Christmas Trees Sell Out for the Holidays

Christmas time is here and every one who celebrates the holiday are out early snatching up the trees for their home. Although, for the late comers their are special deals they can benefit from.

“This year all trees are one price, $33,” said Erin, the nursery manager at Clark Farms, located in Wakefield and Matunick. “We buy [the trees] from auction, this year we bought from pennsilvania.”

The economy being in a tough spot, although, does not effect christmas tree sales very much, only the number of trees Clark Farms buys to put up for sale.

“The sales we get are based upon the economy,” said Erin, “This year we did a good amount of sales because the ecomomy is doing better.”

Candy Grams Bring In The Dough

Christmas is coming and in case you
didn’t know, the sophomore class will help you out.

The class of 2014 is
selling candy cane grams at all four lunches until Wednesday, December 21st.
Then, in the spirit of Christmas, the class officers will give out the candy
canes on Thursday during advisory.

So, if you’ve got a special
someone, send a candy cane their way to get them in the Christmas spirit.

“Every girl wants a candy gram. If you’ve got
a crush, buy her a candy gram,” said Sydney Sweck and Julie Munkelwitz, the
class of 2014’s historian and social chair.

This thinking was presented in the
movie “Mean Girls.” The senior class in the movie did the same fundraiser and
one girl got three candy grams and was praised, “You go Glen Coco.”

This year at SKHS, according to
Sweck, the largest sale was 50 candy grams, all going to the same person.

When asked if the fundraiser was a
success, Munkelwitz replies, “We are bringing in the dough.”

Student Art Show

Thursday, December 8th, support South Kingstown High School Art students and attend The Main Gallery at South County Hospital art show from 4-6pm.

Selected pieces from Mrs. Bianchi and Mr. Gagnon’s Art I classes will be shown in honor of these students for all families and friends to see, sponsored by the South County Hospital Auxiliary Art Program.

Take this opportunity and join in the works of these talented artists. There will be refreshments.

MADD Rhode Island Annual Candlelight Vigil

Tonight, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, MADD, Rhode Island will be holding their 29th annual Candlelight Vigil at South Kingstown High School from 7-9pm, hosted by the SKHS Students Against Destructive Decisions.

This vigil is dedicated to all the victims who have been killed or injured by impaired driving. It will be a night of music, video tributes and guest speakers.

All are welcome and admission is free. Come support MADD Rhode Island and families who have lost or been effected by impaired driving.

Homeschooling Offers Educational Alternative

When Norman and David Kalen first learned to count to 100, their mom took them to the tower on route 1 and wouldn’t let them see the view at the top until they counted all the steps. When they learned to count in pairs, all the shoes in their house were placed in a winding trail throughout the home. The Kalen brothers had to count them all.As young children, this was how the Kalens learned, and being homeschooled, the Kalens say, has allowed them to learn in different and more experiential ways than their public school peers.

Patricia Kalen, their mother, said she enjoys the freedom to make her children’s educations the way she believes schools should.

Throughout the nation, according to the National Homeschooling Education Research Institute, there are over 2 million children who are homeschooled, which the institute says represents an estimated $16 billion in savings for taxpayers.

For the Kalens and others, homeschooling has taught many lessons outside of the normal curriculum.

“I’m probably a lot more independent than most people in public schools,” Norman says, “because I have a lot more responsibilities to give myself a good education.”

Norman also plays for the SKHS boys’ varsity soccer team which he said, “helped [him] to establish great friendships with people [he] probably wouldn’t have met.”

His brother, David Kalen, who was homeschooled as well, is now majoring in mathematics at URI as a 17 year old junior.

Without being homeschooled, David says he wouldn’t be where he is today.

“Obviously without homeschooling, I wouldn’t be able to have been in college right now.”

His mother always told him, “If you can prove to me you know what I’m teaching, you can skip it.”

David took advantage of his mother’s advice and graduated from high school at age 15.

SKHS freshman twins Britney and Stephanie Laraway were also homeschooled, alongside their brother, Nick, who graduated last June.

 

Her sister, Stephanie, agrees whole heartedly.

  Stephanie says that the hardest thing for her when she was homeschooled was that if she didn’t finish her work for the day, she had more work to do the next day.

Because the work is more regulated and she gets to see her friends every day, Stephanie says, “I like public school better.”

  Homeschooling is not only time consuming, but families who choose to homeschool must often face a lot of criticism.

  “My parents were criticized for not letting us choose if we wanted to go to school or not,” Norman said.

According to www.homeschool-curriculum.org, many homeschooling families must face criticisms from their extended families, their friends and complete strangers.

  “If you are unable to live ‘outside of the box,’” FamilyEducation.com warns, “then homeschooling is not for you.”

  There are other challenges that homeschooling families face as well. “We have been secluded from certain things because we are homeschoolers,” Norman added. “For example there were particular academic competitions we wanted to participate in but it required more wok for homeschoolers to register for them.”

  Grant Gulla is another local homeschooled student who went to Broad Rock Middle School and began homeschooling as a sophomore, despite the risk of criticisms.

  Unlike the Kalens, Gulla’s parents pulled him out of public school because he wasn’t performing as well as his parents had hoped. Although Gulla had done well in middle school, he began to fall short in high school.

  The switch to homeschooling, Gulla says, wasn’t easy.

  “At first, it was really hard to manage my time because I had all this freedom,” Gulla said. “Then I realized I needed to actually get my work done.”

  For Gulla, the best thing about homeschooling was the lessons in time management. Presently, Gulla is taking classes at CCRI to finish up his senior year and says homeschooling “helped him not to have a bad attitude toward learning.”

