e g h iin Ti er l THE
March 23, 2010
Volume 50 Issue 21
1015 Division St. Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613
Local schools preparing for new standards Alex Entz Senior Writer
Some significant changes in the educational process are headed toward students all over Iowa. A bill signed into law last year by governor Chet Culver has created what is known as the Iowa Core Curriculum. The Iowa Core Curriculum specifies particular skills that students need to develop in general fields such as math and social studies during certain parts of their education. This state-wide educational framework will begin to come to fruition this coming July when the implementation plan for every high school across Iowa will be due. The ICC itself, however, does not require full implementation until 2014. Jim Janssen is in charge of implementing the Iowa Core Curriculum in Waverly
More than money
Shell-Rock and Cedar Falls. “Cedar Falls is well on its way to developing its implementation plan,” Janssen said. “The Cedar Falls district is electing to develop a K-12 implementation plan by June 30 (in place of just a framework for the high school). The best rationale comes from the system strengths gained from planning, implementing and supporting the Core Curriculum with all K-12 staff at the same time,” Janssen said. Principal Rich Powers illuminated the need for the ICC. “We are teaching to educate our students to a higher level,” Powers said. “Students need more education than they did 20 years ago, and localized, vocational teaching has fallen by the wayside.” Some curriculum will have to be shuffled around and changed to make way
for the new system. “We are in the process of looking back through our curriculum to make sure that we cover the required content,” Powers said. “This is not a huge piece for us in Cedar Falls, but we will need to work on utilizing technology to solve problems.” Janssen also talked about local leadership committees representing the district and the community. Mandated by the ICC, these groups are largely responsible for writing up the implementation plan. “The committee has met twice, started to study the desired outcomes of the ICC, and has delivered its first round of training to all district educators,” Janssen said. “At its December meeting, they will review a sample implementation plan and take initial steps to construct its own.” The Iowa Department
2008,” Hall said. Even with 11 years of piano under her belt, she still has to keep up with the job, constantly adding new tunes to her repertoire. “I try to learn new songs regularly so it doesn’t get too repetitive,” Hall said. “Most of the tunes are jazz, popular songs or from Broadway.” In a typical week, she works from anywhere between six and 15 hours. Not only is she being paid, but she also is gaining valuable experience for her potential future.
“Piano is my first love. I will always play! I am considering majoring in music in college,” Hall said. Hall reaps benefits not only the job, but also from the opportunities that accompany it. “I love my job! My boss and coworkers are wonderful people. Also, there are a few ‘regulars’ who stop by to listen to the music and chat every week. Some of them are in junior high and others are elderly persons — they are fun people,” she said. “There have been times when a customer who
of Education has stated that end-of-year tests are being developed to test students on their grasp of material required under the ICC. An official decision regarding whether or not the tests will be used in the Cedar Falls district is still being looked at, as the tests are not required. “We want our students to demonstrate that they know how to use it, and we believe that it is important to use such measures,” Powers said. School districts around the state received a portion of the money allocated to pay for the implementation of the ICC. Janssen explained how the district has decided to use its money. “To date, Cedar Falls has used these funds to support the essential, first step of implementation — initial training for all teachers and principals. I suspect that
these funds will continue to be used in this fashion next year as well,” Janssen said. Powers talked about the effect that the ICC will have on not only students but also the staff. “We are stressing the four R’s: rigor, relevance, relationship and reflection,” Powers said. Though teachers are being trained to teach to the new system’s requirements, the biggest changes for them will come simply from checking their curriculum for those four defining R’s. The purpose of the ICC is to gauge the development of Iowa children, and to ensure that all are receiving the same base education that will help them to excel on standardized tests and beyond high school and well into their futures. “People want to know if they are getting a good return on their investment,” Powers said.
: CFHS senior enjoys hobby in job
Vincent Stigliani Editor-in-Chief
As many high school students wash dishes or bag groceries to earn money, senior Chelsea Hall does what she loves: piano. Hall, who has been playing piano for 11 years, began playing at Von Mauer a year and a half ago. Her job entails playing in the center of the store, providing music for customers as they shop. “I got the job by applying and auditioning. I began in the summer of
Chris Pierce Photo
Senior Chelsea Hall on the job at Von Mauer, where she plays piano multiple times a week. hears me play will offer me a gig playing a party or
wedding, which is always a great opportunity.”
