Ripples

UnconveredShorewood’s mysteries tunnels are investigated and exposed.

page 8-9

Bienvenue!Students from Avignon stay with Shorewood host families.

page 7

Volume 94, Issue 3October 28, 2015

1701 E. Capitol Drive, Shorewood, WI 53211The Student Newspaper of Shorewood High SchoolShorewood

What’s Inside

Walk to SchoolStudents recognize na-tional holiday and cel-ebrate community.

page 4

www.shorewoodripples.org

Inside Ripples

News....................1-5 Features...........6-7, 10, A&E..................11-13

Sports.....................16

Opinions...........14-15

Project nears completionThe construction underneath

the bleachers on the football field is scheduled to end at the beginning of November. This project originally started with D2D back in 2010-2011, but when the funds ran out, construction was halted until this past August. The company working on construction is coincidentally the same one that was originally going to build the building back in 2011, as part of the original plan.

“There were plans to construct this building back when they renovated the athletic fields, but luckily it’s worked out quite well,” said Patrick Miller, business manager. Miller was in charge of overseeing the construction bids and helps conduct reviews on the construction as it nears completion.

This new building will not only benefit the football team, but also the soccer team, track team, softball team, recreation department, other renters, and most of all, the community. One of the biggest benefits to come with the building is the addition of real restrooms.

“Being able to have a real

by Ananya Murali

restroom instead of a port-a-potty will be a joy for not only me but for all of our fans in attendance,” said LeVar Ridgeway, athletic director. Ridgeway’s role is to make sure that all of the athletic needs for the building are met and completed, as well as helping with design logistics.

The building is the length of the bleacher area, and will be located beneath the bleachers, with a crossway between the pool and the new facility.

“It’s split up into different components,” Ridgeway said. “The concessions will be in the middle of the bleachers, with bathrooms on either side of the concessions stand. There will be team rooms on either side of the bathrooms: on the end by Capitol will be the officials’ locker room, and on the end closer to the softball field will be the spirit shop.”

So far, construction has been going without any major issues.

“We’ve worked through a

few glitches, but we’re moving along on budget and pretty close to schedule,” said Tony Seidita, buildings and grounds supervisor.

Seidita is in charge of supervising the maintenance staff and facilities in all of the schools, and has been making sure the construction that is happening is according to plan.

“Every time I go down there it seems like there’s something else done to it,” Ridgeway said. “Once it’s done and complete, it’s going to be a nice addition to the stadium.”

The building will be in use not only during game season, but also in the off-season. There is currently storage behind the team rooms and restrooms, but during the winter, the team rooms will be used as storage for larger equipment, such as mats for the track team.

“We will be able to get that equipment out of the weather and take better care of it so it will last longer,” Miller said.

“We’re very happy with the progress. It’s nice to finally have the ability to move forward with a project that’s a very long time coming,” Seidita said. “Having the proper facilities out there is beneficial for everybody.”

Construction to finish the John D. Nickoll stadium continues. The work is set to be completed in 2016.

Penelope Musto

Thefts decrease tremendously by Maya Schneider

Senior, Monica Dix, neglects her phone. Such situations are be-coming less common, causing theft to decrease significantly.

Olivia Loomis

Shorewood High School’s theft problems have decreased significantly over the past few years because of increased use of security footage, greater attention to the problem by administration and students being more careful with their belongings. Joe Patek, Assistant Principal, detailed the previous theft issues.

“It’s been pretty widespread,” Patek said. “Electronics are really a hot item … really anything that’s not secured.”

Drew Rekuski, school resource officer, is a new addition to SHS staff, filling the position after it was vacated two years ago.

He investigates crime on campus as well as any complaints of harassment. This year he is collaborating with Patek and other administrators to combat the issue. Rekuski believes lockers are a key part of the situation.

“Number one, you need to use your lockers and use them effectively … which means lock them,” Rekuski said.

David Deshpande, sophomore, also thinks students should take more precautions when securing their belongings.

“People don’t lock their lockers … their stuff can get thrown out,” Deshpande said.

Patek said that in past years not every theft report was looked into. Last year and this year he has worked with all of the administration to follow through with every report.

“When we get a report we take it seriously … why it happened, how it happened,” Patek said.

Rekuski says in order to begin the investigation, first students must report it.

“Report it immediately then let us start an investigation … The more information, the better,” Rekuski said.

Deshpande had items taken from the gym locker room earlier this year.

“I reported it to Mr. Patek and Mr. Peterson … Mr. Patek checked the security cameras,” said Deshpande.

His items were unable to be recovered, but the incident occurred while another team was using SHS fields. They were not

supposed to be in the locker room but were likely let in by another team already in the locker room.

The securing of all unused school lockers has made a difference in thefts on campus, according to Patek.

“Securing lockers helps with preventing theft … any less place there is to stash something,” Patek said.

Patek says the administration needs to keep doing what they have been to respond and prevent thefts. He would like to focus on using tools such as more security cameras to further prevent issues.

“It’s a change in attitude if theft occurs … why not use the tools we have,” Patek said.

Rekuski agrees. “We have the ability to have

some pretty high tech cameras,” Rekuski said.

Patek thinks the school can continue to stay at this low theft level, but only if students are mindful of their belongings.

“It sounds completely benign … but make sure your locker’s locked, your bike is locked, you don’t leave your phone on the table,” Patek said.

The amount of theft has begun to increase, but remains low.

NewsRipples October 28, 2015

page two

Students arrive on time to schoolby Martha Dix

Students arrive at school with time to spare before their first classes. A dramatic decrease in tardies occured in the first months of school due to new the start time.

Olivia Loomis

The start time for the high school and middle school’s 2015-2016 year was changed to 8:05 and 8:10. So far, this later start time has decreased the number of unverified tardies to first hour by 45% and reduced unverified absences in first hour by 54%.

“We would have been interested to see 10% decline, but this is just overwhelming,” said Joe Patek, assistant principal.

Last year, there were 529 unexcused tardies and 426 unver i f ied absences to first hour for the month of September. In contrast, by the end of this year’s September, there were only 289 unexcused tardies and 195 unverified absences.

“ We w e r e a l l expecting fewer, but not that drastic of a change,” Patek said.

Erykah Wright, sophomore, struggled last year with getting to school on time; however, this year she has not been tardy at all.

“It really helped,” Wright said. “Now it is a lot easier to get to there on time or even earlier.”

According to Wright, the change allowed her to get to school earlier to finish homework or do other things. “I can meet my teachers before school, which really helped my

PSAT now made optional for all juniors

This year, PSAT/NMSQT testing was made optional to students at the high school. The PSAT/NMSQT is the preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholar qualifying test for sophomores and juniors in high school. Over 1.5 million students across the U.S take this test in order to prepare for the SAT, as well as gain recognition through the National Merit Scholarship Program.

In previous years, the test was mandatory for all juniors. However, this year, the test was made optional, due to the fact that many juniors are not planning to take the SAT during senior year.

“I think if students are looking to be college bound, … there’s some benefit, but it’s really up to the individual student,” said Bryan Davis, superintendent. “It doesn’t mean that if you’re college bound you have to take it either … I really think it’s up to the student’s choice and preference.”

In the Midwest, most colleges and universities accept ACT scores over SAT scores, and therefore, many students at Shorewood are not planning to take the SAT.

“Primarily students in this region of the country take the ACT, so a lot of our students won’t take the SAT,” said Sarah Johansson, school counselor. “While the PSAT is a practice test for the SAT, if students aren’t going to take the SAT, then it has pretty much no effect on college, unless they happen to qualify for the National Merit Scholarship.”

The National Merit Scholarship is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships. Out of 1.5 million entrants, only 50,000 become semifinalists and commended students.

“[The National Merit Scholarship] is a scholarship [that] students can qualify for based on their PSAT scores, [and] about 0.5% of students who take the PSAT will qualify for

the scholarship [and] a very small number of students will qualify,” Johansson said. “But … in the past few years [we] had students every year who have qualified, and this year we actually have four students who qualified.”

While there may be a possibility of future National Merit Scholars from Shorewood, one major reason the test was made opt ional this year was to ease the burdens of many students, allowing them to focus on their grades and extracurriculars.

“For students who won’t be taking the SAT, it takes something extra off of their plate, and it lets them go to class and focus

on that … [We] give students that option,” Johansson said.

For those students who do not require — or want — an SAT score, making the PSAT optional to them allows more class time, better focus and less stress.

“I like [the school making it optional] because some kids don’t really want to take the PSAT or the SAT at all, and giving them the option of just going to class is better than making them miss

class to take a test they don’t even want to take,” said Katie Love, junior. “The colleges I’m looking at don’t require an SAT score submission at all, and I would rather go to

by Shimana Bose

“I think if students are looking to be col-lege bound, ... there

is some benefit.”-Bryan Davis,

superintendent

academic career,” Wright said.The later start time also allowed a zero

hour team concepts to be added. “I knew if they changed the start time

then I would take zero hour,” said Grace Munson, sophomore.

Taking the early team concepts class allowed for Munson to take the yearlong physics course as a replacement.

“I really like zero hour this year,” Munson said.

Munson enjoys the class because of the people, the greater f r e e d o m i n c l a s s activities, the smaller class size and the less-crowed fitness center.

“It is a good way to wake up by being active at the beginning of the day,” Munson said.

Patek says if more students show interest in zero hour courses, the

school may begin to offer more. “I could see us eventually offering more

[zero hour classes],” Patek said. “It will depend on what kind of demand there is.”

According to Patek, when the idea of the later start time was first brought up, he was unsure it would actually make a difference. He believed this would cause students to stay up later.

Munson and Wright both agree that even with a later start time they both still go to bed

at the same time as they did last year. “There are a lot of different factors that

could be a reason why [there is a decrease in tardies], I do not think you can say that the late start is the sole reason for the decline,” Patek said.

According to Patek, this decline could also be attributed to a change in student body with 25% of the school being new, or the

“We were all ex-pecting fewer, but

not that drastic of a change.”

-Joe Patek,assistant principal

types of schedules with less people having a first hour class.

According to Patek, Timothy Kenney, principal, received calls from schools outside of Wisconsin asking for our data and how we did the schedule change.

“It will be interesting to see if as we keep moving forward, if [the decrease in tardies] continues,” Patek said.

High school students given choice on standardized testclass then take a test for four hours.”

On the other hand, the change is not as consequential for the students who are planning to take the SAT, as the option of taking the PSAT is available to them, but not mandatory.

“I don’t know what would be on the SAT, so I thought it would be good practice for when I do take [the SAT],” said Lindsay Campbell, junior. “I would’ve taken it either way.”

Despite the test becoming optional, a large percentage of the junior class still chose to take the test.

“I believe there are about 50 students who decided to take the test … out of 152. [That’s] one-third of the junior class who decided to take the test,” Johansson said.

Following the examples of some nearby high schools, the concept of making the PSAT optional was considered, and this year was finally put into action.

“What some other of the North Shore schools had done was they had started making the PSAT optional,” Johansson said. “Mrs. Norris and I were meeting with some other North Shore counselors, [and] we were talking about the number of tests our students are taking, and the number of times they’re out of class, and discussing the validity and merits of all this testing.”

“While ACT Aspire and ACT testing are all mandated by the state, we felt like PSAT was another test that took students out of class, so we wanted to put the choice in the hands of students and families,” Johansson said.

Many of the s tuden ts and the administration members reportedly supported this decision.

“Before you could opt out of it, [but] everybody had to take it,” Davis said. “Now it’s an opportunity for students to take it if they want to take it, … and I think it’s good to allow students to have a choice.”

The cover of a practice PSAT distributed by the Student Support office. The test was made optional for SHS juniors this year.

Shimana Bose

News RipplesOctober 28, 2015

page three

New curriculum for elementary schools by Maddie Gravelle

In both Lake Bluff and Atwater, a new curriculum was brought into the 2014-15 school year: Expeditionary Learning, or EL. The curriculum is already in place in over 160 schools across the United States.

“It’s a philosophy that’s built around 10 design principles. They focus on self discovery, the having of wonderful ideas, responsibility for learning, empathy and caring, success and failure, collaboration and competition, diversity and inclusion, nature, solitude and reflection, and a service component,” said Joleen Barry, a kindergarten teacher at Atwater, an active member of EL.

Atwater has begun to use and add the concepts of Expeditionary Learning to the daily school lives of students. The new curriculum was proposed at the end of last school year, and the school decided to implement it. Some staff members attended Expeditionary Learning sites and schools to learn and observe how other schools have implemented EL.

