Theme Copy
The doors to the new building had yet to open, but the walls around it had taken form. We slowly inched towards the long awaited completion date set for April 2019. The addition would add a new library, arena, FACS classroom, office space and allow freshmen to return to the high school campus. We began preparing the underclassmen for new courses, including the upcoming Kohler Academy, that are being added after the school is done and the seniors leave. We welcomed two new administrators, Jason Burkes and Kim Scarborough, to our growing halls while saying goodbye to a decade of leadership with the retirement of Rodney Williams and Terri Bone. Through the year we’re somewhere in between the beginning and end of construction and the beginning and end of adolesence. |
Summer Division Copy
Our flights took off, and our wheels hit the road. The Rec. Center pool was packed, while dozens of students piled into the high school for the June ACT. We drove through mud holes in our trucks, and swung from a rope into the Saline River. The band began their marching show through the festering heat in the middle of July, while students set up their hammocks between trees at church camp. Our graduated seniors prepared for college, while incoming sophomores anxiously waited for the first day of school. Whether we had obligations and demands, or downtime and memories, our summer was a time when we were somewhere in between. |
October Arts & Clubs Story
Whether it was blowing up balloons or selling pink ribbons. National Honor Society created a new, all-inclusive tradition, and helped raise the most money for the Susan G. Komen foundation in SHS history. Benjamin Trussell, 12, blew up pink balloons that were sold in the stands at the Think Pink football game by Sheranda White, 12, and other NHS members to raise money before the game. “I helped blow up the balloons and got them all set up and tied and put them in bags all ready to ship out to the field to get ready to sell them,” Trussell said. This was the first year that the Think Pink ceremony included blue and gold balloons being released to represent other types of cancers that affected people in the community and the district. “We know that cancers are not limited to just one cancer, and even though breast cancer may be the more common type of cancers we want to make sure that everybody feels understood and that we were all there supporting them for that reason,” Trussell said. The idea of the blue and gold balloon release in addtion to as the pink balloon release was proposed during a meeting. NHS President Kristen Pinkerton, 12, agreed to the idea and thought the proposal would get more students and families involved in the ceremony. “A lot of our students haven’t had breast cancer. I think if we keep including other types of cancer it will get more students involved because that hits a multitude of people rather than a small portion,” Pinkerton said. White believed that the blue and gold balloon release was the first step in the right direction to raise awareness for more types of cancer. “I think we should continue to do the blue and gold balloon release, but maybe if you have lost somebody to any sort of cancer you do a white [balloon] release during that,” White said. This year’s Think Pink game was monumental for the students that were a part of NHS especially becase they raised the most money for the Susan G. Komen foundation in SHS history. “We raised more money for the Susan G. Komen foundation than we ever have before,” Jon Scott, 12, said. “It was like 500 dollars. We also did a bake sale and sold stuff during the lunches to help benefit that foundation.” Fall Division Copy
Whether we were receiving acceptance or rejection letters, talking about homecoming dates, or filling our plates for Thanksgiving, we were all learning how to adjust. We watched out the window of our seventh period classes to see the mini-snowstorm fall onto our cars and streets. Waiting for the delayed start, we all caught up on the homework we didn’t start finish from the night before. We were somewhere in between grateful for the snow and wishing the warm would stick around a little longer. Chase Brantley and Mika Evans, 12, attended the KickStart Sheridan meetings after school, while Ethan Higgins worked at the local East End cafe on Halloween day. Jameson Archer and Micayla McGowen, 10, stayed after school to begin getting in shape for soccer tryouts, while Kateland Campbell and Peyton Clark, 12, sat in Susan Coles, English teacher’s, room frantically finishing their research paper. As Thanksgiving break ended, we finally touched our book bags and we dreaded our semester exams while we anticipated another long break to come. When we returned we saw another glimpse of the building and all the progress that had been made. Some seniors cried upon the stands for their last football game, while the underclassmen couldn’t wait for the next season. Senior band members packed up their hats while the football team sang the alma mater for the last time. Fall was a season of hard work and making our ways from one place to another. We got to school early and stayed out a little too late. No matter what we were doing or where we were going, we were constantly somewhere in between thirty degree mornings and eighty degree afternoons, first day of school jitters and semester exams stress, somewhere in between where we are and where we want to be. |
Yearbook Story
After 11 weeks of hard work on spreads and stories, the yearbook staff members nearly lost everything they had created. When the Y-Drive failed to work, staff worked through corrupted files and backups, lost pictures and unsaved spreads to finish the work they had lost to technology. Before the entire Y-Drive crashed, files were only corrupt on a few staffer’s spreads. Unaware of the files going missing on spreads, staffers such as Sarah Rawls, 12, continued working as much as they could. “I was trying to do my big cut out on the right side of the page,” Rawls said. “Everything was going great, everything was fine, [and] I was ahead.” During an after school work night, staffers began to realize that entire spreads and pictures had disappeared. “On that same day, Turner [Justin Turner, yearbook adviser] had Mackenzie [Avant, 11] and Kacie [Wyrick, 11] go to every single person and go ‘Okay, we're gonna re-put it on [the desktop],’” Rawls said. “I was like ‘Okay, everything's gonna be fine,’ because the first time it was fine. It wasn't fine anymore. I lost everything, literally everything was gone. I didn't even have my cut out anymore.” After Justin Turner announced to the staff that some work may be permanently lost, the panic of multiple deadlines worth of work going missing settled in for Kaleigh Coker, 10. “When it crashed, everyone flew into a panic. People didn't know how to get their photos [and] didn't know how to place it on their spread,” Coker said. “It was utter chaos everywhere; even Turner was stressed.” With an upcoming deadline and files missing, partners Juliet Espinosa, 10, and Jamison McGuire, 11, quickly put their faith in their adviser to come up with a solution to lost files and lost time. “I knew Turner would pull it together and come as a team and come up with something,” Espinosa said. For the few days that technology was unable to be accessed, McGuire used her time in yearbook to plan her future spreads, instead of designing the spread she had now. “I wasn't really stressed because we found a different way to work on [our spread], and anytime we did not work on it, we just did stuff that didn't involve the computers,” McGuire said. After setting up a backup system, the yearbook staff had access to files that were saved before the crash, but Torie Stephens, 12, mistrusted the technology that had failed them before. “Take pictures of [the spread] on your phone, and keep just in case it does crash. Always copy your text to Google Docs or a Word document so that if it does crash, you don't lose it,” Stephens said. Even with a solution, all the lost work required hours of redoing his partner’s spread for Caleb Ingle, 11. “I got on and I was finishing my spread… and then I pulled up [Torie’s] spread started checking it off. It [wasn’t] fixed. [It] wasn't there, and I had to reproof that whole spread by myself,” Ingle said. “[It took me] about a couple of hours.” Though some staffers viewed the situation as negative, Emily Wagner, 11, took away a lesson with problem-solving. “Even though it’s my first year, and this is the experience I’ve had, it happens to everyone. You’ve got to look past it and understand that you can do this you’re almost done,” Wagner said. “Each day, you're getting closer to [being] finished. Be patient and wait. It may not work now, but it [will] work later.” |