DAWSON DO

the non-core courses.

Mitigating the testing burden

The revision to Policy IKA is meant to alleviate the amount of testing for students, which has increased signi� cantly with the addition of the Partnership for As-sessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments. “I think that we, parents and stu-dents and teachers alike, went back this year and said there is a lot of testing, especially with the PARCC exam,” Student Member of the Board (SMOB) Eric Guerci said. “We’re reducing the testing

counterparts will start implement-ing quarterly assessments. No de-cision has been made as to whether honors classes will receive a differ-ent version of the assessments than on-level classes, according to Lang.

This will leave over 600 non-core classes, including elective and AP-level courses, without the county quarterly assessment. Teachers of those classes can choose to create their own cumu-lative assessments. Those grades will not be weighted as quarterly assessments, but rather included as in the regular marking period grade. After the initial year of implementation of quarterly as-sessments, decisions will be made about whether to expand them to

Sweeping changes to county policies

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OutdooreducationConnecting with nature could make learning more fun.

Winter dessertA food-focused look into the area’s holiday � air.

Tom BrownThe Super Bowl cham-pion and Blair alum discusses his athletic career.

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No Child Left Behind replacement signed

On Nov. 10, the Board of Edu-cation � nalized changes to Policy IKA, “Grading and Reporting,” eliminating traditional semester � -nal exams and replacing them with cumulative quarterly assessments. This is just one of the many revi-sions the Board has implemented within the last few months, in ad-dition to placing Chromebooks in many classrooms.

According to Board member Jill Ortman-Fouse, a quarterly as-sessment could take the form of a test or another type of cumula-tive assessment. “An assessment could also be a research project or it could be a paper. In one course, there could be a multiple choice and essay assessment. In another course, it could be a research proj-ect, in another, it could be a paper,” said Ortman-Fouse.

The Board has not yet decided on how the quarterly assessments will be weighted in � nalized se-mester grades. While the Board of Education already � nalized most of this policy, it will not be fully implemented until the 2016-2017 school year.

According to Erick Lang, the Associate Superintendent of Cur-riculum and Instructional Pro-grams, next school year, 30 on-level core courses and their honors

ICE SKATING Although the weather has been unseasonably warm lately, Silver Spring residents participate in winter activities like ice skating at Veteran’s Plaza.

CALEB BAUMAN

President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law on Dec. 10 after it passed in the Senate and House of Representatives with bipartisan support. It replaced the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001.

The law aims to uphold the core values of the NCLB to ensure that all disadvantaged students receive the resources they need to gradu-ate and establish a successful col-lege or career path. However, the new act has key differences that move away from the national stan-dardization of education and allows states to allocate their own funds for stu-dents who fall behind.

This mea-sure allows states to focus on the lowest-performing schools. The act advises states to de-velop their own standards for stu-dent performance and abolishes national standards. The ESSA also main-tains annual assessments to evalu-ate students’ performance and improvement, but expels other un-necessary standardized testing.

Quarterly assessments to replace � nal exams

Where only � rst names appear, names have been changed to protect the iden-tities of the sources.

For Katie, a senior, the 40-min-ute ride to Sri Siva Vishnu Temple feels like forever. After her family arrives, they spend anywhere from 30 minutes to multiple hours pray-ing or receiving prayers through an archana, a small ceremony performed by a priest in front of a large statue of a Hindu deity.

Although visiting the temple has been routine since Katie was a child, these practices never made sense to her. At Sri Siva Vishnu, she often questions the seemingly excessive praying. “I even tell my mom sometimes, ‘Why do we go all the way there when we could do it at home?’” Katie says.

Along with a handful of other Blazers and an increasing number of today’s millennials, Katie has diverged from her parents’ reli-gious beliefs into one she feels is

more personal and meaningful.

A different faith

For many individuals, religion is a tradition that is passed down through generations and cultivat-ed through regular mass services, celebrations, and daily practices. But sometimes, religion fails to click somewhere along the line.

Katie has never shared her par-ents’ beliefs. “My mom is very Hindu. She believes in Hinduism and does all the stuff [for that re-ligion] and goes to the temple regularly. [But] I kind of never re-ally believed in religion for as long as I could remember,” she says. However, Katie’s lack of connec-tion to Hinduism does not restrain her from celebrating Hindu holi-days like Diwali and Nevarapti. “I would say that I [am] cultur-ally Hindu,” she says. “I’m really non-religious, [but] I do want to keep that Hindu aspect where I

see RELIGION page C1

When faith and family split

CALEB BAUMAN

LEARNING WITH TECHNOLOGY Teachers use Chromebooks in several classes, but the Board has withheld further distribution.

see BOARD page A3

By Alexandra Marquez

By Daliah Barg, Dawson Do,Sarah Hutter, and Cole Sebastian

By Maris Medina

A winter wonderland

USA TODAY

Under the ESSA, states have the discretion to adjust their edu-cation standards towards appro-priate goals for their students. However, according to William Reinhard, Media Relations direc-tor at the Maryland Department of Education, Maryland changed their education standards in 2012 to align with those of the Common Core Standards Initiative and does not plan to change them again fol-lowing the signing of the ESSA. Gboyinde Onijala, a spokesperson for MCPS, supported Reinhard’s statement and said that the county has not heard about how the ESSA

will affect MCPS.Sophomore Julia Weckstein supports

the shift to state-wide education

standards, but she said she fears some states will fall behind. “It can p r o b a b l y be more

personalized to what cer-

tain states and certain students

need,” she said. “But also, having a national

standard can be good because it pushes states to push students up to a certain level so all kids will have a good education and have the option to go to college.”

ence through a survey. “They were asking me and all of the teachers that participated what kind of top-ics we would like to see that are related to lesson plans and objec-tives,” she said.

Sy was excited to hear about the possibility of using the technology in the classroom. “That would be tough, like every once in awhile,” she said. Faridjoo also saw the bene� ts of using the technology, especially in social studies classes. “It would actually help connect you more to what you’re learn-ing about in class,” he said. “Es-pecially in history and geography classes where you spend a lot of time hearing names and stuff but not actually seeing what they are.”

purchase yet, but the program is expected to be fully released in the spring of next year with improve-ments based on the feedback of the participating schools. Dorset asked each of the classes she worked with about what more needs to be included in the complete version of Expeditions. “I was asking each class, ‘Is there a place you haven’t seen that you want to go to? Would you like to see the technology do anything particularly different?’ We do feedback at the end of ev-ery day and I write down notes of different places people want to see that we don’t have yet.”

Rich said that she and other teachers were asked to provide suggestions based on their experi-

December 17, 2015 A2 News silverchips

The Student Government As-sociation (SGA) combined efforts with the Young Democrats Club to host a voter registration drive from Monday, Dec. 7 to Friday, Dec. 11. The Montgomery County Board of Elections (MCBE) also held a voter registration drive outside the Stu-dent Activity Center on Nov. 18 and 19 in order to register students to vote and serve as election judges in the upcoming election.

According to the Young Demo-crats Club sponsor Allison Russell, both the Young Democrats and the SGA were planning to run drives, but because Young Democrats only has 10 regular members and has had trouble staf� ng tables in the past, they decided to combine their efforts with the SGA. “When we started the process we found out that SGA is running one as well, they have run one off and on depending on their personnel,” Russell explained. “So we [com-bined] our efforts in one joint voter registration drive to register as many students as possible.”

According to Russell, the drive was part of a countywide initiative to get schools to af� rm the impor-tance of voting. Other schools have held drives as well between Nov. 30 and Dec. 23. In a memorandum sent to all the MCPS high school principals, the county required that at least three students from each school be picked as voter reg-istrars and attend a training.

Members of both the clubs staffed the table after going through two, one hour training sessions. The training, according

to SGA sponsor Christopher Klein, was mostly common sense that made sure the students acted ac-cording to legal protocol and un-derstood their duties. “They talk to students who are interested and answer questions, they hand out the forms that need to get � lled

out to get registered and then they take the forms and will then end up submitting them,” Klein said.

According to Russell, in the past two years, the SGA and Young Democrats Club have not registered any voters because they lacked the personnel to run a drive. This year Russell expects them to surpass their numbers

from previous years. “We only reg-istered 86 voters in the [2012/13 school year], so I think we want to probably target around 125-150,” she said. However this year they registered 35 voters.

In addition to registering as many students as possible, the

purpose of the drive was to edu-cate students on the voting process and how they can get involved. “The goal is not just to make sure as many students register as possi-ble, but it’s also to make sure they are aware of where their voting precinct is, that they know when election dates are, just making that � rst step to be motivated to vote

and get involved,” Russell said. Registered junior Yonatan Ara-

ya commented that it is important for students to get registered so that they can vote and have a say in the elections. “Elections affect students a lot and you should al-ways be involved with something

that affects you,” Araya said.

Russell hopes that the drive has instilled similar motivation for young voters like the Takoma Park elections did when the city lowered the voting age to 16. According to Governing Maga-zine, 44 percent of registered 16 and 17 year olds voted in 2013 Takoma Park elections com-pared to 11 percent of registered adults who voted. “If you look at the Takoma Park elections they have had enor-mous success with young voters in the past, and I think that we want to

bring that type of engagement to the entire Silver Spring, Takoma Park community,” she said.

Since the drive was partly run by Young Democrats, there was some concern that liberal bias could be a problem among the club members running the stand. Mary Yilma, a senior member of the club, did not think it was an

Student clubs collaborate to host voter registration driveThe Student Government Association and Young Democrats Club organize drive

issue as the members were forbid-den from showing predisposition at the drive. “We keep it strictly mutual, just encouraging students to vote rather than vote for a spe-ci� c party,” Yilma said.

The drive run by the MCBE was focused on registering students as well as hiring them as election judges. Dr. Gilberto Zelaya, an MCBE of� cial, said that 17-year-old students can earn up to $180 or 25 SSL hours serving as an election judge. Election judges work at vot-ing stations on election day mak-ing sure everything runs smoothly. “Election judges welcome the vot-ers, check in the voters and make sure all the equipment is work-ing,” Zelaya said.

For Zelaya, the goal of the drive was to get as many young people involved as possible, whether they are going to vote or become election judges. “Getting students registered injects a lot of young blood into the process,” Zelaya ex-plained.

These registration drives raise some confusion as to who is old enough to vote in which elections. According to Russell, in the state of Maryland teenagers can register and vote in the primary election in April as long as they are going to be 18 by the general election on Nov. 8, 2016, but it is different in Takoma Park city elections. “In lo-cal Takoma Park elections you can be 16 years old to vote and to reg-ister,” Russell said.

Yilma and Russell reported that all students needed to register was either the last 4 digits of their so-cial security number or their driv-er’s license or permit.

PROMOTE THE VOTE Young Democrats member Jonah Thompson registers voters.

Representatives from Google visited Blair on Nov. 31 and Dec. 1 to showcase the new Google Expeditions program that utilizes the innovative Google Cardboard virtual reality technology to con-nect students in the classroom to the outside world. Social studies teacher Morgan Rich’s application to their program prompted the visit.

The representatives brought sets of the Google Expeditions technology, which features a phone inside of cardboard lenses, to show students and teachers how virtual reality works and to promote the usage of new innovations in the classroom. They operated out of the media center for two days, and teachers brought their classes to the library to view three dimen-sional images of places around the world.

Most students were entertained, and junior Pedraam Faridjoo said he enjoyed seeing images of Peru, Africa, Jordan, and a Chinese na-tional park from a new point of view. “It was really interesting to see the world from a different per-spective, especially in places that the average person wouldn’t go to.” Junior Fatoumata Sy appreci-ated the chance to see places stu-dents may never be able to visit, like the Great Wall of China and the tallest building in Dubai. “It’s cool because some people who

Representatives from Google present students with innovative learning toolsGoogle Expeditions promotes new educational virtual reality

By Grady Jakobsberg

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

PEERING INTO ANOTHER WORLD Google Expeditions virtual reality presentations show students Google Cardboard, a fascinating tool that allows students to look around as if they are in a different place.

cannot afford to travel can [use Google Expeditions],” she said.

Google Expeditions in still in the early stages of produc-tion, but it is being marketed to educators as an alternative to tra-ditional classroom technologies. Christina Dorset, a contractor for Google, said that Expeditions pro-vides a new and exciting way for students to learn. “The Google Cardboard is for… anything, but the Expeditions is more toward the education side,” she said. “The main thing they were looking for is an alternative to just a PowerPoint or a video, another mental stimula-tion.”

She also explained that the technology is helpful for students who cannot afford to go on exotic � eld trips. “The second aspect of it is actually for virtual � eld trips. We were at a school and a Span-ish teacher was taking her kids to Peru the next year, but there are a lot of kids who are � nancially un-able to take those � eld trips,” Dor-set said. She added that the new enhancements to Expeditions will make virtual � eld trips even more accurate. “It’s nice that we have this opportunity to make it so real. And the technology, since it’s ad-vancing more over the next couple of months, it will be even more re-alistic.”

Rich applied for the Expedi-tions program after reading about it in an article from The New York Times. “I saw it on The New York

Times and I clicked it and it was like ‘Ap-ply for them to come to your school,’” she said. Rich knew her students would be intrigued by the op-portunity to experi-ence virtual reality. “I

thought it looked really cool. Any-time I see something that the kids will be very interested in, I’m all about it,” she said.

Rich said that the group aspect of Expeditions and the relation to the curriculum also prompted her to apply. “I had already heard of virtual reality stuff, and then I saw that…it would be related to the whole lesson plan and I thought the kids would be really interested by it.”

Rich applied for the program in October and heard back from Ex-peditions in mid- November. She was in contact with them for about two weeks to negotiate the logis-tics and plan their visit.

Expeditions is not available for

By Alexandra Marquez

CALEB BAUMAN

This story is accompa-nied by a video by BNC. To see the video, scan the code to the left with a QR reader app, or use the URL below.

WWW.VIMEO.COM/SILVERCHIPS/CARDBOARD

December 17, 2015 Newssilverchips A3Board of Education implements signi� cant revisions to county policiesFinal exams and additional Chromebook rollout are among policies affected

burden, I think, signi� cantly.”Although the PARCC exams are a ma-

jor testing event during the school year, the county does not have the discretion to adjust them. “Unfortunately, PARCC tests are state and federally mandated so we don’t have a choice but to take them,” Ortman-Fouse said. The Board has paid close attention to how the new quarterly assessments will co-exist with the PARCC. “As long as we are taking [the PARCC], we want to make sure that we are not duplicating the testing that is being addressed with the PARCC,” Ortman-Fouse said.

In developing this new policy, the Board’s goal was to focus on administering more meaningful assessments to prepare students for college. “We need to prepare our students for all types of assessments, not just the multiple choice and essay,” Ortman-Fouse said. “Other types of assessments that [students] are going to need to be prepared for in college are papers and research proj-ects.”

A major concern for the Board was the stress students might experience from tak-ing multiple tests in a short period of time. “We de� nitely don’t want the last week of the quarter to be like exam week,” Ortman-Fouse said. Unlike the current exam week, the new form of cumulative assessments will be administered across a longer pe-riod of time. “Teachers will have a selected amount of time to give the assessments and the teacher teams will determine when and how long those are for the different cours-es,” Ortman-Fouse said.

Board updates MCPS policies

According to “MCPS Policies and Regu-lations: Start to Finish,” the of� cial policy- and regulation-making procedure of the Board, consists of a series of edits based on feedback. The Board does not have an of� -cial procedure for revising policies. Accord-ing to a drafted timeline of the revisions pro-cess for Policy IKA, the revision removing � nal exams was set to go through the complete policy-making procedure starting on July 30.

When revis-ing Policy IKA, the Board used the same of� cial procedure that is in place for creat-ing new policies. First, the Board Policy Manage-ment Committee or the designated responsible of� ce (RO) identi� es the need for a policy. This must happen before the Department of Policies, Records, and Re-porting (DPRR) can draft the policy.

Before voting on the � nal decision for the IKA revision, the Board asked for teacher, student and parent feedback on the propos-al. According to a Board survey regarding the policy, over 90 percent of teacher respon-dents were against the elimination of � nal exams.

According to Montgomery County Edu-cation Association (MCEA) union president Christopher Lloyd, many teachers feel that their feedback was ignored by the Board.

“Teachers feel like, ‘Wait a minute. We gave you this input. We recognize we’re not al-ways going to get what we want, but we don’t even see in the decision that you heard what we had to say,’” Lloyd said.

Lloyd believes that the disregard for teachers’ input will discourage them from participating in polls in the future. “A lot of teachers go, ‘Well then, why do I want to participate in any poll or survey the next time because what does it matter? No one’s listening to me anyway,’” he said.

According to English Department Head Vickie Adamson, English classes are cur-rently taking similar quarterly assessments in the � rst and third marking periods. How-ever, Adamson is concerned that if the Board were to only create one assessment for each course, like the current English assessments, it will be unfair for on-level students. “We only have one quarter assessment that both

Honors and on-level students take,” Adam-son said. “The average score [for Honors classes] was a B+, whereas the average on-level score was a D. If I’m only giving one assessment and they all have to be weighed the same, is that a penalty for the on-level students who have to take the same test?”

Developing quarterly assessments

According to Guerci, the county quarter-ly assessments will be created by Montgom-ery County central of� ces as well as school-

based teacher teams, in order to ensure that the assessments are properly aligned to the curriculum. “For each course, a team of teachers will work with central of� ces to create exams,” Guerci said. He added that feedback from teachers, students, and par-ents brought the Board to their decision that teachers should have input on the new tests.

By placing the new assessments at the end of each quarter, the Board intends for teachers to give feedback to students while they are still taking those classes. “These ex-ams will be given back to the staff and stu-dents so you can see what you did wrong and the teacher can see what learning gaps

there were so information can be retaught,” Ortman-Fouse said. According to the MCPS web-site, the Board is taking time to “evaluate the feedback” before deciding how students’ semester grades will be calculated under the revised policy.

Because all assessments will be developed centrally, the Board will be able to collect data on these tests, allowing the county to adjust curricula in response to trends in scores. “We are going to be collecting the data [from the assessments] to help us make sure the curriculum is solid,” Ortman-Fouse said.

According to Guerci, the Board hopes that this new assessment policy will help the county iden-tify effective strategies at speci� c schools that can then be imple-

from BOARD page A1

mented at other schools as well. “It’s about measuring how can we [get data] that we can speci� cally target student interventions with,” Guerci said. According to Guerci, the Board also hopes the new quarterly as-sessments will be embedded in the regular classroom process, therefore not disturb-ing classroom instruction as much as � nal exams. “Testing is less of an event now,” Guerci said.

Halting the Chromebook rollout

The revision to Policy IKA is not the only major change the Board has implemented within the past few months. The Chrome-book program that was set to continue this year has been cut off as of June, according to an MCPS press release. The Chromebooks were originally implemented to provide schools computers to take the PARCC as-sessments.

MCPS has cancelled plans for the Chromebook rollout that was supposed to continue at the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year, leaving grades two, four and seven, as well as high school English classes that were promised Chromebooks without the technology.

The county cites a budget crisis as the rea-son for cutting the $3 million that was sup-posed to be allocated towards the purchase of more Chromebooks in the 2016 operating budget. “Right now we’re in sort of budget-ary nowhere. We don’t know if there’s [go-ing to] be further rollout,” said social stud-ies department head Mary Thornton. As of Nov. 16, the Board requested a $1.73 billion six-year Capital Improvements Program

which includes “an additional $17 million, above the approved CIP, in the Technology Modernization project to fund new technol-ogy purchases, [and] continue the Chrome-book rollout plan over the next six years,”

according to an MCPS press release.About 40,000 new Chromebooks came

into Montgomery County schools for the 2014-2015 school year as a result of the school board’s efforts to bring 100,000 new electronic devices into schools by 2018 at the cost of $15 million dollars.

Funding for the program was spread be-tween the 2015 Operating Budget, the six-year Capital Improvements Program, and the Federal Education Rate (E-Rate) pro-gram, according to MCPS. The � rst stage of this technology initiative involved dis-tributing Chromebooks to the third, � fth, and sixth grades, along with high school social studies classes. Social studies classes received the � rst round of Chromebooks because that department was the quickest to write a proposal for the new technology, according to Thornton.

English 10 and Algebra classes received the Chromebooks because PARCC tests are administered in those subjects, and having Chromebooks in those classes during the school year allows students to practice com-puter literacy in preparation for the PARCC examinations, according to English Depart-ment Head Vickie Adamson. The PARCC test must be taken via computers.

Despite wide-spread teacher re-sistance to the new tests, the Chrome-books will contin-ue to be used for this purpose come testing season in the spring. “All of the decisions to get the Chromebooks in the � rst place-were made from the wrong moti-vation [to provide computers for the

PARCC, a test] which literally no teacher supports,” said Keith Anderson, English teacher and MCEA union Representative

According to Adamson, teachers in the department who were promised the Chromebooks for the start of this school year feel as if they have been shorthanded. “We had been gearing up and we had been prom-ised this technology, and teachers are al-ready switching things to Google and trying to use Google Classroom,” said Adamson. The county has already rewritten curricula in response to the new technology, but with-out the promised Chromebooks they cannot follow through, according to Thornton. “All of the major curricula have been rewritten to go with this technology, and now our STEM folk are sitting there with the old laptops – they don’t have the Chromebooks,” she said.

If MCPS does not complete its plan for the next wave of Chromebooks to be sent to schools, Blair’s Chromebook carts will have to be shifted around between classes dur-ing the upcoming school year, according to Anderson. This means that teachers cannot count on having the Chromebooks in their classrooms if they did not book the Chrome-books in advance.

The widespread availability of the Chromebooks allows for more improvisa-tion and spontaneity as a teacher, according to Anderson. “It means that you can impro-vise a lot more as a teacher,” he said. “If I suddenly decide that this class, in this mo-ment, really needs to see or read this article... instead of having to photocopy all of those things and having to plan that beforehand I can simply say, ‘Take out the Chromebooks.”DAWSON DO

DAWSON DO

CALEB BAUMAN

ONLINE CLASSROOMS Chromebooks were given to English 10, Algebra, and social studies classes last year. Plans to distribute more Chromebooks next year were cancelled.

“All of the decisions to get the Chrome-books in the � rst

place were made from the wrong motivation, [to provide comput-ers for the PARCC, a

test] which literally no teacher supports.”

- Keith Anderson

“The average score [for Honors classes] was a B+, whereas the average on-level

score was a D.”

- Vickie Adamson

MONTGOMERY COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION

MONTGOMERY COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION

Newsbriefs

December 17, 2015 A4 News silverchips

Students, staff, and alumni created ceramic bowls in Decem-ber to raise money for the Manna Food Center as part of Blair’s � rst Empty Bowls program. The Empty Bowls Project is an inter-national grassroots movement to raise awareness and funds in the � ght to end hunger. Communities across the world participate by supporting local food-related char-ities. The participants in the event at Blair are involved in creating, glazing, and � ring ceramic bowls.

According to ceramics teach-er Amanda Wall, the ongoing event is open to all members of the Blair community. “Right now we are in the bowl making stage,” she said. “Anyone who wants to help out is welcome.”

The bowls will be sold at a fund-raiser in March and attendees will buy a bowl and use it to eat a meal at the event. The proceeds from the fundraiser will be donated to Manna Food Center in Gaithers-burg to support the � ght against hunger in Montgomery County.

Takoma Park City Council accepts Syrian refugees

Ceramics teachers organize Empty Bowls campaign

Newsbriefs compiled byAlice Park

Students host weeklong dialogue on race Discussion focuses on exposing racial injustices

On Nov. 30, the City Council of Takoma Park passed the Welcoming Syrian Refugees Resolution in one of its � rst votes since being elected to of� ce. The decision re� ected the community’s willingness to accept refugees who have been approved to enter the country. Councilmem-ber Rizzy Qureshi introduced the Resolution to reaf� rm the city’s “commitment to remain a place of sanctuary and a safe haven for refugees from around the world.”

According to Takoma Park Mayor Kate Stewart, the city wanted to add its voice to oppose the incendiary language of politi-cians who have openly rejected admitting refugees. “It’s poison-ous to our community to have this type of rhetoric,” Stewart said. “I think it’s important for other lead-ers to stand up and to reaf� rm…that we are welcoming not only to Syrian refugees but to immi-grants from all parts of the world.”

Physical education (P.E.) class-es have been experiencing over-crowding in the past few years due to budget cuts and staff realloca-tion. The rising number of students in each P.E. section raised concerns about class quality and safety.

According to P.E. resource teacher Robert McMahon, an opti-mal P.E. class size would be around 32 or 33 students, but classes this year commonly contain between 34 and 37. The largest P.E. class this semester contains 40 students.

P.E. classes have been fac-ing overcrowding for several years now, according to McMa-hon. “It’s not really one year from another, it’s the last several years,” he said.“It’s just an in-� ux of students at Blair; it’s get-ting more and more crowded.”

McMahon said that part of the reason for over� owing P.E. classes is that gym classes are the easiest place to put students who begin school late in the semes-ter. “There’s not a lot of leeway as to where kids can go when they come in in the middle of the year… Common sense [says that] if there’s no desk for a kid, you can’t put a kid in a classroom. However, there are no desks… in P.E., so oftentimes the kids that come in the middle of the year get put in these classes,” he said.

Administrator Peter Ostrander agreed that P.E. is the best place to put latecomers. “If they’re coming in late in the semester, the counselor needs to make a choice,” he said. “Is it easier for them to catch up in a foreign lan-

guage class, which they haven’t even started yet, or in P.E.?” Ac-cording to Ostrander, P.E. usu-ally seemed the simplest answer.

A big problem with large class sizes, McMa-hon said, is that teachers strug-gle to involve all the students. Dif� culties arise in allowing all students to par-ticipate in the physical activi-ties of the class, but can also manifest itself in other activi-ties. The Com-mon Core cur-riculum states that teachers should aim to engage students in reading and writing, includ-ing in elective classes like P.E., a task which is complicated by large class sizes. “The kids don’t get as much bene� t [and] activ-ity time,” McMahon said. “We don’t get to do as much stuff as we might be able to do to try to implement new Common Core les-sons, to get more P.E. literature.”

McMahon also mentioned safety as a possible concern, but added that the gyms are gener-ally big enough to accommo-date larger numbers of students. “We’re not really as bad as it could be this semester,” he said. “But I think people are more worried about next semester.”

Ostrander said that teachers

can � nd ways to work around the large class size. “We have some really good P.E. teachers,” he said. “They are supervis-ing their classes very well, and

when that’s done, the safety is-sues that are caused by having more students aren’t as extreme.”

Freshman Nina Kalegi said that her P.E. Soccer class was crowded, but problems only arose on rainy days when the class was forced inside. “It’s too overcrowded, so we waste a lot of time try-ing to � gure out how we’re go-ing to play in the small gym. That’s really dif� cult,” she said.

McMahon understood the rea-sons behind placing more students in P.E. classes, but would like to see the numbers drop. “We’re just like everyone else,” McMahon said. “We’d like to have the same amount of students [as other classes do].

If you have 32 in one class, why should… we have [more than] 32 just because we don’t have chairs?”

However, McMahon and Os-trander both believed that the

large class sizes are not easily recti� ed. Over the past several years, MCPS slashed teach-ing positions in order to ac-c o m m o d a t e budget cuts, Ostrander said.

According to Ostrander, in 2010, the coun-ty increased the maximum class size from 28 to 29 students for English classes and from 32 to 33 students in other classes,

but other changes have also im-pacted student to teacher ratios. “Last year the county formula for how staf� ng was given to schools was changed a little bit,” Os-trander said. “In that change we saw less staf� ng per student than we may have seen in years past.”

