Issue 1 OCTOBER 2011Robin Mickle Middle School

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Page 2: Fitness room update

Page 3: Mickle Clubs

Page 4: Opinions

Page 5: Game and Book Reviews

Page 6: Freaky Stalker Story

Page 7: Art

Page 8: Sports

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Mickle’s greenhouse now built

No fall break=longer winter break for LPS families

Park becomes eco-friendly with Mickle student input

Students help improve Mickle

Photo courtesy of Yearbook Staff

BY KAMI KUCERANEWS/SPORTS EDITOR Last year it was a layout of plans on paper, this year it’s a greenhouse! Mickle Middle School was given a $30,000 grant from Community Crops to start a greenhouse at the school. Community Crops is a nonprofit orga-nization that teaches people how to live without fossil fuel, how to grow their own food, and ways not to harm the environment. This greenhouse is a CLC club ran by Community Crops member Jennie Holt. So far this club has eight people,

and they are just getting started on this massive project. “We aren’t growing a garden, but making Mickle’s very own small urban farm!,” Holt says. The club members will plant crops both inside and outside of a hoop house. A hoop house is a covered shed that will allow them the option to plant indoors. With the hoop house, their harvesting season will last all the way through November. The green-house farmers will also be selling their crops at a local farmer’s market. All funds from the farmer’s market will go back into the project to help it expand. “We will be teaching kids ways to be green, and the study of ecology. Hopefully by doing this project Mickle will be a great role model to the com-munity and other schools on ways they can live green,” says Holt. Mickle teachers are also welcome to help on this project. They can con-tact Holt and set up times to have their classes go and farm. The club meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school from 3-5pm.

BY NICK FULLERTON Many of you may en-joy spending time at Tyrell Park, just north of Mickle. However, you may not know that Lincoln will soon be renovating parts of the park to make it more eco-friendly. The city of Lincoln is very interested in help-ing rain water soak back into the ground. Underneath the ground is the Ogalala Aquifer. The aquifer is like an underground “sponge” made of sandstone. This “sponge” holds and cleans the water in Nebraska so we can use wells to drink this water and water crops and farms. Right now, rain water in Tyrell Park is washed away through the ce-ment drain at the bot-tom of the valley in the park. This means that there is not much wa-ter going back into the aquifer in the ground. If we can get more wa-ter in the aquifer, then we won’t run out of water for drinking and farms. Last year, a city repre-sentative approached Mr. Rousseau and asked what could be done to improve Tyrell Park as a place for teaching environmen-tal topics to students.

Mr. Rousseau select-ed Rachel Jarvis and Taylor Kassebaum, to brainstorm ideas for the city’s project. They submitted their ideas to Mr. Rousseau, and he gave the ideas to the city. Their ideas were used to receive a grant to pay for this project. Jarvis and Kassebaum spent the last week of school researching on-line and talking to local experts. “We visited websites of local nurseries and made phone calls to learn more,” said Jar-vis. Work on on the park is expected to start in summer of 2012. The following changes to the park are planned, based on the girls’ work: 1) parking lots’ will be remade with per-meable materials.

This means that water will be able to seem through the parking lot and into the ground 2) Large land areas will be returned to their natural prairie state. 3) removing concrete liner in the valley. 4) Circular areas on the west areas of the park, will be turned into an outdoor class-room with water pumps so students can learn how permeable concrete and pavers works. 5) The largest circu-lar area will be turned into an outdoor perfor-mance area. The girls were happy to have a chance to work on such an impor-tant project. “I learned that eco-friendly doesn’t have to mean inconvenient,” said Jarvis.

8th graders, Taylor Kassebaum and Rachel JarvisPhoto by Mrs. Jorgensen

Seussical: the MusicalBY ELANOR JORGENSENThis year’s All School Choir will be per-forming Seussical the Musical, songs that have taken their lyrics from Dr. Seuss’s lovable books and added music! “So far, Green Eggs and Ham is their favorite song. It’s got a good rhythm and a good melody,” Johnson said. “We’re also going to have a choreographer come in and teach the kids a dance for a certain song; We’re having Dr. Seuss hats, and a finger-cymbals part as well.” You can watch the performance at Mickle on October 27th at 7:00 p.m in the auditorium.

BY KAMI KUCERANEWS/SPORTS EDITOR This year, LPS will be taking its fall break out of the school schedule, and will be replacing it with a lon-ger winter break. This school sched-ule will still contain the usual 178 school days, but instead of having two shorts breaks in the first semes-ter, we will only be having one long break at the end of second quarter in December. Last year schools had five days off in the fall, and seven days off in the winter. This year however, we had one day off in the fall, but will have

eleven days off in the winter. It may seem like less days off, but it’s ac-tually the same amount of days as every other year. LPS decided to change schedules this year so first semester could end before winter break. In the past years we have always gone on win-ter break before the semester ended and had to come back from break and finish the rest of the semester, and hard for high school students to take finals after such a long break. Mickle’s associate principal Mr. Deutsch thinks that switching sched-ules was the right thing to do. “With the semester ending before

winter break students, will be able to finish out the semester even stron-ger than before. It will also be eas-ier for families to plan for one long break instead of planning for two small breaks.” In a random survey taken of both students and staff, about half of the people surveyed like the new sched-ule, and the other half like the old one better. “I like it better now with the one day off in between the quarters [in Oct.]. It is easier for everybody to come back and for a new quarter after winter break,” Mickle’s library secretary Mrs. Smith says.

BY CHRIS RUSSERT The nine members of the student advisory committee meet with Mr. Thompson at different times in dif-ferent places to discuss how to make Mickle a better place.Mr. Thompson said it is good to have the committee, “because students should have more say in ideas for the school”. He said some of their ideas have been healthier food options such as less fat in foods and more fruit op-tions and they want to make people have more school pride with activities such as the 6th grade social. This is the first year of the Student Advisory Committee and Thompson said he hopes it continues, “We hope

to continue for many more years, but the hard thing is to find times that don’t conflict with other activities.” They are considering holding meet-ings at lunch and providing lunch for students advisers. So far there has been only one meeting of the com-mittee. Thompson hopes we will have more school spirit and help make Mickle the most Sixth grader, Taylor Morgan, joined so she could have input at Mickle. “ I could tell the principal things I might want to change or might want to know”. If you would like to join, sign up in the main office, and when the group meets again, you will be able to join them.