Cypress Woods Key Club September Newsletter

September 2015

The official newsletter of the Cypress Woods High School Key Club.

KEY FACTS

September Success: What We’ve Accomplished In Our First Month in School

IN THIS ISSUE

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The Key to Balance How our Secretary manages to stay organized.

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The Other Side The impact of Key Club on our Vice President.

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The Treat of Fundraising Our Treasurer explains how fundraising really impacts our club.

Volume 4, Issue 6 October 5, 2015

Contributions Articles Sharon Zhou Zsofia Balogh Abhinav Ashar Ashley Kawakubo Will Cowden

President’s Letter Leia George Photos Nikita Dhar Isabelle Myers Sharon Zhou

IN THIS ISSUE...

3 Contact Information 4 President’s Letter 5 September at a Glance 6 The Key to Balance 7 Trick-or-Treat With a Twist 8 From The Other Side 9 A Lifetime of Importance 10 A Smashing Success 11 A Smashing Success

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Contact Information Cy Woods Key Club Officers PRESIDENT

HISTORIAN

REPRESENTATIVE COORDINATOR

Leia George leiageorge10@gmail. com 832-515-6928

Gina Zhang gina_zhang2008@ hotmail.com 832-773-3228

Kishan Solanki kishan.sol99@gmail. com 281-904-8652

TREASURER VICE PRESIDENT Abhinav Ashar abhinav.ashar@ hotmail.com 713474-3494

BUILDER’S CLUB REPRESENTATIVE Ashley Butterfield ashleybutterfield97@gmail. com

SECRETARY

JUNIOR SECRETARY

Sharon Zhou happysharonzh@ yahoo.com 281-346-9218

Jocelyn Yao rainbowky19971 210@gmail.com

EDITOR

Jordan Miller jmiller290@gmail. com 281-733-7616

Ashley Kawakubo akawakubo98@ hotmail.com 281-733-0959

WEBMASTER

Joshua Goodwin 713-252-9943 joshua.goodwin98@ gmail.com

Division 3N Lieutenant Governor Ian Sims Ian Sims is Division 3N’s new Lieutenant Governor. He has succeeded the past LTG, Amy Jiang, who is now one of the eleven International Trustees for Key Club International. During our last PCM in June, members from Division 3N voted on a Division Mascot, which is now a Lion, and also Division colors, which are red and yellow. Ian can be reached at 3n.iansims@ gmail.com and on the phone at 281-979-6275.

Texas-Oklahoma District Staff Governor Secretary Treasurer Editor Convention Liason Technology Producer

Rachel Iselin Crystal Loh Emily Zhao Matthew Riley Megan Reynosa

Governor@tokeyclub.com Secretary@tokeyclub.com Treasurer@tokeyclub.com Editor@tokeyclub.com cl@tokeyclub.com

Brendon Nguyen

btnguyen.kc@gmail.com

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A letter from your

Club President D

ear fellow Key Clubbers, I hope everyone’s first six weeks went well. In this last six

weeks, a lot has happened Key Club wise. We have had two successful Key Club meetings where we went over Key Club membership requirements and all the amazing things we do for our community year round. We also went over our new photo opportunity, which means that if you are able to take amazing pictures of other members or even a selfie with you and other Key Clubbers at a service event, you can send them to our email account for donation hours. This is a great opportunity to use your photo taking skills for Key Club, and if your picture is selected, due to its perfection of summing up Key Club in one photo, we will post it on our social media where you will also receive a reward.

We also had our car smash in September and it went fantastically. We had two cars, one was spray painted with our rival school colors in honor of who we were playing that Saturday night, and the other car was for the ELIMINATE project. It was painted in blue, and if you don’t know what ELIMINATE is, it’s an organization that is going to eliminate neonatal tetanus all over the world. It’s a cause where we can certainly pitch in and help. We raised over 600 hundred dollars at the car smash, and this money is going towards saving mothers and Photo by Jordan Miller babies through ELIMINATE.