In June, the Board of Educa-tion approved a budget which will eliminate more than 380 staff posi-tions for the 2016-2017 school year, meaning that the issue of large class sizes is unlikely to resolve itself.

In the meantime, there re-mains little that the P.E. depart-ment can do. “We’re just chart-ing the numbers and trying to learn from it,” McMahon said.

The Science National Honors Society (SNHS) organized an Hour of Code event on Dec. 10, 11 and 14. Members of the club led one-hour computer science tutorials in class-rooms to expand participation in computer science to students who have never been exposed to cod-ing. Hour of Code, created by non-pro� t Code.org, aims to “increase participation by women and un-derrepresented students of color.”

According to SNHS presi-dent Ramya Durvasula, teachers requested an SNHS member to teach the coding tutorials to their classes. “There are a lot of students who just haven’t been exposed to [computer science] because they haven’t taken any programming classes,” Durvasula said. “Mostly we advertised it to the science and math departments, and we asked the language teachers be-cause there’s a lot more under-represented groups in the lan-guage and ESOL departments.”

Over 200 students partici-pated in the event and learned the applications of computer sci-ence and basic concepts of cod-ing through online tutorials.

Physical education classes face overcrowding

By Julian Bregstone and Alice Park

Large class sizes cause concerns for safety and quality

Students attended a forum organized by members of Kevin Shindel’s ninth period CAP Re-search Methods class to discuss topics relating to race and racism during the week of Nov. 16. The dialogue was held in response to recent protests at college cam-puses over race relations, but dis-cussed racism in the Blair com-munity and around the world.

According to Shindel, students in his CAP and National, State, and Local Government (NSL) classes wanted to facilitate discus-sion between people of different backgrounds. “Looking around the room, we recognized an ex-treme lack of diversity among us,” Shindel said. “We thought we needed to open up the discussion.”

Sophomore Marta Kebede, a student in Shindel’s NSL class, said the forum aimed to raise aware-ness of racial issues that have not been addressed suf� ciently. “I real-ly want people [to become] aware of the racism in this school, any-thing... from stereotypes to cultur-al appropriation,” she explained.

Around 80 students attended the � rst two days of the forum. Shindel emphasized the impor-tance of building relationships with new students throughout the week. “Social change comes out of social relations, and that’s really the only way social change starts. When people have social ties, they don’t want to see the people they are tied to treated unjustly,” he said.

Students led discussions in small groups on issues includ-ing cultural appropriation, ste-reotypes of minorities, activism

Science National Honors Society hosts Hour of Code

party in the media center on Nov. 20.The discussion intended to

provide everyone in the school with the opportunity to gain in-sights from others’ views. “It was particularly important to me that everyone who showed up ben-e� t from the experience,” Shindel said. “I didn’t want it to be some self-serving thing to bring out-side perspectives to a homoge-neous class so that the class would learn and understand more.”

Senior Claudia Allou believed the forum drew a diverse group of students to share their opinions. “I honestly thought it was going to be a lot of CAP students, but I was impressed by the turnout of the rest of the school,” she said.

Sophomore Jennifer Garcia ap-preciated that students of different backgrounds came to voice their thoughts, rather than just white students describing racism. “Even though there [were] mostly white people, there was a lot more diver-sity coming in,” Garcia said. “That was really nice because a lot of peo-ple were thinking that this was just going to be a bunch of white peo-ple ‘whitesplaining’ everything.”

According to Allou, a group of students plan on creating a club to continue the discussion of racial issues. “Our goal is just to make sure that the conversation doesn’t stop after one week,” Allou said.

Bishop hopes that opening the conversation on racism will push students to build more so-cial diversity. “People self-segre-gating [is] a huge issue. I just feel like already at Blair, there’s a lot of liberal people, so… we need to challenge ourselves to actu-ally make a change,” Bishop said.

forum on Thursday, Nov. 19. Stu-dent representatives from City at Peace, a local non-pro� t organiza-tion, led a diversity workshop for students in a separate room. Bish-op and seniors Amanda Feinberg and Neida Mbuia-Joao directed a “stand and declare” where stu-dents stood when they heard a statement that applied to them.

According to Feinberg, the ac-

tivity allowed students to share their experiences with oppression. “The statements were designed to show… how racism is taught and how it affects people,” she said.

The remaining students at the forum on Nov. 19 split into groups of six or seven and had open discussions on racial issues. The discussions were student-led and covered similar topics from the � rst two days of the forum.

The dialogue culminated with a

through social media, the Black Lives Matter movement, diver-sity of Blair Theatre, and the use of violence to create change.

On Nov. 18, Tiffany Flowers, an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement, visited to share her ex-perience in Ferguson, Missouri. She travelled to Ferguson to help pro-testers and to document the events following Michael Brown’s death.

Flowers displayed tweets from the planning behind the trip and discussed her experiences in Fer-guson. After her presentation, stu-dents had the opportunity to ask questions and stay after the end of ninth period to speak with her.

For sophomore Iyanu Bish-op, Flowers’ visit was the high-light of the forum. “That was amazing. It just opened my eyes even more,” she said.

Over 100 students attended the

GUEST SPEAKER Tiffany Flowers, a Black Lives Matter activ-ist, shares her experience covering protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

COURTESY OF SARAH FILLMAN

By Aditi Shetty

FULL TO THE BRIM Emanuel Charles’ ninth period P.E. class, one of Blair’s severely overcrowded P.E. classes, has 40 students.

CADENCE PEARSON

hats rule, said he now supports the reasoning for allowing students to wear hats in school following the instatement of the policy. “If I could go back over the 15 years of my ca-reer and give back all the time that I spent getting kids to take off their hats instead of just thanking them

for coming to school, even with a hat, I could have used that time in a much more productive way,” Cau-ley said.

However, there are still some people who are hesitant about the change. French teacher Lucie Aus-tin allows her students to wear hats in compliance with the school pol-icy, but still believes that students should not wear hats indoors. “I think boys should know that it’s common practice to uncover your head when you enter a building, so I don’t necessarily like seeing people with hats on indoors, but I think in some ways it has solved the problem of people wearing a

hat at school just to defy the rules,” Austin said.

Another policy that has met varied reactions is the cell phone charging policy. Johnson sent out an email on Oct. 26 to notify the staff that students are not allowed to charge their cell phones in class-

rooms in order to prevent the theft of unattended electronic devices. “Kids are charging their phones, they get busy, they forget, they go to the next class. But then their teacher also � oats to another classroom on another � oor. But the phone is left, and it gets lost or stolen,” Johnson said.

According to Cauley, the policy was also created to address the possible distraction that charging phones can provide. “When the phone is unattended it provides an opportunity for something to hap-pen to the phone, and if you don’t have an apparatus to protect it then you will be distracted as a student

A recent radon report from MCPS showed that 28 of 202 MCPS schools have reported el-evated radon levels, according to NBC Washington. Local radio sta-tion WTOP-FM reported that these elevated levels of radon were dis-covered in 2012.

Radon is a colorless and odor-less gas that, according to the En-vironmental Protection Agency (EPA), is a cancer causing agent. The EPA recommends taking ac-tion if indoor levels of radon reach 4 picocuries per liter of air (pCi/L) or higher.

Springbrook High School radon levels of 9.8PCi/L. According to the EPA, radon enters buildings by holes and cracks in infrastructure through the breakdown of urani-um found in most soils.

In December of 2015, MCPS re-leased an of� cial list on their web-site of 26 schools to be retested for elevated radon levels. Action to correct these radon levels will be taken based on the results of the second � ndings.

In their of� cial statement, the county stated that the elevated ra-don levels “do not present an im-mediate safety hazard to students and staff.” MCPS will be working with the EPA to develop and im-plement a radon monitoring pro-gram in schools.

Montgomery County Public Schools are facing two lawsuits � led by � ve students after an ac-cident in September 2014 in which a Springbrook custodian acciden-tally sprayed the cleaning solution Virex II 256 on the varsity foot-ball team uniforms. As many as 40 teenagers on the team suffered from chemical burns, according to local news station WJLA DC. Ac-cording to The Washington Post, the disinfectant, which is used as a cleaning solution for � oors and walls, warns that it is harmful to skin.

Attorney Bruce Plaxen, repre-senting the football players seeking monetary compensation, called the case one of “colossal stupidity.” The burns left many of the players with pink colored � esh and some extensive chemical burns, accord-ing to WJLA DC .

According to WJLA, graduated Springbrook football player Jordan Gillespie alleged that the chemical burns most likely cost him an ath-letic football scholarship to college. The two lawsuits are seeking over $75,000 in damages.

High levels of radon in some MCPS schools

Newsbriefs

December 17, 2015 News A5silverchips

Newsbriefs compiled by Georgina Burros

Springbrook athletes sue MCPS for chemical burns

Bowers proposes 2017 budget after years of underfunding By Cole Sebastian

Interim Superintendent Larry Bowers submitted a $2.45 billion recommended budget for the Fis-cal Year (FY) of 2017 to the Board of Education on Dec. 8, $135 million higher than the FY 2016 Operat-ing Budget. The recommendation comes after a signi� cant decrease in funding from the county since the Great Recession of 2007-2009 despite a large increase in local county tax revenue.

In the of� cial Operating Bud-get, Bowers proposed a 5.8 percent increase compared to the operat-ing budget of FY 2016. The bud-get speci� es that $103 million of the increase is meant to adjust for increasing costs of pre-existing services as a result of increased enrollment, promised improve-ments, rising operation costs, and strategic enhancements. $24 mil-lion of the increase is meant to pay off one-time funding used by the Montgomery County Council to fund the FY 2016 Operating Bud-get. $7.9 million of the increase is meant to pay for a share of the teacher pension fund that has shifted from the state to the county in the past few years.

Bowers said that it is time for the budget to re� ect MCPS’s needs under the current economic situa-tion. “We cannot continue to oper-ate at the funding levels we have received during the past eight years following the economic downturn experienced starting in 2008,” Bowers said in his proposal.

Since 2009, the county local tax revenue has increased by $681 mil-lion while the local funding for MCPS has decreased by $6 million, according to a newsletter from

the Montgomery County Educa-tion Association (MCEA). In other words, there has been a 10 percent decrease in local funding for MCPS and an 8 percent increase in local tax revenue, adjusting for in� ation.

Along with an increase in en-rollment of 19,000 students since 2009, this has caused a 19.5 percent decrease in the amount of money the county spends per student, according to data released by the MCEA.

The budget is ultimately de-cided by the county council, based on the recommended budget proposed by the superintendent. MCEA union president Christo-pher Lloyd said that with the $681 million increase in local revenue the county council should be able to allocate more money to the school system. “We believe that… [the county] could afford to actually fund schools more and, in addition, other county services more and that has not happened in a way that we would expect,” he said.

As a result of the decreased funding from the county council and increased health insurance rates nationwide, employees will have to pay a larger share of their health insurance. Ac-cording to Tom Israel, executive director of the MCEA, teachers will have to pay a four percent larger share of their insurance premium as of this coming Jan-uary. This change is meant to ac-commodate the recent increase in health insurance rates of four to seven percent in most medi-cal plan premiums and the 25 percent increase in prescription drug coverage.

There has been a recent in-

crease in the cost of health insur-ance nationwide because of a hep-atitis C treatment that was released this year. The treatment has cost MCPS millions of dollars in health insurance payments. Instead of using the budget to pay for the higher rates, the teachers have to pay for the additional costs. “It’s simply a way of shifting costs from the school system on to employees and it’s certainly made it harder for both teachers and supporting services staff as they’re expected to pay a larger and larger share of their health insurance costs,” Israel said.

Israel does not think that the school system is dividing costs properly. “The teachers’ union and the school system have a long his-

tory of working together on cost containment on how to design incentives into our health plan to hold down costs, but there’s a qualitative difference between cost containment and cost shifting,” he said. “If you’re simply saying, rather than the school system pay-ing so much of the premium, the teachers have to pay more, you’re not doing anything to control the escalating cost.”

According to Lloyd, MCPS em-ployees gave up cost of living ben-e� ts, as a result of the low budget, and saved the county $89 million. Lloyd also said that the allocated budget for the English for Speak-ers of Other Languages (ESOL) department has not kept with the rapidly growing ESOL population.

Staff and students have voiced both approval and disdain for the new hat policy, the new cell phone policy, and the Oct. 26 reminder that a staff member must accom-pany students during after school activities.

On Nov. 10, Principal Renay Johnson informed the school of her decision to allow stu-dents to wear hats in the build-ing. The new policy allows all students to wear hats in school without teachers con� scating them. Hoodies are still not al-lowed.

Johnson decided the hat policy after multiple students approached her about the rule, and after she talked to teachers at Blair and other high school principals about their hat poli-cies. “We have an Instructional Leadership Team, which is all the administrators, and the department chair from every department. So it’s about 30 of us. And the poll went out to them, asking, you know, ‘Should we keep the hat rule in place?’ The majority said, ‘No, it’s no big deal.’ A few said, ‘Yes, keep the hat policy.’ Then I surveyed high school principals,” Johnson said.

Many students have voiced sup-port for the new hat policy and view it as a victory. “I don’t know about other people but when I got really into [the hat policy] ... it didn’t look like it was going to change. It feels really good to change something that I thought was wrong,” sopho-more Lucas Gilkeson, an active pe-titioner on Blair’s hat policy, said.

Some teachers were hesitant to respond about whether they are en-forcing these new policies.

Assistant Principal Dirk Cauley, a longtime proponent for the no-

New school policies met with mixed reactions

to ensure that your property is not being tampered with or being de-stroyed,” Cauley said.

Teachers understand the reason-ing behind this policy, but also can see why students may disagree. “If your phone is on low battery and there’s an outlet just sitting there it

seems pretty mean to be like, ‘No, you can’t charge your phone’. But I am somewhat sympathetic with the policy because for whatever reason people just leave their things behind and they just forget,” math teacher William Rose said.

Johnson also reminded staff of the after school activ-ity policy that states students must be supervised by an-other staff member during an after school activity.

The after school activity policy was created to ensure that students would be accom-panied by an adult at all times and would not create any dis-ruptions to staff members. “I was getting complaints from the evening building services staff. They’d say, ‘Oh there’s a whole bunch of kids under the stairwell down by the P.E.

of� ce.’ or ‘There’s a whole bunch of kids on the third � oor and they’re not accompanied and they’re mak-ing a mess,’” Johnson said.

Teachers that sponsor after school activities such as clubs un-derstand the reasoning behind this policy, but also run into dif� culty abiding by it. “The policy with the Green Club provides a signi� cant challenge because ... there’s fre-quently different groups of students moving throughout the school and I’m working with the leadership in that club to better abide by the policies, but it’s a signi� cant chal-lenge,” Peter Cirincione, faculty co-sponsor of the Green Club, said.

Staff and students respond to hat, charger, after-school rules

CALEB BAUMAN

By Brianna Forté

The French Honor Society, the Global Culture Club, the French Youth Ambassadors, and the Mus-lim Student Association are orga-nizing a letter drive to Maryland Governor Larry Hogan to call for the admittance of Syrian refugees. Senior Margaret Brown, president of the French Honor Society, hopes students can become more actively involved in the refugee crisis by participating in the letter drive.

The initiative will be held for a few days during both lunches before winter break along Blair Boulevard. Blazers will also have the opportunity to sign a peti-tion to Governor Hogan, urg-ing him to reconsider his Nov. 17 statement that requested that the U.S. government cease set-tling Syrian refugees in Maryland.

Blair clubs lead letter drive for Syrian Refugees

Local funding per student has decreased by

19.5%

Fiscal Year

2016

Local per student spending

of $12,470adjusting for in�ation.

Local per student spending

of $10,044

since 2009, adjusting for in�ation.

Fiscal Year

2009COLE SEBASTIAN

SAY HELLO TO HATS Seniors Ben Alsberg and Marcus Hayes proud-ly wear their hats in style thanks to the recent change in the hat policy.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

Look around at lunch and you will likely see academic dishon-esty everywhere. At one table, a freshman whispers the topic of an upcoming test essay to his friend. Turn around, and a senior furiously copies math worksheet answers from a glowing photo on her phone. When I visited the SAC looking for students to interview for this article, one boy went as far as to (loudly) tell me, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying!” He followed up his out-burst by elaborating—“Everyone cheats. One hundred percent.”

Yet, when students are asked if they consider actions such as copying homework and spread-ing test topics to be forms of cheating, they might say no. Stu-dents must take into account the ethical issues with minor cheat-ing, as this practice is dishonest, impedes learning, and leads to peer pressure.

Dr. Teresa Fishman, Director of the International Center for Aca-demic Integrity, said that many students that cheat fail to see the error of their ways. “They often don’t consider the consequences of those actions, or think they are ‘serious’ violations,” she said.

Sophomore Alexandra Happy said that she does not consider copying homework to be academ-ically dishonest and is unsure if telling a friend about quiz topics constitutes cheating. According to junior Sean Tan, many Blaz-ers cheat out of laziness. “We

purpose, is meant to help students practice new skills and prepare for assessments. It makes sense that students that complete homework are more likely to understand top-ics from class than their peers who copy it.

So, even if a student does not get caught for minor academic

dishonesty, he or she will still suffer the consequences from it—whether that is a worse test or quiz grade or a weaker understand of the material. Teach-

ers might be offended by cheating, but in the end, it is the student that cheats who will be hurt the most.

Cheating can also damage personal relationships. Often, for a student to get homework answers or test topics, they need a friend to supply the necessary informa-tion—and that friend might not be so ecstatic about handing over his or her hard-earned work.

Montgomery Blair High School 51 University Boulevard East

Silver Spring, MD 20901 Phone: (301) 649-2864

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Association Pacemaker

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Gold Crown

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Unsigned editorials represent the views of the editorial board and are not necessarily those of the school. Signed letters to the editor are encouraged.

Submit your letter to Jeremy Stelzner’s mailbox in the main office, to room 158 or to silver.chips.print@gmail.com. Concerns about Silver Chips’

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silverchipsDecember 17, 2015 Opinions silverchipsB1

Minor cheating is still a major problemA closer look at secondary cheating and its consequences

A walk in the woods for our screen-obsessed teensReintroducing outdoor education at the high school level

don’t like to think of ourselves as cheaters, but a lot of us do [cheat] because it’s easier than putting the work in,” he said.

Even if students do not con-sider them to be cheating, copying homework, passing down lab notebooks, and spreading test topics are all. in fact, forms of dis-honesty. The University of Mary-land Honor Council defines cheating as, “fraud, deceit, or dishonesty in...an attempt to gain an unfair advan-tage.” By this description, academic dishonesty can range from a seemingly in-nocuous text from a friend explaining a surprise in-class essay prompt to the circulation of photos of a test to an entire class. One of these should not be viewed as more harmful than the other.

A survey by former Rutgers University profes-sor Dennis McCabe states that approximately 95 percent of high school students have, at one point, chosen to engage in some form of academic dishonesty. According to social studies teacher Morgan Rich, cheating at Blair is a normal-ity rather than an exception. “It’s become part of the culture, the school culture,” she said.

Beyond its ethical implications, minor cheating also hurts students themselves by impeding learn-ing. Homework, if assigned with

By Grady JakobsbergAn opinion

During the outdoor education field trip, MCPS sixth graders retire to the woods for a three-day excursion of learning, social-izing, and having fun. It is a fond memory for high schoolers and a point of excitement for rising middle schoolers. So why can’t high schoolers have the same experience?

Like sixth graders, it is com-mon for freshmen to come into their new school with-out many friends, needing an opportunity to bond with their classmates. Through outdoor educa-tion, high schoolers could connect with their peers, experience the environ-ments that they are learn-ing about in their science classes, or benefit from simply being outside.

One option could be to bring the entire ninth grade and have them engage in similar bonding activities that incom-ing sixth graders do to make friends, like capture the flag or a camp fire. Often, students at-tend different high schools than their friends from middle school and it may initially be tough to find a new friend group. The outdoor education program for middle schoolers aims to bridge this social transition; a similar program can be carried over to high school.

Brian Shilling, an outdoor education teacher at the Lathrop E. Smith Environmental Educa-tion Center in Rockville, says that socializing with other students is a prominent part of the program. “Part of the experience is the education and the other part of

the program is team-building and social skills, learning to work with, eat with, [and] sleep with other students (this sounds very sexual),” he explains.

An outdoor environmental education program for high schoolers is also a great way to get kids outside. We have gradually transformed

into an indoor society; running around outside was once the go-to past time of children everywhere, but now we get home from school and immediately switch on the TV.

Our society’s lack of outdoor time is not just something that tech-shaming hipsters are claim-ing. According to the National Wilderness Federation, each day the average American child spends as few as 30 minutes in unstructured outdoor play and more than seven hours in front of an electronic screen. This is half as much time as kids spent outside 20 years ago according to a study by the University of Michigan. By bringing high schoolers on a fun-filled nature experience, outdoor education would reintroduce the value of the outdoors.

Outdoor time also comes with plenty of legitimate health ben-efits. According to CRC Health, a treatment organization for a number of disorders, direct and extended contact with nature can have positive psychological and physical effects. “Benefits include stress reduction, a sense of coher-ence and belonging, improved self-confidence and self-discipline, and a broader sense of commu-

nity,” the organization wrote on their website. These are

the types of improve-ments that school administrators and teachers hope for.

The main con-cern for high school outdoor education is simply the logistics of organizing such a huge endeavor. Espe-cially at Blair, where the freshman class size is close to 1,000, organizing the entire

grade on a three-day trip would be incredibly hard, not to mention getting MCPS approval.

To Shilling, the only solution to such a problem would be to break the class up. “[Bring kids in] smaller groups, not the entire ninth grade on the trip, just a few classes, and also people that are really interested in going on the trip,” Shilling explained.

Taking students who are cur-rently enrolled in certain science classes would still allow them to meet new people, while also experiencing the subjects they are learning about in class. For example, students taking biology could attempt to find and study the different types of organisms in the ecosystem around them. The true value of outdoor education would be revealed with its con-nection between the program and the in-class content.

Lastly, according to the Nation-al Wilderness Federation, schools with outdoor education programs statistically do better on stan-dardized tests. Our standardized test-crazed county should be able to realize that outdoor education for high schoolers is healthy and educationally worth the cost.

Editors-in-Chief: Eleanor Harris and Amanda WesselManaging News Editors:Reva Kreeger and Anna O’DriscollManaging Op/Ed Editors:Winne Luo andMaris MedinaManaging Features Editors:Camille Kirsch andEmma SolerManaging Entertainment Editors:Mariam Jiffar andLuisa McGarveyManaging Sports Editors:Sam Butler andCamille EstrinOmbudsman:Camille KirschNewsbriefs Editor:Daliah BargExecutive Business Director:Maddie BoyerBusiness Staff:Gerrit AntonisseMarianne BenyaminElizabeth CoveRudi ElienJoe EstrinAnna HukillJoe MaherSusanna MaistoAnna ReachmackAdina RombroChristine WanAriel ZhangPage Editors:Julian BrownGeorgina BurrosDawson DoJoshua FernandesBrianna FortéSarah HutterGrady JakobsbergAlexandra MarquezChristian MussendenAlice ParkNiki PatelTeague SauterCole SebastianAditi ShettyLa Esquina Latina Editors-in-Chief:Camila FernándezMario MenéndezGisell RamírezLa Esquina Latina Writers:Emily BarreroKarla BlancioAlisson FortisCarlos FuentesIlcia HernandezOdalis LlerenaAndrés PérezManaging Photo Editor:Chimey SonamPhotographers:Caleb BaumanBen DoggettChaminda HangilipolaSiddhartha HarmalkarCadence PearsonGriffin ReillyBrennan WinerManaging Art Editors:Candia Gu andVictoria TsaiArtists:Edgar BlancoKendall DelileLindsay HarrisNazea KhanKevin León-MatuteOdalis LlerenaShivani MattikalliAlexandra MendivilMeghna SambathkumarRosemary SolomonNahom TedlaAngel WenPuzzle Editor:Julian BregstoneCopy Editors:Ari Goldbloom-Helzner andEthan HollandLa Esquina Latina Advisor: Dianette CoombsAdvisor:Jeremy Stelzner

By Emma SolerAn opinion

Do you think we should have outdoor education in high school?

“I hated that experience and left the first night. I guess that it could be something students

can take a vote on.”- Sebastian Evangelista, freshman

“We should have outdoor education in high school because for every middle schooler it

was the highlight of their year. It was all everybody talked about.”- Krystine White, junior

soapbox

Because of the casual culture that surrounds cheating, a stu-dent who is asked for his or her work or a test’s topics is expected to comply. If not, he or she will likely face a barrage of questions, such as, “Why not? I would give it to you. What’s wrong with you?”

Thus, an overused and dreaded catch phrase—peer pres-sure—arises. To avoid social sui-cide, damaged relationships, and overall awkwardness, the student will begrudgingly open his or her backpack, slide out a folder, and relinquish last night’s two-hour

long Calculus practice prob-lems—even though the student

does not want to hand over his or her academ-ic integrity.

According to Fish-man, students may cast

a blind eye towards the moral implications of their cheating because they are more con-cerned with their social status. “Stu-dents in high school

and junior high school often want to be accepted by

their peers much more than they want to adhere to academic in-tegrity standards, and they might not initially see that sharing homework actually hurts their friends, the reputation of their school, and their own integrity,” she said.

All of this is not to dictate each individual person’s choices, but the decision to cheat should be ac-companied by a thought process.

MEGHNA SAM

VICTORIA TSAI

SID HARMALKAR

Should parents agree to monitor teenage drinking parties?

their unsupervised alternatives.Really, the whole idea that parents be-

ing at a party will encourage moderation is misguided. Many cite Europe as having a culture which has succeeded in teach-ing alcohol prudence to young people by providing it in a family setting. However, a plethora of recent research has shown that this “European drinking model” is not as effective as it seems.

For example, according to a study by the European School Survey Project on Alco-hol and Other Drugs, teenagers in many European countries are more likely to binge drink than those in the United States. The study found that in half of European coun-tries surveyed, between one-fifth and one-third of students reported binge drinking in the past 30 days, even though European teens are supposedly taught moderation at a young age. In the United States, slightly more than one-fifth of teenagers reported binge drinking, a lower rate than in about half of European countries polled.

Furthermore, a recent study by a team of Dutch scientists found that the more teens drink at home, the more they will drink elsewhere. Another study at Pennsylva-nia State University found that the more accepting parents are of drinking in high school, the more likely their children are to engage in “risky drinking behaviors” in college.

Both studies agree that the best way for a parent to combat underage drinking is to disapprove of it all together. Monitoring underage drinking parties, then, is certainly not the way to encourage alcohol safety in adolescents.

Parents should monitor and work to limit alcohol consumption in their children. But condoning and normalizing under-age drinking by being present at drinking parties is illegal and morally questionable. Many states, including Maryland, allow parents to provide alcohol to their children in a private residence. This does not, under any circumstance, extend to furnishing alcohol to the children of others. Illicitly providing alcohol to someone else’s child, especially in light of the negative effects of drinking on adolescents, is unethical. And even though Kenneth Saltzman did not technically serve the alcohol at his daugh-ter’s party, his tale is a precautionary one. He is now the center of a massive contro-versy surrounding a parent’s responsibility to intervene in unsafe situations.

Underage alcohol use is endemic and difficult to treat, but research has shown again and again that a parent should not condone it. If there is a short or easy solu-tion to the problem, parent-hosted parties are not it. The Wootton crash serves as a tragic warning of what really happens when parents monitor alcohol parties. In the end, the kids are not alright.

According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), 4,700 people per year are killed due to teen alcohol usage. 4,700 people. This staggering number could come from these minors not having a safe ride home, getting alcohol poisoning from drinking too much, too fast, or just not knowing when enough is enough. Regard-less of the specific situation, a good portion of these 4,700 deaths could have been pre-vented if parents supervised the underage drinking of teenagers at parties.