“We visited schools who are implementing EL in Kenosha [and one other site in Wisconsin],” said Anthony Schiro, a sixth grade teacher at Atwater.

So far, members of Atwater staff said they think EL has had a positive impact on the school.

Meg Malloy, a multi age teacher for third and fourth grade at Atwater, said that Atwater will take this teaching opportunity and follow through with it.

“Atwater really thought it was a really great way to unify the teachers, to get professional development so we all learn something that is the same, that’s really

good practice for kids, and that we knew if we signed on to EL we would get a lot of learning … and it would be a long term commitment,” Malloy said.

Atwater teachers say they are looking

forward to the future of the program and are glad they have come across this experience. “It really complements what we’ve already been doing … we already were doing things like that, but this brings it all together in a way that makes the most

sense,” Barry said. Lake Bluff applied the aspects of EL

shortly before Atwater did.“The philosophies of EL is consistent

with the philosophies of Outward Bound

… there was an interest in bringing the practices of some of the philosophies of education and Outward Bound into the classroom experience [and that’s where Expeditionary Learning came from],” said Eric Norland, Lake Bluff principal.

Outward Bound is an organization that takes the concept expeditionary learning and pushes achievement through active learning, development of character in students and teamwork. The organization works with these aspects through a variety of environments.

“Lake Bluff has been a National School of Character for some time, and as the faculty here sought to grow in their practices, they felt that they have adopted some great practices in terms of character and saw [EL] as the next logical step to strengthen the school,” Norland said.

According to Norland, staff will be trained throughout the next four years.

“We work with [Expeditionary Learning] and they provide us with training opportunities and a school designer who [comes in and] works with our staff on a regular basis, about 30 days a year, to help us implement the strategies and training from EL,” Norland said

“It benefits the students [first of all] because you’re always going to learn the content, the curriculum is still going to continue, but to continue that character part, where you are putting out students that are good people and citizens, and looking at what kind of person you are going to be when you’re 30, not just getting into college, but what are you going to be,” said Michael Roberts, a multi age third teacher for third and fourth grade at Lake Bluff. “As a small district with a large population, it sets you apart from other schools, where if families are moving in, they can see … that this district is doing something very innovative that gets their kids out and gets their kids exposed to a lot of different things.”

Rebooted robotics program holds promise

The recreation department has introduced FIRST Robotics programs to the district. There is a Junior FIRST Lego League (JFLL) for kindergarten through third graders, a FIRST Lego League (FLL) for fourth through eighth graders and a FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) for seventh through 12th graders.

“Any time a new program comes to the school that is connected to academics as an extra supplement is really exciting,” said Carol Davis, advanced learning coordinator.

by Madeline Wilson

These programs offer students out-of-school opportunities to build their science, technology and engineering skills.

“I think this is a pathway to the sciences, if they are interested in robotics, interested in engineering; I think it is a good pathway to give them a look at it, to see if it is something they might want to do in their future,” Davis said.

The FTC team must design, build and program a robot in order to compete in a challenge against other robots at a regional

competition. The FTC team has named themselves

“Robohounds 2.0” and currently has 15 members.

Coach, Ted Hauck thinks that the team has faced challenges as a new team, but is learning and growing at a fast pace.

“We are a rookie team; we’ve never competed before so we’ve started from scratch. There are other teams in the area who have been doing this for nine years. They’ve already got a robot and they have people that are experienced to build the robot. So they are probably ahead of us as far as our robot goes for this competition. But we are coming up to speed pretty quick,” Hauck said.

Nicholas Burkee, junior, has joined the team because of a positive experience with FIRST programs in the past.

“Before I came to Shorewood Schools I was at Oak Creek and we did a [FIRST] Lego League with a mind storm robot and we also competed. The experience was good and I had a lot of fun,” Burkee said.

Robohounds 2.0 has already finished designing and building their robot. Their next step is to test its software.

“Now that we have the robot built, it is more software testing,” Burkee said.

The software is the most difficult aspect of FTC, as it is new to members.

Members of the FTC robotics team work together during a team meeting. A district

lack of STEM programs and clubs have pushed the new club into existance.

Adrienne Houck

“The most challenging part [of this process] is software,” said Natan Fessehaye, seventh grade.

The team hopes to finish all the programming by the end of November.

“Our goal was to have the robot running by Thanksgiving. We beat that goal. Now our goal is … trying to get all the program devices working in software by Thanksgiving,” Hauck said. “We are about halfway through of getting all our devices to function properly with the software.

Robohounds 2.0 will compete in a regional competition against other robotics

teams in late December or early January. FIRST has yet to determine the dates of all of the regional competitions.

Team members feel hesitant going into the competition because it is their first year competing.

“I am pretty nervous for [the competition]. I hope the robot’s code doesn’t

malfunction,” Fessehaye said.Davis believes that besides designing,

building and programming a robot, a huge part of FIRST programs is the human component.

“We think about robots as being autonomous and just doing things by themselves,” Davis said. “But there is a huge human component to robotics. We need humans to push them forward, so we need kids to push them forward.”

“I think this is a

pathway to the sci-

ences, if they are in-

terested in robotics”

-Carol Davis, advanced learning coordinator

Program aims to create interest and promote learning for all grades

Atwater students engage in an experience-based learning activity, part of the newly-

established EL program. The program draws on philosophies of Outward Bound.

courtesy Shorewood School District

NewsRipples October 28, 2015

page four

Lake Bluff population exceeds capacity by Yasmin Mohd Suhailin

Students unite in walk

Lake Bluff Elementary School’s population has increased tremendously over the past few years.

“Since about 2006 or maybe 2007, there are about 150 kids more than there were ... the last couple of years the growth has actually been bigger than 100 kids and it has been growing,” said Suzanna Schroeder, Lake Bluff playground supervisor and parent.

“[From] January 2015 to this school year September 2015 the percentage increase would be about maybe between one and two percent,” said Lake Bluff Elementary School Principal, Eric Norland.

The Lake Bluff population has increased due to the people moving into Shorewood and open enrollment.

“Words are getting out that we are a good district. And … it’s a diverse population that is open for anything. Last year I had them salsa dancing, samba dancing. I had done African dancing and it’s partly because it is so diverse that … people are accepted to that,” said Liisa Church, Lake Bluff music teacher.

“There are a couple of reasons [the population has grown,] ... one, we do have some people moving into the district ... then, the district have been opening up the open enrollment seats, and since they are opening up so many open enrollment seats, our population keeps growing and growing and growing at Lake Bluff,” Schroeder said.

The growing Lake Bluff population has created problems, challenges and opportunities.

“There are challenges and opportunities ... When you have [more students] you have ... a little more opportunity to ... hire fantastic teachers, but ... the challenge [is] using the space wisely and to maximum efficiency ... when you don’t have quite that many students. [It] may not be ideal ... because ... you got to heat the whole building, you got to take care of the whole building, and if you don’t have enough seats to fill it up, it may not be efficient,” Norland said.

“The problem is that we literally don’t have enough classrooms to accommodate everybody ... What’s crazy is that there is not enough space ... We have so many kids crammed into small space right now [Lake

Bluff is] actually over capacity,” Schroeder said.

The classroom capacity for the Shorewood School District is as high as the capacity of Milwaukee Public School systems.

“[The] Shorewood School District has incredibly high capacity … class enrollment capacity. It’s the same as Milwaukee Public School systems. We are the only schools in the north shore that have class capacity that high,” Schroeder said.

Large class sizes have caused the Lake Bluff PTO to have some concerns about the students.

“[The] Lake Bluff PTO ... shared some concerns about class size and being able to accommodate all the kids that we currently have ... [They want to] make sure that everybody is taking care of, everybody is educated, and happy and healthy,” Schroeder said.

Parents have also shared their worries about the kids.

“I’m not the only parent who thinks [the class capacity is high,] because we think that kids do not get enough attention that they need when they have so many kids per class and... The teachers did a really good job, but when you have so many kids you

by Katie Eder

Even though Will Reinhart, Lake Bluff student, lives far from school, he got the chance to walk to school thanks to National Walk and Bike to School Day on October 7.

“We parked by the donut place and got donuts and then walked,” Reinhart said.

National Walk to and Bike to School Day is an event encouraging families and youth throughout the entire U.S. to exercise and spend time together and with their community. Shorewood elementary schools have been participating in this day for many years.

“The kids were really excited. Kids that normally don’t get a chance to walk to school so it was all really fun,” said Julia Holmes, Lake Bluff PTO co-president.

This year Lake Bluff’s PTO added many new events and activities that gave everyone the opportunity to participate.

“We took a note from the Atwater page and had kids walk over to Lake Bluff that usually get dropped off by bus. So they got to be a part of the fun,” Holmes said.

The SHS pep band played as students and families stood outside the school talking, dancing and signing.

“We have a small village so it makes sense to walk when you can,” said Rachel Ellerman, Lake Bluff parent.

As students walked in they were given a pencil that said “I walked to school today.”

“We walked so we got a pencil. And we got healthy. Plus, it’s fun,” said Estella Kruthoff, 2nd grade.

Eric Norland, Lake Bluff principal, said the day represented what Shorewood is all about.

“Shorewood is a walking community and the large majority of our students walk to school everyday,” said Eric Norland, Lake Bluff principal. “It is really a celebration of a culture that already exists here.”

According to Holmes, this year’s Walk to School Day has been the best ever received.

“We got the word out in different avenues this year,” Holmes said. “I think it generated a little more knowledge about the event and ... we just tried to involve the parents, ... which made it more special.”

Lake Bluff stands where it has since its opening in 1915. The school, which once

housed grades K-5 through eight, is now facing major over population issues.

Ben Davis

have extra problems ... two years ago 52% of [one grade] were recommended for summer school because they were … over enrolled,” Schroeder said.

There are some opinions and ideas on

how to solve the problems that the school has.“The school board does have the right

to change the policy ... If they change these policies to lower the [capacity,] we can have fewer kids per classroom, and we wouldn’t have many students being recommended to summer school,” Schroeder said.

“An interesting thing is that back in April of 2014, Patrick Miller, who is our business manager, said that we were going to be conducting a facility study at Lake Bluff ... But to date, we’ve been told that there are no concrete plans to go ahead and do that,” Schroeder said. “[The Facility Study] has been discussed, but I don’t know ... if that’s moving forward or not.”

According to Norland, the population could be consistent next year, as it is not confirmed whether it is going to increase or not.

“We can’t make the assumptions that it’s going to increase, but we can’t make assumptions that it’s going to decline ... the increase from last January to now was relatively small ... But that small increase changed [the] number of classrooms a little bit ... We think it will be ... pretty consistent,” Norland said.

Elementary school students dance to the music of the high school pep band during

the Walk to School celebration held at Lake Bluff on October 7.

Katie Eder

A new art program, Silver Graphics, is being introduced to Atwater Elementary School. The program helps support individual schools with single projects like self-portraits printed onto mugs and collective projects such as large wall murals within the school, similar to the fish mural in the front hall of Lake Bluff.

Not only does Silver Graphics print the digital artwork, but it also helps provide a unique fundraiser to support and raise money for the district’s art program. Each collective project produced through Silver Graphics comes with a digital record on a CD, of each child’s submitted work.

In addition to fundraising for schools, Silver Graphics helps fundraise for individual students within the district looking to receive recognition for their artwork. The website allows individuals to set their own prices and profit margins according to what they believe is appropriate for their artwork. Once an account with Silver Graphics has been created, students have access to an online gallery of items to place their artwork on.

According to Angela Hayes, art teacher at Atwater approves the program and its benefits.

“Parents enjoying purchasing Silver Graphics products to give as gifts for the holidays,” Hayes said.

And according to the Silver Graphics website, other schools have also given positive reviews of their experience with Silver Graphics.

“I have been a PTO fundraiser for the past three years. As an urban school, we intentionally set the profit percentage lower than usual so that more parents can participate and buy beautiful products with their children’s’ artwork. Our art teacher is always amazed at the reproduction quality. This is a personal favorite of mine as well as of the rest of the PTO. To top it all off, the order filling is accurate beyond compare,” said Nicole Rosen of Rochester, NY.

Along with being popular with parents and community members, Silver Graphics has also been a way for schools to feature their talented students and bring in extra funds for the school.

“We have worked with Silver Graphics for two years now. They have been great to work with and our tile wall looks incredible. It has become a centerpiece for our school. This has been a fabulous way to highlight the talents of our students and earn some extra money for our school,” says Lakeview Academy, Saratoga Springs, UT.

