KEENE HIGH SCHOOL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 VOLUME XII ISSUE II KHS WEB SITE: HTTP://KHS.KEENESCHOOLSNH.ORG/

 

The mission of Keene High School is to cultivate the academic, civic, and social growth of all students to empower them to become contributing members of the global community.

Principal Notes

Winter is on the way and like everyone else, the staff and students at KHS are preparing for it along with all the holiday festivities. Many student organizations are busy planning community service events for the holiday season. These events include local food drives, clothing drives, and Toys for Tots; the list goes on and on. I would like to thank the community for letting our students get involved. Students and advisors, keep up the good work! I would also like to recognize the staff for the work they do each day and the work that’s being completed towards competency-based education. This is a multi-year process and, when completed, will benefit the students. For many of us the New Year begins with a great deal of reflection and resolution. As we return to school after a much needed break, I would like to remind students that it’s important to reflect on the first half of the school year, prepare for first semester finals, and plan for second semester classes. Seniors should be finalizing their post secondary transition plans and preparing for their future. School counselors are available to help. It is my goal that each senior will have a plan prior to the end of the school year. In January, underclassmen will be busy scheduling courses for the 2018-2019 school year. The scheduling process is time consuming, and we urge students and parents to look through the Keene High School Program of Studies, review graduation requirements, and choose the courses that fit their needs. I remind all parents and students to refer to the KHS website as the semester nears completion. The website will contain up-to-date information with regard to first semester final exams. Finally, I would like to wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday season. Jim Logan Principal

KEENE HIGH SCHOOL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 VOLUME XII ISSUE II KHS WEB SITE: HTTP://KHS.KEENESCHOOLSNH.ORG/

National Merit Scholarship Commended Students

Congratulations to seniors Taylor Hoefer, Ananda Montoly, Cameron Twarog, and Peter Walter who were recently named Commended Students in the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program. Commended students are recognized for the exceptional academic promise demonstrated by their outstanding performance on the qualifying test used for program entry. Commended students placed among the top 50,000 scorers of more than 1.6 million students who entered the 2018 competition by taking the 2016 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT). KHS Food Classes Community Service The days before Thanksgiving were a busy time in the food classes at Keene High School. All students in the Foods & Nutrition, Seasonal Foods, and Eating on Your Own classes made major donations to both the Keene Community Kitchen and the Hundred Night’s Shelter. These classes are part of the Family and Consumer Sci-ences curriculum taught by Deba Robarge at the high school.

With a generous donation from Alyson’s Orchard, students peeled & chopped, roasted & scooped apples, pumpkins, and several butternut squash that they used to create the fresh, delicious donations.

The Hundred Night’s Shelter received two separate donations to help provide lunches for their clientele. Stu-dents made pumpkin squash soup, vegetarian chili, corn chowder, and about 16 dozen corn muffins. The dona-tion to the Keene Community Kitchen for their annual dinner consisted of 14 pumpkin pies, 7 apple pies, 9 loaves of cranberry bread, and 12 dozen pumpkin muffins. Two students, Kalea Ezequelle and Natalie Brzeski, graciously helped deliver the donations.

This is the 12th year in a row that Mrs. Robarge’s students have baked and donated to local agencies. This community service project has been incorporated into her curriculum in order to achieve several goals. Stu-dents work collaboratively in the kitchen and take on the responsibility of preparing, baking, and delivering the food products. This helps students understand the needs of their local community. Students receive no grade for the work, instead, they earn community service credit hours for time in the kitchen preparing the foods.

Upcoming Events • Friday December 1 – Teacher Workshop Day – No School • Friday December 8 – Quarter 2 Progress Reports distributed (tentative) • Tuesday December 12 – Winter Instrumental Concert 7pm (auditorium) • Tuesday December 19 – Winter Choral Concert 7pm (auditorium) • Friday December 22 – Monday, January 1 – Winter Vacation – No School • Monday January 15 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day – No School • Tuesday January 16 – Public hearing on proposed budget & warrant articles 7pm (auditorium) • Tuesday January 23 – 8th Grade Parent Night 6:30pm (auditorium) • Thursday January 25 – Early Release Day – Students Dismissed at 11:48am • Friday January 26 – Teacher Workshop Day – No School • Tuesday January 30 – Snow Date -8th Grade Parent Night 6:30pm (auditorium)

KEENE HIGH SCHOOL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 VOLUME XII ISSUE II KHS WEB SITE: HTTP://KHS.KEENESCHOOLSNH.ORG/

World Languages Honor Society Inducts Fifty-Two New Members The KHS World Languages Department is pleased to announce the induction of 52 students into the World Languages Honor Society on October 12.

The Honor Society exists to acknowledge those students who have demonstrated excellence in the study of world languages. In order to be nominated for membership, students must maintain an A- average throughout all of their language courses taken at the high school level. They must also progress through at least the fourth course in a modern language and complete the application process.

