What happens to a student who is struggling in the everyday school setting? Well, he or she may have Options.

Around 10 years ago, a meeting was held at Woodstock Union High School and Middle School (WUHMS) to design a program to help students at risk of dropping out and/or to re-engage dropouts into the school so they could earn their diplomas. Four people were present to discuss this issue: Johanna Harpster, former WUHS principal, Sherry Sousa, Director of Learning Opportunities at WUHS, Tom DeBalsi, former District Director of Instructional Support Services, and Dana Peterson, WUMS principal.

A proposal was created to begin what is now the “Options” program. Ten years later, the program is going strong.

“The Options program has had a high rate of success,” according to director Tom Emery.

The students seem to agree, In a recent survey of 13 Options students, 100% said It was an overall useful program, and that the teachers were helpful. Ninety three percent said it helped them in their education and 85% of the students gave a rating of 9.5 and higher.

“Teaching middle school is like teaching golden retrievers. They’re always happy and they don’t know why!” says Mr. Rogers referring to his Computer Skills Two class. However, according to Mr. Rogers, something changes in high school; the relationship between student and teacher.

“Students often say today, ‘ I’m getting a great grade, but I am not learning anything,’” says Mr. Rogers. He explains that both students and teachers need to put in a lot of effort to change this. Mr. Rogers adds that the school faculty should address this issue right away because of the number of kids who are too overwhelmed with worry about their letter grade to process the information and use it in their daily lives.

He also brings up the issue of cheating. “What I want to know is what causes students to feel the need to copy another kid’s homework, instead of challenging his/herself instead.”

Kiersten Weiss, junior, countered with, “Well its better to copy down someone else’s homework, than to show up to a class with no homework, especially if you didn’t understand it.”

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win,” these are wise words from Gandhi that can describe what is going on in the country of Uganda.

Logging onto Facebook, the newsfeed showed Kony 2012. I wondered what it was about. At first, I didn’t understand the issue until I started talking with friends and co-workers about this, “political campaign”. This led to me to the 30 minute video on Youtube. The video struck me because it was sad to see that there were young boys and girls in Africa doing horrid things like killing their parents and other people and being sex slaves to the LRA.

Senior Jonathan DeDell appreciated the video. “It was moving. It was a really well prepared film, and it kept the audience engaged throughout the entire 30 minutes.”

Kony 2012 is a campaign to make Joseph Kony (a Ugandan warlord) famous, “not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice,” (http://www.kony2012.com/). The idea is to make him well known for what he does so he can be finally caught and captured. In 1986, Kony formed a group called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and since then has abducted over 30,000 boys and girls in Uganda to be used as fighters and sex slaves or “wives” to the soldiers. Kony has taken many children in their sleep and has given them guns and other weapons to kill people, including their parents.

With this year’s senior prank quickly approaching (or is it?) people are wondering where did this tradition begin?

“It kind of started with the hay,” said Andy Carpenter. The original senior prank was when the seniors filled the solarium with hay, stuffed farm animals and a soundtrack of a mooing cow a few years ago. The juniors had to clean it out quickly when some allergies were triggered by the hay.

Last year seniors filled part of the hallway with balloons. “We did the balloon one, that was cool,” said graduate Ben Kaija. There were a number of ideas that Ben’s class went through to come to the balloon prank. “We had the idea to put cows in the parking lot, or to put library books in a pyramid. Senior pranks are awesome because they’re prankful. As long as they don’t go overboard.”

Other schools also do senior pranks, and have even done some familiar pranks, such as filling a hallway with balloons. At several schools, students have moved cars to the roofs of buildings and into school hallways. Some have coated cars in tinfoil, sticky notes, or even saran wrap. Other schools have seen hallways filled with plastic cups full of water, or created a massive web-like network of strings throughout the school.

Desks are also common victims of senior pranks, being moved to hallways, stacked in piles, or flipped upside-down. Colorful banners are flown bearing humorous slogans at some schools such as, “Class of 007” or “For sale by The Man”. One class decided to take a picture on the front steps of the school, with the seniors tactically positioned on the roof with buckets of water.

Who knows what our seniors have in store for us this year?!