Fundraiser supports artby Michael Sibila

News RipplesOctober 28, 2015

page five

Marquette students teach math at Atwaterby Lorlei Boyd

Marquette University recently began a partnership with Atwater in order to train Marquette students how to teach math while providing a tutoring service to Atwater students.

“Our goal in the end is to increase student learning,” said Cathy Daniels, Atwater math interventionist.

According to Daniels, this program will help reach more students by providing academic assistance for those that need it and providing opportunities to be challenged for more advanced students.

“Marquette students are coming during teachers’ guided study times once a week, and they’re working with students on tier one [interventions for math], which means giving them academic help, whether it’s someone who needs help improving if they have lower skill, or it could be someone who’s really bright that needs a little extra,” Daniels said.

An estimated 50-75 Atwater students from a variety of grade levels are being

helped each week during their 45 minute guided study time. Single Marquette students will work with no more than three Atwater students at a time.

“We’re doing this twice a year … [The Marquette students] started at the end of September … and they’re going through

their semester which is December. Next semester, they’ll do the same thing … February through May,” Daniels said.

While Atwater students benefit from this program, this also trains Marquette students to teach math at the elementary level.

“[The Marquette students] are

preservice,” Daniels said. “They’re training to be teachers so this gives them some experience.”

“The benefit to my students is that … they learn about students’ mathematical thinking,” said Leigh A. van den Kieboom, Ph.D., Marquette professor.

Through this “Teaching Elementary Mathematics,” van den Keiboom helps her university students to one day become teachers.

“I really try to emphasize for my students that it’s not just how a student solves a problem, but it’s their thinking about the problem,” van den Keiboom said.

Each week van den Keiboom’s students write reflections about the tasks in which they helped Atwater students. They practice asking the Atwater students questions to understand how the children think, as well as to provoke the children to explain their thoughts. Van den Keiboom said this is hard for the Marquette students, but that they are improving.

This program also helps Atwater teachers. With Marquette students reaching every classroom in the school by the end of each week, Marquette students provide another way for Atwater students to get help.

“I think it’s good [for the students at Atwater], and I think it’s good for the teachers, too,” said sixth grade Atwater student. “It means they’re going to have more helpers, and we’ll probably get through work time faster since [the Atwater teacher] won’t have to sit with [every] kid to help them. The Marquette students are there to help them.”

Daniels and van den Keiboom agree that this program benefits everyone involved, and is great support for Atwater teachers.

Van den Keiboom said Marquette students even wanted to teach at Atwater after they graduate.

“I’m getting a lot of feedback from my students. They love Atwater,” van den Keiboom said. “They think that the students are really smart … They’ve said a lot of positive things.”

The program was introduced and approved over the summer and is of no cost to the district since it is a part of van den Keiboom’s university class. Though similar programs have run in the past, this is first year Marquette students are helping with interventions.

“The school district is trying to encourage these partnerships with different schools,” Daniels said. “You want to use the resources that are around, and these universities have resources … I think Shorewood is trying to reach out … and bring some of those community resources into the classroom.”

Atwater playground equipment reconstructed by Sabine Peterka

Atwater Elementary is getting a new playground on the west side of the school. The old playground was completely demolished on October 12, and the new one is scheduled to be built before the end of October.

The need for a new playground arose in the spring of 2014 when the slide broke.

“Near the end of the school year two years ago, we came to play on the playground and there was a big board across the slide, on that big spiral one, and we went up and took a look and sure enough the slide had broken,” said Chris Stepanski, parent.

Stepanski volunteered to repair the slide.

“I fixed it … but I told the folks at school, I said, ‘We might get one or two more years out of this thing and that’s about it; we’re going to need a new slide pretty soon.’ And that’s what got the whole playground thing started,” Stepanski said.

According to Kayla Russick, Atwater principal, the company that made the playground no longer made the slide, but it r e c o m m e n d e d getting a new playground because the equipment was around 20-years-old and was starting to break.

Russick organized a group of parents to be on a committee for the playground.

“We found out about the process [and] we realized this was going to be a lot of money,” Russick said.

They received a $15,000 matching grant from the Shorewood Foundation along with donations and fundraising from the Atwater 100 campaign.

“We were hoping that we could pay for the playground and do some improvements to the school, like trying to bring it back to its original state, and most of what we raised [for the Atwater 100 campaign] really took over for the playground,” Russick said.

The final cost of the new playground is around $75,000.

“All the companies, too, want you to pay like half when you order, so we knew we had to raise enough money to pay for half of what we ordered. So that was really what kind of set us back. We were hoping to have this all installed before school started in September,” Russick said.

The playground committee got opinions from various people about what equipment to get.

“We polled the teachers, we polled the students, everybody had an input … and we took what everybody wanted and we put that into the design and incorporated everything,” said Heather Stepanski, parent.

In art class, students drew pictures of their ideal playground and wrote a description.

“We saw some wild suggestions. One child wanted a zip-line from the roof of the school to the playground,” Chris said.

“They gave us papers for us to tell them what we want on the new playground,”

said Sophia Deak, third grade. “I wanted swings [and a] slide.”

The plans for the playground feature slides, climbing nets and spinning equipment.

Michelle Fisher, Milestones site coordinator, attended a few committee meetings.

“They asked my opinion because I work with kids on a regular basis and had been at Atwater for a long time. We were

talking about safety and how teachers and playground supervisors would be able to monitor the safe play of it, and we were looking for equipment that would encourage kids to use it in a safe but vigorous manner. We were also looking for not a lot of blind spots so that the children would always be visible to the supervisors so that we could make sure that everything was going the way it should be; but above all, that it’d be fun and engaging and challenging because it was an older group that was going to be out there,” Fisher said.

Although they had to work within the space, the committee tried to incorporate movement.

“The folks on the committee thought that having a lot of movement in the design would be a good thing to have because we want the kids to be out there being active,” Chris said.

“We could tell right up until the point that they were tearing out the playground, the kids were bored and done with the

playground. No one wanted to play on it after school anymore. It’s like, the slide’s broken; there’s no swings; there’s nothing to do anymore; there’s no kids on it anymore,” Heather said.

Russick said the students are excited for the new playground.

“There will be new equipment that the other playground we have so far does not have,” said Samuel Mitich, first grade.

The committee also investigated the surface.

“That rubberized surface we quickly found out cost as much as the playground,” Russick said.

Instead they decided on mulch. According to Chris Stepanski, the mulch is ADA compliant and easier for wheelchairs to roll on.

“I’ve never done this before; ... it’s been a really interesting process to go through. It’s a lot of work but I thought it was a great effort on parents and teachers and the students’ input,” Russick said.

“I’m getting a lot of

feedback from my

students. They love

Atwater.”-Leigh A. van den Kieboom,

Marquette professor

“Our goal in the end

is to increase student

learning.”-Cathy Daniels,

Atwater math interventionist

“I though it was a

great effort on par-

ents and teachers and

the students’ input...”

-Kayla Russick,Atwater principal

Deconstruction of a west Atwater playgrounds ensues. A state of the art play structure will be funded by different grants and campaigns under a committee.

Bem Davis

FeaturesRipples October 28, 2015

page six

Entrepreneurial spirit added to math classby Elena Cruz

Sam Nadolsky, Lake Bluff sixth grade accelerated math teacher, added a new project to his students’ curriculum this year: the opportunity to create their own business plan.

In order to teach his students about tables, graphs and equations for the Connected Math Program curriculum (CMP), he redesigned an already existing project. His class of 19 students were given an assignment to invent and implement their own small business.

“There was a project that the curriculum suggested. It was a business plan kind of thing, except the book told them how to do it, it already had the business set and it didn’t get into sort of the business specifics,” Nadolsky said.

This new project, instead, required the students to invent their own business, not following a textbook’s specific directions.

Nadolsky, a creator of three small businesses, did this for two reasons: to give the students the opportunity to enhance their knowledge in the mathematics, and to give the sixth graders the chance to learn about businesses in the real world.

“Really I thought the business project was important to students because it creates business literacy, it gives them an idea of

what it takes to do a business, and I think in general it encourages an entrepreneurial spirit,” Nadolsky said.

The students enjoyed this real-world application.

“I liked the feeling of understanding it and knowing the … [lessons] were actually used in an every-day life situation.” said Isabella Lozier, sixth grade.

Nadolsky also thought that, in order to succeed in their future career, the upcoming generation will need to expand their occupation o p p o r t u n i t i e s a n d e n h a n c e a n e a g e r a n t i c i p a t i o n f o r businesses-creation.

“Everyone is so focused on telling kids [they] can do what ever they want, and I think

that falls into the bubble of ‘you can be a doctor or a lawyer or an astronaut’ and I don’t think anyone is ever telling kids that you can start a business, and you can make a company and be extremely successful,” Nadolsky said. “Our generation is much more entrepreneurial. I mean the numbers are just astounding – the number of people that start small businesses – especially with the Internet; it’s the new way to work, it’s the new way to make money and have an income.”

The project consisted of three graded segments: branding, competitive analysis and

a mathematical component. The final step included graph and table creation, as well as an inclusion of income, expenses and profit equations.

“I felt like it was difficult at first but once you got the hang of it, it actually became quite fun,” said Rueben Berkowitz, sixth grade student. “It was difficult because there were a lot of different parts to it … but I actually liked how there were so many different parts to it, so you had to work very hard.”

According to Nadolsky, the branding stage was generally the students’ favorite aspect of the project. They had to design their own logo that would attract a customer base.

“They had to create a title for their company, they had to create a slogan for the company and they had to create a logo ... This was probably one of the fun parts of the project that they just enjoyed doing,” Nadolsky said.

The students also enjoyed the competitive analysis. This element of the project gave the students an introduction to business literature in itself, and included an introduction to value proposition.

“We talked a lot about how important these two pieces are — the competitive analysis and the value proposition — to a business plan because there are a lot of [businesses] out there. If you are going to start a bakery and you need a loan … you need to prove that you are different than the others and that you’re going to be more successful,” Nadolsky said.

The third, and strictly mathematical, element taught the students to use technology in order to create a visual representation of their income, expenses and profit.

“We had to use either Microsoft excel or Google Sheets, and I think that it was really helpful to learn,” Lozier said.

For the final product, there were plenty of industries invented; acupuncture shops, bakeries and truck-rental companies were just a few.

In addition, the students took a field trip to the Colectivo on Humboldt to learn, in even more clarity, how this subject matter relates to their surrounding community.

They toured the roastery as Lincoln Fowler, owner, explained some business basics.

“It was more of a real way to see what we had been talking about and actually see it in action,” Lozier said.

This trip did receive a few mixed results.“I enjoyed the actual trip; I didn’t learn a

lot about [business-creation], although we did learn a little bit about fixed costs and variable costs, which were helpful to our companies,” Berkowitz said.

In the end, Nadolsky was content with the outcomes of the project.

“I would definitely, 100% do the project again,” Nadolsky said.

“I think it’s important that the kids have a basis in what it takes to not only start a small business, but the business terminology that goes along with it.”

The Jazz Estate in Milwaukee, located on N. Murray Ave, is a unique place where jazz musicians can perform their music for an audience.

“If you’re a jazz performer in Milwau-kee, it’s kind of a milestone in your perfor-mance career,” said Quinn McCafferty, senior and percussionist. “It’s not a place where everybody goes but the people who go there are very dedicated and enjoy whatever the people that perform there can put on.”

McCafferty plays with two jazz en-sembles: the SHS Jazz Band and UJAY, a youth jazz ensemble at UWM. McCafferty first started playing jazz in seventh grade. That spring, he auditioned for UJAY, and has been playing ever since.

“I play the drums; it’s one of the more universal instruments out there. Drums can be incorporated into pretty much any genre of music, including jazz,” McCafferty said. “At school, you’re only really exposed to play more classic compositions, and I wanted to try something new. I wanted jazz because there’s that improvisatory aspect to it; it gives you the freedom to express yourself a little more.”

“I would definitely, 100% do this project

again.”-Sam Nadolsky,

math teacher

Jazz Estate closesby Ananya Murali Kyle Stifert, student manager of the

UWM jazz ensemble, has a similar opinion. “I started playing saxo-

phone in eighth grade, and they needed a baritone saxophone player for the jazz band,” Stifert said. “I quickly found out that the concept of impro-visation came pretty easily to me ... and I realized that this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

Stifert first found out about it as a freshman at UWM looking to get a degree in Mu-sic Education and Jazz Studies.