We’ve all heard this debate before in some form, but have any of us really understood it? I was brought up under the strict idea that underage drinking is one of the most awful things a person can do. It is illegal and bad for your health, and I was constantly told I should not do it. But the fact of the matter is that regardless of what adults say, teenagers will partake in under-age drinking if they want to.

An article published by Professor Ruth C. Engs at Indiana University stated that prohibiting alcohol usage by underage teenagers only increased their desire for it. “Drinking by these youth is seen as an enticing ‘forbidden fruit,’ a ‘badge of rebel-lion against authority’... Prohibition did not work then and prohibition for young people under the age of 21 is not work-ing now.” It is true: underage drinking is inevitable.

Teens everywhere drink, even teens here at Blair—and that is reality. The least adults could do is recognize this behavior and supervise it to make it safer.

According to Health Research Funding (HRF), many states, including Maryland, allow teenagers under the age of 21 to legally consume alcohol as long as the teen has parental permission and is on his or her parent’s property. These laws exist because they are believed to make the underage drinking of teenagers safer. Giving teenag-ers the opportunity to experiment with alcohol use in a safe environment can help prevent dangerous situations from occur-ring in the future.

When teenagers are educated by their parents on how to drink responsibly, alco-hol loses the effect of being a “forbidden fruit.” Many European countries actually allow teenagers to drink before they turn 21. According to Engs’ article, “[In] groups such as Italians, Greeks, Chinese and Jews…Alcohol is neither seen as a poison or a magic potent, there is little or no social pressure to drink…young people learn at home from their parents and from other adults how to handle alcohol in a respon-sible manner.”

As a result of this, drunk driving ac-cidents will become less common because teens will know how to handle the sub-stances they are consuming; their parents will have taught them how to drink respon-

December 17, 2015

voicebox“No, teens should not be drinking at all.”

Diane DaoSophomore

NO:YES:It is illegal for a

good reason.Supervision encourages safety and moderation.

silverchips

Niki Patel

The car was going at least 65 in a 35 mph zone when it launched into the air. The vehicle slammed into two trees and a fence. And in the backseat, two teenag-ers, recent Wootton graduates, died on impact. “We felt invincible,” a surviving passenger would later tell police.

Before the crash, the four students were leaving a party where teens were playing beer pong and drinking vodka, according to a police report obtained by the Washington Post. The host’s father, Kenneth Saltzman, was allegedly at home. Yet, a sober adult was not enough to prevent the tragedy. This story illus-

trates

not just the dan-gers of

underage drinking, but the unnecessary risks that come with a party hosted or monitored by parents.

Underage drinking is dangerous by all measures, but also difficult to entirely eradicate. Adolescent brains are not fully developed until the early twenties and numerous studies have shown that binge drinking at a young age adversely affects memory and spatial reasoning skills. Still, about 11 percent of all alcohol in the U.S. is consumed by underage drinkers.

The idea of parent-hosted drink-ing parties is that the adults can ensure safety. But, Saltzman was at home during the party that preceded the fatal crash. Reportedly, he even joked with a teenager bringing beer into the house and asked the kid if one of the 30-packs was for him.

Of course, Saltzman cannot be held en-tirely at fault for the deaths of the teenage boys. Getting in a car with an intoxicated driver is never an intelligent idea. But, his story shows that parties with parents around are not necessarily any safer than

sibly as opposed to trying to scare them away from alcohol’s potential dangers.

According to MADD, car crashes are the leading cause of death among teens. Most of these accidents involve an under-age, impaired driver. In addition, the Cen-ter for Disease Control and Prevention states that an average of 16,375 teenagers ages 12-19 die in the United States every year; motor vehicle fatality is the lead-ing cause with over one-third of all teen deaths per year.

Adult supervision of underage drink-ing could easily prevent hundreds of drunk driving accidents. For example, if a teenager is drunk and tries to drive home by him or herself, a parent would be able to stop him or her. Parents could help provide safer methods of transpor-tation for all the teen-agers that had been

drinking. Wheth-er it is through calling Uber

and cab drivers or driving the teenagers home themselves, parent supervision of teenage drinking parties would decrease the number of fatalities and accidents caused by drunk driving. Drunk driving is not the root of the irresponsibility that sometimes comes along with teenagers drinking. If it was, the driving age would be 21, not the drinking age. Teenagers can be irresponsible while drinking because they are unsupervised and cannot be stopped from making bad decisions, like drunk driving. If parents supervise teen-age drinking parties, they can make sure that impaired teenagers do not get into cars and drive away.

Now of course I am not advocating for teenagers to go behind their parents’ backs and drink and then blame the repercussions of the decisions they made while inebriated on their parents for fail-ing to supervise them. What I am saying is this: underage drinking is inevitable. And as a community, parents and teenag-ers need to work together to minimize the damage that can be done as a result of it.

Opinions B2

Aditi Shetty

SHIVANI MATTIKALLI

“Yes, be-cause they are kids and other-wise will do crazy stuff.”

Wilson SagubanJunior

Kathryn Mussenden Freshman

“Yes, so that people don’t drink and drive and do dumb stuff.”

“No, parents won’t be able to handle teen-age drinking parties.”

Matthew MichelJunior

“Yes, parents should monitor par-ties so that people do not overdose on alcohol or drugs. ”

Daniela Zelaya Senior

BRENNAN WINER

SID HARMALKAR

silverchips OpinionsB3

Deconstructing the racist tirade of the grammar policeSlang is constantly invalidated, but sounding white should not be mandatory

Denying refugees means denying American valuesGovernor Hogan’s stance is based in prejudice and xenophobia

Early in November, when I tweeted about the protests against racism at the University of Mis-souri (also known as “Mizzou”), I wasn’t surprised that some people disagreed with me. However, I was surprised when multiple adult, white strangers argued with me for hours over my use of the word “ain’t.” I was appalled as they called me uneducated, stu-pid, and even claimed I wouldn’t be able to find a job.

For using the word “ain’t.” On Twitter.

While it’s shocking that grown men would pick fights over some-thing so silly, it’s not at all uncom-mon. I have seen countless people online try to get an important point across about racism or sex-ism but struggle with people who are caught up with exactly how they say it. Grammar should not be used as a weapon to oppress marginalized groups – it should be a tool we use to make ourselves understood.

First of all, the bashing of slang in informal arguments online is downright confusing. Social media platforms aren’t conducive to spell-checked, five paragraph essays – especially Twitter, where you have to make your message under 140 characters.

I believe that the purpose of spelling and grammar rules is to clearly convey ideas. If you understand someone well enough to nitpick their delivery, you are missing the point. Correcting someone’s grammar or word choice in the midst of a debate only serves to derail the con-versation to fixate on that party’s supposed lack of sophistication and therefore, somehow, lack of a

valid argument. What difference does it make

if Yale student protesters have a sign that says “We out here” as opposed to “We’re out here” (a real complaint I saw on Twit-ter)? White America cannot have it both ways: if you want to use slang to make your “dank memes” funnier, you can’t turn around and scold black people when they say, “Racism ain’t right.”

Racial minorities never even had an opportunity to participate in the formalization of English. Men in Great Britain started mak-ing English dictionaries in the 1500’s; African Americans in the U.S. were enslaved at that point. And, over 300 years later, there were still laws against literacy for slaves. They weren’t legally allowed to know what was in dictionaries, let alone contribute to them. It’s unfair to hold everyone to the same set of grammar rules when the creators of those rules were so lacking in racial represen-tation.

Even though slaves were denied formal education, they still developed a structured way to communicate: African Ameri-can Vernacular English (AAVE). It has undergone evolution since the times of slavery – like any other dialect – and is still com-monly spoken today. Some regard it as a bastardization of standard English, but many professional linguists would disagree. It has a grammar all its own.

In his article “African Ameri-can Vernacular English Is Not Standard English with Mistakes” (fitting, I know) linguist professor Geoffrey Pullum writes, “[AAVE] has a degree of regularity and stability attributable to a set of rules of grammar and pronun-

ciation, as with any language.” Call it whatever you want: AAVE, ebonics, Black English Vernacular – it is a legitimate way to speak, and it deserves respect.

So, what does this mean for school in-struction? Can students throw formality to the wind when writing papers, simply stating, “The Scarlet Letter: It was lit” ?

I don’t think that teachers should stop teach-ing dic-tion-ary-standard English. High school serves as preparation for both higher educa-tion and the work force, and de-pending on your ethnicity, it might not pay to stick to your roots. Research fellows from the Na-tional Bureau of Economic Research responded to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston news-papers with fake resumes, half of which had common African American names while

the other half had common white names. The white names

got 50 percent more callbacks. It’s not ex-actly the same thing as slang, but sounding black ostensibly does not help a prospec-

tive employee’s application.

Learning

how to sound white seems like a painful necessity to move

up in society. However, we should not trivialize other forms of Eng-lish by saying there is a right way to speak and a wrong way – there is a profitable way and an un-profitable way. Students of color deserve affirmation from their teachers that the way they talk is valid. Furthermore, all students need to learn not to judge one another based on white linguistic

ideals. Then may-be when those students grow up to be manag-ers or CEOs, they won’t turn down an ap-plicant on that basis. Maybe they will bet-ter under-

stand how they could be missing out on the smartest employee

they would ever have.

There should be much more appreciation for the complexity and validity of dialects that aren’t standard English. The “standard” was created and upheld by white people who refused to teach minorities their rules and then mocked them when they took language into their own hands. It

is up to us to show both older genera-

tions and future ones that there ain’t nothing wrong with the way we speak at all.

By Mariam JiffarAn opinion

December 17, 2015

VICTORIA TSAI

By Sarah HutterAn opinion

In light of the recent terror-ist attacks on Paris, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan asked the federal government not to allow any more Syrian refugees into our state, citing them a “threat to public safety.” In a post on his Facebook page, Hogan stated, “Following the terrorist attacks on Paris just four days ago, and after careful consideration, I am now requesting that federal authorities cease any additional settlements of refugees from Syria in Maryland until the U.S. government can provide appropriate assurances that refugees from Syria pose no threat to public safety.”

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 6.5 million refugees are internally displaced within Syria, over 3 mil-lion have fled to neighboring countries such as Turkey and Lebanon, and almost 150,000 refugees have declared asylum in the European Union.

These refugees, who are flee-ing the civil war in their home country, are in immediate need of a safe place to settle. By denying them entrance into Maryland, Hogan’s act violates core Ameri-can values and is an example of

hypocrisy and xenophobia.According to The Washington

Post, nearly two-dozen other Republican governors, including New Jersey gover- nor Chris Chris-tie, have previ-ously taken similar

positions as Hogan. Although Hogan and others have taken this position supposedly to fend off terrorist attacks, denying entrance

to an entire people based on the actions of a few extremists is xeno-phobic and racist.

The argument that Syrian refugees are more likely to be ter-rorists shows an intense preju-

dice toward an entire race of people. In fact, according

to The Washington Post, not a single one of the Paris

attackers

identified so far is a Syrian national. By

denying refugees entrance into Maryland, Hogan suggests that

the entire Syrian population, as well as the religion of Islam, are responsible for the isolated acts of a few people. There is no defense for this kind of racism and preju-dice. Syrian refugees are not flee-ing their home country because they want to spread violence; they are fleeing because of the violence and danger they face in Syria.

Hogan’s reasoning is not only ridiculous but also hypocritical. The United States is a country of immigrants, starting with the Pilgrims in the 1600s (who, by

the way, were refugees). As Hogan’s statement was issued just before the Thanksgiving

holiday, his intolerance really hit home.

Denying entrance to refugees has also

been proven to be a bad idea in the past. According

to political news blog Thinkprogress.org, during World

War II, the United States would not allow over 900 Jewish refugees

into the country because President

Roosevelt was afraid that some of the refugees might be Nazi spies. Ultimately, 254 of them died in the Holocaust, deaths which could have been prevented had they been granted asylum here.

We should learn from our past mistakes, not repeat them. Hogan is using the same reasoning many

Americans used in 1939, claiming that the potential danger posed by a few justifies keeping everyone out.

Instead, we should mirror the tolerance and compassion shown by the French, who have opened their doors to those in need even after suffering horrendous ter-rorist attacks. According to The Washington Post, France has declared that it will accept over 30,000 Syrian refugees over the next two years. French President Francois Hollande stated that it was the country’s “humanitar-ian duty” to open its borders to refugees. The United States has an equal duty to protect those fleeing war and violence, and to show them compassion.

As Blair students, we under-stand how our school thrives on diversity and our openness toward other cultures. We cannot support the ignorant attitude of our own governor.

By writing letters and educat-ing ourselves about Syria and the refugee crisis, we can pro-test Hogan’s actions and show our support for those who are displaced. We cannot allow our governor to take such a prejudiced stance against human beings in need without speaking up for what is right.

Gov. Hogan can be contacted at 410-974-3901 or 100 State Circle Annapolis, Maryland, 21401-1925. Readers can also donate to refugees at www.unrefugees.org/donate.

MEGHNA SAMBATHKUMAR

likely drive them to spend more time working towards the highest percentage possible instead.

The letter grading system is not perfect. It has problems such as arbitrary guidelines that deter-mine semester grades. While the percentage grading system does allow for a better assessment of a

December 17, 2015 Opinions B4 silverchips

Letter or percentage grading: Choosing the lesser of two evils

We all know that thrill you get when you just barely get the grade you wanted in a class – when you are finally bumped up to a B or even that coveted 89.5 percent. Despite all the work that was needed and the stress of balancing your time and effort for your other classes, you have succeeded. With letter grading, this feeling is com-mon for many students.

Our current letter grading pol-icy is beneficial for students try-ing to navigate our school system which puts more emphasis on grades, graduation rates, and col-lege acceptances more than edu-cation. Percent grading, a system that is currently implemented by numerous school districts nation-wide, involves showing your ex-act percentage on your transcript rather than A, B, C, D, or E. Letter grading allows for students to fo-cus their attention on all of school rather than attaining a certain per-centage for one class. The percent-age grading system causes more work and stress for students.

We currently operate under a flawed system where grades are more important than learning. Students now care so much more about the grade on their report card than the actual content they are absorbing. For students in this system, letter grades give a privi-lege: the benefit of the doubt. With the letter grading system, a stu-dent with an 89.6 percent is clas-sified as performing at the same level as someone with a 95.6 per-cent. Not only does this leeway give students some much needed stress alleviation, but it also gives

students the ability to be flexible when dealing with their grades in other classes.

Take, for example, a student who has two tests to study for in one night: one in math and one in English. He can get a C on the math test and it will not drop him below the minimum for the letter grade he now holds. If he is posi-tive that he can earn a C on the math test with minimal studying, then he has the freedom to spend the majority of his night studying for his upcoming English test.

With the percentage grading system, however, he would feel pressured to earn a high grade on both tests in order to sustain a high percentage in both his math and English classes. This pressure could cause him to spend his night studying for both tests, which could lead to minimal studying for one test or spend the whole night studying for both. Both options would cause him to drastically cut into his sleep schedule.

A 2014 survey conducted by the University of Phoenix found that an average high school student has 3.5 hours of homework every night, adding up to 17.5 hours a week. The percentage grading system would certainly cause an uptick in that number as students will stress over every single as-signment, taking away time for many things that are vital to the high school experience like extra-curricular activities and spending time with friends.

It would also damage teenag-ers’ health, with the increase in stress and a decrease in sleep. If every student coveted the high-est percentage possible, then the percentage grading system would

Why letter grading earns an A while percentage grading fails studentsBy Christian MussendenAn opinion

inevitably cause more work, which is the last thing this generation of students needs.

Our generation of teenagers is incredibly stressed out. In 2014, the American Psychological Asso-ciation surveyed 1,018 teens and found that 31 percent felt over-whelmed due to stress. Who can blame us? College costs are at an unprecedented high, not to mention the litany of problems that come with being a grow-ing teenager. With all that taken into account, imagine if your parents, guardians, or prospec-tive colleges pressured you to get a 95 percent in every class? Could you imagine the work-load and stress that would come from that?

Letter grading causes more academic compe-tition among students, making them have to distinguish themselves in different ways. If ev-ery student who has an 89.6 and above is thought of as being an A student, it motivates stu-dents to separate them-selves from their peers in other ways such as sports, clubs, and com-munity service. Further-more, these activities can help students find something they are pas-sionate about outside of school. Percentage grad-ing would mean that students would stop participating in these ac-tivities because it would

student’s progress in a course, the negatives of the percent grading system such as increased work and stress load greatly outweigh the negatives of the letter grading sys-tem. We should hope that MCPS does not plan to move toward per-centage grading and away from letter grading anytime soon.

89.5% - 100%

79.5% - 89.4%

69.5% - 79.4%

59.5% - 69.4%

0% - 59.4%

MCPS Grading Policy

B

A

C

D

E

ALEXANDRA MARQUEZ

CONTESTED SHOT In a boys’ varsity basketball game, senior Jordan Cobb goes up for a jump shot against three Walter Johnson defenders.

silverchips

My Blair: Personal Column

Rethinking educationBy Emma Cross for the brutal workload of MCPS. Even in my

� rst days of seventh grade, I had never in my life been expected to do so much work in one night, and as the years passed, my existence snowballed into a life that consisted of school, homework, and sleep -- or lack thereof.

However, the result of all this work is baf-� ing. The problem with having a “successful” school system such as MCPS is that students are expected to do completely unreason-able amounts of work that seem to have very little positive repercus-sions. MCPS teaches its students like robots, and it seems to the students that all the school sys-tem cares about is how well we perform on tests so it can keep its reputa-tion. The system doesn’t appear to care about our wellbeing or the quality of the teaching.

The fact is that MCPS and other highly ranked public school systems have become absorbed in the destination, but not the journey itself of

education. They are so � xated on rankings and test scores, but I think they care about these rankings for all the wrong reasons.

These school systems need to learn that they are making life a living hell for their stu-dents. To get into a good college, students are expected to take honors, AP classes, extracur-riculars, and help their community. After the typical four hours of homework every night and expectations added on, students don’t have time to live, much less enjoy a normal family and social life. For not only my own sanity but that of my peers also, I think that not just MCPS, but other public education systems across the country need to start think-ing about the journey the students are taking rather than the destination that is educational reputation.

When MCPS recently announced the end of � nal exams after this school year, most students were excited that they won’t have to take their dreaded two-hour exams anymore. But amidst this excite-ment, students failed to consider that maybe the reason MCPS took away � nal exams is not for the wellbeing of its students, but for the wellbeing of its reputation as a highly ranked public educa-tion system.

Over 70 percent of MCPS students failed the Algebra 1 exam in 2015, according to the Washington Post. Fail-ure rates are increasing in the core classes. There are multiple ways of � xing this issue, but taking away exams is not one of them. Taking away these exams is essentially a way for MCPS to hide its failures. The large population of students failing these exams are not at fault. MCPS is at fault for not providing adequate teaching to prepare students for the exams.

It’s not like there isn’t a lot of work. As I get older, I seem to be inundated with more and more work. But what are the results of the stress � esta that high school has become? The outcome is remarkably underwhelming.

I can compare this with my elementary school education, which all took place in Glasgow, Scotland, where I lived until I was 12. Glasgow is the biggest city in Scotland and has a very highly ranked public school system. I don’t ever remember being stressed in my Scottish school -- I probably got home-work once a month, if that.

If you forgot to bring your homework to school, or simply didn’t do it, the teacher would give you a stern look and tell you to bring it the next day, but this had no real consequence. School was not remotely challenging. Yes, that was sixth grade -- but I have visited since, and all my friends tell of me a very different life than what I experience today in the United States.

Obviously my life changed a lot when I moved, but nothing could have prepared me

Guest writer

THEN: 1969

& NOW: 2015

Up and Coming

Student & Teacher Awards & Honors

Senior Angel Wen won the regional American Chemical Society poem competition.

The cheerleading team won � rst place as well as the Spirit Award in Division II at the MCPS Cheer Competition on Nov. 14.

Four music students were accepted into the MCPS Jr. Honors Band, four students were accepted into the MCPS Sr. Honors Band and Jazz Band, � ve students were accepted into the MCPS Sr. All County Orchestra, seven students were accepted into the All State Junior Band and Orchestra, 16 students were accepted into the All State Senior Band and Orches-tra, and one student was accepted into the All National Band.

BLAZER BALLERS Brothers Alvin (30) and Stewart Carter (32) reach for the rebound against two members of the High Point bas-ketball team in the opening game of the 1969 junior varsity season.

COURTESY OF SILVER CHIPS ARCHIVES

Want to submit a personal column? Email it to

silver.chips.print@gmail.com

The Editorial Board will read through all submissions

and determine a selection.

Members of the National Art Honors Society had their artwork displayed at the Russel Rotunda in the Senate Building Nov. 30 - Dec. 4.

Boys’ varsity soccer won the Regional Championships and competed in the State Semi� -nals.

December 17, 2015B5 Opinion

CHIMEY SONAM

Senior Amy Li won one silver medal and two bronze medals at the World Wushu Cham-pionships in Jakarta, Indonesia.

GRIFFIN REILLY

December 24-January 1Winter Break

January 18Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

January 15, 19-21Semester Exams

January 25Professional Day

Senior Jesse Griff-McMahon was selected for First Team All-Met in soccer. Senior William McMillian was selected for Second Team All-Met in soccer.

If you believe that an activity or event that your organization sponsors is newsworthy and should be covered in a full-length arti-cle, you can contact us at silver.chips.print@gmail.com with the details of the event, its date, and why it should be in the paper.

If you want your views to run alongside an article: One article in every section of the paper has a Soapbox, which features student answers to a question related to the article’s topic. For an example of a Soap-box, turn to page B1, where you can read student answers to the question, “Do you think we should have outdoor education in high schools?”

In the weeks leading up to the paper’s publication, Editors-in-Chief Eleanor Harris and Amanda Wessel will post the Soapbox questions on Twitter and share them with Blair English teachers. You can respond to these questions through your English class or by tweeting your response to @Silver_Chips, the paper’s Twitter account.

If you want your artwork published: Each cycle, Chips spotlights a Blair artist’s work in our Blazer Box, which runs on page D6. It features drawings, paintings, and comics. To submit your work to Blazer Box, pick up a form from the envelope outside room 158 and fill the provided box with your original artwork, then place the completed form back in the submission envelope. We will contact you if your work is selected for Blazer Box.

These categories encompass most of the student feedback that we run in the paper.

December 17, 2015 Editorials B6 silverchips

Comments or concerns? Email the Ombudsman at

ombudsmansilverchips@gmail.com

Not funny, not okay: Stop throwing around “terrorist”

When Principal Renay Johnson’s voice crackled to life over the school loudspeak-ers on Wednesday, Dec. 9, many Blazers were surprised. At a school as famously diverse as Blair, could it really be true that Muslim students were being bullied for their faith, called things like “terrorist” and “un-American”?

Unfortunately, Principal Johnson’s state-ments were absolutely true. In the wake of ISIS attacks in Paris and a mass shooting in San Bernardino apparently motivated by Islamic extremist ideology, Muslim students at our school and across the nation are reporting increased bullying.

On Dec. 3, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch told a Muslim group that she has seen “an incredibly disturbing rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric” recently, and Council on American Islamic Relations spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper told Al Jazeera, “I don’t have a figure on number of [anti-Muslim] attacks, but it’s unprecedented.”

While the details of the incident Johnson spoke of have not been released, Muslim Blazers told Chips that they have experi-enced Islamophobic bullying. “[A Blair stu-dent] said that America was going to trade me to ISIS to stop the war,” said sophomore Mohsan Hussain.

We commend Principal Johnson’s prompt response to the bullying incidents as a first step toward school-wide aware-ness. However, intolerance remains a prob-lem at Blair. Junior Suad Mohamud said that she witnessed insensitivity from Blair students even after Johnson spoke about the need for increased tolerance. Accord-ing to Mohamud, several boys in her class began pretending that they were Muslim victims of bullying in order to mock John-son’s statements. “I felt they had hate for my beliefs, and it made me sad because it’s those ideas that ended up creating a society

where people don’t accept us,” Mohamud said.

Blazers must realize that anti-Muslim in-tolerance is a problem in our own commu-nity, not one limited to people like Donald Trump. Mohamud says she experienced blatant Islamophobia just blocks from Blair.

“A week ago, I went into Starbucks with a couple of friends, and as I was on my way back to school a little boy came up to me, and he asked me, ‘Why are you hurting America?’” Mohamud said. “And then his mother approached and told him to stay away from me, and to not talk to me.”

Statements like these, which equate all Muslims with terrorists, are absurd. Terror-ists may claim that their actions are justified by Islam, but their ideology is in direct opposition to what most Muslims believe about their faith. “In our holy book it says that killing is the worst sin,” sophomore Zeeshan Hussain said. “All the stuff [terror-ists] do is just sin. It makes no sense.”

To condemn an entire religion and its believers based off of the actions of a few does not make any sense either.

Blair prides itself on being a tolerant and diverse community, but we cannot claim to be accepting while Muslim students contin-ue to face harassment and discrimination. All students have the right to feel safe and accepted by their community, regardless of religion.

Creating a welcoming environment will require work. It is not enough simply to show tolerance; we must also actively embrace our Muslim peers and speak out when we witness discrimination—even in the form of seemingly benign jokes. No matter the tone, calling a student a terrorist or other charged slurs is never acceptable.

Blazers and Blair community members must stand united against Islamophobia. As Ms. Johnson said, that is the true Blair way.

Answering your questions about reader input and community submissionspolicy: Submit a Letter to the Editors! We welcome letters that constructively criticize or praise our reporting. We have run letters from readers reacting to coverage on sco-liosis treatment, Physical Education, crisis pregnancy centers, and so much more. If you have something to say about some-

thing we’ve said, this is your chance. Letters to the Editor should be short; we typically look for pieces around 100 to 400 words, although we have oc-casionally published longer letters. To submit your work, save your let-ter as a Word document and send it to both ombudsman.silverchips@gmail.com and silver.chips.print@gmail.com.

If you want to ad-vertise a club or event: The best thing to do would

be to purchase an advertisement in Silver Chips for as little as $25. Our Business Staff can work with you to develop an effective ad and to help you determine which price and size works best for your organization. Send an email to silverchips.business@gmail.com to get in touch with them.

We also cover many significant events put on by Blair community organizations.

By Camille Kirsch

See your name in shining lights—or, more accurately, newsprint

This cycle, we have received many ques-tions from readers about the best way to get their views into the paper. Since there seems to be confusion on what kind of reader input we publish and how we accept it, I thought I would take the opportunity to clarify our submissions policies. Here is a guide to what to do to get your unique message heard.

If you want to discuss a topic the paper has not cov-ered: Submit a Personal Col-umn! Personal Columns are generally 500 to 700 words and stem from your own life experi-ence. They can be humorous, serious, or anywhere in between—past columns have covered topics such as being transgender at Blair, the dysfunction of the school parking lot, and reactions to policy changes. Please note that Personal Columns cannot be anonymous and that we cannot guarantee all submitted columns will be published. To submit your work, save the column as a Word document and send it by email to ombudsmansilver-chips@gmail.com.

If you want to react to a Chips article or

Unfortunately, if your submission does not fit into any of these categories, we may not be able to publish it. There are some things that Silver Chips generally does not include in the paper. For example, we typically do not publish lengthy or anonymous contri-butions, and we look for sound argumenta-tion and logical cohesion in publishable student submissions. We will not print obscene pieces or those that advocate il-legal activity. We are also unable to publish creative writing. Consider contacting Silver Quill, Blair’s literary arts magazine, with your poetry and fiction.

