March 8, 2019

Important Dates:

9 week progress report

sign off: March 8

College & Career Fair:

March 14, 6-8pm

Cheerleading try outs

begin: March 14

Volleyball try out info meeting: March 25 @

7pm

Softball info meeting:

March 26@7pm

All dual enrollment pa-

perwork due: March 28

Inclement weather make

up day #2 or student/staff

holiday: March 29

College and Career Fair

Farewell and Introduction

The Counseling Office is hosting a College and Career Fair on March 14th from

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm for all students. Please come out that evening and chat with college admissions representatives and find out about a possible new career! We will have tables set up in the Commons area for our colleges and for our career representatives to use as a platform to share about their college or career. The

list of colleges who have committed to attend at this point can be found HERE. We will update the list when additional colleges are added as well as a list of career presentations when that is finalized. We hope you can attend!!

Today we bid farewell to our long time after hours campus supervisor, Ken Lewis. Ken, also known as Unit 4, joined us in 2009 after serving in the Dekalb County Sheriff’s Department. He has been an integral part of the Mill Creek

Community School ever since. He is returning home to Long Island, New York to marry his high school sweetheart. Please join us in saying congratulations and best wishes to Ken in this new chapter in his life.

Reginald Mahone, who will be known as Unit 6, will be taking over the position of after hours campus supervisor. He is a Chicago native and a twenty-five year veteran of the Dekalb County Sheriff’s Department where he served with Mr. Lewis. The Community School is excited to welcome him to Mill Creek!

Student Honors

Please join us in congratulating Allie Vela, Diana Kim and Melody Pogula on winning 2nd place at the Gwinnett Regional Science and Engineering Fair as well as being awarded the 2019 Scarbrough Water Prize (SWP) for having the best project related to water!

The SWP honors projects that address water quality, water resources manage-ment, water protection, water and wastewater treatment, or the societal aspects of healthy water. Winning projects display creativity, use precise methodology, and convey an in-depth knowledge of the subject matter.

These ladies engineered a water filter to be used in conjunction with a Lifestraw that would eliminate harmful chemicals such as mercury and lead from drinking water. Way to SOAR ladies!

Page 2 Take Flight

Class of 2019 News

A message from senior sponsor Jody Gross:

The PTSA will be organizing the Senior Breakfast this year. Senior Breakfast will be Saturday, May 18th, from 9am-11am at Chateau Elan in the Debussy Ballroom. The price this year will be $34, and the tickets will be on sale the en-tire month of April. Seniors are required to dress nicely. If you have any questions please email, mchsptapresident@gmail.com

The website has been updated with Senior Letters, Locker Strips, and yard sign information. Please visit the website for this information. Continue to send in gift cards and candy. We are very low on both. Watch for an update via email by March 11th.

Paying Senior Dues: Use the following link: https://shop.gabalfour.com/categories/packages

This link will take you to the Balfour website where you pay your "Cap and Gown Dues." Please

note it is not on My Payments Plus Dues will increase on February1st to $140. Check out the school website under senior news to see all the items that the dues cover. Also, Senior Dues have nothing to do with Junior Dues or Prom.

Cap & Gown Portraits—LAST CHANCE!

Volleyball Try Out Info Meeting

Attention Volleyball Players and Parents. There will be an informational

meeting on March 25 in the Mill Creek Theater at 7:00pm for any girls that are interested in trying out for volleyball.

Tryouts will be April 30 - May 2. If you have any questions contact Coach Adams.

Softball Information Meeting

Tuesday, March 26th at 7:00pm

Page 3 Volume III, Issue XIII

The Pad, College and Career Planning

NEW Cafeteria Menus!

Several new LOCAL scholarships are available now for seniors! The Mill Creek PTSA Scholarship (must be a current PTSA member); the Braselton Rotary Club scholarship (must have a Braselton or Hoschton mailing address); and several more. Go to The Pad's website to get the application infor-

mation from the Scholarship newsletter or see Mrs. Vanderpool in the counseling office!

https://www.gcpsk12.org/domain/3195

Also, be sure to sign up for The Pad's Remind app. Scholarship information, college admission reps

visit information is posted daily! Don't miss out on ANYTHING!

Scholarship Information Needed!