“It was surreal ... going into a place like that,” Stifert said. “I was able to project my sound so much better. There’s something about that stage; I

felt invincible up there.”The Jazz Estate state is not your typi-

cal performance venue. Compared to other places, it is very small and intimate.

“It’s a bit claustrophobic, but it’s got a very warm sound to it. It’s a little more real, in my opinion,” McCafferty said. “It’s got a feel to it that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else.”

Curt Hanrahan, director of the jazz bands at UWM, has been a jazz musician for over 40 years. “Through working with many different groups in high school, I began to enjoy play-ing that language,” Hanrahan said.

Hanrahan visits the estate frequently, about once a week.

“It has an old-school, jazz vibe, and a very intimate atmosphere,” Hanrahan said. “[The audience is] not miles away from the musicians.”

“It’s a shame that jazz isn’t as popular as it used to be,” McCafferty said. “It’s one of the true American art forms out there, one of the things that America pioneered. To be able to bring that music to the people of Milwaukee is great.”

The Jazz Estate advertises its venue. This music hub closed after 38 years of live performances.

Ben Davis

Welcoming new teachersNew name in the math departmentby Eli Frank

Derek Larson took over for J im Krolikowski, longtime math and computer science teacher, who left SHS at the end of the 2014-15 school year.

Larson is teaching four sections of Integrated Math III and one section of computer science.

“I’ve always heard very good things from the teacher’s perspective [and] from the community’s perspective about this school district,” Larson said. Not always a teacher, Larson worked as an engineer in the Minneapolis area for 10 years before going into teaching.

Larson attended the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a minor in chemistry, and

Cardinal Stritch, where he got his teaching certification. Larson has also attended UW-Milwaukee at various points throughout his academic career.

Outside of the classroom, Larson has plenty to keep him busy.

“I’m an avid hunter and avid fisherman. I never miss a Packers game, no matter what is going on,” Larson said. “Above and beyond all of that, I’m married; I’ve got a three-year-old son at home and another one on the way due in December.

“I would [like] to get to know this group of students and this student body and this community better than I do right now, [but] … after my first [few] weeks of teaching here, everybody has made me feel … welcome and things are off to a good start for me,” Larson said.

Fresh faces for Bright Beginings

After an Atwater senior kindergarten teacher left late in the summer, her position was filled by Amy Thorston, previous Lake Bluff Bright Beginnings teacher, leaving Thorston’s previous position vacant for days after school began.

Meanwhile, Katherine Gerrits, who had expected to begin her fifth year at Mequon Preschool, found herself out of work when the school was forced to cut teachers due to low enrollment. Not expecting to find full time work so close to the start of the school year, Gerrits instead began to contact area schools about substitute teaching.

Gerrits was given the job almost immediately. She joined Elisabeth Witt, assistant teacher, who is also looking forward to her first year with Bright Beginnings after being hired last June.

by Sydney Widell Gerrits and Wit are busy settling into their new roles and adapting to each other’s presence in the classroom. They are also adjusting to their new setting.

“Everyone is so friendly and welcoming,” Gerrits said.

“I really love it,” Witt said. Both are also excited to forge

connections with their students and witness their growth.

“I love this age. They say what’s on their mind, they are so open to trying new things, to trying new things, they have their manners and they are so proud of themselves.” Witt said.

“I’m excited to see the kids learn and grow throughout the year. You get to the end and you look back and their vocabulary is just so much bigger, their artwork is so different. At this age they grow so quickly,” Gerrits said. “That’s what’s so great about teaching preschool.”

Features RipplesOctober 28, 2015

page seven

According to Fleur Deyaert, French exchange student, Shorewood looks a little bit like what she’s seen in American movies.

French students from Shorewood’s sister school in France, Lycée Alphonse Benoît, came to Shorewood for two weeks earlier this month.

The exchange started eight years ago with the Department of Public Instruction, which had matched up schools in certain areas of France with schools in Wisconsin.

“Through this partnership we were able to secure the exchange and start it,” said Christine Jacquart, French teacher.

This year, there are 47 students total, with 26 staying with Shorewood families and 21 staying with Nicolet students.

According to Evan Schmidt, French teacher, this year had the most students they have ever had come to the U.S. so far.

“I was really excited at the idea of coming to Shorewood,” Deyaert said. “People are really open-minded. It is really … nice.”

“I feel the matching was perfect,” Jacquart said. “One of the best or better exchanges we have had.”

The students visited Madison, Chicago, Oneida reservation in Green Bay, Old World Wisconsin, went apple picking

Exchange program spreads French cultureby Martha Dix and attended a preseason Bucks game.

“They were some of the most enthusiastic Bucks fans I have ever seen,” Jacquart said.

According to Deyaert, America has many differences compared to France, including the cooler climate, smaller class sizes and the fact that not everyone eats hot lunch here.

“We do not have [lockers],” Deyaert said.The French students visited classes

at SHS, and found them to be interesting. “I enjoyed the orchestra.

That is something we do not have in France,” Deyaert said.

Lexi Shields, senior, stayed in France with a French student named Emma Elano-Martis and hosted her when the students came here. Shields helped her experience many things specific to American culture do not

exist in France, for example, apple picking. “She just kept talking about how

cool it was and it was really cool to give her that experience,” Shields said.

“It has changed my living perspective because you are basically inviting someone into your house that you do not really know even if you stayed with them in France,” Shields said.

Last spring a group of SHS students traveled to France to stay with the students that they hosted.

“It changed my perspective of the world, because life in Europe is so much simpler,” Shields said. “They are [more]concerned about having a good time.”

According to Jacquart traveling to France allows the student to develop a cultural fluency that cannot be taught in a classroom.

In past years SHS has gone every other year to France, host one year and travel another year.

But next year will be different. SHS will be offering hosting and traveling in one year.

“We think to keep our costs low. This is not a trip for the elite students that have money … we can offer it to everyone in a good decent range,” Jacquart said.

“If you get the opportunity to host a person from another country you should definitely do it,” said Shields, “It is one of the best experiences you can have.”

Youthaiti expands missionby Katie Eder

Club practices debate

The Youthaiti club changed its name to French Without Borders in order to expand the focus of the club.

“We are trying to encompass more things relating to French culture,” said Katherine Johnson, senior and co-president. “Youthaiti is still part of it, ... but we just want to make it more inclusive.”

Every other Wednesday, French Without Borders meets to hear guest speakers, watch French movies and plan fundraisers and events.

“I like to think of it as celebrating all things French,” said Christine Jacaquart, French teacher and club advisor.

“There used to be a French Without Borders but it kind of just fell out,” Johnson said. “Madame [Jacaquart] thought it would be a good idea to bring it back.”

A large component of the new club is the available tutoring service to other students in French.

“Anybody can come in and get tutored. We will connect an AP student or French IV student with a younger student,” Jacaquart said. “It is a nice service to our local community and our school.”

Shorewood’s chapter of Youthaiti was started in 2008 when the founder of the Youthaiti Organization in Milwaukee gave a talk at the high school.

“[The talk] made me think, this is a country where French is spoken and it’s

in our hemisphere and I know there is something we can do,” Jacaquart said.

The club gave announcements to raise awareness about the problems facing Haiti and then donate money to the efforts of the Milwaukee organization.

“At the end of every year we would give them all the money we had raised by selling crepes because they use the money for the actual sanitation stuff in Haiti,” said Natalie Dess, senior and co-president.

The money French Without Borders raises will still be donated to Haiti; however, the club is also focused on sharing the culture and history of French countries around the globe.

According, to Sophie D’Amato, freshman, this is one of the club’s attractions.

“I joined the club because I really like French,” D’Amato said. “I want to learn more about the culture.”

According to Dess, the club hopes to grow over the next year.

“We want to see a more widespread presence of the students,” Dess said. “It’s mostly been seniors and juniors, … so we are trying to reach out to freshman and sophomores.”

Both Dess and Johnson will be graduating in the spring and Jacaquart hopes new leadership can be found by then.

“We are looking for younger, newer members to take what good work has been down and improve upon it and keep the legacy going,” Jacaquart said.

Senior members of French Without Borders exhibit bracelets that will be avaliable for purchase during future crepe sales. The club recently expanded its mission.

Sophie D’Amato

Both French and Shorewood students gather to converse on the front lawn, enjoying “déjeuner.” French students stayed with Shorewood host families for two weeks.

Olivia Loomis

Andre Letourneau, senior, founded debate club this year to give students a chance to argue in a school setting.

“[In] debate club ... we will be traveling around the state and participating in several different competitions. It resembles debating that we do in speech class and American government, ... except it’s in a competitive setting,” Letourneau said.

Shorewood used to have a debate team, but it ended around 2010. After a five-year lapse, the club is back up and running.

“A few years ago, ... I was the advisor for the forensics club and we would go to competitions … We would compete in debate and other different speaking contests,” said Colleen Tierney, English teacher and club advisor. “Letourneau had asked about starting it up again last year, so I was on board with that idea.”

Many people are excited about this revival, mainly because they have developed a love for discourse throughout their lives and want an opportunity to further develop their skill.

“I like the debating … and the opportunity to be with people who also like debating,” said Isabel Schmitt, freshman. “I am looking forward to [competing].”

“There really haven’t been that many clubs in the school that seem to fit me but this seems like it would … I’m a fan of politics

by Elena Cruz and Layna Wang and I argue a lot so I thought this would really fit,” said Nick Shaffer, sophomore.

Members are looking forward to the club’s future and its impact on them as debaters.

“I am looking forward to it,” Shaffer said. “I might not perform well on my first debate because I really haven’t done this before in real life ... so I ... hope I will improve.”

However, before they can begin debating outside of the school, the team needs to gain eight members to meet a 20-person minimum.

“People haven’t shown up to the informational meetings,” Letourneau said. “It’s a bit of the set back, though ... I’m not really worried.”

If they don’t get the 20 members, students can still be active in the club.

“They can still compete in some of the other competitions like forensics and the other speaking categories like literature reading,” Tierney said. “There are other avenues they can take; they don’t just have to do debate; they can prepare different speeches for any number of things and then present those speeches within the competition.”

“[I heard about debate club] through the announcements and I thought it would be interesting,” Shaffer said.

Debate club meets Wednesdays at lunch.

Ripples October 28, 2015

page 8

RipplesOctober 28, 2015

page 9

Dubbed “The Porch Project,” Gregg Beaster has been putting up Halloween displays at his house for the last 15 years. This has become a Shorewood tradition.

Beaster, an Atwater parent, has lived in Shorewood since 2000. Every year he puts up his traditional Halloween display on his upper balcony; this year will be his 16th display.

“When I was a kid and I would see an adult in a costume handing out candy, I thought that was the most awesome thing,” Beaster said. “I thought if I’m ever in the position to do that I want to ... so this is an outgrowth of that.”

Beaster first started making Halloween decorations and displays when he was involved with running a haunted house in Waukesha. He was involved with that for 27 years.

This year’s display is from the summer movie Minions. The minions themselves are life-sized, along with a seven foot tall Scarlett Overkill. The display itself took between 65 and 70

Local man sets Halloween tradition

Local Halloween decorations, located on Maryland Avenue, attract

attention over the holidays. The decorations have become a tradition.

Cela Migan

hours to construct. Beaster said that the theme

decision is usually not considered until September: he puts off choosing a theme in order to keep his options open and theme time relevant.

“It’s designed to be a last-second decision,” said Beaster.

Some of Beaster’s past displays include scenes such as Captain America vs. the Winter Soldier, Despicable Me 2, Batman vs. Joker, Hulk vs. Gargoyle and Batman vs. Brett Favre.

This tradition has become very familiar to the Shorewood residents, especially to the Atwater

students and families. “That guy has the best

Halloween decorations ever,” said Calvin Wille, 6 grade.

Beaster starts planning “The Porch Project,” Labor Day weekend, and aims to have it up within the first week of October. He works with Tulley Smith, a friend and mathematician, who helps him with the dimensions of the display.

“We basically sit down and I tell him my ideas and I start sketching stuff out, and he starts to scale it,” Beaster said.

Beaster makes the display in his home’s basement. He often has to build the figures without their

arms and legs in order to get them up the stairs, through doorways and onto the porch. The figures in the display are made with an assortment of different materials.

“I just have a weird collection of materials that I work with and different fabrics that I’ve gotten over the years,” Beaster said. “There are paper mache elements, there’s a lot of duct tape, and sometimes there are chunks of foam; it’s whatever I happen to have.”