Here at Chips, we prize every piece of feedback community members send in. We consider each submission carefully when deciding whether or not to publish it, and even unpublished letters often have a big impact on our policies. If we had enough space to publish every piece we received, we would certainly do so. We regret that we are unable to print every community submission.

But don’t be discouraged! If you submit a well-thought-out piece that follows the guidelines I’ve outlined above, your contri-bution will most likely be published. Silver Chips is a public forum for student expres-sion, and as such, we make every effort to showcase Blazer views. You, too, could see your name in print.

Ombudsman Camille Kirsch

Do you have any feedback or see any mis-takes? Let us know. E-mail the editors at

silver.chips.print@gmail.com

Corrections

GRIFFIN REILLY

On page A1, the photo of a food truck was misattributed to Cadence Pearson. It was taken by Caleb Bauman.

In the C2 article “Going beyond the Student Service Learning requirement,” the organization Little Friends for Peace was misprinted as Little Sons for Peace.

The A5 newsbrief “MoCo narrows down superintendent selection” reported incorrect information about the superintendent search. The Montgomery County

mentioned referred to Montgomery County, Virginia.

We must stand against those who bully Muslim students for their faith

VICTORIA TSAI

Thanks to Silver Chips Online and Blair Network Communications for collaborating on this issue. See pages A2 and F1 for their work.

December 17, 2015B7 ADs silverchips

celebrate all the holidays, because it’s so culturally tied to India.”

Senior Gabriel Coté grew up in the Catholic faith, and like Katie, has never felt a personal connection to his re-ligion. Financial matters within the Catholic Church often bothered him. “The Catholic faith is so based around money and I didn’t like that aspect of it,” Coté says. “We would invite people into our church to bring money into our community.”

Unlike Katie and Coté, senior Lytton Xu is more religious than either of his parents. He says that his Chris-tian faith is strengthened through his grandmother. “[My parents] are too busy to be religious. They work a lot so I don’t think they have the chance to go to church,” Xu explains. “I go with my brother and I’m religious because of my grandma. My grandma got me into religion.”

Marco Cruz, a freshman, and Grace Gretschel, a sophomore, are both less religious than their parents. Cruz grew up attending Catholic mass ser-vices with his mother as a result of her devout Catholic upbringing. “[My mom’s] parents, too, were religious and strict. They always took my mom to church and she believed in God. She was Christian so she wanted me to do it,” he says.

Gretschel’s religious upbring-ing was also fostered by her family’s Catholicism. “[My parents] grew up as Catholics,” Gretschel recalls. “[As I grew up,] they always took me to church every Sunday. On religious holidays they [also] did that.”

Changing times

Cruz and Gretschel are among the growing number of young people who are unaf� liated with any religion. According to Pew Research Center, more and more millennials identify as atheists or agnostics, or simply in-dicate that their religion is “nothing in particular.” In one survey, the Center found that “Fully one-in-four mem-bers of the Millennial generation...are unaf� liated with any particular faith.”

Pew Research Center attributes this growing number of less devout youth to increasing acceptance of ho-mosexuality and belief in evolution as “the best explanation of human life.” Gretschel indicates that these stances contribute to her withdrawal from Ca-tholicism.

“Catholics are very pro-life and I have a more liberal view on abor-tion [as well as on] gay marriage,” Gretschel says. “I didn’t really feel like [Catholic beliefs] were important to me as a person.”

Similarly, Katie disagrees with the an-cient Hindu tradition of arranged marriage. “The whole thing with arranged marriage, where marriage isn’t entirely a thing about love rather than it is about family...I don’t really want that,” she says. Since her par-ents have immigrated to the United States, Katie’s mother has relaxed her views on ar-ranged marriage and will allow Katie to se-lect her future husband. “I guess now that she’s growing with me and learning more about what goes on in the United States,” Katie explains. “[It’s more] about [� nding] somebody good that she approves of.”

The Unitarian Universalist Congrega-

tion attempts to reconcile all religious beliefs, encouraging people to seek their own spiritual path. A Unitarian Univer-salist church welcomes individuals from all religions to worship without a formal creed, or a speci� c set of beliefs. Andrea

Spencer-Linzie, the Interim Director of Religious Education at the Unitarian Uni-versalist Congregation of Rockville, notes the importance of � nding a congregation in which one feels welcomed.

“If you’re in a place where you don’t feel comfortable, you need to � nd a place that is comfortable for you,” Spencer-Linzie says. “We have a lot of people in our congrega-tion who are gay or lesbian…or transgen-der and they feel really welcomed [where-as those] people wouldn’t necessarily feel welcomed in other churches.”

Coté, after leaving the Catholic Church, was introduced to the Lutheran faith by a friend. He discovered that there was an emphasis on community service at his new church—an aspect he believes his Catholic

Features C1December 17, 2015 silverchips

Students cultivate religious beliefs that are different than their parents’ Take me to church? For some teenagers, the answer is no

church lacked. “The Lutheran religion isn’t that much different from Catholicism,” Coté says. “[But] the feel that I get from my church now is that it’s more about service to the community rather than anything else. It’s about getting the most from your

religion and then giving back to the com-munity.”

Unlike mother, unlike daughter

Because Hinduism plays an essential role in her mother’s life, Katie keeps her beliefs a secret. “I like to front that I am Hindu. I don’t really want to make her sad because I know that she does believe in that religion,” Katie explains. “She wants the best for me and I guess the best for me would be to have faith in God, at least that’s what she thinks.”

Coté decided to withdraw from the Catholic Church when it was time to re-ceive Con� rmation, a ceremony that Cath-olic teenagers undergo around age 13.

“My parents kind of gave me the choice whether to do that or not and I chose not to, even though my sister and my brother had,” Coté says. “I didn’t feel like that was the right way for me.” Ultimately, his par-ents felt that he was old enough to make

the decision.When Cruz told his mother Christi-

anity did not play as signi� cant a role in his life as it did in hers, she support-ed his decision. “She said that ‘It’s all right, as long as you know what you’re doing...and what you’re getting into,’” he says.

Xu, on the other hand, meets pa-rental disapproval as he continues to attend church service every Sunday. “They’re like, ‘You could be working instead of going to church. It’s not go-ing to help you,’” Xu explains. “[But] their opinions are not going to help me in the long run.”

Finding one’s own path

Amanda Aakes, the coordinator for a youth Episcopalian program called Faith on Fire, af� rms the importance of questioning religion. “I think it’s a good thing to question religion…I don’t think we are ever called to follow blindly,” Aakes says. “We can’t grow in our faith unless we question it or test it and really come to a better under-standing of it.”

Coté emphasizes the importance of being able to independently choose one’s religion. “A lot of times people don’t really � nd religion on their own. They’re mostly introduced to it and then they follow it,” he says. “I’ve al-ways been a person to question my beliefs…If religion can help people do good things, then why not? Why not do it? Why not support that?”

For today’s teenagers, youth groups are a good way to � nd mean-ing within one’s faith, according to St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church youth director Brian Werth. “We really need to provide a positive environment for our students to feel free to be a part of the Church. A lot of people have nega-tive feelings towards the Church and they may not feel like it’s their home,” Werth says. “The idea is to make [church] a home.”

As an active member of his church’s youth group, Xu appreciates the sense of hospitality within his [church’s name](?). “Being in church and having a group of people that are welcom-ing and also just good people to be around, I feel like that’s what keeps me locked into my faith,” he says.

Similarly, Coté suggests that com-munity is a signi� cant part of his faith. “You can really love the faith but if

the people around you aren’t doing it for you, it’s not going to all come together,” he says. As a Lutheran Christian, he is encour-aged to share his religion with others. “[The Lutheran faith is] more like a sharing,” he says. “Share but don’t force.”

Katie, despite nagging from her parents to go to temple and celebrate holidays, says she understands her parents’ desire that she follow Hinduism. “People are like, ‘Par-ents shouldn’t force their religion on their children,’ but like it’s not really them forc-ing something on a child. Rather, [they’re] trying to introduce something that they believe is best for them,” she explains. “If you really do believe in a God, and you’re praying to a God, then [wouldn’t] you think your child should do that too?”

ranged marriage and will allow Katie to se-lect her future husband. “I guess now that she’s growing with me and learning more about what goes on in the United States,” Katie explains. “[It’s more] about [� nding] somebody good that she approves of.”

The Unitarian Universalist Congrega-

as those] people wouldn’t necessarily feel welcomed in other churches.”

Coté, after leaving the Catholic Church, was introduced to the Lutheran faith by a friend. He discovered that there was an emphasis on community service at his new church—an aspect he believes his Catholic

the best for me and I guess the best for me would be to have faith in God, at least that’s what she thinks.”

Coté decided to withdraw from the Catholic Church when it was time to re-ceive Con� rmation, a ceremony that Cath-olic teenagers undergo around age 13.

children,’ but like it’s not really them forc-ing something on a child. Rather, [they’re] trying to introduce something that they believe is best for them,” she explains. “If you really do believe in a God, and you’re praying to a God, then [wouldn’t] you think your child should do that too?”

from RELIGION page A1

CANDIA GU

A DIFFERENT PATH Senior Gabriel Coté was raised Catholic but converted to Lutheranism.

UNAFFILIATED Sophomore Grace Gretschel says that she now identi� es as an atheist.

BEN DOGGETT BEN DOGGETT

TIGHT-KNIT COMMUNITY Senior Lytton Xu appreciates the comfort of the social network his church provides. Here, Xu attends a church trip to a pumpkin patch as a middle schooler.

COURTESY OF LYTTON XU

C2 Features December 17, 2015silverchips

By Christian Mussenden

BLISS program gives a whole new meaning to the word “buddy”New initiative aims to connect high-achieving language students with ESOL peers

Room 172 is almost silent. There is a sense of anxiousness and excitement as students look around for their buddies. Junior Juliana Lu-Yang and sophomore Tanjum Chowd-hury sit down next to each other, meeting for the first time. The two start off by making small talk and are soon exchanging their various likes and dislikes with ease. Lu-Yang and Chowdhury, two students that hail from completely different Blair social groups, are forming a relationship incredibly quickly. Soon after meeting, they discover a common affection for the animated action movie “Big Hero 6”; a few minutes later, they are chatting comfortably. Lu-Yang and Chowdhury are part of a new program within Blair Lead-ers Interning for Student Success (BLISS). BLISS Buddies matches a student in the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program with an English-speaking Blazer to bring together students who would not normally meet. BLISS Buddies was first proposed three years ago, when then-Blair stu-dents Annaleigh Baremore and Elia Tzoukermann—now graduates—were participating in the BLISS tutoring program, a student-led initiative in which high-performing students help peers with academics. Baremore and Tzoukermann en-joyed working with ESOL students, so they began to collaborate with Cindy Spoon, an ESOL teacher, to create a program that would integrate ESOL students into the Blair community. “We came up with this idea of matching ESOL students with high-achieving students so that the two groups would interact a little bit more,” says Spoon. “The ESOL students

could practice their English, and hopefully have a student that could guide them more into activities at Blair,” she says. The program was still in its infancy when current seniors Olivia Lewis, Tuyet Nguyen, and Julia Sint came up with an idea similar to what Baremore and Tzoukermann had

created with BLISS Buddies for a project in their CAP Junior Seminar class. The project, called the “start-up” project, is an assignment that aims to get students out of the classroom and into the community to make a change. “The purpose of the start-up project is to

get students to actually do something rather than just study something,” says CAP Junior Seminar teacher Kevin Shindel. Lewis, Nguyen, and Sint proposed a program that would match ESOL students with students fluent in English who were learning the ESOL students’ native language,

emphasizing social interaction and support. This idea had personal roots, especially for Nguyen. “In elementary school I was an ESOL student myself, and I felt very isolated,” Nguyen said. “I was taken to a different room, I was taught by a different

teacher, and I didn’t make a lot of friends in elementary school. Once I got out of ESOL, I started making more friends and I realized a lot of the ESOL students here are very isolated from the Blair community, and I wanted to do something to better integrate them.”

Eventually, Sint dropped out of the op-eration, but Lewis and Nguyen kept developing their program. At the end of last year, Lewis and Nguyen decided to merge the ESOL language-tutoring program with BLISS Buddies, which incorporated many of Lewis’ and Nguyen’s ideas, including matching up pairs based on language. This way, students like Lu-Yang and Chowdhury are able to develop a relationship that’s more than just a “tutor-tutee” one. Lu-Yang and Chowdhury are getting more and more comfort-able. Chowdhury shows Lu-Yang pictures of her family on her phone, describing each relative’s personal-ity and mannerisms. Eventually, the buddies are asked to set goals on what they want to do outside of school with their new friend in order to further develop their rela-tionship. This pair only needs a few minutes to decide what they want to do together. “We both really like action movies so we decided we are going to make one together.” Chowdhury says. The meeting is over, but Chow-dhury and Lu-Yang have made positive impressions on each other. “[Tanjum’s] a really sweet girl. She’s really enthusiastic when it comes to meeting new people, and we do

have a decent number of common interests,” Lu-Yang says. Chowdhury feels the same way. “[Juliana] is really nice!” she says. Lu-Yang and Chowdhury are going to at-tempt to become friends over the school year, and that’s what BLISS Buddies is all about.

Meet the MCPS P.E. teacher running the MocoSnow twitterAlex Tsironis gives insight on snow predictions and social media

As a former MCPS student, Alex Tsironis knows the anticipation of waking up bright and early to a snow day. Now, Tsironis, a Montgomery County physical education teacher at the Blair Ewing Center, anticipates the possibility of a snow day or two-hour delay and quickly flips through his most trusted weather apps, a local meteorologist’s predictions, and his MCPS connections, who are already surveying county roads. After all of this, Tsironis, the owner of the MoCoSnow Twitter account, tweets a weather and school

By Georgina Burros

makes it more enjoyable. “I find it interesting to see his predictions, just so I can get my hopes up or down…rather than relying on it as a really accurate sort of measurement. Mostly I rely on it just to see the funny re-sponses, and just to see the culture that comes with it,” says Phoolsombat.

What started in the back of Tsironis’ class-room has transformed into online orders of ‘MoCoSnow’ t-shirts and sweaters as well as thousands of Twitter followers. While many MCPS students don’t know the man behind MoCoSnow, for Tsironis, his success is a huge accomplishment. “I love talking to people. Every time I tweet something, if it’s right before a storm, we’ll have hundreds of people reply, and it’s fun to hear what people think” he says.

Junior Chris Isaac is one of those students interacting with MoCoSnow, and for him, it is all about the personality behind the tweets. “I like the fact that if you ask…a question,” says Isaac, “[Tsironis will] reply to you and answer with an honest answer.”

website. “I compile forecasts from different computer models, television stations, and websites to put together what I feel would be the most accurate forecast.” Tsironis tweets about MCPS happenings and his opinions as well as about the weather.

For students, there is always a desire to be constantly informed on the latest weather updates. “Everyone wants to know...if we’re going to have school the next day or if there’s going to be a delay or anything like that,” says Tsironis, “…the easiest way to [spread predictions about that] is social media. One person tweets something out, then someone retweets it, and they tell someone about it,” says Tsironis. “People love talking about it, people love guessing, people love…kind of arguing with me, you know; it’s fun.”

Pencil predictions

Given the possibility of even an inch of snow, Tsironis studies past MCPS weather decisions in similar situations. “I compare [weather conditions]...if we have freezing snow that falls that midnight, what did we do last year when the same thing happened?” says Tsironis. His online blog is updated with a five-point pencil system, ranging from one pencil (we are definitely having school to-morrow) to five (bring out the pajamas and Netflix because there is an absolute chance of a snow day).

However, Tsironis’ predictions can never be 100 percent accurate because school schedules, delays, and snow days are in the hands of the MCPS officials who ultimately make the final decision. “Just because I tell people that there will be no school doesn’t mean ‘don’t do your homework…or stay up late,’” says Tsironis. “It’s just a prediction.”

Tsironis says that, over the last five years, his predictions have been 96 percent accurate.

Student appreciation

For junior Prim Phoolsombat, being able to see the reactions of students and the hu-morous and unofficial nature of the account

cancellation prediction out to his 7,500+ fol-lowers.

Beginnings of MoCoSnow

Tsironis wasn’t an overnight success; Mo-CoSnow had a humble beginning. “Initially it was a bulletin board in one of my classrooms that I had in my health class, and anytime there was snow I would show my predic-tion on the bulletin board, and kids would tell their friends, [and] they were like, ‘You should make a website!’ so I made a website.”

he says. After much encourage-

ment from his students, Tsironis launched his Twit-ter account, @MCPSsnow, roughly three years ago. However, MoCoSnow didn’t really take off among MCPS students until last winter. The account gained more than 6,000 new followers af-ter his tweets spread quickly among MCPS students.

Tsironis is best known for his consistently accu-rate snow predictions. His success in garnering such a huge following--one that includes high school prin-cipals, parents, and even the MCPS Chief Operating Officer, wasn’t due to his predictions alone.

In creating MoCoSnow, Tsironis aimed to present the most specific forecast possible ahead of many news channels and official county announcements. “I created MoCoSnow so that students and parents [would] have a place to go to see the latest and most simplified weather forecast for Montgomery County, MD,” Tsironis writes on his

FAST FRIENDS Junior Juliana Lu-Yang and sophomore Tanjum Chowdhury write down their common in-terests during the first BLISS Buddies meeting of the year to form strong bonds with fellow BLISS tutors.

CALEB BAUMAN

GRIFFIN REILLY

SNOW MAN As MoCo Snow, Tsironis has a 96 per-cent accuracy rate for his school closing predictions.

SNOW-READY Alex Tsironis has been running MoCo Snow’s Twitter since 2011.

COURTESY OF ALEX TSIRONIS

when adopted children and their parents are of different races, the adoptive parents tend to have a considerable amount of influence over the child’s cultural perceptions. “Their identity depends on how that adopted fam-ily has respected and honored their origin or their race to make them still feel connected,” she says.

Singer agrees that connection to roots is critical. “Teens are dealing with identity, and how do you form your identity if you don’t have a strong connection to a very huge piece of who you are?” she asks.

Zwerdling has had some exposure to Chinese culture. Zwerdling’s adoptive par-ents are Jewish, so she had a bat mitzvah at 13. However, in a unique cultural twist, the party took place in a Chinese restaurant. She also attended Chinese school until fifth grade.

On the other hand, Harris feels discon-nected from her Guatemalan origins, and struggles to engage herself with the lan-guage. “I find it hard to learn Spanish. My [adoptive] mom does speak Spanish... But I find it hard to learn Spanish because I don’t know my background very well, so… I get very personal about it,” she says.

Zwerdling visited her former orphanage in Changzhou in 2010. The experience was enjoyable, but also quite foreign. “[China] is really polluted, and I didn’t feel completely safe because you can’t drink tap water,” she says. “But it was nice.”

What struck Zwerdling the most about the orphanage was the number of disabled children. “All the older kids are generally disabled,” she says. “[The orphanages] want to help these kids, but generally they put forth the ones that seem most appealing.”

Because she was only 10 when she vis-ited, Zwerdling feels that the trip did not hold as much meaning as it would now. “I think it would be more interesting to go back because I’m more mature now,” she says.

“Back then, it was nice to go to my orphan-age. It was kind of emotional, but it didn’t hold a ton of meaning.” She also feels drawn to China’s culture, which is quite different from her own.

One race, another culture

Zwerdling was raised Jewish by her par-ents, but she does not feel a strong connec-tion with her adoptive faith. “I never reli-giously felt very Jewish. My family wanted me to have a bat mitzvah, so I did it, and I’m in confirmation now, but none of it really agrees with me,” she says. “If I marry some-one who wants to raise the children Jewish, I’ll go with it, but my personal preference is no religion.”

Children adopted internationally can feel a disconnect between their physical features

and their cultural iden-tity, as Harris says she does. “I consider my-self Hispanic, but at the same time, I consider myself white because I was brought up in a white family,” says Harris.

“Race-wise, [I’m] Asian, definitely, but culturally probably more white,” says Zw-erdling. “There are lots of… parts of Asian cul-ture that I have nothing to do with, but race-wise Asian is always first.”

Zwerdling admits feeling like she must adhere to Asian stereo-types simply because of where she was born. “I do kind of feel like I need to do well in school… Not that I re-ally want to fulfill the Asian stereotype, but I kind of feel like it’s something I’m sup-posed to do,” she says.

Singer, the adoption therapist, says that this racial and cultural dif-ference can cause ad-opted kids to feel like they do not fit in.

“Trying to be ac-cepted by their racial peer group can pres-ent challenges,” Singer says. “If they’ve been raised by a Caucasian family, sometimes their peers don’t see them as legitimately of their race, and they can sort of feel betwixt and be-tween in terms of that sense of that belong-ing.” Singer believes that adopted families can work to help their children manage that feeling.

Not easy, but worth it While they acknowledge these challeng-

es, Bartz, Harris, and Zwerdling are over-whelmingly thankful for the opportunities their adoptions have provided for them.

“If I was still in China,” Bartz says, “I wouldn’t be here playing soccer, doing all the really cool stuff [I do]. In China, it’s a lot poorer and I’m guessing my mom was re-ally poor, so I probably have a much better life here.”

Zwerdling thinks that in light of her in-terrupted history at the orphanage, it seems like her birth mother did not want to give her up, but something made her do it any-way. “I think that if I hadn’t been given up I’d probably have to stay hidden,” she says. “I don’t think my parents would resent me, but they’d probably much rather have a boy, so I’d probably be working all the time.”

Harris, who was mortally sick as an in-fant, credits adoption with giving her anoth-er shot at life. “I don’t think I would’ve been alive if I hadn’t been adopted,” she says.

She was the youngest of 10 kids, born to poor parents in Guatemala. When she was only a couple months old, she came down with a deadly fever. That could have been the end of her life, as she lived in a country with an infant mortality rate more than five times that of the United States. But then Ma-ria Harris was adopted.

Of the 135,000 children adopted in the United States each year, about 26 percent were born outside of the country, like Har-ris, now a Blair sophomore.

Adoptions, including many international ones, can save lives by placing children into safe and loving families. Yet, despite its posi-tive impact, adoption leads to a unique emo-tional situation which can cause strain on the children and families involved.

Blood relations

All Harris has left of her biological par-ents is an old photo-graph. In it, her birth mother stands inside her house, holding baby Harris in her arms. Harris was nine months old when she was adopted and has never returned to Gua-temala.

She says that, at some point, she would like to meet her birth parents. Freshman A.J. Bartz, adopted at 11 months from an or-phanage in China, feels the same way. “[Meet-ing my parents would] be awesome,” says Bartz. “I was given up at two days old, so I don’t know anything about them.”

Ellen Singer, a thera-pist who specializes in adoption at the Center for Adoption Support and Education, says she often sees reactions like Bartz’s.

“For some teens, be-ing able to connect with birth families means the world to them, because if you’re trying to figure out who you are, and you’re doing that with a lack of information, that can be very diffi-cult,” she says.

She adds that meet-ing birth parents can answer many questions that trouble adopted kids. For example, Har-ris wonders what the rest of her relatives are like. Bartz would like to meet his birth parents to understand why he looks the way he does.

Sophomore Oriana Zwerdling was ad-opted at 19 months from China, and is more cautious about a potential reunion. “It might be cool, but… I don’t know if it’s all that worth it,” she says. “A lot of the time for both the parents and the kid, it’s emotion-ally distressing… It’s extremely upsetting for some people.”

Singer says that this is another common view. “It also can be completely overwhelm-ing, and it depends on what you find,” she says. “If… what you find out is information that is difficult to process… [it] can be very painful and very difficult for a teen to figure out, ‘What does that mean to me?’”

Questions and answers

Making sense of his adoption has never been a problem for senior Abdul Byrd, who was adopted when he was four years old. Byrd has two half-sisters, both with the same mother as him but different fathers. Byrd and his sisters were adopted by his

Features C3

younger sister’s biological father.Byrd and his sisters moved frequently

when they were younger. They eventually settled with a friend of their father whom they call “Mom.”

Although the family was established by the time Byrd was in elementary school, he says that the situation did not settle down for a while. “[My sisters and I] fought a lot as children, probably up till seventh grade for me. That was when we stabilized as a family,” he says. However, once things settled down, the adoption has not been a point of conflict in his life. “It hasn’t affected me at all,” he says.

Harris, however, has some lingering questions about her adoption. She knows that her adoptive mother and birth mother had met before Harris was born, but she does not know how the women met. She

also wonders if her birth parents left her anything to remember them by besides the photograph.

Zwerdling knows more about her past than most adopted children do. Her parents provided her with some information about her life in China, which was enough to draw a vague picture of the situation surrounding her birth parents. “It was pretty clear that [my birth mother] didn’t want to put me up for adoption, because I was put in the orphanage and then taken out and then put back into the orphanage,” Zwerdling says.

She speculates that her birth parents put her up for adoption due to China’s recently changed one-child policy. “Boys are [consid-ered] the favorable child to have if you can only have one,” she says. In fact, more than 90 percent of the 70,000 Chinese children ad-opted internationally since 1991 have been girls.

Connected to their roots

According to counselor Charlain Bailey,

December 17, 2015 silverchips

Adoptive families are connected by choice, not bloodQuestions of origin and belonging complicate adolescent identity By Aditi Shetty

COURTESY OF MARIA HARRIS

FAMILY PHOTO Sophomore Maria Harris (left), ad-opted at nine months old from Guatemala, poses with her adoptive parents and her younger sister.

COURTESY OF A.J. BARTZ

A JOYFUL RIDE Freshman A.J. Bartz (shown here at age nine) was adopted at 11 months from an orphan-age in China. He says he is thankful for his adoptive family.

GROWING UP Sophomore Oriana Zwerdling was adopted as a nineteen-month-old from an orphanage in China. Zwerdling maintains connections to her Chinese heritage, while simultaneously embracing her Jewish upbringing.

COURTESY OF ORIANA ZWERDLING COURTESY OF ORIANA ZWERDLING CADENCE PEARSON

GHundreds of students visit the

media center every day, doing homework,

printing out papers, and enjoying quiet study time.

It is a comfortable space for students to complete whatever work they did not finish the night before. For some of the library’s most frequent visitors, it also provides the only computer access they have all day. Most of the media center’s patrons do not concern them-selves with getting all of their work done at school because they know they can always finish on their comput-er at home. But some Blair stu-dents do not have the luxury to work at home, and life without

a computer is a harsh reality.

silverchipsDecember 17, 2015 Features C4/C5

story by

Alexandra Marquez

To the left David Ottalini, Lorin Evans, and James Ritz deconstruct, refurbish, and donate used Apple computers as a part of the weekly MacRecycleClinic.

Where only � rst names appear, names have been changed to protect the identities of the sources.

With nowhere else to go, students without comput-ers at home spend much of their free time at libraries or using their small smartphone screens to type long essays and complete research projects.

Junior Salvador Alfaro lived without a computer during his freshman year and says he found it dif� -cult to � nish all of his work in his 45-minute lunch pe-riod. “Either I went during lunch to get things done every day, or I would stay every day after school to do my work,” Alfaro says. “Sometimes, it wasn’t enough time, so I wasn’t able to � nish my projects properly. My grades were really affected by that.”

Dylan, a senior who has lived without a computer since sixth grade, says he often does his in the media center as well. “It’s a large amount of work that, either you need to research, or you need to do something on-line for those classes. Unfortunately, I can’t. I have to go to the library before school starts,” he says.

Dylan tries to type homework on his smartphone sometimes, but he � nds it dif� cult to edit documents and ful� ll some of his teacher’s policies. “I think [the app] is called Google Drive. I do work on that and just type it and try to print it over here,” Dylan says. “Ed-iting things would be the hardest [homework to do on my smartphone]. Searching things up is not that hard, but editing for sure. And if people want double spac-ing, I don’t know how to control that.”