The French inductees this year are: Teal Borden, Emilion Boyd-Tucker, Lily Brogdale, Sosha Burnor, Denali Croteau, Natalie Hanna, Ananda Montoly, Ford Oster, Caroline Power, Victoria Reynolds, Jackie Richter, Hallie Robertson, Maia Round, Elizabeth Snelling, Cameron Twarog, Rebecca Webb, and Natalie Wood. The Mandarin Chinese inductees are: Andre Nolan and Emily Provencher. The German inductee is Libby Gorske.

The Spanish inductees this year are: Alethea Aivaliotis, Alyssa Bartlett, Naomi Besson, Lyza Bobka, Emma Breslend, Maggie Cahoon, Hyo-Hyang Carty, Emma Charles, Katie Comerford, Andrew Derry, Sarah Eaton, David Erunski, Heidi Fales, Erika Farhm, Owen Fauth, Laura Fryberger, Will Hadlow, Zachary Jankowski, Sabrina Kurevija, Willow Lavallee, Meagan McLaughlin, Abigail Mitchell, Graysen Phippard, Richard Randall, Nick Royce, Ethan Scanlan, Lauren Scanlan, Rian Soucia, Karli Stroshine, Molly Swope, Andrea Thisner, and Madison Tremblay.

¡Felicitaciones a todos!

Speakers Series The Speakers Series recently sponsored three presenters. Sean Sodder worked with two Chinese classes to teach them basic Chinese martial arts, including Kung Fu. Mr. Sodder explained the proper breathing tech-niques and execution of kicks and blocks. This presentation provided students with connections to traditional Chinese culture. One student shared that “being immersed in the culture really made me appreciate everything that we do in class.”

Tom White, coordinator of Educational Outreach for the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, visited many classrooms first semester and will do so again second semester. Mr. White presented Elie Wiesel

KEENE HIGH SCHOOL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 VOLUME XII ISSUE II KHS WEB SITE: HTTP://KHS.KEENESCHOOLSNH.ORG/ and Night to three English classes and Nazi Germany and the Holocaust to three US History classes. Students said Mr. White was “charismatic and relates well to students,” and “his background knowledge and ability to connect students to the curriculum themes is strong.” Students particularly enjoyed the personal survivor stories that were part of the presentations.

Christine Destrempe worked with Art 2 classes to coach them in the art of monotype printing. Students enjoyed working with Ms. Destrempe because it “showed (them) a different medium,” and they appreciated “working with a professional.” Students especially enjoyed the opportunity to express their “artistic freedom by making our own prints.”

Library News The school year usually begins with some degree of excitement. From the vantage point of the library we see the students as readers with their likes and dislikes, and we are excited to open the doors each morning and both greet these patrons and serve them. We note the enthusiasm that is displayed when favorite items are ac-quired and wait to see which title or item will emerge the most popular.

As we seek to deliver excellent service to the school community, the Drew Library makes a tremendous effort to encourage reading. This year we are reading six books that a few departments have chosen. These items will be discussed in the book club during scheduled I-Time. The selected titles are Seedfolks, Hidden Figures, The Hate You Give, Drown, Unstoppable and How to Bake PI. In November, we began the book discussion with Seedfolks. This little book has some big themes and leaves one asking the question “How may I have a positive influence on my community?” As the time draws near for the second book discussion on December 13 and 14, we hope that many students will take the opportunity to read the book Hidden Figures and participate in the book discussion. Book discussion dates for the other items will be scheduled for 2018. Parents can access the library website (via the link on the KHS website) for updates about new book lists, databases, book discussions, and more.

We are grateful that the TAG group is back in action. TAG (Teen Advisory Group) is a group of students who work along with the library employees to advertise the library programs and to make suggestions. The group is very creative in their attempt to draw students to the library, thus encouraging them to become information lit-erate. We appreciate the TAG.

Continuing on in the academic year, let us remember the following words:

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” ― Stephen King

Competencies We’ve participated in a number of activities and training for competency-based education (CBE) in the past few months. On the October 6 early release day, we worked with the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) to finalize our department competencies and begin the process of mapping our curriculum to these competencies by aligning units in individual courses to the department competencies. CCE helped us to understand how school-wide competencies and department competencies connect, and we began the discussion of performance assessments and practices that provide meaning to the competencies in our day-to-day teaching and learning.

Staff piloted the four school-wide competencies with their classes and provided feedback on them. These school-wide competencies represent work-study habits and practices and are separate from academic competencies (department competencies). When we transition to competency-based grading, the school-wide competencies will be rated and not graded.