Beaster’s displays are staged on his upper porch and are big enough to be easily viewed by passing civilians. Many students and parents are able to see the display when coming to or from school.

Jessica Kosempa, Atwater parent, sees the display often on the way to school.

“I think it’s clever and my kids really enjoy them,” said Kosempa.

Beaster is a big Halloween enthusiast and enjoys the tradition of celebrating Halloween by putting up the display every year.

“On trick-or-treating day, I wear a costume to blend in with whatever the display is that year and I lower candy down in a basket to the kids from the balcony,” Beaster said.

Shorewood after darkWhen I learned of the tunnels underneath the school, it led me to

imagine a very Hogwarts-esque setting, filled with monsters and mysteries. I was lucky enough to get a tour of the tunnels and, thankfully, there was

not a basilisk in sight.Mr. Kenney led the tour of the tunnels along with Tony Seidita, the head of facilities.We entered the tunnels from the administration building and proceeded underneath the parking lot and

school grounds, finally emerging into the physical education building. When first entering the tunnels, my eyes had to adjust to the darkness. There were dated light fixtures that

lined the walls and an abundance of pipes.Once the tour started, it was clear that getting lost in the tunnels would be quite easy. The straight length of

the tunnels seemed to stretch on and on forever. There are also numerous, s o m e w h a t - obscure places, with doorways or openings leading to another path, in a never-ending maze.

A sense of direction in the tunnels is very misleading. Underground, it is hard to judge how far you have gone in relation to the surface, and it is hard to judge where you would pop up if you were to travel directly up. Getting lost in the maze that is the tunnels is a definite possibility if you do not have someone to guide you.

If the route we took had not been explained to me, I would never have believed that we had traveled the short distance from the administration building to the physical education building via the tunnels. It seemed like I had traveled so much farther and in a very different direction.

The most interesting aspect of the tunnels was definitely the old relics that had been left down there. There were old textbooks and desks, along with an assortment of odd objects that you wouldn’t typically expect to see: a shopping cart, a random chair cushion and a copy of Ripples from 2011.

Although students were not allowed down in the tunnels, a number of them have made their mark. Most of it is typical graffiti and defacement, but there was an explosion of the class of 2012’s prank, the notable red, smiling face sticker with a X for a eye.

At the end of the tour we surfaced in the performing arts building. The Mr. Kenney Tunnel Tour experience is not one that many get to have. I’m so glad that I was able to be a part of it.

Coming out from the dimness, I realized that there was a lot more to school then the normal hallways we see everyday. Now, I have not only seen the school inside and out, but also under.

October is the month where shadows begin to grow long, coats get thicker and days grow shorter. It is also the time of year where we begin to focus on the spooks and scares. Spooky Shorewood is a celebration of all the mysterious, creepy and even haunting tales from Shorewood’s four schools. Ripples talked to students and custodians to get firsthand accounts, tales and sightings of strange events that have gone unexplained. A major source is George Anton, who has been a district custodian for almost 30 years between both elementary schools, and who attended the district as a child. He currently is the head custodian at Atwater Elementary, and has seen a lot of the supernatural that may give you a chill or two. Beware!

After reading this, your school may never look the same again.

Schoool Spooks

Shorewood’s slightly younger elementary school has plenty to share when it comes to mysterious stories.

Perhaps one of the most visible mysteries are the “glows” that are seen around Lake Bluff and by janitors at Atwater as well. They often appear along the west hallway on the second floor by the Little Theater. Anton comments that they are seen by him and his coworkers and appear to be in the distance, like a light was left on. But when they proceed to investigate, the light disappears or travels away.

In the theater that lies at the end of a hallway in Lake Bluff, Anton has often seen the stage’s curtains ruffling, as if someone is there, but upon further searching he finds nothing that would have caused the movement.

Students tour tunnels Students tour tunnels

For students, the building has inspired some legendary tales that have thrust fear into the hearts of many children. The ghost of Irene in the girls bathroom by the 1st grade classrooms is a legend that has lived on. Current senior, Alison Reinhoffer, recounts the legend of the bathroom’s ghost.

“In the Lake Bluff girls bathroom … lived the ghost of Irene. Irene was a student back in the day, but she died because she hit her head on the mirror, which explained why there was a crack in the mirror. So then her soul went to live in the toilets. If you sat too long on the toilet, her soul would come up and stab your butt,” Reinhoffer explained. “As a first grader using this bathroom, I would always keep the stall door open to facilitate a quick getaway,

Atwaterin case she came up and tried to harm me, and I would never flush because I was afraid it would upset her.”

Anton and his coworkers have also seen mysterious activity in the girls bathroom on the second floor by the little theatre.

“The stall doors open and close and the toilets flush once and awhile all on their own. The woman who worked at night cleaning the bathroom said she always got it done before the sun set because it got really creepy at night. She’d hear the doors and the toilets when no one was there and see the glowing lights traveling out the windows,” Anton said.

The school exterior is not exempt from the eeriness. The roofs of both elementary schools have vents and other air circulation

SIS SHS

devices that often make loud banging noises during windy or stormy weather.

“Once and a while you’ll have a really calm night and hear a lot of banging of the various valves on the roof. You start to wonder what the hell is going on up there,” Anton said.

Lake Bluff

It began with a flight of stairs with chipping paint, a dark and for-gotten hallway, and a door that warned all who came near to “keep out.”

The stairs that brought us to the tunnels below were not much differ-ent than the ones you’d walk on during an average school day. However, the reality is that the tunnels are not a haunted labyrinth, but instead a place often populated by the custodial staff. But even knowing that the tunnels were there for practical purposes, I still viewed the tunnels as something foreign as we explored them – and they did bring a sense of mystery and eerie secret reality to the school I had attended for the last three years.

Timothy Kenney, principal, unlocked the first door and our five eager students descended the flight of stairs in the administration building. We gathered closer in a small group, and listened to Tony Seidita, head custodian, discuss the tunnels themselves.

As we entered, I noticed a slight drop in temperature in the air, as we listened to Mr. Ken- ney explain that the biggest reason for the existence of the tunnel system is to hold and grant access to the mas- sive boiler pipes. During all my years at the high school, I had never considered that this could have been what lay beneath my feet every day.

It was explained that all of the tunnels connect the various buildings on campus (like the tunnel I was look-ing at, which trav- eled underneath the parking lot), from the administra-tion building to the arts and sciences building, and from the performing arts building to the gym building.

Each footstep taken as we moved forward left a dull echo, and Kenney explained to us that the tunnels in past years had been used to evacuate students for tornado drills, but this had stopped due to liability issues involving the protruding metal pipes and concrete walls.

Soon we exited these tunnels and emerged into daylight once again – this time outside of the gymnasium building – we were led to a series of underground tunnels and rooms in the performing arts building. This was perhaps the most interesting part of our excursion because of the copious amounts of graffiti etched or spray-painted into the walls by students of past decades. It was fascinating that evidence of student life was permanently marked upon the walls of the school was in a place that not many students would ever see.

Years went as far back as 1982, ’71, and even ’51 and I thought of it as a sort of unconventional high school yearbook. Other students of years past had written other sayings on the walls in large spray-painted letters, many of which mentioned their joy at the arrival of graduation or summer. It was like we had unearthed a sort of time capsule left by past students.

With over 100 years of history, “Atwater has a history of spooky sightings of ghosts and sounds,” said Anton.

Perhaps the most dramatic sighting of Anton’s was in his early years working in the district. In 1988, when

Anton was just beginning his work at Atwater, “We had an antique show at Atwater and [the janitors] had to stay all night and guard them. That was the first time I saw things. At two in the morning the old clocks they had were chiming and you’d see stuff moving around in the stairwells. You could see a cloud flowing up the steps, just like the students do, and going out the window towards St. Roberts,” Anton said.

Many of the spooky things at the school happen late at night.

“If you’re ever here at night, sometimes you’re walking the halls and the elevators will just open, but no one will be there. Other night janitors tell me that they see that too, they think someone’s playing games with them but there’s no one

there,” Anton said. There are many spooky

phenomena that have been happening at Atwater since Anton was a student. A room with a mural on it that was painted in the 40s has always perplexed Anton.

“It is covered in lots of little people, and I swear every time I go in there the people are in different positions. Sometimes they even look like they’re holding knives or guns. The room is just storage now, probably because it was too creepy,” Anton said.

Atwater has a similar ghost to Lake Bluff’s, one known for haunting a girl’s bathroom, as retold by Justine Spore, senior. Her story occurs in the girls bathroom in the basement next to Mr. Stanco’s room.

“Legend has it that one time this girl went into the bathroom

by Cela Migan by Celeste Carroll

and for whatever reason she died in the stall furthest from the door. It was closest to this really freaky looking radiator on the wall. So anyways, she died, and now haunts the bathroom. However, many years later, a girl went into the bathroom and she used the last stall, which is, like, sacrilegious, and when she got out green slime started coming out of the radiator and was creeping towards her on the floor. So she stumbled back and put her hand on the wall, and when she took it off she had cuts all over her hand. She ran to turn the sink on and blood came out of the faucet. And then she ran out, and no one has used the last stall ever since,” Spore says, “[Personally,] I’ve never used the last stall-- I don’t want to get attacked by the demon. Everyone knows about this, and not a single girl uses the last stall,” Spore

confessed.While the custodians always

joke about getting dizzy when they go to SIS, due to the school’s round shape, not much has happened to arouse the janitor’s suspicions at the school. The only mysterious instance was the case where the janitors repeatedly found food and objects in the ceilings of the bathrooms.

“They would always find stuff in the ceilings … empty bottles, garbage, lunches. I don’t know how it all got up there in the ceiling-- that was really unusual,” Anton said.

Our dear high school may be deceptively un-unusual. The tunnels, as mentioned above, are musty and less accessible, but not so spooky.

Other suspicious places at SHS include the yearbook’s namesake.

“[In the Copperdome,] there used to be a lot of language classes up there, and I swear when you go up there at night you hear a bunch of garble, tongues, different languages going around, echoing down the stairwell,” Anton said.

Anton also comments that the often unexplained and intense fires and flooding in the drama building merit some consideration.

“I’d hate to be around there late at night,” Anton said.

by Monica Dix

by Cela Migan

Spread by Shimana Bose, Katie

Eder and Maeve McKaig

Olivia Loomis

Olivia Loomis

SHOREWOOD AFTER DARK

FeaturesRipples October 28, 2015

page ten

Junior Filmaker showcased at festival With an interest in filmmaking for his entire life, Tyler Pelzek, junior, was one of the young filmmakers featured in the 2015 Milwaukee Film Festival.

The film, a documentary-style project titled A Work In Progress — The Painter, stars Clarence Corbett, senior.

“I approached Clarence with the idea to work on a film because we hadn’t … ever worked together. I knew he was an extraordinary artist, but I didn’t know that much about him as a person at the time,” Pelzek said.

Although they began working on a

by Eli Frank different project, that was set aside, and the project featured in this year’s Film Festival, A Work In Progress, emerged.

“In [A Work In Progress] we focus a lot on mental illness, and in writing this project about mental illness, I learned a lot about Clarence as a person and discovered a lot about his own experiences with mental illness,” Pelzek said. “[Corbett] had a story that I thought people deserved to hear, and I wanted to be able to start a conversation and bring to light the ways that students and kids are struggling with depression that people outside of high school might not necessarily understand.”

While A Work In Progress focuses on

heavy issues, Pelzek’s films weren’t always that way.

“[A Work In Progress] was really my first serious project,” Pelzek said.

He started making films in fourth grade, filming skits with friends after school on a cheap video camera.

“We didn’t take ourselves seriously. I definitely didn’t take it seriously, but I enjoyed it a lot,” Pelzek said. “I was always a huge fan of movies and TV shows and I always knew I wanted to make movies.”

Despite that fact, Pelzek stopped making films in middle school.

“[I stopped doing videos] because I was the weird kid,” Pelzek said. “I never did

sports. I think my last sport was fifth grade, so I … didn’t want to be the weird kid [making films].”

The break from filmmaking didn’t last long, and Pelzek started again in high school.

“As soon as I entered the high school, I was introduced into this huge artistic world of so many creative people that I had never even met and it definitely made me feel less weird, so late into my sophomore year, I got the opportunity to make a video for a graphic design project, … and I had a lot of fun with it, so that inspired me to pick it up again,” Pelzek said.

