Life HCPS Homegrown Leaders Celebrated Principal & Teacher Grew Up in School System
Break A Leg
Students Write One-Act Plays for North Carolina Theatre Conference
Industry Tours
Students Tour Local Manufacturers
Winter 2015
Snow Days:
What Determines the School Cancellations
Life HCPS Winter 2015
HCPS Life is a free publication produced by Henderson County Public Schools highlighting special programs, events, activities and our student and teacher successes throughout the district.
Made in Henderson County Tours Page 3
What Makes a Snow Day?
Hello there! In this issue, you’ll notice a few articles that haven’t been previously published on the Henderson County Public Schools website; in an effort to keep HCPS Life fresh and current, I’ll be writing as much new content for the newsmagazine as possible – while still including some stories already written for the web. Since there’s new content, it’s even more important for you to share the articles you love on Facebook and Twitter, and the online digital platform Issuu makes it easy! And did you know that there can be links embedded in these publications? Look for lines of small blue dots encircling words, and check out the attached links!
Page 4
Growing Learners Page 5
Thanks for reading, Molly McGowan Gorsuch
Homegrown Leaders Page 6
Students in the Spotlight Page 8
Teacher’s Pets Page 10
Photo Gallery: Veterans Day Celebrations Page 11
Share the news! Facebook: facebook.com/HCPSNC Twitter: twitter.com/HCPSNC Website: www.hendersoncountypublicschoolsnc.org
2 HCPS Life
er Henderson Countyy
S
BY Molly McGowan Gorsuch
tudents in North Henderson High’s automotive and agriculture CTE courses stood in front of a 5,000-ton push press Oct. 1, as it cranked out steel pieces that would ultimately be welded together to create axle housings for Meritor’s heavy vehicle systems. The trip to Meritor was part of the “Made in Henderson County” tours established by the Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development (HCPED), which annually takes Henderson County Public Schools’ middle and high school students into local manufacturing industries, introducing various technical career paths to young learners. “Many companies offer tuition reimbursement and ongoing training,” said HCPED Board Chair Adam Shealy in a news release. “These are high-tech jobs and we have to make sure students know about these opportunities here at home.” According to the HCPED, Henderson County’s 135 manufacturers employ more than 5,250 people, representing 15 percent of the local workforce, and employees average wages in excess of $48,000 per year. “Allowing students the opportunity to see first-hand all the career opportunities available in advanced manufacturing was such a valuable experience,” said Wendy Edney, HCPS Director of Career & Technical Education (CTE). “All 16 CTE career pathways are represented in some way within Henderson County advanced manufacturing sites. Students were also able to hear about the amazing benefits and tuition Flat Rock Middle students at Day Star Machining Technologies in reimbursement programs many of the facilities offer.” Hendersonville.
Winter 2015
3
At Meritor, Housing Department Manager Rich Jones told students that the push press uses 1.5 megawatts of power and is the most important piece of equipment Meritor has in North America. If it were to go down, he said, the trucking industry could be at a standstill for up to two weeks. That’s because Meritor is the largest heavy duty axle manufacturer in the United States, equipping 60 percent of tractor trailers on the roads today, according to the company. Students saw other large robotic machinery used to create axle components, including a ring and cover welder. Robotic Welding Specialist Roger Freeman said the machine uses 1.2 million pounds of 70,000 lb. tensile strength welding North Henderson High students toured Meritor, and saw how 3D scanning can be used to check for minute imperfections in materials. wire a year, and produces about 1,400 axle covers each day. In addition to Meritor, HCPS students toured Alpha Tech, Cane Creek Cycling Components, Clement Pappas, Daystar Machining, Elkamet, GE Lighting Solutions, Kiln Drying Systems, MWW, Multi Packaging Solutions, Ohlins, SELEE, SMARTRAC, Wilsonart and Wirtz Wire EDM.