Parents of seniors! Gwinnett County Public School gathers student data annually in a mandatory Senior Survey. Your senior will complete the survey sometime in March. The survey is designed to gather data on students post-secondary plans and if they have been offered any scholarships other than the HOPE or Zell Miller Scholarships. Despite our best efforts to thoroughly gather all scholar-ship OFFERS for our report, we feel confident that students are not accurately reporting and we are missing a lot of what our students are being offered!

We do report all offers, whether the student intends to attend the school offering the money or not. Example, many of our athletes receive upwards of 20 full ride scholarships and we are allowed to report every single one! Or, a student who may qualify for scholarships at several different schools, but only reports the money he/she plans to use at the school he/she will attend. WE REPORT ALL OFFERS.

In the hopes of more accurate scholarship offer reporting, we are reaching out to parents. Please email any and all offers your student has received that are NOT HOPE or Zell Miller to Betsey McGuire by March 31st.

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

NEW Breakfast menu

NEW Lunch menu

Page 4 Take Flight

An EPIC Student Prospective by guest student author, Mitchell Chastain

An EPIC Student Perspective: The EPIC Junior engineers have been using their knowledge learned from Physics as well as Language Arts to create a solution to solve the issue of excess use of energy in the school. Many teams decided that the lighting through-out the school is very inefficient and there could be solutions to help trim down on the energy used to light the school. For example, one group in the fourth period EPIC Language Arts class decided to create motion sensing lights that would help reduce the energy wasted on lighting the hallways since the hallway lights are on all day. The motion sensing lights will work by using the secu-rity cameras already installed in the schools to find motion in the hall-ways of the school. If the camera detects motion in the hallway then it will flip the relay and then the lights around the person would turn on. This in return would save the energy that is currently being wast-ed on lighting the hallways all throughout the school day. The teams have worked diligently on their project while still having to get their classwork done for the school day.

EPIC Engineers

The 11th grade Engineers have spent several weeks researching, designing, and building prototypes

for their Bright Idea presentations. The purpose of this project was for students to find a realistic solu-tion for saving energy at school, that would, in turn, save money and resources. Students came up with some really innovative ideas like insulated curtains for the windows, light sensors that would be connected to the existing camera systems, and mirrored ballasts that would help to distribute more light but use less en-ergy. They presented their ideas via the DESIGN process to an audience of peers, teachers, and administrators earlier this week. Our program pio-neers truly are EPIC!

Page 5 Volume III, Issue XIII

EPIC Entrepreneur Presentations

An EPIC Student Prospective by guest student author, Juliana Pleck

On Monday, February 25th the 11th grade Entrepreneurs participated in a county fair-style presenta-tion day of their Bright Idea projects. Each group hosted a station presenting applicable solutions to cut the energy costs for Mill Creek high school and like-sized organizations. In anticipation to Mon-day, students spent project building days doing research to validate their proposals. In addition to the energy saving solutions each student proposed, they also calculated an estimated return on the budget that would be realized over time and could be reinvested in a culture building item or activity for our school system for the same or a lesser cost. As our students finish these projects and move toward their next phase in Entrepreneurial growth, we believe that each and every one of them will consider taking the extra steps to save large amounts of money in their own business budgets moving forward. More importantly, they will factor the environment into their business plan to make their community, and in turn the world, a better place.

The EPIC sophomore engineers are using their knowledge from biology to help design a living building. The living building project, originally performed by students at Georgia Tech, is a project used to design new buildings based off of city core values using five different petals: place, beauty, materials, ener-gy, and water. The EPIC students at Mill Creek chose a local city and de-signed a building based off of core values. Next, they 3D designed and printed their buildings and constructed a proof of concept for their biology animal ad-aptation from which their building was based. Way to go sophomores!

Page 6 Take Flight

2019 Cheerleading Try Outs

The 2019 MCHS Cheerleading Tryouts begin March 14, 2019

For additional information, please go to Mill Creek Cheerleading or attend a parent informational meeting on February 11, 2019 at 6pm in the MCHS media center.