Blair counselor Alphonso Burwell says that most students who do not have computers use the library, like Alfaro did and Dylan does, as well as whatever technology they can get to. “What I � nd a lot of stu-dents doing is using their smartphones as far as com-puter access, but most of my students will go to the library or stay after school,” he says.

Burwell notes that most of these students are lim-ited in what they can do during their lunch period. “They’re being rushed to do stuff. If they only have access here, that only gives them like an hour to do work,” he says.

Alfaro says that long-term or in-depth projects were

Homework is schoolwork

dif� cult to manage because these assignments required the most time commitment. “Projects that you would have to present [were the hardest to complete] because you need a lot of time to think about what you’re go-ing to say, prepare yourself, � nd information, and then write and type it,” he says.

With limited time to do their work, students with-out computers can fall behind their peers. This techno-logical inequality affects not only the amount of time students have to complete work, but also their grades and ability to graduate. The Institute for the Study of Labor found that teenagers who do not have comput-ers at home are six to eight percent less likely to grad-uate high school than those who do.

Alfaro says that if he had not gotten a home com-puter, his grades and his internal drive would have suffered. “If I didn’t have a computer now, it would really affect me because now I really care about school; I want to graduate, I want to go to college and get a career. If I didn’t have a computer, it would affect me and bring my grades down,” he says.

Like Alfaro, Burwell acknowledges that students who live without a computer at home can be emotion-ally affected by their technological disadvantage. “It’s hard for [students] to be successful if they don’t have access to computers whenever they want to. Once you start seeing your grades lowered and you’re not doing as well simply because you don’t have access to a com-puter, it de� nitely affects you,” he says.

The U.S. Census Bureau states that in 2013, 83.8 per-cent of U.S. households owned a computer. The prima-ry reason other households do not own one is because they cannot afford one.

It was similar � nancial dif� culties that prevented Alfaro from purchasing a computer. He says that at the beginning of high school, he felt he could manage without one. After a few months of school, he realized how important a computer was to complete his work, but his family could not afford to purchase this neces-sary technology. “We could’ve bought one, but I didn’t want to buy one because I thought I didn’t need it,” he says. “Then, afterwards, my family started having some small economic problems, so when I needed it, we couldn’t buy it.”

Dylan’s family cannot purchase a computer for the same reason Alfaro was unable to: economic instabili-

An uneven path to success

A social stigma

ty. Also, his wireless network is often unreliable. “We couldn’t really afford [a computer] and whenever we do, either our internet is cut off or there’s something wrong with the computer,” Dylan states.

The Census Bureau also found that minority fami-lies and families with a low socioeconomic status were more likely to only own mobile devices and not desk-top or laptop computers. Because of this correlation, some students are embarrassed to tell their teachers, counselors, and administrators that they do not own computers. Alfaro says he felt uncomfortable letting staff know that he didn’t have access to a computer at home.

“It just felt weird to tell [my teachers and counsel-or] that I didn’t have a computer,” Alfaro says. He also notes that, because owning a computer is expected, students fear being treated differently if they admit to their situation.

“Nowadays, a lot of people are like, ‘How do you not afford a computer?’ or something like that; ‘You shouldn’t be in school,’ or, ‘Go do something else with your life,’” he says. Alfaro suggests that people should recognize that students may be in a tough situation. “It’s rare that a poor person can become someone suc-cessful when they don’t have the same tools to work with as other people who could afford them,” he says.

Dylan does tell some of his teachers about his lack of a computer. “Most of my teachers that I work closely with know I don’t have a computer at home. The other ones, they don’t know,” he says. “They just give me options of, basically, going after school here, or going to a library.”

Dylan feels the gap widening between him and his peers as he is able to complete less and less work at home. He believes MCPS should prioritize placing computers in every student’s home. “I feel like they should really focus on giving these kids opportuni-ties to get any sort of technology in their household; at least get something to type on,” he says. “All we’re going to do is more advanced technology and even in classrooms, it started with the Promethean board, and then the Chromebooks.”

In 2012, the MCPS Of� ce of the Chief Technology Of� cer introduced the Strategic Technology Plan to in-tegrate more digital devices, including Chromebooks and Android tablets, into the classroom. The rollout was intended to occur from � scal year 2014 through � scal year 2016. The plan does not include speci� c measures to help students without computers at home.

Counselor Susanne Bray believes MCPS neglects

A failure to help

Outside resources

to realize how many students they can leave behind when instituting new technology policies. “I do think that people up in Rockville and wherever tend to for-get about the kids that can’t afford this technology,” she says. “It’s great that we’ve got it in the schools, but there is an overwhelming assumption that all students have equal access and they don’t.”

To provide their students home computers, coun-selors and administrators look to organizations in the Blair community that aim to � ll this technology gap. Every Monday night, the Marvin Methodist Church across the street from Blair hosts one of these programs.

There, a rotating group of � ve or six Montgomery County residents operate the MacRecycleClinic. The program refurbishes donated and discarded Macin-tosh computers and provides them to students. David Ottalini, a public relations professional for the Univer-sity of Maryland, has volunteered for the clinic for 32 years. He explains that the group accepts donations from people in the community as well as through the county’s recycling center, connecting community members with affordable technology.

“Bottom line is, we wanted to help people,” Ottalini says. “Both of my sons went to Blair and I was the PTA co-president, so I was an active volunteer in MCPS. It was a natural [� t], once we secured this space...Blair’s across the street. We’ve also helped Wheaton; we’ve helped Einstein; we’ve helped other schools and we’re happy to help.”

The Clinic tries to cater speci� c computer donations to individual students’ wants and needs. Ottalini re-members a student who loved video editing and need-ed a computer with a tower, which can house bigger hard drives and more memory. “I had a student up in Gaithersburg who was heavily into editing videos. Of course, she needed a tower because the iMacs are � ne for doing some things, but you really need something that has a lot of umph to it. [Towers have] a lot of mem-ory and can take really big hard drives.”

According to Ottalini, the group is happy they can make a difference. “We’ve been here for a long time and we love working with students. We feel like we have a great relationship with Blair and the other schools and we hope we can keep that going,” he explains.

Ottalini says he is proud that the group supports students. “We’re empowering students to be success-ful and in some ways we’re even making the playing � eld a little more even,” he says. “Because of our small efforts here, a computer may be the difference between you getting into college or not.”

design by Maris Medina and Emma Solerphotography by Ben Doggett

Students without computers struggle to keep up academicallyROWING DIVIDEROWING DIVIDETHETHE

A HELPING HAND

GHundreds of students visit the

media center every day, doing homework,

printing out papers, and enjoying quiet study time.

It is a comfortable space for students to complete whatever work they did not finish the night before. For some of the library’s most frequent visitors, it also provides the only computer access they have all day. Most of the media center’s patrons do not concern them-selves with getting all of their work done at school because they know they can always finish on their comput-er at home. But some Blair stu-dents do not have the luxury to work at home, and life without

a computer is a harsh reality.

silverchipsDecember 17, 2015 Features C4/C5

story by

Alexandra Marquez

To the left David Ottalini, Lorin Evans, and James Ritz deconstruct, refurbish, and donate used Apple computers as a part of the weekly MacRecycleClinic.

Where only � rst names appear, names have been changed to protect the identities of the sources.

With nowhere else to go, students without comput-ers at home spend much of their free time at libraries or using their small smartphone screens to type long essays and complete research projects.

Junior Salvador Alfaro lived without a computer during his freshman year and says he found it dif� -cult to � nish all of his work in his 45-minute lunch pe-riod. “Either I went during lunch to get things done every day, or I would stay every day after school to do my work,” Alfaro says. “Sometimes, it wasn’t enough time, so I wasn’t able to � nish my projects properly. My grades were really affected by that.”

Dylan, a senior who has lived without a computer since sixth grade, says he often does his in the media center as well. “It’s a large amount of work that, either you need to research, or you need to do something on-line for those classes. Unfortunately, I can’t. I have to go to the library before school starts,” he says.

Dylan tries to type homework on his smartphone sometimes, but he � nds it dif� cult to edit documents and ful� ll some of his teacher’s policies. “I think [the app] is called Google Drive. I do work on that and just type it and try to print it over here,” Dylan says. “Ed-iting things would be the hardest [homework to do on my smartphone]. Searching things up is not that hard, but editing for sure. And if people want double spac-ing, I don’t know how to control that.”

Blair counselor Alphonso Burwell says that most students who do not have computers use the library, like Alfaro did and Dylan does, as well as whatever technology they can get to. “What I � nd a lot of stu-dents doing is using their smartphones as far as com-puter access, but most of my students will go to the library or stay after school,” he says.

Burwell notes that most of these students are lim-ited in what they can do during their lunch period. “They’re being rushed to do stuff. If they only have access here, that only gives them like an hour to do work,” he says.

Alfaro says that long-term or in-depth projects were

Homework is schoolwork

dif� cult to manage because these assignments required the most time commitment. “Projects that you would have to present [were the hardest to complete] because you need a lot of time to think about what you’re go-ing to say, prepare yourself, � nd information, and then write and type it,” he says.

With limited time to do their work, students with-out computers can fall behind their peers. This techno-logical inequality affects not only the amount of time students have to complete work, but also their grades and ability to graduate. The Institute for the Study of Labor found that teenagers who do not have comput-ers at home are six to eight percent less likely to grad-uate high school than those who do.

Alfaro says that if he had not gotten a home com-puter, his grades and his internal drive would have suffered. “If I didn’t have a computer now, it would really affect me because now I really care about school; I want to graduate, I want to go to college and get a career. If I didn’t have a computer, it would affect me and bring my grades down,” he says.

Like Alfaro, Burwell acknowledges that students who live without a computer at home can be emotion-ally affected by their technological disadvantage. “It’s hard for [students] to be successful if they don’t have access to computers whenever they want to. Once you start seeing your grades lowered and you’re not doing as well simply because you don’t have access to a com-puter, it de� nitely affects you,” he says.

The U.S. Census Bureau states that in 2013, 83.8 per-cent of U.S. households owned a computer. The prima-ry reason other households do not own one is because they cannot afford one.

It was similar � nancial dif� culties that prevented Alfaro from purchasing a computer. He says that at the beginning of high school, he felt he could manage without one. After a few months of school, he realized how important a computer was to complete his work, but his family could not afford to purchase this neces-sary technology. “We could’ve bought one, but I didn’t want to buy one because I thought I didn’t need it,” he says. “Then, afterwards, my family started having some small economic problems, so when I needed it, we couldn’t buy it.”

Dylan’s family cannot purchase a computer for the same reason Alfaro was unable to: economic instabili-

An uneven path to success

A social stigma

ty. Also, his wireless network is often unreliable. “We couldn’t really afford [a computer] and whenever we do, either our internet is cut off or there’s something wrong with the computer,” Dylan states.

The Census Bureau also found that minority fami-lies and families with a low socioeconomic status were more likely to only own mobile devices and not desk-top or laptop computers. Because of this correlation, some students are embarrassed to tell their teachers, counselors, and administrators that they do not own computers. Alfaro says he felt uncomfortable letting staff know that he didn’t have access to a computer at home.

“It just felt weird to tell [my teachers and counsel-or] that I didn’t have a computer,” Alfaro says. He also notes that, because owning a computer is expected, students fear being treated differently if they admit to their situation.

“Nowadays, a lot of people are like, ‘How do you not afford a computer?’ or something like that; ‘You shouldn’t be in school,’ or, ‘Go do something else with your life,’” he says. Alfaro suggests that people should recognize that students may be in a tough situation. “It’s rare that a poor person can become someone suc-cessful when they don’t have the same tools to work with as other people who could afford them,” he says.

Dylan does tell some of his teachers about his lack of a computer. “Most of my teachers that I work closely with know I don’t have a computer at home. The other ones, they don’t know,” he says. “They just give me options of, basically, going after school here, or going to a library.”

Dylan feels the gap widening between him and his peers as he is able to complete less and less work at home. He believes MCPS should prioritize placing computers in every student’s home. “I feel like they should really focus on giving these kids opportuni-ties to get any sort of technology in their household; at least get something to type on,” he says. “All we’re going to do is more advanced technology and even in classrooms, it started with the Promethean board, and then the Chromebooks.”

In 2012, the MCPS Of� ce of the Chief Technology Of� cer introduced the Strategic Technology Plan to in-tegrate more digital devices, including Chromebooks and Android tablets, into the classroom. The rollout was intended to occur from � scal year 2014 through � scal year 2016. The plan does not include speci� c measures to help students without computers at home.

Counselor Susanne Bray believes MCPS neglects

A failure to help

Outside resources

to realize how many students they can leave behind when instituting new technology policies. “I do think that people up in Rockville and wherever tend to for-get about the kids that can’t afford this technology,” she says. “It’s great that we’ve got it in the schools, but there is an overwhelming assumption that all students have equal access and they don’t.”

To provide their students home computers, coun-selors and administrators look to organizations in the Blair community that aim to � ll this technology gap. Every Monday night, the Marvin Methodist Church across the street from Blair hosts one of these programs.

There, a rotating group of � ve or six Montgomery County residents operate the MacRecycleClinic. The program refurbishes donated and discarded Macin-tosh computers and provides them to students. David Ottalini, a public relations professional for the Univer-sity of Maryland, has volunteered for the clinic for 32 years. He explains that the group accepts donations from people in the community as well as through the county’s recycling center, connecting community members with affordable technology.

“Bottom line is, we wanted to help people,” Ottalini says. “Both of my sons went to Blair and I was the PTA co-president, so I was an active volunteer in MCPS. It was a natural [� t], once we secured this space...Blair’s across the street. We’ve also helped Wheaton; we’ve helped Einstein; we’ve helped other schools and we’re happy to help.”

The Clinic tries to cater speci� c computer donations to individual students’ wants and needs. Ottalini re-members a student who loved video editing and need-ed a computer with a tower, which can house bigger hard drives and more memory. “I had a student up in Gaithersburg who was heavily into editing videos. Of course, she needed a tower because the iMacs are � ne for doing some things, but you really need something that has a lot of umph to it. [Towers have] a lot of mem-ory and can take really big hard drives.”

According to Ottalini, the group is happy they can make a difference. “We’ve been here for a long time and we love working with students. We feel like we have a great relationship with Blair and the other schools and we hope we can keep that going,” he explains.

Ottalini says he is proud that the group supports students. “We’re empowering students to be success-ful and in some ways we’re even making the playing � eld a little more even,” he says. “Because of our small efforts here, a computer may be the difference between you getting into college or not.”

design by Maris Medina and Emma Solerphotography by Ben Doggett

Students without computers struggle to keep up academicallyROWING DIVIDEROWING DIVIDETHETHE

A HELPING HAND

The vast universes of fiction created by movies, TV, books, comics, and video games can leave many fans with the never-ending question: “what if…?” Sophomores Jennifer Canales and Mahima Chowdhury answer that question themselves, by writing fanfic-tion to interact with their favorite characters.

Fanfiction, also known as fanfic, is a genre of storytelling in which writers use the characters or settings from already-existing stories to create an original narrative. “You take a story that’s been created...and you just make it your own,” says Canales, who writes fanfiction based on a variety of anime, or Japanese animated productions. Junior Liza Hazelwood, an avid reader, describes fanfiction as observing existing char-acters and using that to come “up with a dif-ferent situation to put [those] characters in.”

Character consistency

Good fanfiction writ-ers are able to use the same characters but in different situations. “The most important part of fanfic is exploring the characters, be-cause with fanfic you don’t have to follow the plot, and it’s not really the point to try to do that,” says Hazelwood. “It’s more like trying to make all the characters still the same.”

According to Chowdhury, who mostly writes fanfiction based on the video game “Life is Strange”, the skill of a fanfiction writer lies in accurately translating the char-acters into a new story. “Some people write

By Cole Sebastian

Fan fiction allows writers to further explore the characters they know and love

out of 2400, compared to 1195 in P.G. County.Sarah, another Blair junior with a false

address, lies for a slightly different purpose. She resides in Montgomery County, but not in the district of her choosing. “I actually live near Northwood,” Sarah says. “My home school is Northwood… [But] I wanted to go to Blair because my brother, aunts, and dad went to Blair. So it was kind of like carrying on a tradition.”

Sarah used to live at the address she still claims, which is in the Blair school district, but she moved 10 years ago when her grandmother fell ill. “We used to live near Long Branch Library and my grandma lives there now. We’re with my other grandma now because she’s sick and we’re helping her out,” says Sarah.

The legal consequences

Every Montgomery County school has

a residence department which records and verifies the address of each student. Accord-

ing to Assistant Principal Suzanne Harvey, the head of Blair’s residence department, students using false addresses are discovered in a variety of ways.

In most cases, the residence department is

C6 Features December 17, 2015silverchips

Taking pop culture into their own hands—one fandom at a time

A risky solution to MCPS’s out-of-county policyStudents use family members’ in-county addresses to attend Blair

Where only first names appear, names have been changed to protect the identities of the sources.

Ashely, a junior, pulls into her assigned parking spot and gets out of her car. The sun is just beginning to rise, but the area surround-ing her is already abuzz with activity. Some students run towards the school, excited to catch up with friends, while others walk slowly, fearing the moment when they must enter the building and go to class.

Unlike these students, Ashely does not dread her school days; she appreciates them, because they are by no means guaranteed. Ashely, like a small number of other students, lies about her address to attend Blair.

Claiming a false address is not the only way for out-of-county students to go to Blair. MCPS policy allows out-of-county students to legally attend public schools in the county if they pay an annual tuition fee. According to MCPS Senior Communications Specialist Gboyinde Onijala, there are currently 33 stu-dents in the county system who pay $14,299 per year to attend MCPS schools. However, some have chosen a different way.

A simple lie

Ashely lives in Prince George’s County

(P.G. County), but according to MCPS records, she resides in Blair’s school district. “Right now, I live in P.G. County, but my fake address is by Eastern Middle School. My grandma used to live there,” says Ashely.

When Ashely was in elementary school, her mother and father decided to send her to a Montgomery County school. “The schools in Montgomery County are better. There’s more diversity and more opportunities to get a better education here than in [Prince George’s County],” Ashely says.

According to The Baltimore Sun, Montgom-ery County Public Schools spends an average of $15,480 per student per year, while Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) spends $14,813. And, according to Maryland State Department of Education records, MCPS seniors’ average SAT score was 1665

By Julian Brown

it never happened,” she says.Sarah, on the other hand, says it has been

easy to keep the secret safe. “No one really asks about the address ever,” she says.

Despite the possibility of inquiries, Sarah and Ashely have adapted to their secretive lifestyle. “I used to feel weird about it,” says Ashely. “But now, I don’t know, I just feel like it’s a normal thing that I have to do.”

tipped off when MCPS mail is returned to sender. “Most of the time it comes from getting the mail back…[but] I had one [student] that I found out when a student came to a counselor and said a student asked him if he could use his address, and I said, ‘No, he doesn’t live in the county.’ So sometimes we get our infor-mation from other students,” says Harvey.

These first clues are gen-erally followed by an in-vestigation, which requires the student to bring in a legal document as a proof-of-residence. “If the mail’s coming back, it doesn’t do me any good to send a letter to this address, so I’ll call the kid in and ask him what’s going on. [The student] now must prove where he lives...If they bought a house, they must bring in a property tax bill… If they moved to a new apartment complex; fine; just bring me your lease,” says Harvey.

These lies result in con-sequences if discovered. Ac-cording to Harvey, Blazers discovered to be lying about their addresses face immedi-ate consequences. Out-of-county students must switch schools immediately, while in-county students would be transferred back to their home schools for the next semester.

Ashely recalls one time in middle school when her real address was almost discov-ered. “The assistant principal started asking questions about if I really did live there and asked to see paperwork. [My parents and I] just showed them some paperwork and they tried to make it seem like they would stop by anytime to see if we were telling the truth, but

there is often a much stronger connection between fanfiction writers and their readers than the normal writer-reader relationship. Fanfiction websites, such as wattpad.com and fanfiction.net, put readers in direct con-tact with writers through forums and com-ment sections. “I know what [my readers] want to see and what they want to read, so I can base my stories on what they want and what I want and we communicate a lot,” Chowdhury says. “When people are com-menting on my fanfiction, I take their feed-back and I do stuff with the story and I edit it and I fix it. I just work all the time on my fanfiction.”

Chowdhury found this feedback to be es-pecially rewarding after releasing a pivotal chapter of her multi-part “Life is Strange” fanfic series. Time-traveler Maxine and her friend Chloe finally confessed their love for each other after a long period of tension. “Everyone cried,” she jokes. “[My] read-ers felt emotional because of that and I love evoking emotion,” she says.

Canales enjoys the control she has over her favorite stories by writing fanfiction. “Once I watch something, if I don’t like how it’s going… I can rewrite it into something that’s more creative and more exciting and more dramatic instead of sad or depress-ing,” she says.

Hazelwood believes that fanfiction can be a great introduction to writing. “When you’re really just starting out with trying to figure out how to write it’s a lot easier to take someone else’s characters that you know very well and just experiment with it,” she says.

Paradoxically, that introductory baseline of pre-existing characters gives fanfiction writers a unique freedom with their work. As Hazelwood says, “With fanfic, you can do anything.”

An engaging outlet

Fanfiction has gained immense popular-ity. Fanfiction.net is ranked number 471 in the most popular websites in the US and the average visitor spends 25 minutes a day on the site, according to Alexa, a web analytics service.

Writers use fanfiction to immerse them-selves in the fictional worlds that they love. “When I write, I don’t think about anything else. I just forget the world exists and I just

write,” says Chowdhury. “It’s kind of like an escape.” For Canales, fanfic-tion helps her feel “really relieved and calm. I can imagine what I’m writing, and I see the story com-

ing to life.”According to Hazelwood,

writers often use fanfiction to take stories and characters places that big companies are too afraid to take them. She says that fanfiction al-lows characters to escape the heteronormativity, or norm of only male-female relationships, of main-stream media. “It’s great because there’s not a lot of representation for LGBT people in TV shows, books,

everything, because com-panies and people are afraid that people are not going to like it,” Hazelwood says.

The writing process

Members of the fanfic community say

fanfiction, but it’s just not good because their characters aren’t like in the game or in the show or in whatever it is,” she says.

Fanfiction has given read-ers and writers stories that they find more personal and engaging than the root sto-ries. “It’s just really

interesting to read something that’s someone’s imagination of what has already happened,” says Hazelwood.

$17,617MCPS spends an average of

per student.

$15,035PGCPS spends an average of

per student.

$14,22933 out-of-county students pay

in annual MCPS tuition.

“I used to feel weird about it.

But now, Idon’t know, I just feel like it’s a normal

thing I have to do.”

-Ashely, a junior

CAMILLE KIRSCH

ROSEMARY SOLOMON

BALTIMORE SUN/MARYLAND STATE DEPT OF EDUCATION

December 17, 2015 ADs C7silverchips

first Thanksgiving that I ever had was with a friend who lived on the other side of my block. I never had Thanksgiving with my family,” he says.

He met the family a few months before they invited him over for the holiday, and over the years, they have become close

friends, even though the children all attend different schools. “It started with Hallow-een. I decided to go trick o’ treating with them, and with Thanksgiving being around the corner, they invited me over,” Roy re-counts. “Ever since then, it’s been a tradition that we spend Thanksgiving together.”

Roy remembers his mixed feelings from the first time he spent Thanksgiving with his neighbors. “At first it felt very odd, spend-ing a holiday with someone other than my family,” he explains. “But it felt amazing that I got to have Thanksgiving…even if it wasn’t with my family.”

This year marked the seventh Thanks-giving Roy spent with his neighbors, now his close friends, and he looks forward to celebrating many more. “Any friendship that lasts over seven years is more likely to last a lifetime,” he says.

The trip of a lifetime

T h i s s p r i n g , s o p h o -more Olivia Gonzalez ’s grandmother asked if she wanted to go on a vacation over the sum-mer. “She just sent me an email and

silverchips December 17, 2015D1Entertainment

The most meaningful presents from students’ pastsStudents reflect on their favorite gifts ahead of the holiday season

By Joshua Fernandes

The weather is getting colder, which sadly means Blazers have to double (or triple) up on layers. More importantly, though, winter break is right around the corner! Better yet, we are right in the middle of the holiday season—Chanukah just ended, Christmas is next week, and Kwanzaa comes the day after. And what do kids love about these holidays more than anything else? Gifts! In honor of the upcoming celebrations, Blazers share some of the best gifts they have ever received.

Snacks to sports

Food is always an important part of the holidays. While most people look forward to a big feast, junior Theresa Guirand has a particular snack she loves: Wheat Thins. “I ask everybody to get me a box of Wheat Thins [for Christmas],” she says. “By the time Christmas comes, I have a lifetime sup-ply.”

The tradition began when Guirand was in seventh grade and her mom bought her a box of Wheat Thins. “It was flavored, and I was like, ‘I want these all the time,’” she remembers. Now, she eagerly anticipates them every Christmas. “It’s great because Wheat Thins aren’t expensive,” Guirand says. “I know it’s guaranteed that people will get me my Wheat Thins.”

Now, Guirand looks forward to having the crackers each holiday season. “Wheat Thins aren’t a year-round kind of snack. I only crave them in the winter,” she says. “I know I have my life together if I have my Wheat Thins.”

Like Guirand, junior Kendall Douglas’s best gift was also a material thing, but he remembers a specific present rather than a tradition. When he was 7 years old, he re-ceived a Kobe Bryant All-Star Game jersey from his father.

Kobe Bryant was Douglas’s favorite player at the time, making the jersey top on Douglas’s wish list. “The Lakers were always my favorite team,” Douglas says. “I played guard. [Kobe Bryant] was one of the best players in the league and he was a guard.”

Douglas still remembers how unexpected the gift was. “I really wanted it, but I didn’t think I would get it,” Douglas recounts. “It was really expensive.” He was overjoyed to see the jersey, and was in a state of excite-ment and surprise for the rest of the day.

Douglas still owns the jersey and has fond memories of opening it, but he has grown a bit since second grade. “I still have it,” he laughs, “but yeah, I can’t fit in it any-more.”

Gifts for life

Every day when sophomore Lyla Di-Paul looks at her bed, she is reminded of her favorite present. On her ninth birthday, her friends worked together to make her a meaningful gift. “It was a homemade quilt made of T-shirts my friends and family do-nated,” DiPaul says.

The family of one of DiPaul’s friends thought of making a quilt. “It was a very creative family,” she explains. “They really

like making homemade gifts.”Now, the quilt stands out for DiPaul as

the most memorable gift she’s ever gotten to unwrap. “It was the first birthday gift I opened that year,” she says. “I got to open it

the day before my birthday, and it was really special. Everybody watched me open it.”

DiPaul is humbled by the thoughtfulness her friends and family put into making the gift for her. “I was really honored that all my friends had helped to put into this gift, and it’s still pretty,” she says. “I still have it on

my bed today.”While DiPaul’s gift is quite unique, many

Blazers consider their pets the best gifts they have ever gotten. When junior Kelton Gon-zalez was seven years old, he wanted noth-ing more than a pet dog.

For his seventh birthday, his parents gave him a beagle named Buster, but decided sim-ply giving it to him would not be enough. “I’d been wanting a dog for a while, so my parents decided to surprise me,” he says. “They put a stuffed dog in a box and after I opened the stuffed dog, I thought, ‘Oh that’s cute,’ but then my parents actually brought a real dog out.”

Gonzalez now finds his parents’ ruse both amusing and thoughtful. “I was really sur-prised and really excited,” he remembers. “It was a great trick that they pulled on me to surprise me with that, and I loved that dog.”

Unfortunately, Buster has passed away, but Gonzalez loved him from the day he met him. “I felt that immediate connection, and I spent all my time with him,” Gonzalez says. “I just really loved it. It was a great present. I loved my dog,” he says.

