Heidi Katz and Kelsey Herrmann-Stanzel write: Our HHS dog-rescue club has been working for a year with CARA, a no-kill, non-profit animal shelter, located in in Jackson, Mississippi. Right now we are trying to get four dogs from the shelter adopted: Chloe, Alice, Shelby and Moby (the dogs in the pictures above). We have raised money for vaccinations for these dogs which lowers the cost of adopting them to $125. If you or anyone you know is interested in adopting a dog, please contact Heidi.Katz@dresden.us or Kelsey.Herrmann-Stanzel@dresden.us.
If you would like to adopt please contact us and also apply online: http://www.carams.org/DogApp.html
To learn more about the dogs and the shelter you can read below, or check out the website: http://www.carams.org.



CARA is a non profit "no-kill" animal rescue group in Jackson, MS that provides food, shelter and care for hundreds of abused, unwanted, and stray animals. CARA is operated by volunteers and part-time employees. The expenses for our programs and services are supported by private donations from individuals, businesses, & fund raising events throughout the year. We receive no funds from the city, county, state or federal government.

The shelter manager writes: Alice was pretty banged up when we got her, with the bad cut on her paw and having her shoulder sewed up. Shelby was so traumatized by whatever had happened to her, that she was afraid of everyone and everything, until she met Alice. They were so innocent even after all that they had gone through. They are sweethearts; all they want  is for someone to play with them and give them lots of love. They love  attention! Right now Alice is still in that gangly puppy stage, all puppy (half grown).She will make someone an excellent best friend.  Shelby is still a little reserved with strangers, but will make a great watch dog. Once you get her trust,you will see what a great pet she will make. Together,they can climb mountains!!
Although we never did got them housebroken, they are paper trained for the cold days , when we bring them in from the bad weather. They have never shown any signs of aggression in any way. They will share their food,I F they just absolutely have to !
When Shelby came here,she and Alice were best buddies from Day One. What a pair! They act more like sisters than anything else. One is not happy without the other one. Whichever one is left at home will whine until the other one is back again.What a reunion!! Please try and keep these two together.They have been through so much already, I would hate to break their heart again by separating them.
Moby and Chloe were rescued by a truck driver when they were 3 months old at by the side of the road where they had been dumped along with their sister, who has already been adopted. In March they will be around 2 years old. The shelter manager said they were very sweet and playful and got along with other dogs. They have had limited exposure to children and probably no exposure to cats.

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MD TO SPEAK TO HHS STUDENTS ABOUT MEDICAL RELIEF IN HAITI

Dr. Brian Remillard, who recently returned from helping with earthquake relief in Haiti, will speak to HHS students in an upcoming sociology class. His topic is "How Society Influences the Delivery of Health Care," with the disaster in Haiti as an example. The class meets from 9:50 to 10:40 AM on February 11th in the HHS auditorium. All are welcome. Dr Remillard is a nephrologist at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

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HAITI RELIEF: CONTRA-DANCE FUNDRAISER IN THE GYM

The Hanover High Student to Student club is hosting a Contra Dance! The money raised will go directly to Partners In Health for Haiti relief. David Millstone, a former teacher in the district, will be calling the family-friendly barn-style dance. All are welcome and encouraged to come join us in the HHS gym on Febuary 27th from 5-7pm for fun for a good cause. Donations big and small are welcome. If you have any questions, please contact Emily Bensen at Emily.Bensen@dresden.us

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KEEGAN DUFTY, STUDENT OF THE MONTH

Keegan Dufty from Norwich, VT is Hanover High's February Student of the Month. A humble and genuinely talented athlete, Keegan plays basketball and rows for the crew. He hopes to be a writer and is interested in creative writing. He is also co-leader of the “Sorethroats” which is a student-run, male a cappella group. Keegan is a sincere and widely respected student whose good will and positive spirit make him a student everyone likes. To quote one of his teachers...”He rocks!”