Current MCHS student try out sign up link

Rising 9th grade student try out sign up link

FIRST Robotics

Mill Creek High School's FIRST Robotics team, nicknamed the Steel Talons, had their first competi-tion this past weekend at Riverside Military Academy. The team did a great job, competing in every match and problem solving through issues like firewalls, Velcro malfunctions and more. We even beat a previously undefeated team in one of our matches for a very exciting moment. Overall the team placed 22nd out of 38 teams, and we have some great ideas for how to continue to improve for our next competition in Columbus, GA later this month. If you are interested in checking out what FIRST and FRC means at the high school level, check out videos from the weekend here: https://www.twitch.tv/gafirst1/videos. Our FIRST Robotics team is an awesome opportunity for teamwork, technical skills and problem solving. We have over thirty students and are always looking for mentors and sponsors! If you are interested in discussing either of these opportunities, please contact Kelly Dyar.

Page 7 Volume III, Issue XIII

Welcome to Mill Creek Community School Dr. Victoria Starr

Director

Our office hours are Monday - Thursday 1:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Phone # 678-714-5855 Register online at

www.MyPaymentsPlus.com. Serving our Community

Mill Creek Community Driver’s Education

Dates Days Times Registration

4/15-4/26 Mon-Fri 2:30-5:30pm NOW OPEN

5/6-5/17 Mon-Fri 2:30-5:30pm Open in Late March

The price of Driver’s Education Class is $345.00. Included are 30 hours of classroom instruction, 6 hours driving and 6 hours driving observation.

Driver’s Education contracts and a copy of learner’s permit are required before class begins. Driver’s Education contracts CANNOT be mailed, faxed or emailed. The Driver’s Education

Contract and a copy of learner’s ARE necessary to attend the class. PAYMENT ONLINE - Go to www.MyPaymentsPlus.com

PAYMENT IN PERSON - You can bring your check or cash to the front office

Mill Creek Community School

Summer Health & PE 2019 May 28 – June 20

Mondays – Thursdays More details are on the website.

Dates could change due to school make-up dates

Mill Creek Freshman

Orientation Camp Wednesday, July 24th 5:00-8:30pm

$65 - Online Register online by 11pm Monday, July 22nd to receive

your schedule at the camp.

$80 - At door* *(Does not include schedule)

Babysitting & Childcare Certification Workshop

DATE: Wednesday, March 27,2019 TIME: 4:15-6:45pm AGE GROUP: 6th-8th grader COST: $75.00 - Space is limited ( Small snack will be provided) LOCATION: Osborne Middle School

STUDENTS WILL LEARN 1. Basic first aid & emergency response skills 2. Home alone safety skills and Certified ASHI

REGISTER ON www.MyPaymentsPlus.com

REGISTER ON www.MyPaymentsPlus.com

HAWKS S.O.A.R. to Excellence

S.O.A.R.

Strive to Overachieve through

Accountability and

Respect.

Work hard in SILENCE

let SUCCESS

make the noise. -Unknown

Literary Team—Region Champs!

Dual Enrollment Information

Any student planning to participate in Dual Enrollment must meet all paper-work requirements (Dual Enrollment Contract returned, Google Form complet-ed, met with Mrs. Griffin to complete Student Participation Agreement, and ap-plied to the college) by March 28th. After that date, Dual Enrollment will not be an option for summer or fall 2019-2020. For more information regarding the

dual enrollment program, please see information posted HERE.

Mill Creek High School participated in the 2019 region literary meet and earned the following awards. Our team swept the competition and was Awarded Region Champions!

First Place:

Essay Argumentative- Lauren Davis

Essay Personal - Grace Nebel Essay Rhetorical - Hailey Hamilton

Extemporaneous Speaking-Domestic- Abubakarr King Extemporaneous Speaking - International - Cooper Rock

Oral Performance Humorous-Henry Boston Oral Performance Dramatic - Jeremy Gilstrap

Oral Performance Duo- Sydney Argento and Elain Whitbeck Boys Solo - Harrison Eason

Girls Solo - Jordan Averett Trio- Alexandria Burkingstock, Quinn Dillard, Kaliah Harris

Quartet-John Brannigan, Elijah Shaw, Foster Curtis and Terrance Calder

Congratulations also go to our

awesome team of coaches: Sarah Lindahl-Oral Interpretations Linda Waddell-Extemporaneous Speaking Lori Bowen - Essays Stephanie Archer: Music

We wish these talented students good luck as they compete for the state title on March 16th!