This renewed love for filmmaking led to Pelzek’s collaboration with Corbett, whose story inspired Pelzek to work in a new area of film.

“I really wanted to tell a story and documentary was an interesting way to get into that because it’s an interesting combination of filming what you see and telling a story, … so I thought it was a nice way for me to transition into making more planned out stories,” Pelzek said.

After finishing A Work In Progress and having it featured in the 2015 Film Festival, Pelzek and Corbett soon started back on their original idea for a film, Solace, which is set to be released on October 28 on Pelzek’s YouTube channel.

The fictional film also touches on mental illness but does not repeat the same story.

“[It is about] a poet that doesn’t necessarily understand his condition … [He is] trying to find solace in a shallow world,” and is narrated through poetry by Corbett alongside an original soundtrack by Elissa Koppel and Ben Boehm, class of 2015.

“It’s visually surreal, audibly mind-blowing,” Pelzek said. “It’s just a really cool film and … really outside of my comfort zone, but it’s going to be interesting … [It’s] a really exciting project that we’ve been working on and I have full intentions of trying to get that in as many film festivals as I can.”

Tyler Pelzek, junior, speaks during a question and answer session at the 2015 Milwaukee Film Festival. Pelzek’s film The Painter — A Work In Progress was featued at this year’s Film Festival.

courtesy Tylar Pelzek

College feature: Lewis & Clarkby Sydney Widell

Brendan Nagle, class of 2015, knew he wanted to live in Portland, OR. Lewis & Clark College, located just a few miles from the downtown, seemed to be the perfect fit.

Nagle was drawn to the city because of its thriving cultural scene and its coastal climate.

“The city brought me here,” Nagle said. During his college search, he briefly

considered other schools in the area like Reed University or University of Oregon-Portland, but decided that Lewis & Clark was right for him. Part of what he likes best is the size.

“It’s not so small that you never meet new people, but it’s not so big that it’s unfamiliar. It’s a really good size,” Nagle said.

Nagle was also struck by the beautiful campus.

“The campus is definitely not urban,” said Nagel. “It’s basically surrounded by woods and really pretty gardens. It’s also smaller than you’d think.”

According to Nagle, Lewis & Clark is very comparable to Shorewood.

“Lewis & Clark is like Shorewood but Big Brother,” he said. “If you enjoyed Shorewood, you’d enjoy Lewis & Clark. If you did not enjoy Shorewood, you’d definitely not enjoy Lewis & Clark.”

Nagle has found positives and negatives in their similarity.

“The people are all very nice and the outdoorsy thing is really big here,”

he said. Nagle also spoke to the “bubble phenomenon,” which he notices at both schools.

“There’s a tendency to get sucked into the bubble. It is really easy to get caught up in campus stuff and never leave. Campus is great, but it’s important to be aware of what is going on around you, too. You definitely see that at Shorewood, too,” Nagle said. “There’s a lot of diversity, but there are also [privileged] upper middle class kids who haven’t been exposed to a lot.”

Nagle has made a concerted effort to fight the “bubble phenomenon” by taking advantage of all the opportunities offered off campus. According to Nagle, it is very easy to get into the city using either public or school provided transportation. Nagle has enjoyed exploring the unique restaurants, coffee houses and record shops that Portland is reputable for, and has already made it to several concerts, including Deer Hunter, which he considers one of the best show he’s seen in a while.

Some of the best fun he’s had has not been in the city, but outside of it. There are many adventures to be had in the forests, beaches, rivers and mountains surrounding campus. Lewis & Clark facilitates outings through their College Outdoors club.

“It’s a really cool program. They have day trips, surfing trips and longer trips during the breaks and summer,” he said. “There are just so many opportunities to get outside and there are so many opportunities to do what you love.”

On campus, Nagle is involved with Lewis & Clark’s online radio, where he hosts a show every Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s very low key and a fun thing to do,” Nagle said. Nagle’s interest in music is not just a hobby. He recently declared it as his major, and is currently studying trombone, guitar, piano and musical theory.

“They have a really, really great music department, the classes and the professors are really cool,” Nagle said.

In addition to his music classes, Nagle is also taking Environmental Studies and Exploration and Discovery, a required class

for freshman that Nagle describes as a mix of literature and philosophy.

Nagle thinks about Shorewood a lot, especially now that it is fall.

“It’s still really hot here, and I honestly miss the cold. It just gets kinda clammy and it rains a lot. The other thing is we mostly have pine trees up here, so it looks really different, too,” he said.

Nagle also laments how difficult it is to come home.

“It’s easy to get flights, ... but you can’t just drop 500 dollars every time you want to see your family,” Nagle said.

Brendan Nagle, class of 2015, hikes the woods surrounding the Lewis & Clark cam-pus. Nagle is enjoying the available opportunites at the liberal arts university.

coutesy Brendan Nagle

Arts & Entertainment RipplesOctober 28, 2015

page eleven

If I asked you to think of

art, cartoons probably would not

be the first thing you think of. Especially not the cartoons in The

New Yorker. Many people who read The New Yorker don’t give the cartoons a second thought; they only focus on the punch line they

deliver. Very

Semi Serious

shows that

the cartoons,

and the

c a r t o o n i s t s

who create

them, are

where the

real magic is. A n

offbeat documentary, Very Semi

Serious was one of the more

lighthearted presentations at the 2015 Milwaukee Film Festival. The majority of the film follows Bob Mankoff, The New Yorker

cartoon editor, but goes off on many different tangents. As we learn how Mankoff narrows down the hundreds

c a r t o o n s

pitched to

him, a process

riddled with

rejection, we

meet the many

different faces

of The New

Yorker cartoon

scene. The old timers:

George Booth, who has been

s u b m i t t i n g cartoons since the 60s, and Roz

Chast, who has had over 1,000

cartoons published. The newbies: Liana Finck, a shy graphic arts student still working on getting her quirky material published, and

Ed Steed, a former shepherd who

has had almost instant success,

despite only first hearing of The New Yorker months before.

It’s no surprise that all of the

interviews were very funny. But what was most interesting about the array of subjects was that,

despite the large range in age and experience, each interview had the same sense of humor,

Film Festival celebrates independent filmby Maeve McKaig

Independent movies

manage to bring au-

diences even closer.

This year, like years

before, [the festival]

delivered to the ben-

efit of both the com-

munity and indepen-

dent film.

Very Semi Serious impresses

Junior impressed by film Landfillharmonic

The documentary Man on

Wire gets Zemeck-ified!The Walk is directed by

Robert Zemeckis, the guy behind films like Back To The

Future and Forrest Gump, and

stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, C h a r l o t t e

Le Bon,

C l e m e n t

S i b o n y

and Ben

Kingsley. T h e

film tells the famous

story of

P h i l i p p e

Petit (played by Gordon-Levitt), a French troubadour, and how he shocked the world

as he dared to place a wire at

the top of the Twin Towers and

walk on it. With the help of his girlfriend, Annie (Le Bon), and a team of adventurists, Petit attempts to show the world,

and himself, what he’s made

of.I went into the theater

expecting a little bit of a flop. It seemed like Robert Zemeckis, a director that I mostly have faith in, came across a new

CGI technology and wanted to make this film primarily for the reason of showing it off.

I’m glad to say that I didn’t get that.

Instead I got a pleasantly exciting, heart-warming, fun

The Walk pleases with story and style

by Graham Hartlaub experience at the theater.The first thing that came into

my mind while watching this film was how light-hearted it was. After seeing Zemeckis’ last film Flight,

I was expecting a more serious, dark tone, one that would fit in an Oscar contender. From the opening

shot, the film guarantees a brighter feel, s o m e t h i n g with a little

more bounce

to it, a little

more jazz. I don’t really

know what to

make of this,

whether it’s a

positive or a negative; the shock value was interesting.

I also appreciated how the

movie moved along, doing a good job of maintaining plot, while keeping the audience engaged throughout.

In the end,

the movie did look pretty good. The 3D style

of viewing was most positive throughout the last third of the film. Looking down at the city of Manhattan from over 100 stories up was

extraordinaryand other areas of

cinematography were handled very well and in a creative fashion.

The CGI is there and you

can tell when and where it’s

present. It may be a bit overused

at times, especially throughout the narrative of the film, but it won’t completely pull you

out of the story. It starts to get annoying when the CGI

becomes something that the film starts relying on, and although the film comes close to that threshold, it doesn’t

cross it far enough to become irritating. However, I digress when I say that the climax was

amazing all-in-all.For me, the acting was just

about as shaky and fragile as a wire itself. Gordon-Levitt’s notorious French accent is a little grating to the ears at first, but it heals over as time goes on and as he gets more and more accustomed to it. Most of the ragtag team of adventurists are pretty good too, including Le Bon and Sibony. A few, on the other hand, did not impress me

as much. The suave inside-man, the insecure

nerd, the

s t o n e r ,

a l t h o u g h h u m o r o u s

at times,

c o u l d ’ v e been cut out

from the film and it wouldn’t really do any harm.

All-in-all, I was surprised by The Walk. I don’t think this

is exactly Oscar material, but

it is a good time at the movies, and if you have some free time, I highly recommend checking this one out.

I was surprised by

The Walk.

I [had] a pleasant-

ly exciting, heart-

warming, fun experi-

ence at the theater.

The poster from Very Semi Serious, a film featured at the 2015 Mil-waukee Film Festival. The festival celebrates independent film.

courtesy verysemiserious.com

the same rhythm. That unifying trait effectively illustrated how this institution, The New Yorker,

attracts a wide variety of people with one thing in common: they want to make people laugh.

In short, the movie was great. But I want to write about what I

think makes a

movie-going e x p e r i e n c e

u n i q u e :

the crowd. Whenever you see a movie in a theater,

the audience

shapes the way

you watch it. You and a theater full of strangers share laughs, tears, gasps, “how did they do that’s” and “I can’t believe its.” I believe independent movies manage to bring audiences even closer. You’re not just watching the new installment of a superhero franchise or the latest

dumb romantic comedy to stay

up-to-date on pop culture. Y o u ’ r e

walking into a theater full of

people drawn

to the same

underground c u l t u r a l

niches that

stood out

to you as

you flipped t h r o u g h the Film

Festival schedule. In the case of Very Semi

Serious, the audience was full of

people who get The New Yorker’s

sense of humor. It was like reading The New Yorker with a bunch of

people looking over your shoulder. As cartoons filled the screen while the interview audio played, the audience’s collected laugh was so loud that you often could not hear

what the interviewee was saying. On the surface, Very Semi

Serious and Landfillharmonic may

seem like very different films, but they actually leave the audience with very similar messages.

In the case of Very

Semi Serious, the

audience was full of

people who got The

New Yorker’s sense

of humor.

Landfillharmonic tells the

story of the Recycled Orchestra

of Cateura, Paraguay. Cateura is a small,

impoverished town minutes

away from one

of the largest l a n d f i l l s

in South

A m e r i c a . The children

who live in Cateura have very little resources to explore different hobbies

and interests; playing a musical instrument is almost unheard of. Favio Chàvez, environmental engineer and director of the Recycled Orchestra, originally came to Cateura to implement a

new system of recycling (which later failed). After seeing how little the children of Cateura had,

he decided to share his love of music with them to keep them out

of playing in the landfill. Soon, the number of kids coming to the free classes exceeded the number of

instruments available, which led Chàvez and Cola, a garbage picker in the landfill, to experiment with making instruments out of recycled garbage.

The film follows the orchestra from their first gig in Paraguay, to their viral success on YouTube, to performances

in Brazil, the U.S., Canada,

Amsterdam, Tokyo and beyond. As we follow the original

members of

the orchestra,

it is clear

that the

experience of

playing music has impacted

each of them

in significant ways. A

brother and sister get to meet their favorite band, Megadeth and connect with their father. Cola has the opportunity to leave the landfill, a work

environment riddled with

d i s e a s e . Perhaps most

touching, a girl whose father has

a b a n d o n e d

the family

d i s c o v e r s a second

family in the

o r c h e s t r a .

Landfillharmonic is a film that gives incredible perspective. The children of Cateura cherish

many of the things that residents of Shorewood often take for

granted. We have constant access to Lake Michigan, a huge body of water, and watching the Recycled Orchestra see the ocean for the first time reminds us of what a privilege that is. Hearing a child say, “My violin is the most valuable thing I own,” gives a new appreciation to our incredible orchestra program.