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HAITI RESPONSE: FUND RAISING FOR PARTNERS IN HEALTH

Students and staff are planning several events to raise funds for Haiti earthquake relief. The week of 2/8 to 2/12 will be "A Valentine for Haiti" week, with students selling baked goods and valentines in the atrium. There will also be a raffle for staff, students, and community members with prizes donated by local businesses. On Friday, February 12 at 7PM we will host a variety show of student and local talent in the Hanover High auditorium. All money raised, including raffle proceeds and ticket sales, will support Haiti Relief Fund sponsored by Partners in Health. This is a medical organization with clinics already working in Haiti. Local medical teams from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center are in Haiti now, working with Partners in Health.

Finally, the greatest need in Haiti right now is for financial support. If you wish to send a donation to Partners in Health please use our website, "A Valentine for Haiti" at http://act.pih.org/page/group/AValentineforHaiti. Scroll to the bottom and look for the goal thermometer and the "Click Here to Donate" button. You can donate on-line directly to Partners in Health at any time.

Thank you for your support. .

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BUNGEE-JUMPING IN THE ATRIUM

Math teacher Greta Mills writes: the Mathematical Modeling Class worked on motion projects recently. They could choose among in-school projects based on Bungee Jumping, Skydiving or The Seconds Pendulum (building a pendulum with a one-second swing).

The assignment: build a physical model, collect data, replicate the results in a computer model, and solve the equations of motion.

In these photos of the bungee-jumping and sky-diving experiments, the paper hanging from the bridge in our atrium is meant to record distances, so students who took videos could measure both distance and velocity.

The emphasis was on the use of "found" objects. Students were asked not to go out and purchase materials; instead, use of ordinary household items was encouraged (note the use of a water bottle and a Co-op bag in two of the groups, as well as rubber bands).

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HOW TO LET SENIOR FALL SEMESTER TAKE UP ALL YOUR TIME AND EAT YOUR SOUL

Julia Murdza, class of 2010, wrote this essay in the Senior Writing Seminar:

It’s the end of August: the leaves are still green, your feet are still bare, and your mind is still intact. You’re a rising senior, and you need some advice about the months ahead. Allow me to prepare you for your senior fall semester. No, you won’t get through it sane, healthy, or good-natured, but it’s time you knew better. Your body might make it to January, but your soul certainly won’t.

First, sign up for classes. Sign up for too many classes. Sign up for classes that, after eating all your free time, turn on each other and conflict in nasty, terrible ways. Attend these classes. Rush around school, and around town, because it’s a fifteen minute scramble to get to your Dartmouth lecture on time. As you do all this, rush around in your head as well, as you try to remember where you’re supposed to be, what your homework was, and whether you did it. Don’t mess up.

Sign up for activities, too. You’re already a member, and probably a leader, of many clubs and organizations, but that’s not enough. Join something new. Let these interests consume your activity periods, your afternoons, your evenings, and your nights. Let them become just as important as your classes. Agonize when they conflict with each other and you have to prioritize. You won’t want to prioritize. You will want to do everything, and you will want to do all of it perfectly. You can’t mess this up either. Other people depend on your success. And so do your college applications. Don’t forget about college. Like you ever would. You won’t ever, ever stop thinking about colleges. It will come up in nearly every conversation you have, no matter who you’re with. When you’re with other seniors, it will be all you talk about.

Spend your nights and weekends, even though you won’t have them anymore, applying to colleges. Apply to far too many colleges. Apply to colleges your parents make you apply to, and apply to your favorite colleges, the ones your parents scorn. Apply to so many colleges that you can’t rattle off your list anymore. Then again, maybe you’re just too tired to get through any sort of list.