We emailed a link to an online survey for the school-wide competencies to KHS parents in order to obtain more feedback, and we will be gathering feedback from students in the next few months. The Core Competency Team

KEENE HIGH SCHOOL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 VOLUME XII ISSUE II KHS WEB SITE: HTTP://KHS.KEENESCHOOLSNH.ORG/ (CCT) is using all of this feedback to make revisions to the school-wide competencies as needed. As a reminder the four school-wide competencies are listed below.

Collaboration Students will collaborate respectfully in groups to achieve a common goal. Communication Students will communicate in a variety of ways in diverse situations. Problem Solving Students will solve problems critically and creatively. Responsibility Students will be accountable for themselves and show concern for others.

We are excited that we have five teachers participating in the Teacher Leader Training co-sponsored by PACE and NEA-NH. This training consists of learning about CBE and the NH PACE program in order to share this information with the KHS community. Two English and two math teachers have attended the first of three performance task development sessions, and three science teachers and CTE teachers will be attending sessions in the next month. At these meetings, NH teachers in PACE schools develop performance assessments that Tier 1 PACE schools use with their English, math, and science classes. As a Tier 2 PACE school, we will not implement these performance assessments this year. However, our participation in the development of these performance tasks is building our knowledge about CBE and is providing robust training in the development of these tasks so we can use this information to create our own local performance assessments. In March, all staff will receive training in performance assessments and rubrics, and we will begin developing common performance assessments for our courses.

Remember to check the Competencies tab under Quicklinks on the KHS website. We add new resources each month.

DAR Good Citizen Program

Keene High School participated in the D.A.R. Good Citizen program again this year. This program is intended to encourage and reward the qualities of good citizenship. Each faculty member was asked to select one mem-ber of the senior class who has demonstrated, in an outstanding way, the qualities of dependability, service, leadership, and patriotism in their home, school, and community. This year the faculty nominated Teal Borden, Maddie Phaneuf, and Cameron Twarog. From the three students selected by the faculty, the students of the sen-ior class then selected one student as this year’s Good Citizen, Cameron Twarog. Among his many endeavors, Cameron is vice president of Student Council, class representative for Class Council, president of Interact, Var-sity Math Team member, and first violinist in the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Congratulations to all of the D.A.R. nominees and best of luck to Cameron as he enters into the state competition.

Course Selections for 2018-19

It’s that time of year! We will begin the course selection process for the 2018-19 school year in early Decem-ber. Check the KHS web site and your email for detailed information and updates starting soon after Thanks-giving break.

KEENE HIGH SCHOOL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 VOLUME XII ISSUE II KHS WEB SITE: HTTP://KHS.KEENESCHOOLSNH.ORG/

PSAT Results

Official PSAT scores should be available to students online on collegeboard.org between December 11- 13. A hard copy of PSAT scores will be returned to students in December. One of the greatest benefits of taking the PSAT is the information provided on the score report. Now students have the opportunity to work with Khan Academy to get a free and personalized plan that identifies their strengths and helps them to work on their weaknesses. Students who use the Khan Academy Official SAT Practice have seen substantial improvement in their SAT scores. Follow the steps below to create/link your College Board and Khan Academy accounts so you can get the most out of your results. If you do not yet have a College Board account... Step 1: Go to collegeboard.org Step 2: Click on “Sign Up” Be sure to only create one account,and do not use your KHS email. Once you have a College Board account... Go to khanacademy.org/sat to create a free Khan Academy account. When prompted, agree to link your College Board and Khan Academy accounts.

ASVAB Juniors and seniors – register now! The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) will be offered on December 5. This is a multi-aptitude test battery that is designed to measure skills and abilities. Every stu-dents taking the ASVAB will get their results along with a guide that will further help them to match interests, abilities and personal preferences to over 400 occupations. The test is FREE and takes approximately three hours so students will miss part of Block 1 and all of Block 2. Students must bring a signed permission form to Main Guidance. Pick up a permission slip in Main Guidance or contact your school counselor.

Depression Prevention & Awareness:

Did you know about 20 percent of all teens experience depression before they reach adulthood? In December, we will raise awareness about depression. Students will have an opportunity to learn more about what depression is, how to help a friend, and the supports available at KHS. Teen Depression: · Depression is a real illness. · Depression is a common but serious health condition. · Depression can take many forms. · Depression is treatable. Paying attention to our own emotional well being is just as important as our physical well-being. One way we can do this is to recognize the five signs of emotional well being in others and ourselves: personality change, agitation, withdrawal, decline in personal care, and hopelessness.

KEENE HIGH SCHOOL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 VOLUME XII ISSUE II KHS WEB SITE: HTTP://KHS.KEENESCHOOLSNH.ORG/

National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week In January, we will share information with students during health observance week that aims to help teens SHATTER THE MYTHS about drug and alcohol use. KHS students will have opportunities to gain factu-al information about drugs and alcohol and take a drug IQ "quiz" for a chance to win a gift certificate. A drug fact for you--Memory impairment from marijuana use occurs because THC, the ingredient in marijuana that can cause the “high,” alters how information is processed in the hippocampus, a brain area responsible for memory formation.