Lastly I wanted to talk about the structure of Key Club. Many of you probably don’t realize how large Key Club truly is; and let me tell you, it’s humongous. I’ll start at the base: members. The members are the largest and most important part of Key Club. They are the ones who are serving their communities and making it a better place. Next is the officer team, who help to organize events and plan meetings. If you have any questions about anything Key Club related please ask them, they are there to help you better our community. Then we have our lieutenant governor, our LTG is Ian Sims and he’s pretty awesome. He is the one who governs over all the Key Clubs in the 3N, which is our division that is made up of Key Clubs all around CFISD. He ensures that the officer team is prepared to lead you the best they possibly can. He is also the liaison between the Texas-Oklahoma district board and the officer teams of the surrounding Key Clubs. The district board is made up of officers who govern all the Key Clubs in Texas and Oklahoma. They send out any relevant information and keep the LTGs informed. The leading member of the T-O board came and visited us this past meeting, Rachel Iselin. She came and spoke about how Key Club impacts the community and the different parts of Key Club. It was a treat to hear from her. There are so many interesting leadership opportunities and activities we can do the more we get involved. I can’t wait to see you guys at the next meeting with your Key Club forms.

Leia’s Laughs

A Joke of the Month from our Key Club President.

What’s a tree’s favorite month? Septimber!

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Leia George Cy-Woods Key Club President

October Event Schedule

at a Glance

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5TH: Monday from 6:30PM-8:30PM is the Homecoming Parade. Keep an eye out for the Key Club float.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6TH: Key Club Meeting before school at 6:45AM and after school at 2:40PM in the Teaching Theater.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8TH: Spillane Volleyball Concessions from 4:15 PM to 6:30PM, shifts also available on October 22nd and November 5th.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23RD: Adam Elementary Fun Night at Adam Elementary, with shifts from 4:30PM to 6PM and also 6PM to 9:30PM.

OCTOBER REMINDERS New Members- Freshman Representative positions are available. Keep an eye out for information at the next meeting.

Reps and Officers- Remember, articles are due on the 24th at 10PM to the gmail (cywoodskeyclub@gmail. com).

Members- Dues and Membership Forms are due on October 6th to Mr. Kent’s room. Dues are $15 without a new T-Shirt, $25 with one.

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The Key to Balance

How our Secretary Gets it All Done, from Studying to Service.

T h e beginning of the school year is an exciting time. As another Sharon Zhou year of Secretary education commences, students work to get back into a schedule that balances sleep-loss with homework-gain. They’re also getting ready to divide their time between the classroom, clubs, and other extracurricular activities they’ve signed up for. For many students, the transition to the sudden increase of activities after a summer of relaxation can be hard to manage. However, there are some ways for students to juggle their time without feeling stressed or pressured.

Firstly, stagger your activities. For example, if you know you’re going to be volunteering or attending a PCM on Saturday for Key Club, don’t schedule anything major for that day. Also, try to do most/all of your homework on Sunday. Likewise, if you know you have something major on a future Saturday, don’t sign up for any volunteering opportunities that day. If you do, you would be stressed the whole day, which will make you dread the date in question.

Secondly, don’t slack off. For example, we all know that at the end of the semester, there are those dreaded finals. You know that around that time, you will be frantically studying for all the upcoming tests. Hence, don’t leave all of your volunteering hours until the end. If you have a free weekend, and there’s a volunteering

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opportunity, then go volunteer. It might be tempting to slack off and think, “I’ve been working hard this whole week. I deserve a weekend off,” but don’t do it. If you keep putting Key Club off every week, you could and most likely will pay for it sometime later in the year.

Thirdly, try combining the activities you have to do. Students in multiple clubs can feel pressured when two events from two different clubs coincide together. Instead of thinking about the volunteering hours you need and about the mandatory orchestra bake sale you have to attend this Saturday, combine the two. Grab an ‘Outside Hours’ form and have

Key Club members at the first General Meeting. Photo by Nikita Dhar.

your activity sponsor sign it. You’ll be getting quick hours while doing to an event that you just can’t miss.

In conclusion, doing Key Club is possible, even if you have other extracurricular activities to participate in. Don’t look at volunteering events as just ‘boring old things for me to get my hours,’ Instead, grab all your friends and make it fun. This way, while you’re volunteering, you get to spend time with the people you want to be around while knocking something off of your to-do list.

What more is needed to make Key Club a memorable part of your high school career?