You’ll be more than tired, you’ll be exhausted. You’ll determine the minimum amount of necessary sleep, and then get less than that. Watch as your sleep deprivation leads to exponential increases in swearing and in talking to yourself in public. You’ll need gallons of coffee to stay lucid through the day, but then you’ll spend the last of your cash on postage for transcript mailings. Survive without caffeine by whining, muttering, and microsleeping. Go home, do that homework and apply to those colleges. Don’t even think about going to bed before midnight. Promise yourself that you’ll clean your room, take a shower, do some laundry. You won’t do these things, at least not all of them, at what you used to consider normal waking hours. You’ll be diurnal, nocturnal, and crepuscular by turns, and sometimes all three. You will not be coherent or cheerful.You’ll need to be coherent, unfortunately, though you’ll give up on cheerful. Why is coherence important? Because you’ll need to write your college essays. As you’ll be repeatedly told, this is the only part of your application you’ll have left to control, besides your senior grades. The essays are supposed to represent the Real You. Before this fall, the Real You might not have been completely normal and content, but it managed. That’s the image you want to present to colleges: that of Someone Who Can Manage. To portray that, you need to be somewhat coherent. Good luck.


There will be too many essays. The Common Application one, and then the one,
two, or even three supplemental essays that every college finds it amusing to assign. Panic. If you were not, by chance, already panicking, this is your cue. Standby panic, panic go. You’ll delay writing the essays, because when you do write them, the prompts will be awful and your responses worse, and they will make you want to curl up in a ball and hide from all the ickiness. You will not want to explain why colleges should want you, and you will want even less to explain why you want each of them. You will be asked to write thousands of words, to revise and rearrange time after time. Don’t forget, these essays are supposed to reveal your intelligence, your creativity, and your sense of humor. Don’t mess these up either.

You won’t have time for all this, and you won’t have the motivation either.
Fatigue is part of it, but even after you sleep for twelve hours on a Sunday morning, you won’t be able to make yourself work. Check email, Facebook, web comics, the weather, and Facebook again. You’ll procrastinate and spend five hours on a week-long assignment the night before it’s due, and you’ll discover the sort of crap you can churn out at ridiculously early hours. Avoid making eye contact with teachers when they return your papers, because the quality of your work will be joke compared to your ability. You will feel guilty, and you will want to produce thoughtful work, but if you do, it will be some sort of miracle.

Even if you do work hard, you will not be good enough. You will have friends
taking more and harder classes than you, and doing better with less effort. If you do not take a Dartmouth class, captain a varsity sport, get the lead role, run three clubs, and complete the Common App by November, you will be inadequate. You will feel inferior during those constant discussions of colleges, no matter where you are applying. Either your friends will be looking at Ivies while you compare state schools, or you will regret yuour Ivy deliberations as your friends apply elsewhere to study the arts. When you read other college essays, your own will seem even more banal, pretentious, and artificial than before. No matter how hard you try, you just won’t be able to win.

While drowning in academics and activities and applications, you’ll miss things.
You’ll miss family events like soccer tournaments and apple picking, and you’ll miss things with your friends like birthday parties and concerts. You will have some fun, because if you don’t, you’ll be dead and buried instead of just undead. Even though you can’t afford to, you will spend time with your friends. You’ll all complain, commiserate, and offer consolation. When you finish a worksheet or a set change or an essay, you will find moments of exhilarated relief heightened by exhaustion. And by the end of December, the pace will slow and you might have some unallocated time. Time that you’ll use to worry whether your soul-killing senior fall was worth the agony. To worry about the letters that will soon assault your mailbox. To worry if you did mess up everything after all. Have fun.

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CANS, CANS, CANS FOR THE FOOD BANKS

Teacher Margaret Caldwell writes: Thank you so much to all the groups that participated in the Can Sculpture Contest. I think it was our 7th annual event.

Today, the Haven food bank will get a delivery of 50 + + grocery bags of food. The quality of the donated food was remarkably better than it has been in the past. Thank you for that. Prizes will come to the following groups on January 28th (the first Common Ground / home room of the second semester).

"CAN-ival" -- Most creative.... and most lucrative

"CAN-demic" -- Most cans

"CAN-junctivitis" --Punniest

Again, it is all about the cans and the food bank in the end, but thanks for making it a fun event!

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