2 opinion
THE
tiger hi-line March. 23, 2010
Going with the Flow: our view Tapping into concentration, forgetting
Memories shouldn’t have a big price tag
We look at fashion magazines such as Vogue and Bazaar and shake our heads in wonderment. Does all this merchandise actually have any meaning, or is it just keeping up with the image of popularity? We’re guessing that it is the latter. Recently, Opinion Editor Monica Clark read the book Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. The main character is a collector; more specifically a collector of family things. He finds that the most important things to him are these seemingly meaningless and mundane objects that have a story behind them. To Jonathan, these mundane items are what ties him to the past, and through that, the present. Today in America, we are obsessed with the commercialized world. We are constantly updating our phones, cameras, laptops, iPods, cars, clothes, shoes and jewelry all for the sake to have something new and shiny that will entertain and amuse us for a couple of days. Clark remembers one Christmas when she was a child and had asked for an awesome toy that she saw on TV that looked completely cool. It was all she could think about before Christmas, and when she opened it up and started playing with it on Christmas morning, the toy turned out to be a waste of money. Before Clark left this past summer for France and a job at Okoboji, she got together with her closest friend. To her surprise, she was given a going away present. It was a box filled with quotes and little thoughts for her to open up when feeling homesick over the long summer. To Clark, this gift was priceless, and she wouldn’t have given it up for the world. She says she would have given up every Christmas toy to keep that one inexpensive gift. Everyone should look up to the people in our lives that put emphasis on the really important things — not commercialized merchandise, but memories that will be much more important years down the road.
Contact the Tiger Hi-Line
The Tiger Hi-Line is a weekly publication of the journalism classes of Cedar Falls High School, 1015 Division St., Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613. Our website is www.hiline.co.nr. The Hi-Line is distributed to CFHS students on Tuesdays to read in their DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) classes. Columns and letters do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Hi-Line or Cedar Falls Schools. The Hi-Line editorial staff view is presented weekly in the editorial labeled as Our View. Reader opinions on any topic are welcome and should be sent to the Tiger Hi-Line staff or delivered to room 208. All letters must be signed. Letters must be submitted by 3 p.m. on Thursday for publication the following Tuesday. Letters may not exceed 300 words and may be edited to meet space limitations. Include address and phone number for verification.
Editorial Staff
Editors-in-Chief: Maggie Devine and Vincent Stigliani News Editors: Vincent Stigliani and Ben Sadkowski Opinion Editor: Monica Clark Sports Editor: Alex Entz Feature Editor: Aubrey Caruso On-Line Editors: Vincent Stigliani Entertainment Editor: Maggie Devine Senior Writer: Alex Entz Photo Editor: Ben Sadkowski
self-consciousness, key to creativity The act of forgetting oneself should not be an entirely new concept to most human beings. Certainly at least once in a person’s life comes the event in which he or she is so focused on what they are doing that they lose any feelings of selfconsciousness, feel their skills stretched to a degree that they feel stimulated and challenged, and lose track of time completely. Recently however, the experience has been given a label, ‘flow,’ and has enjoyed increased attention. The coiner of the actual term ‘flow’ is Dr. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a former head of the psychology department at the University of Chicago. Csíkszentmihályi has listed nine main components of flow that accompany a flow experience, but those that are most prevalent with my own experiences are a level of high concentration, loss of self-consciousness, and a distorted sense of time. One must not experience all nine of Csíkszentmihályi’s components in order to have considered oneself to be in a state of flow, and the three I mentioned previously are those that I could identify most with in Csíkszentmihályi’s list. The concentration I have while in a state of flow surpasses all other experiences of conscious attempts at concentrating on a task, for example with the ACT. A good example would be writing. When I have to write a paper the night before it’s due, the concentration I
Ben Sadkowski News/Photo Editor have during such an event is consciously induced, because I need to have that concentration to ignore distracters and to complete the paper. But when I am working on an independent creative writing project late at night, the concentration I have during that situation stems purely from the creative stimulation I receive from writing. In addition, a loss of selfconsciousness goes hand in hand with the high level of concentration. Naturally, if absorbed in a task, I will not have the mindset to direct my focus onto self-criticism; everything goes toward what I am doing at that moment. When I ran cross-country my freshman and sophomore years, I experienced a state of flow in some races. However, during times that I was in pain either from an injury or from fatigue, I’m certain my face went into a sort of comedic grimace that I myself would laugh at if given the opportunity to see it. Once again, everything goes to the task at hand Lastly, a warped sense of time, for me, is largely the most striking effect of a state of flow. “Time flies when you’re having fun,”
is a cliché statement, but it completely sums up how I perceive time in my flow experiences. Next to selfconsciousness, time is the last thing I have on my mind when in flow. When I look at the time somewhere in the middle of an activity, either I realize the absurdity of the amount of things I accomplished in a very small time frame, or I realize that I have spent hours on an activity when I promised myself that I would devote only a fraction of the time I spent. In terms of actually inducing a state of flow, I can’t give any concrete methods that will guarantee such an experience. My own experiences creep up on me without any planning on my part. One larger guarantee that an experience may come is that what I’m doing at the time is something I find creatively or physically stimulating, like photography or running. While performing this activity, I can exhibit all three of the previously mentioned characteristics, and also a lack of self-awareness that subsequently prevents me from realizing that I am in such a state. The realization and analysis of its occurrence always comes after. Flow is as flighty as it is real. There is no foolproof way to induce it, and conscious attempts will most likely fail, but once it does come around, looking back on the experience in retrospect, I find the real pleasure of being consumed by a task and having my skills stretched on an activity I find truly worthwhile. Call it whatever you want: “On the ball,” or, “in the groove,” it’s bliss.