What Makes a
{the decisions behind the winter school cancellations} BY Molly McGowan Gorsuch
4 HCPS Life
You wake up, ready to get your kids off to school and start the day, when you find out school has been cancelled due to inclement weather. It’s cold outside, but not a flake of snow has fallen – so what’s the deal? In this type of situation, parents can become frustrated that their children are missing a day of school, knowing they’ll have to make up later in the year. But if parents know the decision-making process determining the snow days – and at what time those decisions have to be made – they can better appreciate the effort that goes into ensuring student safety. In the wintertime, Henderson County Public Schools is monitoring local weather forecasts by the National Weather Service and communicating with administrators in nearby public school districts. “If inclement weather is called for, the next morning we’re usually up around 3 a.m.,” said Bo Caldwell, HCPS Assistant Superintendent for Administrative Services. “At that point, we start communicating with the N.C. Department of Transportation and N.C. Highway Patrol,” to find out which roads may be unsafe, Caldwell said. If snow is on the ground in the early morning, Caldwell, Transportation Director Fred Klumpp, and transportation staff hit the roads to do their own reconnaissance. Caldwell and Klumpp said each driver takes a different section of the county to canvas and Central Office staff
uses the information gathered – supplemented by NCDOT and Highway Patrol reports – to determine if a snow day is warranted. Even if the main roads have been plowed by 3 a.m., it’s the secondary roads and those at higher elevations – and thus still frozen – that can make or break the call for a snow day, Klumpp said. “We have to have the call made between 4:30 a.m. and 5 a.m.,” in order to inform the bus drivers, Caldwell said. “The drivers start cranking about 5:30 a.m.,” Klumpp added. “There’s a finite time we’ve got to make a call,” Caldwell said. “Conditions may change by 8 a.m.,” he said. But if in the wee hours when the decision has to be made, there’s still a high chance of snowfall forecasted for the morning, “We want to err on the side of safety.” Whether students go back to school the day after a snow day depends on whether any snowfall on the roads have melted, and if there’s an overnight freeze in the forecast – which could make the roads a slippery, dangerous mess in the morning. If a second day of snowfall is expected on top of existing snowy roads, Caldwell said Central Office will sometimes make the call for a second snow day by 6 p.m. the night before. “If it’s iffy, we’re out on the roads at 3 a.m. again,” and will make the call by 5 a.m. the second morning, Caldwell said. “There’s a lot of guesswork,” Klumpp said. But, Caldwell said, “We have to make the best decision with the information we have for the safety of our children and staff.”
Growing Learners S
BY Molly McGowan Gorsuch
tephanie Darnell’s kindergarten students cradled seeds smaller than pinheads in cupped hands at Upward Elementary on Sept. 14, and planted them in rows following directions from John Murphy of Bullington Gardens. “These are tiny, tiny seeds, so you have to really keep track of these,” Murphy said, shaking carrot seeds into the children’s outstretched hands. Murphy visited the class Monday morning to help the students plant their very own winter garden, made possible by a North Henderson High School student’s Eagle Scout project. Patrick Darnell, an NHHS senior and Stephanie Darnell’s son, built an outdoor learning environment including two picnic benches, the garden and a workbench just outside the kindergarten classroom. “We wanted an area where the kids could do lots of handson learning,” Stephanie Darnell said. She said that after years of regularly scheduled visits to Bullington Gardens, “We got to realizing that a lot of these kids have never had their hands in the dirt ... and planted seeds and watched something grow.” In addition to giving the children an opportunity to learn about the life cycles of vegetables like turnips, lettuce, kale and carrots, Stephanie Darnell said planting and caring for a garden reinforces basic math, science and fine motor skills.