A tradition to last forever

It is the middle of winter now, but soph-omore Aritra Roy’s favorite gift involves Thanksgiving. He had never celebrated Thanksgiving until he was 10 years old, when he was invited to spend the evening with his neighbors. This initial invitation started an annual tradition. Now, Roy sees that invitation as the best gift of his life. “The

she was like, ‘Do you want to go on a trip with me somewhere?’ and then she gave me a few options,” Gonzalez says.

Gonzalez remembers her initial reaction to the invitation: “Oh my God, yes!” She ac-cepted the offer happily, and they agreed on a trip to Europe. They traveled to the Neth-erlands and Belgium together in August.

What Gonzalez liked about the trip above anything else was getting to know her grandmother much better. “I never re-ally spent that much time, just me and her,” Gonzalez explains. “I learned a lot about

her life. We got to bond.”Sophomore Pierre Moglen also received

the gift of an incredible trip this summer. From a young age, Moglen has loved to cook. “For my eleventh birthday, I was in France with my family, and my grandma set it up for me to go and watch a shift at a restaurant,” he says. “It turned from a one-day thing into a two-week thing, and I actually worked there for three years after that.”

A year and a half ago, Moglen’s mother gave him a homemade certificate grant-ing the opportunity to study at the culi-nary school of his choice. Given culinary school’s high cost, the certificate was a combined gift for Moglen’s eighth-grade graduation, two of his birthdays, and the following Christmas.

He cashed in the certificate this sum-mer. “I found a culinary school in Chicago where I could actually be with the full-time students and stay in the dorms and be with all the actual chefs, so I was there for two full weeks, fully immersed,” he explains.

Moglen now has multiple job offers and believes that his dream of becoming a chef is closer to reality. “I really do think [cook-ing’s] what I’m going to end up doing: be-ing a chef and owning a restaurant, hope-fully,” he says. “When you have a passion and you feel it inside, just go with it, and put everything into it.”

Even though Moglen has not gotten any major gifts in the past year, he is extremely appreciative of his opportunity to study in Chicago. “This gave me the experience and it gave me something to build off,” he says. “Those little things give you experiences rather than things.”

“I got to have Thanksgiving

and it became a regular tradition for us, even if it

wasn’t with my family.”

-Aritra Roy

“I felt that immediate

connection, and I spent all my time with him. I just really loved it. It

was a great present. I loved my dog.”

- Kelton Gonzalez

CULINARY EXPERIENCE Sophomore Pierre Moglen donned his crisp chef whites after an intense summer of cooking at a prestigious culinary institute in Chicago.

COURTESY OF PIERRE MOGLEN

COURTESY OF LYLA DIPAUL

HOMEMADE HAPPINESS Sophomore Lyla DiPaul shows off a unique quilt made with t-shirts by all of her close friends and family members for her birthday.

SHIVANI MATTIKALLI

silverchipsDecember 17, 2015 Entertainment D2

‘Tis the season to be jolly...and satisfy your sweet toothA merry look into the Silver Spring area’s best holiday desserts

On Jan. 17, 2016, the world will meet the six dynamic ladies who have taken the Po-tomac social scene by storm. After the Real Housewives of Washington, D.C. (RHODC) tanked, BravoTV decided to refocus national attention by creating another Real House-wives franchise to document the drama of this group of successful and wealthy black women in this overwhelmingly white and impressively affluent area of Maryland’s elite.

Say hello to the Housewives

On the cover of the Washington Post, six women stand tall in the series poster. With perfectly glossy hair, impeccably shaped eyebrows, and precisely tailored designer dresses, each will bring a specific role to the upcoming series.

In the trailer, Housewife Gizelle Bryant describes the black community in Potomac as, “extremely, extremely small.” The show’s group of women represents what senior Jim-my McMillian, a Potomac native, describes as the social circle of, “upper class black peo-ple…in the DMV.”

Potomac, a short distance from the na-tion’s capital, is a small and wealthy commu-nity. According to Forbes, the median house price is just under $1.2 million. The U.S. Cen-sus Bureau reports that 75.8 percent of peo-ple in Potomac are white, while 4.6 percent are black. Realtor.com lists Potomac’s aver-age household net worth is $1,323,124 com-pared to the $484,469 average U.S. household worth. In the trailer, Housewife Karin Huger stresses the Potomac ideal: “New money is good, but old money is so much better.”

Changing the face of the series

While fans of the Real Housewives series might expect housewives from the heart of Potomac, RHOP stars Bryant, Robyn Dixon

By Georgina Burros

A new Real Housewives series hones in on Montgomery CountyStudents react to Bravo’s latest installment of the reality TV show in Potomac

organization that is the core of the show. The Post describes Jack and Jill as an

“elite membership organization,” formed by a group of mothers in 1938 in Philadelphia to promote opportunity for black children. Jack and Jill has repeatedly come under fire by the media with accusations of elitism.

Each of the six Housewives are members of the Potomac chapter. “It’s funny because they’re all in Jack and Jill,” says McMillian, who is also a member of the Potomac chap-ter. “There’s a lot of ridiculousness involved that surrounds that whole entire organiza-tion, and…it’d be funny to see that exposed on TV and how other people view it.”

Following the filming of the show, the organization’s president, Tammy King, sent a warning letter to members of Jack and Jill stating that, “members are expected to act publicly in a way that reflects the high moral and ethical character of Jack and Jill mothers.” Judging from the trailer, it seems as though the Housewives got this letter too late.

Redefining standards

In a predominately white community, the focus on these women, many of whom are single mothers, will differ from any other Real Housewives show in the past. RHOP is the first all-black cast since the Real House-wives of Atlanta. Of course, with all the Real Housewives shows, “they’re looking for dra-ma, and I think one place where you can find a lot of drama that people don’t know of...is upper class black people, especially in the DMV,” says McMillian.

Potomac is regarded as one of the wealthi-est and generally unknown areas in the coun-try. “Most women [in] this area have real jobs,” says senior Schuyler Cross, daughter of a friend of one of the Housewives. “They’re lawyers and doctors and congresswomen, so I can’t imagine them fighting and acting crazy.” One thing is for sure, these women will put Potomac on the map.

By Julian BrownIn first person

that has taken over American cities. The cafe was also extremely quiet due to its side-street location.

As I stepped into line, I realized that this was the first cafe I had been to in which I had to wait to order. Thankfully, the wait was only a few minutes, and soon I was ordering a sweet and shiny sticky bun for only $2.35. Unfortunately, the modern decorations also came with a plain, modern way of ordering, and my sticky bun was served in a simple plastic bowl -- no chocolate swirls or dollops of whipped cream. Despite the arrangement, my sticky bun was delicious with hard, crunchy, nutty outer layers that gave way to a soft, chewy, and sweet center.

Rating: 7/10Located at 918 Silver Spring Ave.

munity we are and probably make fun of us,” says freshman and Potomac native Arthi Thyagarajan.

Jack and Jill of America When the show was announced, a frenzy

erupted on social media. Sophomores Mar-ley Majette and Olivia Amitay heard of the

RHOP as it broke on Twitter after the release of the trailer. “The arguments you see in the [RHOP] trailer, oh, absolutely hilarious. That’s exactly what’s going on [in real life],” says McMillian, a member of the RHOP so-cial circle.

However, the social organization Jack and Jill of America was less than pleased to hear about The RHOP. According to the Washing-ton Post, BravoTV intended to create a series entitled Potomac Ensemble, now RHOP, to “navigate the cattiness” of Jack and Jill, the

and Boalch Darby all live outside of Po-tomac. Boalch Darby lives in Arlington, Vir-ginia. According to the Washingtonian MOM magazine, Dixon resides in Silver Spring. Bryant lives in, what BravoTV calls, the “Po-tomac Area.” Only Charisse Jackson Jordan and Huger actually reside in Potomac.

Some Blazers have concern that the show will not be popular to DMV residents

as Potomac is not considered a new and unique place to them. “I thought [the trailer] sucked,” said sophomore Betty Samuels. “I think it’s because it’s so close to home that it sucked so badly.” Another question that arises is whether the show will cast a nega-tive light on Potomac for those who are not members of Maryland’s elite. Other students worry that the show will paint Potomac in a negative light as a significantly richer and more exclusive community than it actually is. “It’ll take advantage of how rich a com-

that this was a cute, little coffee shop that served delicious crepes as well as the usual coffee and pastries.

Walking into the shop, the first thing I no-ticed was the cramped quarters. The tables and chairs were practically on top of each other; the tight path to the register was the only open space in the room. After navigat-ing my way to the front, I looked up at the large menu board on the wall and was de-lighted to see the number of choices avail-able. I counted a total of no less than 47 different sweet and savory crepes, as well as many interesting additions that could be added to any of them.

This being the first cafe of my journey, I was a bit hungry, so I ordered two crepes: the Apple Delight ($5.25) and the Chestnut Spread ($6.55). The crepes were brought out after just a couple of minutes. The arrange-ment on the plate was beautiful with the crepe folded into a triangle in the center and a dollop of whipped cream on either side. I first tried the Apple Delight but found it strangely inconsistent. At some points, the crepe would be bland, but then I would get a spike of flavor that burned my mouth and left me with vague memories of 2012’s cin-namon challenge fad. The Chestnut Spread, on the other hand, was a true delight. The crepe had a warm, creamy, nutty filling that left me thinking of Christmas, and wanting more.

Rating: 7.5/10Located at 8311 Fenton St.

Zed’s Cafe

Next, I moved on to Zed’s Cafe. This time, the first thing I noticed as I walked in was the noise—or rather, the lack of noise. The cafe, whose front door, might I remind

Everywhere you look around this time of year, you see something related to the holiday season. Since November, there have been holiday songs on the radio, Christmas trees on our sweaters, and even the color red on our Starbucks lattes. But without a doubt, the best thing about the holidays is the food. So I decided to go out and visit some of Sil-ver Spring’s best cafes to find the tastiest holiday dessert.

Fenton Cafe

The first coffee shop I visited was the Fenton Cafe. I had heard from my friends

you, is just 30 feet from Georgia Avenue, is al-most dead silent. The only thing I heard was the calming music play-ing on the stereo and the murmur of conversation coming from the other customers. I was truly amazed, and I immedi-ately felt relaxed.

I walked up to the reg-ister and peered through the glass casing that con-tained the cafe’s assorted sweets. As soon as I saw the red velvet cake, I knew I had to have it. So after paying the afford-able price of $4.50, I re-ceived my cake and went to sit down.

The display I found on my plate was just as beautiful as Fenton Cafe’s crepes. The cake was surrounded by strawberries on one side and whipped cream on the other, all topped in swirls of chocolate sauce. The red velvet cake was a bit too sweet, but the creamy, cool icing did a wonderful job of balancing out its flavor.

Rating: 9/10Located at 83225 Georgia Ave.

Kaldi’s Social House

The third and final cafe I visited was Kaldi’s Social House. In comparison to the others, this coffee shop had a distinctly mod-ern interior, with brown, gray, and black furnishings and dark wood floors that went along with the hipster-ish, shabby chic trend

SUGAR & SPICE Fenton Cafe’s selection of 31 different sweet crepes make for great meals in the morning or after dinner.

JULIAN BROWN

JULIAN BROWN

QUIET & CALM Zed’s Cafe’s relaxing music and quiet conversation creates a tranquil, homey atmosphere.

LINDSAY HARRIS

On his most recent album, GO:OD AM, clever lyrics mixed with interesting instru-mentals show that Mac Miller has matured musically. At 17 songs, the record is a little too long and the energy fades after the � rst half. However, throughout the album, there are plenty of melodic beats and con� dent verses that allow for easy listening.

Some rappers reveal little about their opinions and lives outside of rap. But not Vince Staples. He is never afraid to share his opinion on Twitter, sometimes creating con-� ict among his fans, but always backs up his claims with an eloquent manner and sharp wit. On his � rst full-length album, Summer-time ‘06, his lyrics are super focused on his message.

Most of the instrumentals are full and fast with a deep dark bass and a rhythmical

2015 has been quite a year in hip hop and will certainly be remembered. The rap game was shaken up and pushed to its lim-its with new sounds and ideas. Artists have dropped fresh debuts, incredible follow up albums, and long-awaited albums that will stay interesting for years. Other artists have have laid dormant this past year but will de� nitely command our attention in 2016.

Important albums

Dr. Dre’s Compton is one of the best-produced albums ever. In August, Dr. Dre � nally of� cially released new music after 16 years and it is certainly not classic Dre.

The beats have changed from a gritty but simple feel into a more wandering and spread out style. Also, his voice has changed over the years. The album stays current, but also reaches back into the past, drawing in-spiration from the golden age of “gangsta rap.”

However, the features are what solidify this album. Dr. Dre was able to work with a wide variety of artists from Kendrick Lamar to Eminem to Snoop Dogg to Xzibit without making it sound unnatural. Compton has a lot of things going for it and despite a few too many R&B choruses that can get stale, it is a solid record.

On the other side of the country, an art-ist from Pittsburgh came of age. Mac Mill-er rose to fame in 2011 when he was still a teenager and dabbled in trashy pop-rap that touted his newly earned riches. After his ini-tial surge, he lost some of his excitement and cheer, releasing more monotone and cold music the past couple of years.

feel. However, there are a lot of extraneous tracks that take away from the � nal product such as “Surf” and “Like It Is.” Summertime ‘06 loses its initial excitement near the end of the record with sloppy hooks that leave things to be desired.

Artists to watch in 2016

One artist featured heavily on Compton was Anderson Paak, a new age West Coast rapper who has been releasing singles re-cently and is going to release his album, Malibu, in January. He has a very unique voice that is laid back and raspy. His lyrics are intriguing and his � ow is effortless. An-derson Paak has found his sound and shows a lot of promise. He borrows sounds and vo-cal riffs from R&B and sometimes switches back and forth between pure R&B hooks and lighter rap. Paak shows his versatility on recent singles, “The Season / Carry Me” and “Am I Wrong.”

Pusha T has been in the game for de-cades, but he is about to reach new heights. Starting on Dec. 18, he will start a full rollout of his recent work. It will start with a short � lm and prelude album, sharing the title, “Darkest Before Dawn.” Based on the title and clues from the trailer, the � lm is about his past business ventures on the streets of Virginia Beach.

The � nal piece of the puzzle is his full length album and true master project, King Push, which is going to be great. Pusha T’s verses are a perfect marriage of brutal hon-esty, amusing wordplay, and poignant ref-erences. He released a single in November titled Untouchable, and if it is any indication about how his album will sound, it’s going to be awesome.

Roxanna UlloaJUNIOR

silverchips December 17, 2015D3 EntertainmentBlazers of Note

Chips helps you � gure out which hat to rock in the hallwayBy Teague Sauter

That’s a rap: A look back on hip-hop in 2015A simple guide to all of the best rap albums of the year

The last place you would expect to see art is in a hospital, where sterile white walls are the norm. To decorate these blank walls, stu-dents like junior Roxanna Ulloa participate in the organization Youth Art for Healing (YAH) in an effort to bring works of art into hospitals to comfort and inspire patients.

Last year, Ulloa worked with senior Rosemary Solomon on a painting for YAH. The painting was � nished at the end of March and hung at the MedStar Montgom-ery Medical Center along with 170 other student paintings. This December, Ulloa and Solomon’s painting was chosen along with 25 other paintings to be hung in the Russell Senate Of� ce Building for a week.

Ulloa is currently working on two other paintings, on of which is for YAH. The other painting is for a contest at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “The topic is ‘conundrum’ and I’m doing something about my ADHD so it per-sonally relates to me and how I have this in-ternal struggle with medicine and ADHD,” says Ulloa.

The reason Ulloa loves art so much is be-cause it gives her a form of expression that is accepted. “Art isn’t just a form of expressing yourself, it is a language. Everyone can in-terpret it in a different way so art can never really be wrong,” says Ulloa.

GRIFFIN REILLY

By Brianna Forté

Amy LiSENIOR

By Julian Bregstone

After years of telling students to remove the � ashy caps that cover their heads, teach-ers had to adjust their policies as Principal Renay Johnson ended hat prohibition in November. Students now have a whole new aspect of fashion that they never had the chance to explore within the walls of Blair. Now, all these new options of head-wear may be a little overwhelming, but fear not: Silver Chips is here to tell you the rules of the hat game.

The � rst question you might have is, “Hey Teague, I have this sweet baseball hat that I want to wear to school, but there are just so many angles to rock it at, and I don’t know what looks best!” Well, don’t worry faithful reader, be-cause I have hat an-gles down to a science. The real question at the heart of this debate is, “How chill is too chill?”

In other words, think about the situation: are you going to a party or are you going to sit in school for eight hours? If your answer is the latter, then I suggest going with the brim facing forward with a slight upwards tilt, so as not to hide your beautiful face from the world. Of course, school is a place to show off for your peers, but this style is still slightly professional, as the backwards hat can sometimes give off a vibe that’s too casual. Save the backwards hat for the week-end and stick to the traditional method for those long days indoors.

I know your next complaint, too. “But Teague, what if I want to wear my hat side-ways like the rappers do?” I’m not going to stop you from being yourself, but don’t blame me for any funny looks you might get in the hallway.

Maybe you’re not even a baseball hat kind of person, though. Another question you might have is, “How do I know if a hat is right for me?” Well, according to a survey I just made up in my head, I can tell you that 97.8 percent of the human population can rock a hat in some fashion -- it’s all about

� nding the right one. If you were unlucky enough to be born into that 2.2 percent, I’m sorry; I would suggest you stop reading im-mediately so you don’t bum yourself out.

There are all types of different hats even within the baseball cap subgroup. You have your cloth c u r v e d - b r i m caps, � oppy cloth curved-brim caps, � ex-� t hats made of a more ath-letic material, snapbacks, � at brims, and many more. For those of you with a little extra let-

tuce � owing down from your head, the cloth baseball hat is the best for you. If you prefer to keep your hair short, though, a larger hat with a � at brim may suit you better.

Honestly, one of the most important se-crets to being an effective hat wearer is to avoid � ooding the market with your glori-

ous hats. You don’t want to overuse your hats by wear-ing them every day, since your headwear can quickly become stale. Keep in mind that since we have odd and even days, you will always have a different audience to please. This means that it’s okay to wear the same hat two days in a row because most people didn’t see you wear it the day before.

However, if it gets to day three without a switch-up, you’re in trouble. You run the risk of someone noticing that you wore the same hat two days ago. There is also the occasional astute observ-er who points out that this is the third day in a row that you’ve worn a hat, which could be an absolute trage-dy. To be on the safe side, re-member to keep things fresh

at all times.So, there you have it Blazers, the rules to

the game all laid out. Now even you can get out there and rock a fresh hat. Just don’t for-get the number one rule: no fedoras.

Senior Amy Li recently won one silver and two bronze medals at the World Wushu Championships in Jakarta, Indonesia. Li has been practicing wushu, a Chinese martial art, since she was a child. “I started learn-ing wushu at the age of 8 at Chinese school. The coach there recommended me to Omei Wushu Kung Fu center because I was okay, and I’ve been at Omei since,” Li says.

Her favorite part of the World champi-onship was not just winning, but meeting and connecting with all the other athletes. “There are a lot of lasting bonds that are made between athletes of different coun-tries and backgrounds... I also loved seeing all the amazing athletes,” Li remarks. “Their wushu was simply inspiring.”

Li is happy that wushu is slowly becom-ing more and more popular throughout the U.S. “The International Wushu Federation is really trying to push wushu into the Olym-pics and I would really love to see it hap-pen,” Li says.

soapboxWhat is your favorite way to wear a hat?

“My favorite way to style my hat, or chapeau, in french, is by placing it intricitely on my head, or noggin.”

- Sophie Stringer, freshman

New hat policy adds brand new aspect to fashionBy Niki Patel

COURTESY OF AMY LI

“I don’t like wearing hats, but I want hoodie equality. I like wearing hoodies. No discrimination against hoodies.”

- Jeremy Abarca, sophomore

MAD HATTERS Blazers enjoy their new found freedom by rocking a variety of hats. Popular styles include baseball hats, beanies, and panda bear hats.

NEW AND IMPROVED Several famous rappers release their latest albums to pos-itive reviews from critics and fans alike.

In � rst person

INTERSCOPE, WARNER BROS, AND DEF JAM

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

silverchipsDecember 17, 2015 Entertainment D4

Self-expression and memories through ink that runs deepShowcasing tattoos from stick and poke to professional pieces

By Dawson Do

heritage. “I have the Nationals’ logo because in my family, every-body’s from Washington, D.C.,” says Redman. “I got one of the Ni-caraguan flag triangle with two of my family’s last names, too.”

Tributes to family is a common theme among the tattoos of these Blazers. Senior Whitney Nguyen got a tattoo of a lotus flower on her arm during spring break as a way to carry on a tradition. “It’s a part of my family: my mom has it, my cousin has it, all my sisters are go-ing to get it,” she says.

Covering up

Some Blazers were wary of how their parents would feel after they got tattoos. Neither Jenifer nor Sara’s parents are aware of their hidden tattoos. “My parents once said, ‘If you get a tattoo, we are not paying for college,’” Jenifer recalls.

On the other hand, Hernan-dez’s mom was very accepting of his tattoo. “She was like, ‘If it has my name, it’s not gang-related or anything else, go ahead and get it,’” Hernandez says.

Not a single one of Redman’s many tattoos left him dissatisfied. “I don’t regret them because they all have a meaning about some-thing,” Redman explains.

None of these Blazers look back on their tattoos and regret their decisions, but some end up ques-tioning their decisions under the influence. Despite being happy with how her tattoo turned out, Clara admits that getting a tattoo from her uncertified friend may not have been a smart decision. “It was a bad idea,” says Clara. “I don’t regret it, but in hindsight, it was a little dumb.”

Jenifer thinks that getting a stick and poke tattoo is exciting, but the tattoo does not compare to the quality of a professional tattoo. “It was a good experience and fun, but I’d get a real tattoo,” says Jeni-fer. “[My tattoo] looks like it was drawn on with a pen.”

Personal showcase

By showing off their tattoos, Blazers express themselves and set themselves apart. Sabi’s tattoos make her stand out and also help her open up and talk to others. “It’s my way of talking to people and finding a way to connect with people who are into the type of stuff I’m into,” explains Sabi.

Gabriel believes that tattoos are not only a form of expression, but also a permanent reminder of something in your life. “If you think you’re going to forget [some-thing], or you think it would look cool on you, just put it on you,” says Gabriel.

While tattoos help some people

over my body.”Gabriel, a junior, did not need

his parents’ permission when he first started getting tattoos in middle school. “In my situation, if I wanted tattoos, I would ask my brother and we would go get tat-toos,” he says. Gabriel now has four tattoos on his left arm includ-ing a crown, a rose, and two stars. Sometimes, Gabriel did not even need to leave his own home to get a new design. “It depends on how much I wanted to spend and how I felt. Whether I wanted to leave my apartment or have a tattoo artist come to me,” says Gabriel.

Tattoos are often expensive and usually require careful consider-ation before the final commitment, but they sometimes end up being unplanned. Clara, a freshman, has a tattoo that was done by her friend, who was an aspiring tattoo artist at the time. “My friend got a tattoo needle, and he was work-ing on his [tattoo] license. He was like, ‘Oh, I’ll do it for you for free,’”

says Clara, who didn’t put much thought into the asterisk that her friend etched onto her hip this past summer. “I was kind of drunk and he was like, ‘I can do straight lines right now,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, let’s do some straight lines.’”

Stick and poke

Jenifer and Sara, both seniors, did not go to a parlor or even get their tattoos done by a tattoo art-ist. Instead, they chose to do a stick and poke tattoo by themselves during the summer. “Our friend

Where only first names appear, names have been changed to protect the iden-tities of the sources.

Senior Isias Redman remembers sitting in a waiting room five years ago, twiddling his fingers and ner-vously looking around. Eventual-ly, a man entered the room, put on his gloves, and started pressing a needle into Redman’s chest. After ten minutes, his arm started to go numb, and after an hour, the man was finished. The numbness had yet to subside, but Redman was already marveling at his red and swollen chest where he just got his first tattoo.

The word “tattoo” can invoke a wide spectrum of emotions de-pending on who you ask. Getting a tattoo can be seen as impulsive, re-bellious, and ultimately regretful, or, on the opposite end, liberating and self-expressive. As it turns out, many Blazer tattoos have unique

stories behind them.

Custom work

Like Redman, some Blazers got their first tattoos at a very young age. After getting her first tattoo as a freshman, a small heart on her back, senior Sharon Sabi took a break before eventually getting almost her entire body covered. “I stopped for a while, then I started getting a lot after,” says Sabi. “I have a full sleeve, I have some on my back, and I have some on my chest. So basically, I have them all

remember, they are serious com-mitments. Sabi thinks everyone should consider having tattoos, but also cautions others to not be too impulsive. “I think everyone should at least have one tattoo,” insists Sabi. “But [tattoos] are very different from piercings, you can never take them off. They’re there forever, so there’s no way you can get rid of them unless you want to pay a lot of money.”

Back to the shop

Many Blazers felt the urge to get a second tattoo after overcom-ing the anxiety and nervousness that comes with the first tattoo. Clara looks to get another tattoo now that her friend received his tattoo license. “I want to get an ar-row along my upper thigh. It’s like an arrow with dots and lines, like geometric,” she explains.

For some, the desire for more tattoos never stops. Gabriel, who already has several tattoos on his left arm, hopes to cover his entire arm with a sleeve and parts of his chest and back with tattoos. “My whole left half by next year should be tatted,” says Gabriel.

Even covering her entire arm was not enough for Sabi, who per-haps has more tattoos than anyone else at Blair. Sabi admits that she might have an obsession with tat-toos. “I thought, ‘Oh I’ll be done after my sleeve,’ but then I got two more like two weeks ago,” Sabi laughs. “They’re just addictive...You just want to get more and you just want to cover more of your body.”

bought all the stuff over Amazon. She bought Indian ink, and this big box of tattoo needles,” Jenifer recalls. Jenifer and Sara were en-thusiastic about the idea of getting a tattoo, despite the painful and time-consuming stick and poke process. “We took a flame and burned the tip of the needle to get rid of bacteria. You just dip [the needle] in the India ink and then you just poke through your skin,” Jenifer explains.

In the moment, Sara chose to have her friends tattoo a planet on her ankle while Jenifer wanted a simple design hidden behind her ear. “I was pretty drunk at this point, and I was like, ‘I’ll just get a circle because it will be simple and look cool,’” says Jenifer.

Beneath the surface

Tattoos often carry deeper meanings and represent some-thing special. Senior Fred Hernan-dez has two tattoos, one with his little brother’s name and the other with his mother’s name, to remind him of his family. “My mother and my little brother are the only ones I’m really out here trying to succeed for so later on in life they can be good,” explains Hernandez. “[My brother’s] not here with me right now, he lives far away, but he’s still right here [on my arm].”

Similarly, many of Gabriel’s tat-toos have special meanings and sentiments attached to them. “I got ‘FOE’ in a diamond on my heart. That means ‘family over every-thing,’” Gabriel says. “I [also] got stars for my fallen brothers and a rose on my arm that’s a tribute to my grandmother.” Gabriel ex-plains the main reason he gets tat-toos is to remind him of his loved ones. “I can remember the ones I love the most through my body,” he says. “If you don’t have a place for the people you love, sometimes you just forget about them.”

Through his tattoos, Redman shows off his personal identity and

FAMILY Senior Fred Hernandez has the names of his mother and brother tattooed on his arm.

TATTED UP Senior Sharon Sabi has a full tattoo sleeve as well as tattoos on her back, neck, and chest. COURTESY OF SHARON SABICOURTESY OF SHARON SABI

TRADITION Like her mother and cousins, senior Whitney Nguyen has a tattoo of a lotus flower.