Stress Symptoms One fourth of local teens have felt so sad or hopeless that they stop being active. While many stress symptoms are temporary, symptoms that last for weeks and influence their relationships with families and friends may need treatment. For more info, go to SAMHSA.gov. Warning signs and risk factors include:

• Eating or sleeping too much or too little • Pulling away from people and things • Having low or no energy • Having unexplained aches and pains, such as constant stomachaches or headaches • Feeling helpless or hopeless • Excessive smoking, drinking, or using drugs, including prescription medications • Worrying a lot of the time; feeling guilty but not sure why • Thinking of hurting or killing yourself or someone else • Having difficulty readjusting to home or work life.

Finals can be the most stressful time for a student! To help reduce stress during the week of finals in late January, students will have opportunities to engage in activities such as games, coloring, soothing music, and relaxing movement.

KEENE HIGH SCHOOL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 VOLUME XII ISSUE II KHS WEB SITE: HTTP://KHS.KEENESCHOOLSNH.ORG/

A Chorus Line: High School Edition Congratulations to the KHS Drama Club, cast, and crew, for a fabulous production of A Chorus Line: High School Edition. The 46 performers and 12 crew members put on a rousing show for three wonderful audienc-es. The Club thanks all who came out to support their work! We love an audience! The Club takes a small hiatus from performing until February, when the play Almost, Maine will go into production. Auditions will be held in February. Mark your calendars for the production on April 5, 6, and 7. We are now holding sign-ups for the April 21 trip to NYC to see the new musical The Band's Visit. Rumor has it the show is being consid-ered a strong potential Tony nominee in a number of categories. The Club's planned social activities include a winter gathering and an end-of-the-year potluck and awards event. All students are able to be involved with Drama Club. Meetings are the second Wednesday of each month in the LGIA unless otherwise an-nounced. Contact Beth Hansel, Club advisor, with any questions (ehansel@sau29.org). Thank you for your continued support!

Kick Line

Full Cast Photo

French Exchange 2018

The 28th French Exchange trip to France and Germany will take place during spring break, Tuesday April 17 to Saturday April 28. Enthusiastic KHS students are ready to go on this amazing trip to benefit from this edu-cational and cultural experience as well as from a full language immersion.

In April 2017, 24 French students traveled to Keene High School to be hosted by our students’ families. This April, the French students will host our students and show them the beauties and interesting sites of their own region. Students will experience a full week homestay and delicious French meals with a French family. We will travel to majestic Freiburg, Germany; beautiful Colmar, Alsace; Besançon; and the Citadelle; then go to

KEENE HIGH SCHOOL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 VOLUME XII ISSUE II KHS WEB SITE: HTTP://KHS.KEENESCHOOLSNH.ORG/ Paris for three days. We will visit museums, monuments, and castles (Louvre and Gare d’Orsay Museums, the Arc de Triomphe, Cathedral Notre Dame, the Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, the Champs Elysées, the Latin Quar-ter, the Eiffel Tower, the gardens of Versailles, and their own high school!

An added trip suggested by the French families is to visit the American Cemetery to honor the US soldiers who fought there during WWII. French people are so thankful for American and Canadian help!

We still have a couple spots available for this trip. If you are interested, please contact chaperones Madame Reilly or Madame Wilson as soon as possible at mreilly@sau29.org or swilson@sau29.org

Fundraisers for the French Exchange We hold fundraisers to help offer small scholarships to deserving students going on the French Exchange. Stu-dents are making and selling Saint Nicolas Sabots full of candy (small $3 - large $6) and Haiti bracelets to help Haitian mothers raise and educate their children. Order some if you want to help!

Yearbook Ads Dear Parents and/or Guardian of the Class of 2018,

The yearbook staff would like to offer an opportunity to congratulate your student in the 2018 edition of Sal-magundi, the school yearbook. This opportunity would require your purchase of space in Salmagundi, and the prices are listed below.

Full Page: $350 Half Page: $175

Quarter Page: $100 Eighth Page: $50

An eighth page equates to roughly the size of a business card and has space for one photo. A full page equates to an 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of paper and has space for roughly ten images. All congratulatory messag-es are printed in full color, and you will receive a digital proof of the message before it is sent to print. You can submit a brief message and attach images (digital or hard copy). Hard copies of the pictures can be sent home with your student or mailed home in a pre-addressed envelope.

All congratulatory messages must be submitted by December 15, 2017. Messages and images can be emailed to advisor, Linda Merrill lmerrill@sau29.org or handed in to room 505 at Keene High School. Checks should be made payable to Keene High School Yearbook. If you have any questions, contact Mrs. Merrill at her email address or her phone number (603) 352-0640 ext. 3505.

We would love to hear from you, and thank you!