Winter 2015
5
Hom
w n o r eg
Leaders
BY Molly McGowan Gorsuch
P
eggy Marshall knew in high school that she wanted to be a teacher in Hendersonville, whereas Katie Bradley swore up and down she’d never return to live in the small North Carolina town where she was raised. They each set out after high school with different ideals, but both Marshall and Bradley returned to their hometowns and Henderson County Public Schools to lead and inspire future generations of local students – earning them the titles of 2015-16 Principal of the Year and 2015-16 Teacher of the Year, respectively. Born in Fletcher in 1982, Bradley spent her childhood in different areas of the East Henderson High School district – where she attended Hillandale Elementary, then East Flat Rock Elementary for fifth grade before the current middle school existed. “My sixth grade year was the first year they had an actual middle school,” Bradley said, referring to Flat Rock Middle – where she attended before moving onto East Henderson High. Bradley graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Exercise Sports Science in 2004, and ventured to Bolivia where she’d thought about becoming a missionary. After a year overseas, Bradley realized missionary work wasn’t her calling, and ate her words when she moved back to Henderson County in search of a job. “It was awesome coming home,” she said. “Doors just opened.” In March 2005, Bradley responded to a job opening for a part time Exceptional Children (EC) assistant at Dana Elementary, where her younger brothers went to school. From there she became the Junior Varsity girls basketball coach and EC Occupational Course of Study Assistant at East Henderson High. After four years at East, Bradley went to Flat Rock Middle for a year to teach physical education, then returned to East as an EC teacher. She served in that capacity for five years, and this year became Lead Teacher at the high school and HCPS 2015-16 Teacher of the Year. Bradley said it seemed like she “fell into education” when she returned to Henderson County, but through the years she’s realized her passion is to positively influence young lives the way local educators influenced hers. “I had some really good teachers in my life growing up here,” Bradley said. “The impact they had on me brought me back here.” Bradley said Shirley Raesemann, who still teaches English at East, taught her the value of working diligently on something she didn’t particularly enjoy. “Her English class was the hardest class I had,” Bradley said. “I wanted to do better because of the teacher she was.” Marshall was similarly inspired by her teachers, who set high expectations like the ones the Sugarloaf Elementary principal now requires of her students
6 HCPS Life
and teachers. Before she could have dreamed of being an elementary school principal, Marshall learned about maximizing student potential from her sixth grade teacher, Norma Bridges. “She just had high standards for me, and wouldn’t let me settle,” Marshall said. “I was terribly shy, so she put me in (leadership) roles.” Bridges put Marshall in charge of checking the temperature and reciting the weather report each morning during announcements, and cast her as an elf in a school play. “She gave me leadership ability,” Marshall said. “She would trust me to do these things on my own.” Due in part to Bridges’ example and encouragement, Marshall challenged herself to graduate from East Henderson High in 1987 at the top her class – which she did – and graduate from college. “I was actually the first person in my family to go to college,” Marshall said. She earned her Elementary Education degree from Appalachian State University in 1991 and started her teaching career in Polk County at Mill Spring Accelerated School. She returned to Henderson County in 1992, teaching second grade at Dana Elementary. Once at Dana, Marshall spent nine years in the second-grade classroom, one year teaching first grade, five years teaching kindergarten, and her 16th year at Dana as a third-grade teacher and an instructional coach. Marshall earned her Masters in Educational Administration from Scranton University in 2009 and was Lead Teacher at Hillandale Elementary for three years, before serving as Assistant Principal at Rugby Middle for two years. She became Sugarloaf Elementary’s principal in 2013, and was named the 2015-16 Principal of the Year. Marshall’s mission is to empower children, especially those living among financial hardships, to be the change they need to break the cycle of poverty. “That’s where I can have influence – growing these teachers so they can grow these students to be successful in any area of life they choose,” Marshall said. “Education is their way out,” she said, adding, “Our expectation is that they’re going to go to college.” “I know some people think I’m strict,” Marshall said. “It’s not strictness – it’s high expectations.” Because, she said, “I believe in them.” Bradley echoed Marshall’s sentiment, explaining that one teacher or administrator can help a student find – or remain on – a positive path. “It’s about making a difference for a kid – for life,” Bradley said. “That’s why I am what I am today.”