  Though the transition from public school to homeschool was difficult for Gulla, the transition from being a homeschooled student to a college student wasn’t difficult, says David.

   “I started taking classes at URI before graduation and enrolled as a sophomore,” he said. “That made it much easier to transition.”

  David says it was easy to transition to a college classroom environment because he and Norman sometimes took classes with other homeschoolers taught by experts on the subject.

  For the Kalens, there was no official decision to start homeschooling. They both started reading before the age of four and were learning from their parents as soon as they were born.

  When they were five, and at the age to start kindergarten, their parents filled out the paperwork needed to keep their children out of school, and became their children’s official teachers.

  Looking back, their mother Patricia said, “We weren’t going to lose what we already had, our children were reading at the level of a sixth grader.”

  There are many different ways of learning, but as Patricia Kalen said, “Education doesn’t stop.”

 

Smokers Learn To Work Around the Rules

  “I was waiting for my bus alone and had a cigarette when Mr. Cronin came out of nowhere and told me to put it out and that I had ISR on Monday morning for smoking on school grounds,” said SKHS senior Westley Sprague.

  Sprague is one of the unlucky victims recently caught smoking on school grounds.

  “I understand why they are trying to prevent smoking on school grounds,” Sprague said, “but I’m not a baby. Smoking is my choice and some-times you just need a cigarette.”

  According to Familyfirstaid.org, every year about 3,900 teens under 18 start smoking a day, and out of those 3,900 teens 1,500 will become regular smokers over the course of their lifetime.

  In fact the rise of teen smoking seems to appear to be greatest among white and Hispanic teens while the rates of teen smoking declined among African American teens.

  “Kids know it is wrong and they get disappointed when they are caught, but I think they learn to accept it,” said SKHS resource officer Montafix Houghton. “It’s hard for students to digest that they can smoke in other public places but not on school grounds.”

  Houghton added that although there are more serious issues to deal with besides smoking, it is still a major issue at the school.

  “As far as safety,” Houghton said, “I don’t think smoking is the most critical, but it is still a concern for the student’s individual health.”

  According to, helpwithsmoking.com, kids start smoking at such a young age because they aren’t fully aware of completely wor-ried about the health issued caused by smoking.

  Peer pressure, growing up in a family of smokers or images of looking cool or older are some of the main reasons why teenage kids begin to smoke.

  “I started smoking when I was 14 years old,” Sprague said. “I grew up following in my big brothers footsteps and because he was a smoker I started smoking”.

  “Once I started I couldn’t stop, the addic-tion picked up really quick for me.”

Some SKHS students express concern for their smoking peers.

  “I think it’s terrible that so many teens are smoking because they are killing themselves at such a young age,” said Nick Greene, a nonsmoking SKHS student.     

  “Kids should quit smoking because there are more important things to buy than cigarettes and they are abusing their body’s health.”

  Local CVS, Food mart, and all gas stations sell cigarettes for prices that range from $6.99 a pack to $8.00. Some believe the easy availability of cigarettes results in the increase of smoking because cigarettes can be easily purchased for or by teens.

  “When I was younger it was a lot easier for me to get cigarettes be-cause my brother would share with me,” Sprague said. “But now that I’m older I don’t have the money to go buy a pack on my own so I mostly ask for a cigarette when I see kids smoking.”

 

Italian Club Back in Action

 

Executive Board Members Devyn Passeretti and Libby Short

Last Wednesday on October 26, Italian Club held its first meeting of the 20011-12 schhol year.

“We are one of the biggest clubs in the school,” said Italian teacher Signorina Magliari.

This comes as no surprise to many students here at SKHS. With great food, soulful music and enthusiasm, the world languge meetings continually have good turn-outs.

Many events have been planned by the current executive board of the Italian Club.

These events range from karaoke to full-blown festivals for the Italian holidays such as Carnevale and San Giuseppe.

If you are interested in the events, calenders can be found posted around the school.  See either Signora Coutcher or Signorina Magliari for more details.

Students Mull Over Costumes for Halloween

Halloween is fast approaching and the SKHS students are all preparing clever costumes for Monday, when students can dress up as their favorite fictional character or wear black and orange.

Again this year there will be a costume contest during lunches and the winner will be determined by the clapping of lunch goers.

Most students have already decided their costumes weeks in advance and are excited to show of their craftiness.

Alyssa Daily-LaBelle, a junior, said, “I am going to be Ellie from the movie Up and [my boyfriend] is going to be Carl.”

Although, some people are not planning on dressing up for this occasion. “I don’t dress up for Halloween anymore,” said Kayley Stone, a senior at SKHS.

But, there is another option for people who despise dressing in costumes, “I’m just going to wear my SKpades shirt that’s black and orange,” said Stone.

“[I'm] too old, [I] hate Halloween,” said Michelle Stromley, another SKHS senior.

Only time can tell who will show up clad in Halloween garb Monday, but those who miss out will still have spirit week to redeem themselves.

Paranomal Activity III Hits Theaters

Boo! Paranormal Activity III flew into theaters this Friday morning, October 21, at midnight. However, following the first two installments, students appear to be losing interest in the series.

Junior Sheamus O’Rourke described how the series is progressively getting worse, and how the third one is not worth his nine dollars.

“It’s just the same movie with different characters,” O’Rourke said. “I’ll probably just wait until it comes out on DVD or Netflix®.”

According to IMDb, Paranormal Activity III is about two sisters in 1988 that “befriend an invisible entity who resides in their home”.

Only time will tell what students think of this haunting “threequel”.