Both Landfillharmonic

and Very Semi Serious are stories

that shed light on the simple things that fuel the human spirit. Where the cartoonists of The New Yorker

used comedy to carry the nation

through the aftermath of 9/11,

music helped the people of Cateura

e n d u r e

environmental disaster and

e x t r e m e

poverty. The M i l w a u k e e Film Festival prides itself

on bringing stories like

these to

Milwaukee ’s

a t t e n t i o n ,

reminding us of what the

fundamentals

of life and the human spirit

are capable of. This year, like years before, they delivered to the benefit of both the community and independent film.

Landfillharmonic ...

gives incredible per-

spective.

Arts & EntertainmentRipples October 28, 2015

page twelve

AFS Showcase highlights student talentAFS Showcase Rise Up, Shorewood

High School’s variety talent show, will be presented November 19 and 20.

Zach Lipo Zovic, Marie Matthias and Justine Spore seniors, as well as Grace Anderson, Ellie Schmitt and Dayton Simenz, juniors, will lead the production as student directors.

Lipo Zovic is a veteran to Showcase and directing the show.

“I’ve been a Showcase director since sophomore year, but started Showcase my freshman year … I always try to be involved in as many acts as I can,” Lipo Zovic said.

Matthias is also a veteran director.“I was a director last year … [In] my

sophomore year, I just did a solo,” Matthias said.

Spore, Schmitt, Anderson and Simenz are new to Showcase directing but have participated before.

Anderson performed in Showcase for the first time her sophomore year.

“Last year, I did an act … It was super fun going through the process; I’d never done it before,” Anderson said.

As student directors, they select who gets in, schedule practice times and run rehearsals, as well as critique and improve the acts.

“All of Showcase is student directed … We have students doing tech, stage managing,

by Maya Schneider lighting and sound design,” Lipo Zovic said.Last year’s Showcase saw an involvement

from about a third of the student body.“By getting such a large number of

students, that opens a lot of doors to new acts and new types of people,” Lipo Zovic said.

“With such an amazing show and

amazing experience last year, it’s hard to let that go and start fresh … but I’m sure that this show and experience will be just as awesome,” Matthias said.

Anderson is looking forward to the new opportunities that come with directing.

“I want to be on the other side of the

process and helping other people get to where I got to last year,” Anderson said.

The experience is already bringing excitement to the directors through its prospective opportunities and illumination of Shorewood’s talent.

“I’m basically looking forward to everything Showcase is … Music has always been my most important thing and Showcase kind of brings together everything I love about Shorewood,” Matthias said.

Lipo Zovic, Matthias and Anderson all agree that Showcase is an incredibly meaningful experience in their lives.

“It’s easi ly one of my favori te performance experiences of all of high school,” Lipo Zovic said.

“My best memories here have been in Showcase … I can’t imagine not being a part of it,” Matthias said.

“It means a lot … Showcase is something I pour a lot of myself into,” Anderson said.

They also agree that although there may be some bumps in the road, the show’s success is rewarding.

“Opening night, … when that curtain falls, it’s all worth it … There’s a lot of pride in knowing that we created something that was so spectacular,” Lipo Zovic said.

AFS Showcase Rise Up has two showings: November 19 and 20. Both performances will be at 7 P.M. in the SHS Auditorium.

The AFS Showcase directors watch and critique a future act for the 2015-16 AFS Showcase Rise Up. The variety talent show is student-run and benefits the AFS

Penelope Musto

Shorewood High school drama kicked off the 2015-16 season with an incredible production of Wit, featuring a talented cast of 15 students. As the lead Vivian Bearing, Ella Curran, senior, had a stellar performance.

“It was such a fantastic experience, all about the power of spoken word. The power and love of language is something I liked best,” Curran said.

In Wit, by Margaret Edson, Curran played the role of a college English professor with stage IV ovarian cancer. Revealing right at the beginning that her doctors were just emotionless researchers and that she was to die, the audience was drawn in. Following the scene where Bearing throws up, she is describing how lonely she feels and says, “‘Brevity is the soul of wit,”’ Curran’s favorite line that also hit home with the audience, reminding us just how little time we have.

C u r r a n a n d castmates had originally mentioned some anxiety about the hundreds of lines she would need to memorize over such a short span of time, but the straight 80 minutes Curran was on stage flowed without a pause or hitch.

“I slipped up a couple times. I was bound to slip up but no one seemed to care, as I had to memorize almost the entire script,” Curran said.

“All of the words Ella had to memorize were long, complicated and often medical terms, she did an amazing job at remembering all of them. I also loved the scene where she was suddenly interrupted in her classroom, it was such a metaphor to her life, suddenly interrupted,” said Clarity Seigh, freshman.

The entire audience was seated on stage, in a semi-circle form called thrust seating, which allowed the actors to interact to audience.

“One of my favorite parts was the lecture

scene in the second half, where I was able to rat out and tease teachers and friends,” Curran said.

The intimate environment left much of the audience crying at the conclusion.

“Another thought provoking moment was when nurse [played by Claire Evans, junior] was talking to Vivian about how we often try and think too much, wondering at what point we stop over-analyzing things and start learning,” said Rachel Robrecht, junior.

Evans was perfect for the role of Susie Monahan, R.N., providing comfort and care throughout the emotional ride of the show.

“The popsicle scene [with Claire] was very sweet and tender. It felt very real to me, and I enjoyed getting to eat a popsicle every night,” Curran said.

To the audience t h e r e w e r e n o a p p a r e n t f l a w s . Yet what went on backstage was a different story.

“Ikshvak Sobti, a s s i s t a n t s t a g e

manager, fell and hit his head really badly,” said Kaya Schwartz, freshman. “He had to have staples! He was sobbing and it was crazy. Many people also messed up their lines, and there were a few blackouts that just never happened,” said Finn Rowden, freshman.

“I was adjusting my hospital socks and the stretcher tipped over and I fell off of it. I still have a cut on my leg, but we had to keep the scene going. It was really hard not to break character and start laughing,” Curran said.

“I wouldn’t change the experience of playing Vivian for the world.” Curran said. “It was stressful at times and I did cry because I was so worried that I wouldn’t learn the lines on time. I thought more than once that I wouldn’t be able to do it but I did and I’m so glad. It really was the experience of a lifetime.”

Wit celebrates spoken wordby Olivia Poole and Abby Widell

“I’m so glad [I did the show]. It really was the experience of a

lifetime.”-Ella Curran,

senior

The Martian sets prescedent for future outer space movies

When you think of movies about space travel, you probably would think of Ron Howard’s Apol-lo 13, starring Tom Hanks. I guaran-tee that will change with the release of Ridley Scott’s The Martian, star-ring Matt Damon.

In this high-in-tensity movie, Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, is part of the ARES mis-sions to Mars and is left behind on the planet during a massive sand storm under the assump-tion that he is dead.

H e s o m e -how manages to stay alive, but can-no t con tac t NASA, so the r e s t of the world thinks he is dead.

Wa t n e y i m m e d i a t e l y s t a r t s growing food and making water on a planet that nothing grows on.

None of this matters if he can’t get in touch with NASA, though. And while he fi-nally does, he has to wait about a year and a half, so the question arises: is the wait even worth it?

While The Martian is a very intense movie dealing with heavy top-ics, there were many comedic moments, even in the face of possible tragedy.

The movie had me laughing and

by Clayton Holbrook crying, but ultimately had me on the edge of my seat begging for more.

The Martian displayed many similar features to Apollo 13.

For one, both films are about as-tronauts stuck in space with minimal connect ion with NASA. While many elements of The Martian seem rela-tively far-fetched, that’s the way it was for Apollo 13, and that was a true story.

I watched the film with Alverno College Professor Paul Smith who was the teaching assistant at MIT th i s summer in an online course

about space travel, where he worked with NASA astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman.

S m i t h a n s w e r e d t h e q u e s -tion on how realistic the movie was.

“We have rockets that can get us to Mars, and we have ways to land on

Mars, but keeping people alive for that length of time, and not just the time, but through the amount of radiation, is a big deal,” Smith said.

I highly rec-ommend this film to anyone who is a space enthu-siast or who just l i k e s m o v i e s .

From the intense moments to the co-medic ones, The Martian is bound to make anyone laugh, cry and yearn for more.

The Martian is bound to make anyone laugh, cry and yearn for more.

While The Martian is a very intense movie dealing with heavy topics, there were many comedic mo-ments, even in the

face of possible trag-edy.

Arts & Entertainment RipplesOctober 28, 2015

page thirteen

Crossword cornerACROSS 1. Crane-like device used on a ship 6. Indo-European 10. Short, sharp cry 14. Relating to sheep 15. Common headgear of the French army 16. Figure skating jump 17. ____ Rica 18. Leap ____19. Polynesian shrub 20. Remove dirt with a broom (plural) 22. Crust over a wound 24. Hawaiian wreath of flowers 25. Students given training to serve in the military 27. Opposite of ingested 29. Relating to Tahiti 33. Type of tree 34. Genus of flowering plants 35. Greek name for cupid 37. Not brightly 41. Deep hole 42. The track or scent of an animal44. To cause pain 45. To avoid capture48. Small island49. Indian exam 50. Sphere or globe 52. Large retail store 54. Type of gun

by Shimana Bose 58. Certain59. Male 60. Milk’s favorite cookie 62. Shortened version of narcotics (plural)66. In addition to68. Religious observance beginning on Ash Wednesday70. Sully, tarnish 71. Eurasian duck 72. Gulf of ____73. Person related on one’s mother’s side 74. Opposite of love75. Used to attract attention quietly 76. Lower

DOWN1. Casual name for doctors (plural) 2. Declare openly 3. Metal tool with moveable jaws 4. Intervening time 5. Used to make tea6. ____ blue 7. Protective shelter (plural) 8. With speed 9. A domineering, violent or bad-tempered woman10. Wooly cow 11. Raise in rank, honor 12. Embankment to a river13. Pattern of Scottish Highlanders 21. Pigpen (plural) 23. Small decorative object

26. Wrist bones 28. Top activity in the Swiss Alps 29. Adhesive ____30. Fleshy covering of some seeds31. Ethnic population in Rwanda 32. Loop with a knot 36. Small town in Germany 38. Zoroastrian priests (plural) 39. Place; stead 40. Theoretical ‘first’ substance of the universe 43. ___ Kamuy; the God of the sea in Ainu Mythology 46. A small circle

47. Therefore 49. Southern last name 51. Plain-woven fabric 53. Speaks aloud 54. Break to pieces 55. Type of board game 56. Beginning 57. Wants, desires 61. Multiple dollar bills 63. Italian greeting 64. Upon 65. Distance covered in one stride 67. Obligation 69. Trinitrotoluene

Issue 1 sudoku solution

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Issue 2 puzzle solutions

Op/EdRipples October 28, 2015

page fourteen

RipplesEDITOR IN CHIEFElena Katrina Cruz

MANAGING EDITOR OF STAFFMonica “The Beauty” Dix

NEWS EDITORMonica “The Beauty” Dix

FEATURES EDITORSydney Katherine Widell

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOREli Jacob Frank

OPINIONS EDITORElena Katrina Cruz

SPORTS EDITORMaeve Elizabeth Mckaig

WEBSITE EDITORAnanya Murali

ASSISTANT WEBSITE EDITORMartha Katherine Dix

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITORSEli Jacob Frank

Maeve Elizabeth Mckaig

DEPUTY PAGE EDITORSShimana Meghan BoseSarah Katherine Eder

COPY EDITORSCeleste Bernadette CarrollMaya Celeste Schneider

Madeline Elizabeth Wilson

PHOTOGRAPHY EDITORSBen Samuel Davis

Olivia Grace Loomis

BUISNESS MANAGER Olivia Lynn Holbrook

ADVISORMichael Cody Halloran

By tradition and practice, Ripples is an open forum and provides a guaran-teed outlet for student expression. Ripples subscribes to the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, includ-ing the obligation to perform with intel-ligence, objectivity, accuracy and fairness.

Editorials are unsigned and represent the majority opinion of the Ripples edito-rial staff. Signed letters to the Editor are welcome, but the staff reserves the right to edit for grammar and length. For more in-formation, contact any editor or the advisor.

Ripples reserves the right to deny adver-tising space to any ad deemed deceiving or misleading. Libelous ads and those contain-ing misstatements or mistruths are unaccept-able. Publication of an advertisement in Rip-ples does not indicate endorsement of that ad.

Ripples students do all work to bring ten issues per year to press.