CALEB BAUMAN

D.I.Y. TATTOO Sara, a senior, gave herself a stick and poke tattoo of a planet on her ankle.

CALEB BAUMAN

PERMANENT MEMORIES Gabriel, a junior, has tattoos that remind him of his mission statement and his loved ones that he has lost.

CALEB BAUMAN

CALEB BAUMAN

December 17, 2015D5 ADs silverchips

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1. Unusually cruel

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10. A stronghold

14. Bring together

15. “__ __ the Next One,” Jay-Z

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17. Whole dried coconut meat

18. Acronym for As Soon As Pos-

sible

19. Period of 40 days before Easter

20. To get onto one’s knees

21. Sled dog command for go

22. Large amounts of something

23. Predicted time of arrival

25. Packages of paper

27. A party below the equator

31. The namesake of Houston, ___

Houston

34. Four NY crime � ghting turtles

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38. Places to play coin operated

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42. Queen headwear

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44. Field goal attempt in basketball

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50. Fake identity

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3. Ready to be eaten

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6. On top of a Cappuccino

7. Made certain

8. States of balance

9. A formal mens black hat

10. Angel _____, Venezuela

11. Milk’s favorite cookie

12. Musical about struggling artists

13. Slang for tattoos

24. A single enemy

26. Address for southern women

27. The condition of something

28. Israeli small fwd. for the Kings

29. To remove a cap

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50. To despise a lot

52. Sound of a car horn

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Vacacionesby Julian Bregstone

silverchips

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La Esquina LatinaSilver Chips 17 de diciembre del 2015

La Esquina Latinasilverchips 17 de diciembre del 2015E1 Español

Las actividades deportivas desde el

comienzo han sido clasi� cadas como accio- nes meramente masculinas, sin embargo a lo largo del tiempo se han ido denotan-do cambios por parte del grupo femenino.

Un gran ejemplo de esto es nuestra es-cuela, en la cual un trío de chicas: Rachel Menjívar y Mónica Reyes de décimo gra-do y Madeline Tobar de noveno grado se inscribieron a una academia de boxeo a pesar de todas las personas que las ata-caron con críticas para convencerlas de se-guir la norma social.

Conocemos que en la sociedad en la cual el ser humano convive, las denomi-nadas “eti- quetas de género” son bastante importantes para el reconocimiento de difer-entes grupos y la misma adaptación a ellos.

Aun así podemos comprobar en el ple-no siglo XXI, que todas aquellas etiquetas impuestas desde el inicio de la civilización, son sólo un re� ejo de eso que nos apega-ba más a nuestra etapa más primitiva.

Aquí es donde damos a paso a nues-tras nuevas integrantes del colectivo fe-menino, nuevas mujeres que ya no sólo se quedan en casa a cuidar de los niños, sino que también se han integrado a nuevas actividades que fueron seleccio-nadas al principio como masculinas.

Aunque gracias a los mismos estereo-tipos, siempre terminamos teniendo una

clara clasi� cación entre los deportes “para mujeres” y los deportes “para hombres”. Madeline cuenta que al principio, su madre se oponía a la idea de que ella hi-ciera boxeo. “Cuando le dije a mi mamá que quería hacer boxeo, lo primero que me dijo era que no porque me iban a golpear.”

Hoy en día, cada persona va evolucio-nando poco a poco como le plazca, como un ser único y auténtico, sin necesidad de rendirle cuentas a nadie. Rachel Menjívar comenta que practica boxeo para mejorarse como persona, no para complacer a nadie más. “Yo empecé a hacer boxeo porque qui-ero dejar de ser común, quiero hacer cosas que me gustan para sobresalir y hacer cosas que nunca pensé que iba a hacer. Algunos chicos me dicen que soy lesbiana por hacer deportes fuertes, pero yo no le tomo impor-tancia porque lo hago por mí, no por ellos.”

Los deportes que no se han clasi� cados como difíciles o de gran esfuerzo físico, según el ma-chismo, son automáticamente para mujeres.

De acuerdo a Madeline, ese tipo de men-talidad es lo que desanima al resto de mu-jeres de practicar deportes fuertes, ya que las hace creer que sus capacidades físicas no son

comparables a las de un hombre. “Muchas chicas no quieren hacer deportes como el fút-bol o el boxeo porque tienen miedo de lasti-marse o creen que son demasiado débiles.”

Las mujeres que ignoran estas expecta-tivas y se desafían a sí mismas, son las que rompen estos estereotipos y logran direct-amente sus objetivos tanto como atletas como pioneras en ir cambiando la mental-idad encasillada de la sociedad. Mónica Reyes por ejemplo, tuvo la suerte de que su familia la alentara a practicar boxeo. “Mi hermano y mis primos me ayudaron a entrar a las clases con ellos. Al princip-io mi papá quería que hiciera karate, pero a mi mamá le gustó más el boxeo porque quería que me aprendiera a defender.”

Las chicas como ellas son las que inspiran a otras a enfrentarse a las expectativas sexistas de la sociedad y a romper esas barreras mentales que encasillan a las mujeres. Rachel dice que con su ejemplo, ha logrado inspirar a algunas de sus amigas. “Las otras niñas se emocionan y me dicen que ellas también quieren entrar a las clases y quieren formar parte de nuestro grupo. El boxeo les permitirá pasar menos tiem-po prestando atención a lo que las otras personas creen de ellas y más tiempo pensando en ellas mismas.”

También es importante con- siderar los bene� cios que se ob-tienen de practicar deportes. Por un lado, Madeline dice que las clases de boxeo le ha enseñado más sobre sí misma. “Aprendí que soy más valiente de lo que creí y me volví una mujer más atrevida.”

Por otro lado también hay un efecto directo en el estilo de vida de la mujer que se mantiene activa.

Rachel cuenta que el boxeo ha cambiado al-gunos de sus hábitos por unos más sanos des-de que hace boxeo. “Ahora tomo decisiones más saludables, como mejor y me preocupo más por mi salud en general.” Finalmente, también es una cuestión de obtener habili-dades físicas y de autosuperación. Mónica explica que el boxeo es una manera en la que ella y otras chicas demuestran sus capaci-dades. “Las mujeres somos fuertes, y sería bueno que otras chicas se unieran a deportes más intensos para demostrarle a los otros que las mujeres no solo somos dulces y lindas.”

Todo el asunto desemboca en la idea que el único límite real existe en nuestras mentes, ya que si la sociedad y las mujeres mismas se liberaran de las barreras mentales que se les han impuesto, cada quien se sentiría más libre de hacer lo que sea, sin preocuparse por los prejuicios y las críticas que puedan ocasionar.

Con el paso del tiempo, los estudiantes enfrentamos muchos retos académicos. Al alcanzar la escuela superior, madu-ramos físacamente y emocionálmente. Sin darnos cuenta, somos responsables por sobresalir académicamente obtenien-do buenas cali� caciones y a la misma vez tener una vida ba- lanceada. En ocasiones, se hace un poco difícil lograr esto. Es agotador saber cuán ocupados estamos con los muchos deberes escolares, los quehaceres de la casa y los trabajos que algunos tienen. Muchos se ven agobiados por tantas responsabilidades.

En ocasiones, creemos que estamos solos. ¡No es cierto! Dos de nues-tros maestros, la Sra. Coombs y el Dr. Fields, han sido designados como mentores principales del programa LEAP, Latinos Exceeding their Academic Potential (Latinos excediendo su potencial académico). El señor Currence es el administrador que supervisa este programa. Juntos, se han dado cuenta que con un poco de más apoyo, hay un grupo de estudiantes que pueden exceder su capacidad académica. El enfoque de LEAP es en la mentoría de un grupo de estudiantes seleccionados a base de su record académico y asistencia escolar. LEAP ayuda especí� camente a estudiantes identi� cados de noveno y décimo grado con el apoyo de mentores en los grados once y doce o en Mont-gomery College. La premisa es tener un mentor que pueda compartir sus expe-riencias en cómo ha sobresalido para lograr éxito académico y tener un efecto

motivador. El objetivo es que bajo la orientación de los mentores, los es-tudiantes del programa demuestren un cambio en sus actitudes hacia un mejoramiento escolar y establezcan prioridades que conllevan al éxito académico. Se espera que mediante la ayuda de compañeros, los estudian- tes pierdan el temor y se den cuenta

que si su mentor pudo superarse en sus clases, ellos también pueden. La meta primordial es que estos estudiantes logren superar retos académicos y cambien su perspectiva con respecto a lo que son capaces de lograr. El ayu-dar a crear una visión de logro que ayude a esta-blecer hábitos de estudio que conlleven a poder exceder el rendimiento académico en cada clase es un reto en si mismo. Algunos estudiantes en

el programa han logrado superarse al punto de ser evidente la con� an-za que han desarrollado al poder de- rribar barreras que han tenido en el pasado. Al lograr esta superación, los estudiantes tienden a estar más atentos a sus cali� caciones y no se satisfacen con lo mínimo para poder aprobar las clases. La motivación que estos estudiantes han desarrollado sirve de ejemplo para sus amistades que están en LEAP. A través del pro-grama y sus intervenciones, se espera que el poder salir adelante académi-camente dentro de un marco de moti-vación que sea contagioso para todos los participantes. Lo importante es no darse por vencido, seguir adelante y descubrir el potencial que muchas veces no se sabe que se tiene.

LEAP, un programa de mentoría

Por Karla Blanco

Abre las puertas a un mundo de posibilidades

Estudiantes comparten su pasión por el boxeoPor Andrés Pérez

Jóvenes latinas desafían los estereotipos sexistas

El gimnasio de Blair se tornó rojo el pasado sábado 14 de noviembre. Se debía a todos los fanáticos que lle-garon a apoyar el equipo de porristas de Montgomery Blair High School. Durante la competencia de porris-tas de la segunda división en MCPS, el equipo de Blair ganó dos premios. Los porristas tenían mucha compe-tencia contra otras escuelas secunda- rias como Walter Johnson, Wheaton, Einstein, Blake y más. El equipo de Blair no solamente ganó el premio de “espíritu” por la duodécima vez, sino que también obtuvo primer lugar en la competencia de porristas de segun-da división de MCPS del 2015-2016. Jasmine Trejo, una porrista en el gra-do onceavo dijo, “cuando anunciaron que Blair había ganado, me sentí muy feliz. Lo más memorable fue cuando di-jeron ‘Blair’ y todo el equipo se alegró.” Trejo, que ha sido una porrista des-de el décimo grado, cuenta que se sin-tió muy orgullosa de su equipo. “Yo creo que parte de la razón por la cual nosotros ganamos es porque tenemos una conexión especial.” Elabora dicien-

do, “en el tiempo que hemos estado en el equipo, nos hemos vuelto como una familia. Todos trabajamos muy bien con cada uno.” Fue una competencia muy inten-sa. En segundo lugar quedó el equipo de Walter Johnson y en tercer, el equi-po de porristas vecino, Northwood. Eso es exactamente lo que hizo nuestro equipo de porristas de Blair. Gracias a su empeño y determinación, lograron ganar el título de campeones de la segunda división en el condado de Montgomery. “Todos tra-bajamos tan fuerte durante las prácticas y cuando llegó el día de la competencia, hi-cimos lo mejor que pudimos,” continúa diciendo Trejo. “Queríamos ganar y creo que nuestra rutina enseña todo el esfuerzo que hicimos para llegar a donde estamos.” En � n, fue un día muy especial, no sola-mente para los porristas, sino también para toda la escuela de Blair. Es la primera vez que el equipo ha ganado primer lugar en la com-petencia de la segunda división desde el 2007. Los porristas hicieron un trabajo excelente y se merecen el título por el esfuerzo que pusieron. Esta ganancia sirve para enseñar que el esfuerzo arduo tiene buenos resulta-dos. ¡Felicitaciones a los porristas de Blair!

Los animadores de Blair logran su meta al ganar campeonato

CORTESIA DE WILL COOK

Por Alisson Fortis

CALEB BAUMAN

LINDSAY HARRIS

“Conoce el camino.

Demuestra el camino.

Anda el camino.”

tualmente, Maldonado Aguirre está como presidente hasta el 14 de enero del 2016, cuando Jimmy Morales va tomar el lugar. La primera dama, Nadine Heredia, fue investigada por actos de corrupción hechos

por el ex ase-sor del presi-dente Ollan-ta Humala y Martín Be-launde Lo- ssio. Inves-tigaron a la primera dama porque tenían du-das sobre el origen de los fondos que ella re-cibió cuando B e l a u n -de Lossio la c o n t r a t ó como aseso-ra de empre-sas vincula-das, antes de que Humala llegará a la presidencia en el 2011. L o s i n v e s t i -gadores en-c o n t r a r o n

dinero venezolano para � nanciar al partido de Humala. Esto fue en tiempos en la cual Hugo Chávez estaba en poder. Aunque Be-launde Lossio está en la cárcel después de ser extraditado por Bolivia, Heredia clama que recibieron dinero para la campaña de una manera legal. A pesar de esto no se han encontrado su� cientes pruebas para encarcelar a Heredia en este momento, la

Por Ilcia Hernandez

La corrupción del gobierno afecta a ciudadanos permanentemente

17 de diciembre del 2015 silverchips Español E2

ParaguayBolivia

30.2

Corrupción* en

Latinoamérica

28.1 27.2

México

26.6

Venezuela

26.4

Perú

26

Ecuador

23

Honduras

20.7

Guatemala

18.8

Panamá

16.8

Argentina

15.5

Costa Rica

14.7

Nicaragua

13.6

Colombia

9.8

El Salvador

6.7

Uruguay

5.3

Chile *Según Transparency International:“En términos generales colmo ”el abuso del poder para [el] bene�cio privado.” La corrupción se puede cali�car como grande, pequeña o política dependiendo en las

cantidades de dinero perdidas y el sector donde occure.”

Proporción de la población víctima de la corrupción en el 2014 (porcentaje)

Países latinoamericanos luchan contra la corrupción

REVA KREEGER

Por Carlos Fuentes secreto. Para los que no saben sobre lo que es el Santa secreto, esta es una actividad donde todas las personas que participan re-ciben el nombre de otro de los participantes y tienen que comprarle un regalo para la

Navidad mien-tras otra persona compra un regalo para él o ella pero nadie sabe quien tiene el nombre de quien. Una chica que va a participar en un Santa secreto es Yessie Portillo, una estudiante de onceavo gra-do de El Salva-dor. Ella dice que va a hacer un Santa secre-to con sus ami-gas. Hacer algo como un Santa secreto con un

grupo o equipo afuera de la familia es una buena manera de construir amista-des cercanas para tener una familia afuera de la familia y es como Yessie describe al grupo de POMS. Ella dice, “Las chicas de POMS son mi segunda familia, es por eso que disfruto del evento del Santa secreto.” Las vacaciones de invierno es un tiem- po para disfrutar y compartir con familia y amigos. No importa si celebras la Navi-dad o Chanukah, lo importante es tener una conexión especial con tu familia y hacer memorias. No hay que perder el tiem- po, comparte con tus seres queridos en esta época tan importante y especial.

Es la temporada más maravillosa del año. Diciembre está aquí y es tiempo de re-unirse con la familia para celebrar las vaca-ciones, costumbres culturales y religiosas. Todos los estudiantes en Blair deben estar feliz y no importa de donde vengan o de qué religión sean porque este es el mes para terminar el año de la mejor manera posible. Con la diversidad de Blair, hay muchas diferentes cosas que los estudiantes pla-nean hacer durante las vacaciones. Como ya establecido, las vacaciones son tiempo para reunirse con la familia. Esto lo hace Isell Reyes, una estudiante del doceavo grado de familia salvadore- ña, “Yo celebro la Navidad con mi familia por parte de mi madre, pero pocas veces con la familia de mi padre.” Pa-sar tiempo con la familia es probablemente el plan para la mayoría de los estudiantes de Blair, pero hay muchas otras posibilidades. Isell continua, “pero si podría, me gustaría pasar la Navidad con la fami- lia de mi novio para acercarme más a ellos.” No es que reunirse con la familia sea una mala idea para las vacaciones, pero hay muchas otras cosas por hacer. Por ejemplo, la Navidad es un tiempo muy importante para los cristianos y católicos. Durante esta temporada, se celebra el nacimiento de Jesu-cristo, de acuerdo con algunas ideologías religiosas. Por esta razón, muchos van a la iglesia

como la estudiante de noveno grado, Leslie Alcántara. Leslie y su familia van a la iglesia todos los años el 23 de diciembre, “siempre nos reunimos el día antes de la Nochebuena para dar gracias por todo lo que hemos reci-bido durante el año. Después para el 24, otra vez nos vemos para celebrar la Navidad.” La religión es algo que junta a las personas y es por eso que es buena idea celebrar su religión durante este tiempo, además de ser una bue-na forma de rea� rmar las creencias y valores. El cristianismo no es la única religión que se celebra en las vacaciones en diciembre. El judaísmo tiene la celebración de Chanukah, donde se conmemora el momento en que los judíos en Europa se habían levantado contra sus opresores griegos en la revuelta Macabeo.

Durante Chanukah, la familia judía enciende una vela cada dia por 8 días y los hijos reci-ben un regalo cada día. Considerando que la mayoría de los hispanos son cristianos o católicos, encontrar a un judío hispano en Blair es como tra-tar de encontrar una aguja en una pila de paja, pero sí existen. Marcus Murphy Moreno es un estudiante de onceavo gra-do con un padre católico de Mé- xico y una madre judía de los Esta-dos Unidos. Con esta combinación de padres, Marcus celebra Chanu- kah y la Navidad. “Mis padres es-tán divorciados, entonces cele-bro Chanukah en la casa de mi madre y la Navidad en la casa de mi padre. Pero pre� ero celebrar Chanukah porque a comparación de la Navidad, Chanukah se celebra por ocho días. Cada día recibimos un regalo y pue-do pasar más tiempo con mi fami- lia.” Marcus es un ejemplo de unos de los his-panos que celebra sus creencias durante las vacaciones en una manera distinta. Por supuesto unos tienen una vida afuera de sus familias. Aparte de pasar tiem- po con la familia, a unos les gusta celebrar las vacaciones con sus amigos. Una tenden-cia de los años recientes es juntar a muchas personas y hacer un evento llamado Santa

ALEXANDRA MENDIVIL

Anticipando las vacaciones de invierno con alegríaEstudiantes de Blair celebran diferentes religiones en las vacaciones

ALEXANDRA MENDIVIL

situación es otro ejemplo del poder exce-sivo que tienen los � scales en el gobierno. Aproximadamente la mitad de la po-blación venezolana es pobre y no tienen los recursos para muchas de sus necesidades. El gobierno de Venezuela tiene un proble-ma en manejando el dinero que supues-tamente va a la gente que más lo necesita. Este dinero se usa para pagar la comida y medicina. Una organización llamada Trans-parencia Venezuela, colaboró con un perio- dista para descubrir que habían 400 to- neladas de medicina tiradas en una bodega y dejadas sin usar hasta que se expiraron. Otro ejemplo de corrupción fue encubi-erta por una investigación sobre la impor- tación de leche en polvo. La leche para los niños en la escuela fue llevada a Colombia ilegalmente con la aprobación de las autori-dades de Venezuela y Colombia. En el 2005, la Corte Suprema, compró tierra por 78 millones de bolívares (más de un millón de dólares estadounidenses) para construir la ciudad judicial en Caracas. Pero hasta este dia, no se han visto planes ni construcción. En todos estos casos, nadie se ha hecho responsable por los actos. Transparencia Venezuela trabaja para tratar de denunciar los actos de corrupción. El director exe- cutivo de la organización dice, “solo si las víctimas y los testigos denuncian [estos] actos de corrupción y de los individuos, existe la posibilidad de sanciones y que las cosas cambien para mejor en Venezuela.” De acuerdo a él, la gente Venezolana tiene que tomar acción contra violaciones de los derechos humanos y contra la corrupción. Muchos de los países en latinoamérica no tienen separación de poderes y eso puede resultar que un partido o gobierno tenga poder excesivo. Está en las manos de la po-blación y los ciudadanos para demandar cambios en sus gobiernos para poder tener derechos básicos y vivir con los bene� cios que sus gobiernos deben de proveerles.

La vida en Latinoamérica puede ser muy difícil y diferente en comparación a la vida en los Estados Unidos. Esto puede ser porque los gobiernos en los países hispanohablantes suelen a funcio-nar de manera diferente y tienen otras normas. Sucede que han habido muchos países en Latinoamérica que han esta-do teniendo problemas con su gobierno. En el 2011, Otto Pérez Molina fue elegi-do como presidente en Guatemala, con la meta de darle frente al crimen organi-zado con que se enfrentaba el país y las acciones fraudulentas de los funcionarios del gobierno. A principios de este año, la vicepresidenta, Roxana Baldetti, renunció porque se encontraba bajo investigación con respecto a un escándalo de corrupción. A la funcionaria le congelaron sus cuentas bancarias y le prohibieron salir del país. El resultado fue que Juan Carlos Monzón Rojas, secretario privado de Baldetti, junto a otros funcionarios incluyendo al pre- sidente, llegaron a defraudar millones de dolares relacionados con la economía del país. Este grupo conocido como La Línea, cometió un crimen de fraude aduanero. Monzón Rojas es un fugitivo y no se ha visto en Guatemala desde el principio del escándalo. La policía investigó y arrestó a mucha gente involucrada. El presidente Pérez Molina rechazó las alegaciones con-tra él pero los ciudadanos de Guatemala comenzaron a protestar. Tuvieron diferentes manifestaciones llamando a que Pérez Mo-lina renunciara a su cargo. Muchas personas pobres salieron a protestar para representar a los ciudadanos que no estaban recibiendo los recursos necesarios del gobierno. Esto es lo que más enojó a la población porque Guatemala es un país de pocos recursos económicos y los funcionarios del gobierno estaban malgastando y robando el dinero

destinado para el bene� cio de los ciudadanos. El miércoles 2 de septiembre del 2015, Pérez Molina presentó su carta de renuncia. Tres días después del anuncio, Pérez Mo-lina fue acusado en corte por corrupción,

soborno y por ser parte de una asociación ilícita. También llevaron a la ex-vicepresi-denta Baldetti quien fue igualmente acusa-da de cargos ilícitos de corrupción. Fue la primera vez que un presidente de Latino-américa ha sido encarcelado por corrupción. Muchos especialistas dicen que los actos que tomó el sistema judicial es algo que otros países en Latinoamérica deben seguir. Ac-

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17 de diciembre del 2015silverchipsE3 Español

que tenían. Lo que más extrañan son los miembros de su familia que dejaron atrás y con los que solían compartir estos días. “Yo me siento mal porque no podemos ce- le rar juntos al mismo tiempo. Por ejem-plo, no puedo darle un abrazo a mi mamá. Es muy triste porque no podemos estar to-dos juntos y porque sé que ellos no pueden venir a visitarme,” dice Yuvisa Santos. “Por una parte estoy feliz por tener la oportunidad de celebrar con la fami- lia que tengo acá. [Al mismo tiempo] me siento mal porque la parte de mi familia que está en Guatemala es con la que más conviví y celebré estas � estas [pero ahora] no están aquí,” comenta Brian Díaz, es-tudiante del décimo grado. Es una alegría a medias porque, sí se puede celebrar con los familiares que se encuentran en los Estados Unidos, pero aún hacen falta los demás familiares que algunos estudiantes han dejado atrás al inmigrar a este país. El cambio drástico de una cultura a la otra es una situación difícil para estos jóvenes inmigrantes que recientemente ingresaron al país. “La diferencia es mucha. Primera-mente porque en este país te mantienes la mayor parte del tiempo encerrado y allá yo podía salir a visitar y disfrutar de los juegos pirotécnicos para Navidad,” añade Díaz. Entre las costumbres y los cambios drásti-cos a los que estos jóvenes se enfrentan, está el convivir con personas nuevas, asistir a una escuela nueva y una cultura nueva e idioma. Estos factores contribuyen para que los jóvenes se depriman aún más. Esta es la triste realidad que los alumnos de Blair tienen que enfrentar cada año y la razón por la que algunos de ellos deciden no celebrar-la. A pesar de que esta época está supuesta a simbolizar armonía y felicidad, no todas las familias pueden disfrutar de una Navi-dad con la familia completamente reunida.

Por Emily Barrero

Se acerca la época navideña, época del año tan esperada por muchos para cele-brar y compartir en familia. Uno de los mo-mentos del año en que las casas se llenan de familiares desde los más grandes hasta los más pequeños. Muchos viajan desde dentro y fuera del país para estar juntos y compartir de estas festividades. Se hace evidente la felicidad y alegría que existe en convivir con la familia reunida después de un largo tiempo de no estar juntos. Es tiempo de regalar y disfrutar de deliciosa comida de la temporada. En � n, todo se trata de pasar un buen rato y compartir con los seres más queridos estos días festivos. Los latinos no se quedan atrás en cuanto a estas celebraciones. A la hora de festejar, incorporamos elementos únicos y propios de la cultura nativa de nuestros países o de la herencia de nuestros padres ya que ellos quieren mantenerlas vivas. La comu-nidad hispana es una de las comunidades más diversas que se puede encontrar en los Estados Unidos. Por lo tanto, es importante destacar lo que los jóvenes latinos de Blair tienen que decir sobre estas festividades. De todos los millones de hispanos que vi-ven en los Estados Unidos, la gran mayoría celebra el Día de Acción de Gracias y la Na- vidad. Estas épocas son importantes y cele-bradas tanto por el signi� cado religioso que tienen como el emocional. Entre los latinos, es una costumbre común cocinar mucha comida típica de sus países natales e invi-tar a toda la familia para compartir la cena. Tampoco puede faltar la música y la � esta que produce un ambiente lleno de armonía y felicidad. Estas celebraciones de Navidad usualmente empiezan el 24 de diciembre, du-rante la Nochebuena, donde se celebra has-ta la medianoche para intercambiar regalos.

A pesar de todo esto, es necesario pre-sentar el otro lado de la historia porque no

para todas las personas estos días son de alegría. Estas fechas pueden ser muy tristes debido a que no todas las familias hispanas tienen la oportunidad de estar juntas o de poder reunirse durante la víspera navideña.

