by Laura Smith, NEA-T member
Each March 2nd on the anniversary of Dr. Suess' birthday, the National Education Association encourages teachers to help student readers to celebrate reading. Schools across the country celebrate by dropping everything and reading for a specified period of time, researching Dr. Suess' life and books, and dressing up as Dr. Suess characters. Most important of these celebratory activities is experiencing the joy of reading for pleasure.

In the atmospshere of spring time state assessments, the idea of reading for pleasure can become lost, so the NEA celebration is well timed. spending a day reminding teachers and students about the joy that reading can bring helps lighten what sometimes feels like a load that comes in the form of mandated reading tests. For teachers, the pleasure of watching students become engaged in reading a self-selected text is a welcome respite and reminder of the purpose of teaching: to stimulate life-long learning in young people.

After participating in the famous “cola-taste-test” last week the students in the 5th hour Consumer Skills & Economics class ran a taste test of their own. The students were divided up into 3 different teams, each assigned the task of creating a “brand” of peanut butter and a slogan. On February 18th they “opened shop” and gave out test samples to the student body of their brand of peanut butter along with scoring sheets to rate the three different brands.

They knew from their experience with the cola-test how much of an influence taste has on someone’s buying decisions, but this experiment helped them see how influential marketing is to buying decisions. After the tasting was all over the students gathered the product surveys and looked over the numbers. It was then revealed that the peanut butter they had been given to "market" was not from three different companies – but only one!

They were each trying to advertise and market the same product, and the people responded by rating the exact same peanut butters differently. The students hard work paid off… as a reward they were given some pizza… they were too tired of peanut butter!

Hope Street will be hosting summer school again this year.

Session 1: June 1-June21
Session 2: June 22-July 13
(No School on Monday, July 5)

Enrollment:

May 24 and May 26: 4:00p-7:30p

After spending time learning how electricity is generated and building small generators in class, Hope Street students turned their attention to how to spin the generators without using more electricity than they made. Since the wind is free, students began to design blades to capture wind power. 

Teachers Mr. Schwarz and Mr. Kuhns challenged the students to a contest to see who could design and build the best turbine blades. Pictured are some of the results of their experiments.  After the good-natured trash talking was done, the winning team of designers is Cody McClease, John Perrine, and Taishawn Thomas. The budding engineers will conclude their project by writing up the results of their experiments in lab reports.

On Wednesday, November 4, Twenty-five students and three teachers were hosted by AT&T for a Job Shadow. This is the second year that Hope Street Academy has attended this Job Shadow.

Students were involved in a job fair and saw five different areas of AT&T. Each group listened to different speakers and got to see different areas of work and materials/tools used in their work. One of the guest speakers was the Kansas AT&T President, Dan Jacobsen.

The students attending were: Jermaine Avery, Kayce Carson, Vandellia Clark, Lauren Christian, Rebecca Goforth, Arianna Grier, Sarah Johnson, Jacqueline Jones, Dantre Mitchell, Amanda Penry, Cuashan Robinson, Jazmin Rodriguez, Michael Sahadi, Jordan Sawyer, Corina Slusser, Donovan Tartenaar, Evan Wheeler, Jarrett Woodley, Sterling Wilkins, Tah'Nae Tidwell, Justina Lucky, Jordyn Shepard, and Chaz Graber.

On Tuesday, September 22, a group of Hope Street students and staff attended the Topeka city council meeting in order to ask that the proposal to install a wind turbine on campus be passed.

By a vote of 10-0, the city council approved the request. The council also approved an ordinance requiring users of wind energy systems to acquire a conditional use permit from the governing body.

Students speaking to the council on Tuesday evening were: Jacy Gatchell, Evanne Wheeler, Amanda Rice, Quincy McCord and John Scholes. Council members complimented the students for their research and hard work.

Students Evanne Wheeler, Lauren Christian, Stephen McMillan, Amanda Rice and Chaz Graber speak to the City Planning Commission.

Hope Street students spoke during the public hearings portion of the city planning commission meeting on August 17.

Hope Street students presented their case for the planning commission to approve a draft proposal on wind turbines within the city limits. This would allow Hope Street Academy to move forward on installing a turbine that was awarded through the Wind for Schools program at Kansas State University. Students and Hope Street staff answered questions from the commission. The draft proposal was forwarded to the city council for final approval with slight changes.

The changes will not affect Hope Street Academy as the commission was very impressed with what Hope Street students had achieved with the awarding of the wind turbine and wanted the school to be able to proceed. Hope Street students continue to be involved in the democratic process at work and will now await final approval from the city council.

The start of the 2009-10 school year has brought some exciting changes to Hope Street:

We are welcoming three new teachers this year: Sharon Tagle and Miranda Forgey in Science; and Sarah Hazen in Language Arts. We look forward to working with them.

The building received a facelift by being painted inside and out this summer. Everything looks new again.

We are also excitedly awaiting the installation of a brand new wind turbine which will be erected on the south side of the building. The program strives to help school districts install 1.9-kW wind turbines for use in education, and to encourage incorporation of renewable energy education into the K-12 science curriculum.

Everyone is anticipating a great year ahead!

Students and staff members at Hope Street Academy have been working on a wind turbine proposal called Wind for Schools Program.  

The students helped make a brochure that they took out door-to-door in the neighborhood to gain support signatures. They wrote letters of support, made support videos, wrote narrations, and came up with some cross-curricular lesson plan ideas.

http://www.eece.ksu.edu/psg/wac/
http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/
http://www.skystreamenergy.com/
http://www.need.org/