Winter 2015
7
E
t
S
e n d u t s t S in the po gh tli BY Molly McGowan Gorsuch
ach year, high school thespians have the chance to write, rehearse, manage and perform their own one-act plays for an audience of theater industry experts at the North Carolina Theatre Conference’s High School Play Festival. Henderson County’s high schools have historically participated in the judged festival, and despite several students attending NCTC all four years of their high school careers, each year’s plays are unique. Year to year, the plays are always fresh, always organic, and sometimes the end results even surprise the players. North Henderson High students in Sydney Bailey’s theater class expressed how surreal it was to perform a play that began to form when they started listening to music. Ultimately, North’s play, “Hiraeth,” portrayed the Williams family’s discovery of dark secrets on Christmas Eve of 1969 when the eldest son, Michael, appears at the door after being declared MIA in Vietnam. But first, it was just music. “I played them some songs and they wrote about what they felt in relation to the songs,” Bailey said. “We would lie on the floor with our books and our eyes closed, and listen to the music,” said senior Jordan Briggs, who played Michael. “From there, we started talking about war,” Bailey said. “We talked a lot about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” and how war is not locationspecific in that it comes home with the soldier, she said. Once the general theme was decided upon, Bailey said the students elected to research the Vietnam War, and watched movies by David Lynch to learn how to create a spooky, surrealist emotional atmosphere. “We wrote monologues and created characters off of the moods,” said senior Madison Livingston, who played Michael’s younger sister, West Henderson High students portray a laboratory scene in Mary Jane, in the play. “It’s really crazy how it all started from there and their NCTC play, “Luminescence.”
8 HCPS Life
turned into this,” she said. Many of the juniors and seniors in Hendersonville High’s play, “Derrorim,” had taken the NCTC stage prior to this year’s regional contest, but remarked how each new cast member – and voice – directly influences the creative process. Focused around the “authentic voice” itself, “Derrorim” features three stereotypical “nerdy” high school girls and their struggle for authenticity as they write stories for a class assignment. The writers become the subjects of each other’s stories, and as the play progresses, it’s purposely unclear whether they are three individual girls with remarkably similar stories or they’re all the Younger siblings DJ and Mary Jane are uncomfortable learning the same person becoming more self-aware. truth about their family in North Henderson High’s “Hiraeth.” Julia Slawek, a senior who’s performed with Hendersonville in previous years’ NCTC plays, said, “Because it’s a new group of people (each year), you get different perspectives.” Writing and performing a play from scratch also has certain advantages, like last-minute creative license. “We kept changing things,” even up to the dress rehearsal, said senior Eva Sainsbury. “It’s our play, so we can do that,” Slawek said. The same happened at West Henderson High, where major changes to “Luminescence” took place just before dress rehearsal. “The whole show just changed, with the narrators being on stage,” said West’s theater teacher, Kelly Cooper. “Luminescence” was largely written by Cooper and her husband over the summer, but was still molded and inspired by student input. Cooper said, “One of my students, Sierra Seevers (a junior), is an amazing writer,” and also helped write the play, which explores moral ethics in the medical field when advances in technology are made through the use of firefly and jellyfish fluorescents as gene trackers. For months, Cooper gathered tea lights, flashlights and supplies to make the play’s props – where the Characters in Hendersonville High’s “Derrorim” rip the pages from their notebooks to rewrite their stories in their authentic voices. students’ creativity came into play. “Everyone handmade their jellyfish,” using trash bags, finger lights, dowel rods and pipe cleaners, said junior Mary Elaine Bridges. The play also included local folklore, including Asheville’s ghost story of Helen’s Bridge and the tale of the Brown Mountain Lights – ghost lights reported at Brown Mountain in Burke County. East Henderson High’s play, “The Letter,” also incorporated a local story, but of the nonfiction variety. “The Letter” was based on the Holocaust-era plea of help written by Betty Erb of Germany to a John Erb in Philadelphia, Penn. Using Erb’s original letter, students traced Erb’s lineage to Suzanne & Shira Goldberg of Florida, who were presented with the letter in May 2015. “We took that letter and created a story around it,” said East’s theater teacher, Clay Gaitskill. “We used as much real information as we could find,” going so far as to include commentary on butter rationing – since students had found a Gestapo arrest record citing Betty Erb with being in possession of too much butter. The theater class’ efforts to accurately depict Nazi Germany earned them the Excellence in Adapting a Historical Event award at NCTC, and student Hannah Fischer was recognized for Excellence in Stage Management.