Trick-or-Treat With a Twist A Sophomore Rep Describes our Club’s Halloween Service Project.

Zsofia Balogh

Trick or treating for candy on October 31st may be fun, but why not spend

Sophomore Representative

Halloween raising money for an important cause? Haven’t you ever wanted to help a program, but you never knew exactly how to do it? This service project is an easy way to get money for a fantastic organization, and you can do it on your favorite day of the year: Halloween.

The UNICEF program supports the Eliminate Project, which helps save moms and their babies from maternal and neonatal tetanus. Every year, about 49,000 babies die from this disease, which causes painful convulsions in infants. Ever since UNICEF, Kiwanis International, and the Eliminate Project united forces, there have been major decreases in the number of deaths cause by maternal and neonatal tetanus. So how has this been accomplished?

Instead of collecting candy and chocolate for Halloween, Key Club encourages their members to gather donations for the Eliminate Project. Every Key Club member that wants to participate gets the opportunity to take home one or many orange ‘Trick or Treat’ boxes, which is where they put loose change and money that has been donated. Since most people are home on Halloween night, the

Key Clubbers can easily go door to door and explain the cause.

Most people in the neighborhood will be happy to support UNICEF and will donate a few dollars.

Or, if you don’t want to walk around asking for funds, you can host a haunted house or a Halloween festival and put the money collected from that into the UNICEF box. Once the box is full or the deadline comes, you can turn all the money in to your club and receive donation hours for each box you turn in.

It may seem like the little amount of money you are contributing is nothing, but it actually counts a lot. Think about it: if most or all the members in your school’s

Key Club fill up a box, then all the money adds up. Now total up all the Key Clubs in your division, and then your district, and then the entire U.S.A. and eventually the world. Key Club has actually raised more than $7 million for child survival programs all over the world. Now that’s a big difference!

So when Halloween comes around, think about babies suffering from this deadly disease and rally your club to raise money for UNICEF. Make a change and take part of this different way to trick or treat because one person always counts when you are helping to make a difference in the world.

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From The Other Side Our Vice President Explains What Key Club Means to Him.

Abhinav Ashar Vice President

Though I have had many great experiences in Key Club, my most valuable experience is when I

volunteered at Postma Elementary for their annual school festival. T he volunteering event star ted up with helping set up the festival by either car r ying tables from one place to another or decorating the school g ates with dozens of balloons. Sur prisingly enough, I enjoyed doing the work as much as I enjoyed the actual festival because I was inspired by the number of students that have a desire to help others and the community as a whole.

Later, we set up the different

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booths at the festival as others were g etting done with their final touches. W hen the kids star ted to come in and play the g ames, I enjoyed working at my booth where they would tr y to knock down a pyramid of cans with a football. At the moment, I ref lected back to when I was an elementar yschool kid g oing to the Moore Elementar y School Spring Festival. I remembered that I would walk into the festival and see so many fun things to do. I would g et super excited and r un to the cakewalk booth or play tag with my friends in the lighthear ted setting. T he excitement and overwhelming joy I had experienced when I was young mir rored exactly what I saw on the kids’ faces.

Working the actual festival was ver y fun and pleasing, but in my opinion, the best par t was that we were putting a

smile on their faces and making the day a memor y they will be able to cherish in the future, much like how I cherished my own memor y. At that moment, I lear ned the impor tance of helping others in the community was much g reater than I originally thought.

Before I attended Cypress Woods, I had never been in an org anization so dedicated and deter mined to g enuinely assisting other people, but now, through Key Club, I had a medium through which I could help the community. I had always known about the impor tance of giving back, but at the Postma festival, I also g ot to see its impact on the people we helped. T hat experience taught me a lesson and g ave me a memor y not to forg et, exce pt this time it was from the other side of the booth.

The Treat of Fundraising Our Junior Secretary Explains The Effects of our Fundraising Efforts.

Key Club at Cypress W o o d s H i g h S c h o o l is the biggest club in Ashley Kawakubo our whole Junior Secretary school. We have over 300 members and a strong officer board. We aim high and tr y our best to raise as much money for fundraisers as we can. Officers, Reps, and members put in a lot of effor t to tr y and get as much money as possible to donate. We enjoy raising money and love the feeling we get when we give it away to an organization in need, especially when we fundraise for UNICEF. Each year, our club holds a fundraiser to donate to UNICEF: an organization that helps to aid needy children and their families. Around Halloween in October, our Key Club par ticipates in the Trickor-Treat for UNICEF donation.