First class postage paid in Shore-wood. A subscription to Ripples is avail-able for $25.00 per year. Mail payment to:

Shorewood Ripples Shorewood High School

1701 E. Capitol Drive Shorewood, WI 53211

Phone Number: (414) 961-3128

Email address: shorewoodripples@gmail.com

Ideas?Submissions?Suggestions?

Letters to the Editor?

Contact a Ripples editor or advisor at the number or email address listed above.

Iconic music venue closes doors

Since 1977, Milwaukee jazz enthusiasts have flocked to The Jazz Estate, a small, disheveled building at 2423 N. Murray Ave. Although the outside of the building looks like nothing more than a garage-band hangout, a step inside is a step into an outstanding Milwaukee tradition. Although the establishment has gone through several owners throughout the years, it has remained true to its original purpose, as a live music venue and bar.

As a participant in the UW-Milwaukee Youth Jazz ensemble, I was able to experience The Jazz Estate first hand, performing Thursday nights with other high school students under the direction of Curt Hanrahan, a local jazz musician and the founder of the Lakeshore Conservatory of Music. The first time my parents dropped me off at the dilapidated building three years ago, I walked through the front door and immediately wondered how we would fit an entire band in the space. The ‘stage’ is merely a riser, and the structure of the building is entirely wrong for the acoustics of a band.

Nonetheless, we tuned, checked microphones, and performed. Since that first night, I have come to adore our gigs at The Jazz Estate. Not only is it an opportunity to play our music somewhere besides a small campus hall, it provides the Youth Ensemble with a more realistic experience of the professional jazz life, performing for true strangers in a not-so-perfect environment.

Unfortunately, only two years short of its 40th anniversary, The Jazz Estate is to be shut down. It is not apparent whether the closing is caused by one large problem or several smaller ones, however, its loss will be felt by

by Justine Spore

After 38 years, local venues need to be protected

Milwaukeeans, myself especially. To prevent local venues like The Jazz

Estate from disappearing, music enthusiasts should be aware of such businesses and support them religiously. The advancement of music-sharing technology has hastened the decline of local venues by allowing listeners to stream live concerts from around the world, devaluing small gigs.

The Jazz Estate provided me with a rare live-performance experience, as well as the

Jeff Zimpel

opportunity to hear renowned musicians live, in a place not far from home. The cramped space, terrible acoustics, and shack-like appearance were well worth putting up with for the music.

Although tastes changed and musical fads came and went since its opening 38 years ago, The Jazz Estate remained a favorite spot among locals, and a unique music venue in the city of Milwaukee, one that I will miss dearly.

From the lab: a political debateLuis Roche

Spore and More

Justine Spore

Op/Ed RipplesOctober 28, 2015

page fifteen

SHS needs greater variety of zero hour classes

There should be a wider variety of zero hour classes offered at Shorewood High School, as many students do not have enough room in their schedules to fit all of the classes that they would like to take in merely seven periods.

Not only would offering more zero hour classes give students the opportunity to take an extra class, but bringing about this change would only be helpful to students, not detrimental.

Additionally, with first hour being pushed back to 8:05 a.m., students would still have an ample amount of time to wake up in time for zero hour, which only begins at 7:10 a.m.

Other schools offer zero hour classes as early as 6:30 a.m., which

by Akshaya Kannan

Editorial

may be a little too early. However, our school does not

coerce students into waking up incredibly early. This puts us at a great advantage, and it would be inapt to waste such a wonderful opportunity.

Apart from that, many students

have a multitude of activities and other commitments to focus on, and it may be difficult for them to finish their homework in the time they are given after school.

By taking a zero hour class, students may potentially be able to finish a class earlier in the day

and have a free period sometime during the school day, which may reduce the stress of having very little time to finish their work.

By offering classes other than Art and PE, students will be able to utilize their time in a productive manner, and this would

be opportune for students who habitually wake up early.

There is also a rather noticeable amount of students who cannot focus in their first hour classes due to the fact that their brains have still not been warmed up, and the addition of zero hour classes may resolve this perennial issue.

Students should also be able to choose which class they would like to take during zero hour, giving them the freedom to pick a class that they feel comfortable taking in the morning to help stimulate their brain cells.

These electives are typically only one semester long, ensuring that if the student does not like taking a zero hour class, they do not have to enroll in another class the following semester.

As they come with an abundance of freedom, zero hour classes have the ability to give students more time and options to take an extra class, which is why we should not miss out on introducing more of them at our school.

Overpopulation requires thoughtful solutions

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Pros and Kans

Akshaya Kannan

Lake Bluff Elementary School is being forced to confront the issue of overpopulation, as the school has faced a steady increase in the student population in recent years due to a growing community population and an increase in the number of open enrollment spots. While this is a valid and serious problem that rightfully draws significant concern, it is one that needs to be dealt with in a well-thought out and levelheaded manner, keeping in mind the current state of the school district, while planning ahead for the future. As a district, we need to come together for a rational discussion to set a plan for the correction of this problem and to ensure a similar one does not arise in the future.

It is the opinion of the

Ripples editorial board that the issue of overpopulation at Lake Bluff requires a comprehensive plan, thoroughly examining all possible options and the implications of each. To do so, the district needs to start by correcting the problem in the short-term. Currently, the dividing line between students who will attend Lake Bluff and those who will attend Atwater lies on Marion St. Moving this line would bring the student population at Atwater and Lake Bluff into equilibrium, solving the overpopulation at Lake Bluff.

In recent years, the district has upped their campaign to attract new families who will eventually send their kids to Shorewood schools, and with new housing developments, such as the one on Oakland Ave., this is understandable. However,

the district should focus on accommodating its current student p o p u l a t i o n b e f o r e looking to attract new students. By rezoning the district within the next year or two and backing down on the campaign to attract new families, the issue of overpopulation could be solved for a short period of time, until the district begins implementing a long-term solution.

The district should then shift toward investigating possibilities to prevent the problem in the future. It is clear that if the district wishes to continue attracting new families, the maximum capacity

of Lake Bluff and Atwater will eventually be less than required.

With no more a v a i l a b l e space, money could begin to be set-aside in the budget for a construction p r o j e c t utilizing the unused utility b a s e m e n t space in

Lake Bluff, transforming it into an additional level of classroom space. Another option, probably more sensible, if the district wishes to grow, would be to add a third floor onto the addition-complex of the intermediate school. Sixth grade could then be moved to SIS, aligning Shorewood with the majority of other school districts, in terms of elementary, middle and

high school grade structure. The issue of overpopulation at Lake Bluff would then not transfer over to SIS because of this addition.

Overpopulation would not be an issue at the high school, which once held 1,000 students, compared to the current approximately 700 students, and has a number of unused or little-used rooms, which could eventually become full-time classrooms.

We believe that with a consistent population growth at Lake Bluff, the district needs to begin drafting and implementing a system to deal with this overpopulation with the help of the community, keeping in mind that the issue needs to be fixed soon, in the short term, but also that the issue will continue and grow in the long term.

The district needs to begin drafting and

implementing a sys-tem to deal with ...

overpopulation.

Jack Schill

SportsRipples October 28, 2015

page sixteen

Boys soccer breaks three year losing streakWith help of new head coach, team vanquishes Pewaukee

by Justine Spore

After losing to the Pewaukee boys soccer team three years in a row, the boys varsity soccer team defeated the Pirates 5-2 at home on senior night, October 14.

The preparation for this game began last June, with informal practices hosted each Wednesday night by Austin Poole, Jake Rock and Squeaky Washington, seniors and team captains.

Three weeks before the official start of the season, the seniors met with Kyle Konkel, new head coach, to discuss the team’s goals for this year.

“Being that I’m new, [my main goal] was getting to know the players … and figuring out how I could help them achieve their goals for the season – one of those being beating Pewaukee on senior night – but also creating more of a team atmosphere and an atmosphere where players are happy to be playing soccer at the high school,” Konkel said.

The captains agreed that Konkel is much different from Andy Biasch, last year’s head coach, and has had a positive influence on the team.

“He’s always at practice before we are; he’s really committed,” Washington said.

Captains cite the increase of comradery and respect as the reason behind the improved atmosphere.

“Our last coach never did [this], but our coach now makes it to pasta dinners, wants to be around the players and likes everyone joining together, and sometimes he’s just kind of like another player,” Rock said.

Konkel says that the biggest challenge

for the team this year was performance consistency.

“We’re playing a different style of soccer this year than I think they’ve been used to, and it’s really team- and passing- based, so it relies more on sharing the ball and then playing a disciplined defense,” Konkel said. “We’ve had our good times, our not so good times and our in-betweens.”

This year, the soccer team received a large group of freshmen, which helped the program establish three teams: a varsity, a “JV 1” and a “JV 2.” Although there was a gap between the large group of freshman

and the varsity team, which is made up of mostly upperclassmen, the athletes dedicated themselves to creating a friendly atmosphere.

“The seniors were good about being nice to the younger players,” Konkel said.

The team ended their regular season with a record of 9-7-2, and played their first playoff

game on October 22 at Nickoll Stadium. After beating Pewaukee, the captains are

hopeful about the future of the program in Konkel’s hands. Konkel currently resides in Shorewood with his family, which also gives even higher hopes for the players.

“[That] is important because he’s setting his roots here and so you know he’s dedicated and trying to start a dynasty,” Washington said.

Konkel is also positive about coaching at Shorewood.

“I’m happy to be at Shorewood and happy to be a coach for such a great group of guys. I’m looking forward to the program getting better and better every year,” Konkel said.

Squeaky Washington, senior, prepares to pass to Chris Zak, junior, during a playoff game against Milwaukee Lutheran. The boys won with a score of 5-1.

Sydney Widell

With a growing group of over 45 girls and four coaches, the girls volleyball team is just getting stronger.

The girls started practicing at the end of August, adding on many new freshmen, two of who made the varsity team.

“This season we brought on a lot of new, younger kids and we graduated a couple of seniors so it was definitely a transition working with some of the younger kids who

Girls volleyball sees spike in conference finishby Olivia Poole we hadn’t been playing with for as long and

losing some of the girls we had been playing with for our entire high school career,” said Sarah Goldberg, senior.

With a record of 10-4, the team built up quite quickly.

“It took us a while to get back up to where we were last year, when some of the girls had been playing together since we were all in middle school … but at this point we are pretty equal with where we were last year,” Goldberg said.

“[Our coach] is

always at practice

before we are; he’s

really committed,”

-Squeaky Washington,senior

The team lost the conference champion-ship to Greendale on October 17 for an overall 2nd place in the Woodland conference, mov-ing up two places from last year.

According to LaVar Ridgeway, athletic director, every year the team recovers well from losing star seniors and keeps up their se-cure reputation.

“Overall the girls volleyball program has been consistently strong with [Coach Ryan’s] lead,” Ridgeway said. “We have also been fortunate to have good talent on the JV and freshman level, this year having younger players step up to the varsity level.”

Goldberg said Ol-ivia Kessenich and Olivia Riley, freshmen starting on the varsity team, have been brought in by the varsity team and are doing their part to help the team find success.

“It’s definitely a pretty big thing to make varsity as a freshman, especially now as the volleyball program is getting overall more competitive, but we are definitely excited to have them. They bring a whole fresh perspec-tive to the team. I think they’re happy to be there; they’re just goofy and fun and great to have, all of the underclassman always are,” Goldberg said.

Rita Yasrob-Doust, sophomore, said the positive team environment has contributed to the team’s success.

“The people involved and my team-mates are definitely the best part, they make everything really fun,” Yasrob-Doust said.

“They’re encouraging, supportive and funky. We all help each other to get better, and with the new coaches, JV and freshman girls have improved so much.”

Ridgeway agreed.“The togetherness

of the team is strong. You can really see over the course of the year all the girls coming together and enjoying themselves, being a fam-ily,” Ridgeway said.

“This really showed at senior night when the younger players spoke about the seniors and lots of emotion came out, showing the effect the seniors had on them … hopefully they can keep this tradition going.”

Goldberg said she hopes the program continues to improve after she graduates.

“Shorewood volleyball is a great pro-gram to be a part of,” Goldberg said. “I came in as a freshman and we hadn’t won many games, and now as the senior class is leav-ing, we are definitely leaving the program in good hands, better than when we came in.”

Miranda Jacobi, Megan Eimers, Annie Leo, Jada Stackhouse and Sarah Goldberg, seniors, complete a conference game. The team says their season has been strong.

courtesy Megan Eimers

“As the senior class

is leaving, we are

definitely leaving the program in good

hands, better than

when we came in.”

-Sarah Goldberg,senior