Los alumnos de Blair también se en-frentan con esta difícil situación. Muchos

de ellos emigraron a los Estados Unidos en busca de una mejor oportunidad de vida y se ven obligados a de-jar a gran parte de su familia en sus países natales. Para algunos de estos jóvenes, estas fechas pueden repre-sentar más tristeza que alegría. En estas fe-chas, muchas de estas familias se encuentran separadas por fron-teras, los costosos precios de los vuelos aéreos o un estatus migratorio que no les permite salir ni entrar al país. Esto hace la situación mucho más difícil. Son muchas las millas de distancia que separan a estos jóvenes de sus familias. Muchos jóvenes de Blair viven en este país con una familia incom-pleta. No todos sus familiares se encuen-tran dentro del país, volviéndose imposible de reunir a la familia completa. Situaciones como estas opacan la

alegría y positividad que estas épocas of-recen. El no poder compartir estos días fes-tivos con los seres más queridos hace que los jóvenes padezcan de nostalgia y hasta depresión porque extrañan las costumbres

EDGAR BLANCO

Nostalgia llena nuestros corazones en esta época navideña El estar lejos de nuestro país de origen durante las vacaciones es difícil

Los latinos se han establecido en los Esta-dos Unidos como una de las minorías más grandes del país. Muchas personas no pien-san de las implicaciones emocionales al refe-rirse a inmigrantes indocumentados usando términos como alien e illegal alien. Estos térmi-nos al ser traducidos al español, signi� can ser extraterrestre, marciano, o meramente no pertenecer a este país y se consideran como referencias ofensivas y derogatorias. Existe un proyecto de ley que no ha sido aprobado por Congreso, donde las palabras alien e illegal alien se eliminarían de las leyes al referirse a alguien que está en el país ile-galmente. Joaquín Castro, demócrata en el estado de Tejas, introdujo una nueva ley que se llama CHANGE, Correcting Hurt-ful and Alienating Names in Government Ex-pression (Corrigiendo nombres ofensivos y alienantes en las expresiones gubernamen-tales). Castro dijo que los “Estados Unidos es una nación de inmigrantes, sin embargo, nuestro gobierno federal continúa utilizan-do términos que deshumanizan y conde-nan al ostracismo a los que están en nues-tra sociedad pero nacieron en otro lugar.” En el pasado, el Congreso a pasado le- gislaciones similares como el 21st Century Language Act (Acta del lenguaje del siglo XXI), en la cual la palabra lunatic (lunático)

fue eliminada. También existe Rosa’s Law (Ley de Rosa), la cual eliminó el término mental retardation (retraso mental). Por es-tas razones, la población latina tiene la es-peranza de que el Congreso aprobará esta acta y estos términos serán eliminados. La Liga de ciudadanos latinoamericanos unidos y el Foro de inmigración nacional, han ofrecido su apoyo para este proyec-to de ley. El presidente de LULAC, Roger Rocha Jr., y el representante demócrata de Arizona, Rubén Gallego, apoyan esta acta. Belén Sisa, quien vive en Gilbert, Arizo-na, llegó a los Estados Unidos desde Ar-gentina hace 15 años y dice que si se elimi-na el lenguaje ofensivo, sería un gran paso. Joaquin Castro ha indicado que “la eli- minación del término alien de nuestras leyes federales es una muestra de respeto a nues-tro patrimonio común y hacia los cientos de millones de descendientes de inmigrantes que llaman a Estados Unidos su hogar.” Pasos pequeños como el cambio del térmi-no al dirigirse a los inmigrantes guiará este movimiento de igualdad hacia todos y la eli- minación de calci� caciones en manera ofen-siva. Es pues, que esta legislación es de gran importancia no solo para los inmigrantes, sino tambien para un futuro donde quien viva aquí sea tratado con respeto y dignidad.

TeletónUSA es una fundación que ayuda a recaudar fondos para mejorar la salud de niños con incapacidades. El pri- mer teletón empezó en Chile en 1978 por Mario Kreutzberger, conocido como Don Francisco. Otros países de Latinoamérica empezaron a hacer su propio teletón con su propio es-tilo y necesi-dad. La histo-ria detrás del teletón em-pezó cuan-do Mario K r e u t z b e r - ger estaba en camino a un hospital y se encontró con un niño ata-do afuera de su casa. ¿Por qué? Porque sufría de re- traso mental y podría ata-car a sus hermanos. Desde allí, Kreutz-berger comenzó el legado de Teletón Chile que bene� ciaría a millones de niños.

La primera donación fue entregada por una niña llamada Carmen Gloria de 90 pesos ($5.40 USD) y en total, el pri- mer TeletónChile logró recaudar 3 mi- llones de dólares estadounidenses en 27 horas. Teletón fue creado para ayudar a � -nanciar los tratamientos médicos de niños incapacitados sin recursos económicos. Cada teletón ha tenido mucho éxito y ha ayudado a personas con incapacidades en dife- rentes maneras.

El primer TeletónUSA tuvo lugar en diciembre de 2012. La programación fue en español en los Estados Unidos y logró recaudar un total de $8,150,625 en dona-ciones. Antes que el teletón estrenara en los Estados Unidos, muchas personas se preguntaban ¿Porqué se necesita un teletón en este país cuando es un país que

tiene los mejores programas de me-dicina del mundo? La razón por la cual se necesita el teletón en este país es porque los recursos médicos son muy costosos por el mismo hecho que son los mejores. El teletón de México, uno de los más grandes, ha logrado que cada niño en México tenga más tratamientos que un niño en los Es-

tados Unidos. Este fue uno de los mo-tivos por los cuales teletón se creó en este país. Con las d o n a c i o n e s que el teletón obtuvo, cons-truyeron un centro de re-habilitación en San Antonio, Tejas que o- frece servicio a niños des-de que nacen hasta los 18

años de edad, sin importar que la familia no tenga su� cientes recursos económicos para pagar.

Durante la programación del 4 de diciembre, llegaron muchos artistas y músicos que donaron al teletón. También, hubieron historias y tes-timonios de pacientes o familias de cómo el teletón los ha ayudado y cambiado sus vidas al igual que a personas que lo necesitan urgente-mente. El programa duró dos días con 30 horas y llegaron a recaudar $15,705,865, sobrepasando su meta del año pasado.

Todavía no es tarde para donar. Se puede donar por teléfono y correo o en la página teletónusa.org. No im-porta la cantidad que se done, ya sea pequeña o grande, se puede ayudar signi� cativamente a muchos niños que no tienen los recursos necesarios.

El TeletónUSA cambiando vidasPor Odalis Llerena

¿Extraterreste o marciano?

VICTORIA TSAI

Por Gisell Ramírez

ODALIS LLERENA

Aparentemente somos de otro planeta

ADs E4December 17, 2015 silverchips

Walking into a varsity girls’ basketball practice, the last thing I expected was to wake up the next morning with my wrists being the sorest part of my body. I know I didn’t really pass or catch the ball correctly, and I definitely wasn’t making amazing la-yups or jump shots. I was certain my sore-ness was due to my skill, or rather, the lack thereof. In retrospect, though, it was prob-ably because of all of the high fives.

Every team has their own “thing.” Some do chants, others have dance circles, but the basketball team’s thing is high fives. Encour-agement, support, and respect all wordlessly communicated through the smacking of one another’s palms all the way down the court--whether the free throws are made or not.

Expecting the worst

I walked into practice expecting it to go terribly. I didn’t know what I was going to be

December 17, 2015 F1 Sports silverchips

The unfortunate tales of two inept baller(ina)s By Niki Patel

A varsity pom and basketball player switch sports for a dayasked to do, how I was going to do it, or how I was going to avoid looking like a complete klutz. Besides, the last thing I wanted to do was upset anyone on the team by disrupting their practice with my lack of skill.

I missed every single one of my free throws. Every single one. And to be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure when we were even try-ing to make free throws, or jump shots, or la-yups. Either way, I do know that the basket-ball did not go into the hoop. Luckily for me, I was not bad enough for them to kick me out, although I probably came pretty close.

Call me Curry

I struggled with just about everything: dribbling, passing, catching. Anything that required legitimate basketball skills or hand-eye coordination. But of my 50 differ-ent attempts at layups, I can proudly say I made about two or three, which is more than anyone expected, including me. But practice wasn’t as hard as I expected. Don’t get me wrong, it was still pretty rough, and incred-

ibly embarrassing, but not to the extent I feared it would be. I realized I could actually do some of the things asked of me—maybe not very well or 100 percent correctly—but I could still do them.

There were even a few things I even considered myself good at. Stretching and running laps were a breeze. The stamina and muscle I had built up from endless ballet classes and three years of being on the varsity poms team helped a lot, and I felt really good about myself for about the first ten minutes of practice. Unfortunately, the only other thing I seemed to be good at was getting hit in the face with the basket-ball. And I’m no expert, but even I know that’s definitely not supposed to happen.

Positivity is key

Even though I caught the ball with my face more often than I caught it with my hands, all the players and coaches were gen-uinely supportive of me. The atmosphere was positive, encouraging and fun.

In first person

That is the one aspect of practice I recog-nized and felt familiar with. Both poms and basketball are sports where team dynamics and communication are key to success. Even though physically the sports require two different skillsets, mentally, it’s all the same.

I spent the last ten minutes of practice watching the players run drills for their scrimmage the next day. The players and coaches yelled over the sound of sneakers squeaking while the players raced down the court; they all worked together to improvise their plays to make sure the basketball made it into the hoop before the timer ran out.

As I stood on the sideline, I watched a prime example of teamwork unfold. Wheth-er or not the girls actually made a basket at the end of each round, they all congratulat-ed each other for trying their best and giv-ing it their all. In the end, that’s what makes this team so successful. I’m so glad I got to witness their drive to be the best they can be—individually, and as a team—and their consistent support and encouragement of one another, all through a simple high five.

This story is accom-panied by a video by BNC. To see the video, scan the code to the left with a QR reader app, or use the URL below.

WWW.VIMEO.COM/SILVERCHIPS/SWAP

It’s November, it’s getting colder, and I’m wearing the shortest shorts that I have worn in months. I’m in the locker room, but in-stead of putting on Nike elite socks and bas-ketball shoes, I’m slipping on fresh no-show socks and checking that my hair looks good. How do you even wear your hair when you dance?

Turning left out of the locker room in-stead of right toward the gym, I try to think back to the days when I did ballet; unfor-tunately, my memory of kindergarten is a bit hazy. All in all, I’m out of my element.

Tiny dancer

I have played basketball since third grade and soccer since kindergarten, but my danc-ing experience ended in early elementary school – except, of course, rocking out to 60s pop when no one is looking. For one day, however, I agreed to practice with Blair’s varsity poms team.

When I walked into the dance room, we quickly got to work, warming up by run-ning in a circle. Unfortunately, it was noth-

DRIBBLING QUEENS Junior Niki Patel tries out basketball for a day. Pictured at left, Patel dribbles with junior Elizabeth Cove, then, at right, waits to see if she will make a basket.

ing like sprinting up and down a basket-ball court. It was supposed to be graceful. Eventually though, we started core work, and I was finally at home. I was glad to do some crunches, planks, and leg raises, and I grew hopeful about the rest of practice.

Getting down to business

But the respite was short, and soon we were back to dancing. Luckily, I had the team to guide me through it. Unluckily, I am perhaps the least flexible person alive. I am bad at deadlifting because I am physically incapable of reaching down to pick up the barbell without bending my legs. My own mother is more flexible than me.

Flexibility, however, is essential to dance. From doing the splits to kicking above their heads, the girls surrounding me could do it all. Meanwhile, I had my legs extended as far as possible in a split that still left me a foot above the ground.

When we started to learn a new part of their routine, it was like someone had brought his or her younger sister along to an advanced calculus class. And no, that child was not a prodigy. I tried to learn some of the routine and do my best performing with

the team, but I was mostly just impressed by how easy the dancers made it look. And believe me, it is not easy. After we began, the team’s synchrony was impressive. Well, except for me at the back of the line mov-ing three, or maybe more, steps behind.

Dancing queens

I’d like to think that I improved as we progressed through the dance. My crowning achievement during the practice, if I can say that there was one, was staying upright dur-ing an almost-successful pirouette, or spin on one foot for us amateurs.

I felt bad that I was disrupting practice, but at least I provided some comic relief. Not to mention, this practice taught me so much. I improved my ability to laugh at myself, for example, which is essential to trying new things and something from which I often shy away.

One of the most unique things about the poms team is that they choreograph their own routines. I cannot imagine be-ing responsible for inventing even one of our basketball plays, not to mention all of them. Poms is so much more than waving some sticks with flashy tassels at the end

— which, by the way, are incredibly fun to wave around.

Over the course of the practice, we went from some strengthening, to learning indi-vidual moves, to putting them together into a routine. While I was somewhat horrible at most of those skills, I had fun doing it. The poms team was supportive and helped along the way.

This swap taught me some poms lingo, some dancing techniques, and most of all, how hard the poms team works. Dance is now one more thing I know I will never do again. But now when I see the poms team performing during the halftime at basket-ball games, I will appreciate their routine all the more.

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE Junior Eleanor Cook joins the varsity poms team in a test of her dancing ability. At left, Cook (third from left) stretches before practicing a routine.

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

By Eleanor Cook, Guest writerIn first person

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLACHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

December 17, 2015 silverchips

Two-time Super Bowl champion returns to rootsSports F2

MCPS needs to take a time-out before investing in turf � elds

Q&A with former Green Bay Packers player Tom Brown

County should check the safety of arti� cial turf before moving forward

The blistering summer sun hit senior Miguel Lopez’s back as he slid across the ground, side tackling another soccer play-er before he could reach the ball. While he kept his opponent from scoring, the save left Lopez with a painful burn from rubbing against the searing turf � eld. Five years later, the scar remains on Lopez’s left thigh.

Anyone who has stepped foot in Blazer Stadium knows that the turf in� ll, composed of small bits of recycled rubber tires, gets ev-erywhere—into shoes, socks, and even hair. However, these rubber crumbs are not the only nuisance of playing on turf � elds; for athletes who practice on these � elds every day, arti� cial grass increases the chance of being injured and burned.

On Oct. 28, Interim Superintendent Larry Bowers proposed funding additional arti� -cial turf installations in his Capital Improve-ment Program for 2017-2022, ignoring the current literature which suggests that turf is unsafe for users. According to Gboyinde Onijala, an MCPS Senior Communications

Specialist, these additions will be imple-mented over the next few years. “The Board has approved Bowers’ recommendation to install arti� cial turfs at the 19 high schools that currently do not have turf � elds,” Oni-jala says.

In light of the health risks surrounding arti� cial turf, the county must conduct a more thorough investigation into the impli-cations of turf before jumping to install more � elds.

Every time athletes step onto a turf � eld, they risk exposing themselves to potentially dangerous chemicals. In a September press release, Elliot Kaye, Chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, ac-knowledged his lack of con� dence in the safety of arti� cial turf due to the possible carcinogens in the rubber in� ll. “I am deeply troubled by the uncertainty that consumers experience when it comes to… potentially being exposed to harmful chemicals in con-sumer products,” he said.

Studies have also found a connection between arti� cial turf and increased risk of injury. In 2012, Stanford University School of Medicine raised a concerning correlation be-

tween turf and knee injuries in college football players. Knee injuries occur 40 percent more of-ten when athletes play on arti� cial turf versus grass; these injuries main-ly consist of tears to the anterior cruci-ate ligament (ACL), which can sideline an athlete for up to 12 months, and even crush a play-er’s career.

In addition, ath-letes are susceptible to turf burns when

the surface of a � eld reaches high tempera-tures. According to Thomas Serensits of the Penn State Sports Surface Research Center, surface temperatures can easily surpass 150 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer. As a result, athletes often suffer burns from slid-ing against the hot surfaces of the � elds.

Lopez, who is co-captain of the boys’ varsity soccer team, says that turf burns are common among athletes. “It’s easier to get burns on turf. On grass, you don’t get any burns,” he says.

In 2011, the M o n t g o m e r y County Arti� -cial Turf Staff Work Group released “A Re-view of Bene-� ts and Issues Associated with Natural Grass and Arti� cial Turf Rectan-gular Stadium Fields,” discuss-ing the risks s u r r o u n d i n g synthetic turf. The report, which acknowl-edged the safety implications of turf, was a necessary � rst step toward investigating whether the county should implement more arti� cial turf � elds. However, the report lacked both an environmental impact assessment and a health impact assessment of turf and was far from being enough research for such a sig-ni� cant project of installing turf � elds at 19 high schools.

The study did brie� y mention the pos-sible health risks associated with turf, such as chemical exposures, heat-related illness-es, abrasions, and injuries. “The Staff Work Group identi� ed some of the areas of poten-tial human risks,” the report reads.

By Camille Estrin

By Alice Park

CHIMEY SONAM

SHARING WISDOM Blair alumnus and former NFL player Tom Brown spoke to stu-dent athletes on Nov. 13 and gave advice on managing academics with athletics.

However, the report overlooked these health concerns, dismissing them as being too challenging for the county to study. “A formal process would be required to identi-fy and examine all the human health risks,” the report continues. “Such an analysis was beyond the scope and capacity of the Arti� -cial Turf Staff Work Group.” In other words, the county is incapable of analyzing health risks that would directly affect its students.

The installation of turf � elds comes at a

high cost. William Beattie, Director of Sys-tem-wide Athletics in MCPS, says that the price of installing one turf � eld can range from $1.1 to $1.5 million, over half a mil-lion dollars more than the cost of installing a grass � eld. The county cannot justify this spending when its study of turf lacks a de-� nitive safety review.

The county should thoroughly assess turf � elds to ensure that they are safe for users before spending millions on facilities. Athletes deserve a reliable place to play and compete, and the county must prioritize the safety of its students and community mem-bers above all.

Tom Brown, 1962 second round draft pick for the Green Bay Packers and Blair alum, returned to Blair to present the Blazers with a golden football given to him by the National Football League.

On being a student athlete:

I didn’t play tackle football until high school, but I got a [football] scholarship to University of Maryland. College is different because most kids are just as good as you are. You have to be dedicated to work hard and not get discouraged. You might be sit-ting on the bench as a freshman or a soph-omore.

But it’s all in your court, how hard you want to work. Sports [are] a lot like life, you have ups and downs and you have to work hard to obtain your goal. Nothing is easy.

On playing baseball:

[Growing up], my favorite sport was baseball. I played it every day in the sum-mertime. When I was 15, I played on a real-ly good team that traveled all over the east coast playing baseball. I really loved it; that was my � rst sport.

The Cuban Missile Crisis happened the same year [as I was drafted] and Fidel Cas-tro would not let any of the Cuban baseball players who played here in America out of Cuba. The [Washington] Senators didn’t

have a � rst baseman, so I was [their only option]. They were getting ready to send me to Pensacola, that’s where they had the minor league practice, [but they couldn’t anymore].

Guess who got me the job as starting � rst basemen for the Washington Senators in 1963? The President of the United States. It’s a tradition that the Washington Senators always start the season a day early, so [the general manager] goes and presents Pres-ident Kennedy his season pass. President Kennedy [said], “I will come to opening day if you start that boy from Maryland.” So I got to start opening day.

On playing in the NFL:

Coach [Vince] Lombardi, the head coach of the Green Bay Packers, called me up and said, “Brown, we’re still interested in you playing football, but you can’t sit out anoth-er year. If you go back and play baseball and don’t play football, we’re not gonna be in-terested in you for the Green Bay Packers.”

This is where my Blair education came in. My Blair education told me that baseball starts in February and I would get paid in February. Football doesn’t start till July, so if I signed with football I don’t get paid until July. I said, “I’m gonna play baseball in Feb-ruary. By July 1, because that’s when football starts, I’ll make up my mind about if I want to play football.”

Come July 1, I called [Lombardi] up and said, “I’m ready to play football.” That’s how I got to football one year later. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, be-cause the Green Bay Packers were winners and Lombardi was a great human being.

On life after the NFL:

For forty years, this was the best thing Coach Lombardi ever said: “You can’t play

football forever, so � nd your niche.” First of all, I had to � nd out what the heck niche means. He said, “Do something that you like to do as your job.”

So for forty years I have been working with young boys and girls. I had a � ag foot-ball program, a basketball program, and a baseball program for young boys and girls. It was great because I gave them an intro-duction to the different sports. And every-body played, nobody sat on the bench.

On Coach Vince Lombardi’s in� uence:

Coach Lombardi was interested in you [even] after your playing days were over. He was interested in you as a person, and not many head coaches feel that way. He wasn’t a coach; he was a teacher of life.

Two or three times a week, I think about the experience I had. I try and use that in working with football and baseball with the kids.

On returning to Blair:

This is the � ftieth anniversary of the Su-per Bowl. I was lucky enough to play in the � rst two Super Bowls. We won both of those games, so we won three consecutive gold championships in ’65, ’66 and ’67.

Because it’s the � ftieth anniversary of the Super Bowl, the National Football League started a program. Anybody that played in the Super Bowl, they will donate a gold foot-ball to their high school. That’s pretty neat, to go back and have a football presented to your school because you played in the Super Bowl.

I said I’d like to do that, so they sent a football. I’m here to present the gold football to Montgomery Blair.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

40% more often Knee injuries occur

when athletes play on turf versus grass

An opinion

soapboxDo you prefer to play sports on

turf or grass � elds?

“I prefer to play sports on turf because if it rains, grass gets muddy, slippery, and gross.”

- Victoria Browning, freshman

“I prefer grass because I hate when all those little rubber things get in my shoes.”

- Alex Sobey-Strick, freshman

SOURCE: STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE CAMILLE ESTRIN

By Joshua Fernandes

December 17, 2015F3 Sports silverchips

Albert Einstein banks in the final shot to defeat Blazers 51-49Varsity boys’ basketball loses on a buzzer beater

NELSON H. KOBREN ME-MORIAL GYMNASIUM, Dec. 8—In a close game, varsity boys’ basketball (3-1) lost to the Albert Einstein Titans (1-2) 51-49 after an unlucky buzzer beater to end the game.

Blair got off to a slow start, go-ing down 0-8 in the first quarter. With their first few possessions, the Blazers missed shots just to see Einstein sink a pair of threes and a pair of free throws. “We didn’t come out intense, with energy, and we missed a lot of shots we could have made,” said junior forward Julius Cobb.

Coach Damon Pigrom wasn’t too worried early on as he just saw it as a blip Blair could overcome. “I don’t think they turned the ball over in that stretch,” said Pigrom. “I thought we had good looks.”

None of those looks turned into points though, which seemed to be the trend of the night. From the field and the free throw line, Blair repeatedly missed shots through-out the game. “It was just a pat-tern that was consistent the whole game where we just missed shots we would normally make,” said Pigrom.

The Blazers began to warm up and brought the game back to within five at the end of the half. While they still couldn’t score as much as they would have wanted, a combination of Blair’s strong de-fense and Einstein’s own shooting difficulties kept them in the game. “My biggest concern is not with

our defense,” said Pigrom. “If I had to grade our defense I’d say C+, B-.”

After halftime, Blair came out with the strength and intensity they lacked in the first half, thanks to a few tweaks to their game. “We made a couple adjustments,” said Pigrom. “The points that we scored were in transition so I think they came off of some steals and stuff like that.” Those changes led

the Blazers to their biggest lead of the game, 27-24.

The game was littered with fouls from both teams, especial-ly the second half, which senior guard Tucker Nosal attributes as the reason for Einstein’s win. “We just allowed them to fight and keep themselves in the game with free throws,” said Nosal. “They made up for what they weren’t making on the court in open play

with their free throw shooters, so that’s what killed us.”

Einstein shot 92.3 percent from the line, while Blair only shot 68 percent. Einstein senior Caleb Lewsey made all seven of his free throws, making five in the fourth quarter to help Einstein to the win. After seeing the devastating effect of Einstein’s free throw shoot-ing, the Blazers plan on improv-ing their own. “For the first two

games, some of us were struggling with free throws,” said Cobb. “I think [in] tomorrow’s [practice] we’re actually going to take free throws seriously, not joke around at all, and do what we got to do.”

Blair’s improvements in the second half led to an intense finale between the two teams. After fall-ing to 30-37 in the fourth quarter, the Blazers rallied back. Senior guard Max Burke sunk a three to tie the game 37-37 halfway through the fourth.

With the game so close so late, both teams upped the pressure with better shooting and faster play. The pace of the game dra-matically increased with cheers and ovations from both sides of supporters after every point for their team.

With 25 seconds left, Nosal tied the game 47-47 with a three from the corner. After a foul, Einstein made both free throws, restoring their lead to two points with 19.5 seconds remaining. Junior guard Demetri Cooper drove down the court for the Blazers, drawing a foul with 10.6 seconds left. Mak-ing both foul shots, he brought the game to 49-49.

With the game on the line, Blair sought to stop Einstein’s last possession, but Einstein junior Arnold Ebiketie’s bank shot buzz-er beater from the top of the key gave Einstein their first win of the season. “We were trying to find our matchups,” said Nosal. “We were able to do it for the most part when it came down to it, but they made the final shot.”

By Brianna Forté

A look at the many responsibilities of Blair’s athletic director of five yearsOutside the lines: Helping student athletes, behind the scenes

Scheduling and attending meetings, going to sports events, helping out the athletes, organiz-ing all the teams, hiring coaches, and more. For Athletic Director Rita Boule, it’s a never ending job, but a gratifying one.

From coaching to directing

Boule started out coaching girls’ soccer and girls’ basketball at Plattsburgh High School in Platts-burgh, New York. After that, Boule taught, coached, and was assistant

athletic director at Kennedy High School for 17 years. With a vast coaching experience behind her, Boule was ready to move onto something else. “I wanted to do something else in athletics, but not coach anymore. So I wanted to take more of a leadership role in athletics, which is why the ath-letic director position seemed so appealing to me,” says Boule.This is the fifth year that Boule has been the athletic director at Blair.

Improving athletics

Boule has made many changes

to the athletic department such as implementing new baseline con-cussion testing, changing athletic awards ceremonies, and changing the way students are cleared to participate in a sport.

According to many coach-es and players, the sports teams have also improved under Boule. She has input on every coach that is hired and attracts new coaches to come to Blair. This year, Boule has brought on a new girls’ varsi-ty basketball coach, Carlos Smith, and a new boys’ wrestling coach, Sam Bulagay.

Boule also played a role in hir-ing Andrew Fields as the football coach three years ago, who has been a major contributor to ‘new Blair football’ and the team’s suc-cess at making playoffs two years in a row. “You can say there’s an athletic Renaissance going on at Blair since Ms. Boule’s taken over. Our basketball teams have thrived, our football team’s been to their first two state playoffs, our soccer teams are doing really well, the volleyball team, I mean, every-one,” says football coach Andrew Fields.

Boule has also helped improve the athletic community at Blair. “I want one Blair program. I want ‘We Are Blair’ to be the sticking motto for this athletics program and show that everyone involved in this athletics program is one big family,” Boule says. Her passion and goal for a Big Blair is appar-ent among her co-workers. “She wants students to have success athletically, but also feel part of a larger Blair program,” says assis-tant athletic director James Mogge.

On top of her game

Boule’s success is impressive, especially considering how many

different duties the athletic direc-tor has. “The nature of the job is that there are a hundred things to do every day. And so the idea that you can get above those hun-dred things and be able to get a big picture of what’s going on and be able to relate to other people is just an amazing quality that [Boule] has,” says Mogge.

First and foremost, Boule is in charge of supervising the athletics department, which includes deal-ing with the coaches, athletes, and parents, and also managing the budget. She is also responsible for working with the booster club to fundraise for Blair athletics, coor-dinating with the building services and administration about sporting events, taking care of paperwork, and managing games.

To manage all these different duties takes a lot of organization and Boule has got it down. “She’s very organized with what she does and she has a plan for ev-erything. Whatever she’s doing, with pie sales or whatever she has to do for the athletic department she’s always on top of her stuff. So whenever we needed something she would always be able to get it and help us out,” says senior Bri-an Guzman, who is a kicker and punter on the football team.

Building relationships

Even with all these responsibil-ities, Boule still manages to form connections with Blair’s student athletes and be available to any-one who needs her. “She’s really good at communicating and she’s always super friendly. If you need anything she’ll help you right away and she’s just there for you,” says junior Madison Weachter, a member of the co-ed swim and dive team.

WORKING HARD Rita Boule manages many aspects of Blair’s Athletics department, including event scheduling and fundraising.

BALL IS LIFE Senior captain Jared Williams dribbles down the court, searching for a nearby teammate to pass to. Blair’s boys’ varsity basketball team is 3-1 through their first four games.

COURTESY OF DEXTER MUELLER

Students appreciate Boule’s open door policy and come to her with any concerns and requests. “If you have a question you go to Ms. Boule,” says junior Nkosi Wil-liams, a member of the boys’ varsi-ty basketball team. She has the an-swer for almost every question.”

CALEB BAUMAN

insideSPORTS

Two Blazers exchange sports to gain a new athletic perspective.

Switching sports

An inside look at the health issues caused

by artificial turf.

Turf problems

NAZEA KHAN

ANGEL WEN