Each member gets an orange UNICEF box to put change in to raise money. UNICEF helps by giving mosquito nets to victims of malaria and vaccines to expecting moms. They do so much more and to suppor t them we tr y to donate as much as we can.

Last year, our club raised a total of over $2,000 for this organization. Our members did an amazing job of raising money, by asking neighbors,

friends, teachers, or even g rocer y shoppers for spare change to help children and their families around the world. Some members went as g roups to g rocer y stores and told shoppers what they are tr ying to raise money for. We all enjoyed raising awareness of the problems that we can fix in the world while raising money for UNICEF. Our officers also did an amazing job of counting money as well as raising it.

As a previous treasurer of Key Club, I know that it is a lot of work counting up all of the coins that we raise during the fundraiser. Officers do a

A car used for Cypress Woods’ Key Club’s Car Smash fundraiser at the Cy Woods Carnival. Photo by Isabelle Myers.

g reat job of being organized and efficient when counting.

We are all so thankful for the donations and appreciate the effor t our members put in to the fundraiser.

The feeling of giving a $2,000 check to UNICEF is priceless.

It is amazing when you know you are helping people around the world to have better lives by holding a fundraiser at your high school. Key Clubbers enjoy benefiting the world and spending their time volunteering. We hope to raise more money this year than last year with Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF and are ver y excited for the upcoming challenge.

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A Sophomore Reperesentative Explains His Experience Our Club’s Car Smash.

A Cypress Woods student participates in our Car Smash. Photo by Sharon Zhou.

Recently, Cypress Wo o d s H i g h School had a Will Cowden Sophomore Reperesentative

gigantic carnival that included booths from over 54 different clubs and activities. These groups had a chance to not only make a few dimes off of the fundraising event, but also were able to use their booths as a recruiting point to get more members and expand influence to others. The carnival was open

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to all students and families of the school, as well as the funneling middle and elementary schools, and was an enormous success All clubs had the opportunity to create their own booths, with events like karaoke, a haunted house, face painting, and many more.Our Key Club took full advantage of the opportunity and was the booth that raised the most funds, as well as contained the most fun for the general audience.

Our Key Club’s booth was a car smashing event, where you could pay to smash the car with a sledgehammer, with proper safety protection of course. We were able to raise around $700

from that one night, which will help us to do many new things to spread service around our community.

With the help of the Cypress Woods Automobile Technolog y classes, whom we received gear from and got a place to store the scrap cars before and after the event.

The event was not as hard as it would sound to set up; with a few tarps and a few dozen Key Clubbers, it was a breeze.

Acquiring the cars to destroy only involved a few phone calls to people whose professions involve disposing of old or unusable cars. They were transported over to the back

SUCCESS of the school until the date of the carnival. After school, the cars were rolled out to the desired location until the event began.

After the four hour event, the three cars had no windows left, the bumpers were about off, and the car itself looked like it faced 20 years of damage and was never once repaired.

The clean up was not that hard either, due to the help of the Automobile Technolog y classes and Key Clubbers again, and the tarps put under the car to collect the debris after the carnage happened.

The Auto class allowed us the keep the cars in their garage until we were able to dispose of them. As you could guess, the tarps allowed for a quick and easy clean up for the most part.

The carnival really helped Key Club raise funds as well as the rest of the school. If other Key Clubs could convince their school to have their own version of the Cypress Woods carnival, it could benefit everyone involved.

Or even if they can’t, just doing something like this at a different school event, and advertising it a lot to get it out could still be a huge event that would definitely benefit their Key Club.

An ELIMINATE-themed car from our Key Club Car Smash. Photo by Sharon Zhou.

A car painted with a rival school’s colors from our Key Club Car Smash. Photo by Sharon Zhou.

Cars used for the Cy Woods Key Club Car Smash. Photo by Sharon Zhou.

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KEY FACTS

CYPRESS WOODS HIGH SCHOOL SEPTEMBER 2015