Winter 2015
9
That’s one thing that remains constant, despite the changing plays each year: the theater programs at Henderson County Public Schools’ high schools are award-winning. This year, West’s “Luminescence” won Honorable Mention for Best Ensemble, the Best Collaboration in Playwriting, and Excellence in Technical Design awards. Hendersonville’s “Derorrim” was named the Honorable Mention Distinguished Play of the year, the cast received the Outstanding Ensemble Acting Award and Weakley received an Excellence in Directing Award. North’s “Hiraeth” received the Excellence in Old-Age Makeup Award and student Kye Laughter received an Excellence in Acting Award. In addition to student talent and excellent teachers, continued local achievement at NCTC is due to the collaborative energy required and the overall investment the students make in their schools’ plays. Or as Hendersonville sophomore Noell Munoz said, “Instead of just taking a play that’s already been written, you write it and you feel even more connected to the characters.”
Teacher’s Pets “H
BY Molly McGowan Gorsuch
ow do you feel about spiders?” Anne Johnson asked a room full of kindergarteners Oct. 27, as she pulled a Chilean rose hair tarantula out of its container. Most of the Glenn C. Marlow Elementary students said they thought spiders were scary, but they couldn’t help but lean in as Lydia the tarantula crawled across Johnson’s arm. Johnson, an ESL teacher at Glenn C. Marlow, raises, studies and breeds tarantulas as a hobby, and brought a few to the school to educate students – and adults – about the cuddlier breeds. Though some tarantulas are venomous enough to send a person to the hospital with a bite, the breeds Johnson keeps only have bites that amount to a bee sting. And she wouldn’t know, because Lydia, Raven and Pickles the tarantulas have never bit her before. And before they’d even think about biting, the tarantulas practice other defense mechanisms, Johnson said. The first thing Lydia would try if threatened would be to run away. If that didn’t work, Johnson said the tarantula could fling “urticating hairs” from her abdomen, which are actually tiny bristles that cause itching. Johnson added that her spider friends have never made her itch, and are in fact very patient with humans. When Johnson pulled Pickles out of his cage, many students Pickles the tarantula waves his eight legs at kindergarteners. recognized him as Johnson’s class pet. She explained that he’s a Chaco golden knee tarantula, and he showed off his gilded joints by waving his long legs at the class. She said Pickles is a burrower, and in the wild would use those long legs to dig deep below the hot sand of a dessert. “The way you can tell boys from girls is, the boys have really long legs,” Johnson said. The males also use their legs for tapping and drumming when they’re trying to attract a female, she told an inquisitive student who wanted to know how tarantulas had babies. “She’ll either want to see him or she won’t,” Johnson said. “If she wants to see the boy, she’ll tap back to him.” If not, she’ll raise her front legs in the air and show her fangs. Students had many other questions for Johnson, but the most common was about the tarantulas’ diets. Johnson said Lydia, Raven and Pickles mostly eat crickets, moths and cockroaches. “We need spiders,” she said. “If we didn’t have spiders we’d be up to our knees in insects.” “They can eat vertebrates, which means something with a backbone,” Johnson said, adding that tarantulas can also eat other spiders. “You wouldn’t want to put (Lydia) with her sister in a cage,” Johnson said, nodding to Raven. “She would eat her.”
10 HCPS Life
Students in Henderson County Public Schools recognized Veterans Day on Nov. 9 and 10 before the national holiday on Nov. 11, inviting local veterans to the schools for assemblies and luncheons. The students performed skits, read poetry, sang songs and drew pictures for the visiting veterans, thanking them for their service to America.
Winter 2015
11