SPORTS 3
THE
tiger hi-line March 23, 2010
Farokhmanesh does it again!
UNI shocks first-seeded Kansas with late three Alex Entz Senior Writer
There are no hyperboles grand enough for what happened last Saturday in front of 15,587 at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City. So, to put it simply: David felled Goliath. On the heels of a nailbiting, 69-66 victory over the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which was punctuated by a 3-pointer by guard Ali Farokhmanesh with 4.9 seconds remaining, came this shocker. The Kansas Jayhawks—ranked number one in all of college basketball and picked by President Obama to win the
entire tournament (as 42% of all brackets on ESPN. com had predicted), fell to a team from an otherwiseforgettable university in the heart of an otherwise-forgettable state. A paltry .9% of ESPN brackets had UNI in the Sweet 16. And yet, when the RockChalk Jayhawk machine started getting going late in the second half—paring UNI’s seven point lead with 1:18 left down to a meager one point lead just 35 seconds later, the Panthers got going, too. Mismatched in size, athleticism, and popular opinion, UNI controlled the tempo, locked the Jayhawks up with their
defense, and continued to mix up their players. And then, on a team so balanced and deep that a standout player is not truly necessary, Farokhmanesh stood out, again. After UNI finally pushed past the full-court pressure the Jayhawks were applying, Farokhmanesh was found, standing all alone on the edge of the three-point line. Though 0-6 in the second half, he sank his shot to put UNI up by four, an insurmountable lead with just 35 seconds left. The college right up the hill, almost visible from the high school, instantly blew apart the vast majority of brackets. Instantly, pictures
of UNI and their victory were plastered all over the headlines and banners of innumerable websites, as editors struggled to understand what, exactly, had just happened. In any case, the win will certainly be a huge boon to the already touted basketball program at UNI. Such a win could entice a number of prospects to choose UNI over a similar, or more highly regarded, competitor. Surely, the immediate future is uncertain, with the upcoming graduations of a number of UNI’s current stars, including today’s playmakers. Yet, Saturday’s win gave the college a nearly-palpable hope
that this type of success can be repeated in the future, assuming Ben Jacobson, the lauded head coach behind UNI’s Cinderella run, stays on. Even after the event, it can be hard to fully grasp. The Panthers were clearly overmatched—it is unlikely that any of UNI’s starting five would have come close to cracking Kansas’ vaunted starting lineup, nearly all of whom will surely dot pro lineups in the coming years. And yet, with heart, determination, and a stubborn insistence on playing as if their feet were tied to concrete blocks, the impossible happened.
Men’s soccer hoping to repeat State run Tigers in Meg Lane Staff Writer
With last winter’s snow only recently melted, green grass and soccer balls fill the air as men’s soccer gets underway. This year the guys are looking forward to finishing high in the MVC division and building a strong team. With their season last year ending with a 12-8-1 record and a loss to Ankeny in the first round of State, the team is working hard this winter to prepare.
“For the better part of the winter they have had the opportunity to play in the gyms on Sunday nights. There are also a bunch that have played in a league in Cedar Rapids and in our local Panther Pride indoor league at UNI, but this week they are playing up at Wartburg just to keep getting touches on the ball,” Head Coach Josh Printz said. Senior Omeed Kashef noted, “We lost seniors, and we have a lot more young kids, but our team has good leadership to win this year.”
The team also has been working other goals such as building teamwork and endurance for the games. “If we come to play, stay focused every game and work harder in practice to prepare ourselves and be able to play 80 minutes and not just 40, we will go far,” Printz said. The team also looks to compete well with their big rival, Waterloo West. “It’s a great group of guys that knows how to push each other as a group as well as challenge us
Support Student Press
The list of businesses and individuals included here are backers of the real world educational opportunities made possible by all the publication and broadcasting programs at Cedar Falls High School. Check out their links at our website: http://www.hiline.co.nr
coaches to constantly improve,” Printz said. The team this year has also expanded, as about 80 kids are expected to tryout, and 11 varsity will be returning this year. “We have a large group of freshman coming out this year. From what I have seen, we have over 25 coming out this year,” Printz said. Practice started March 22 for the team. The team’s first game is April 8 against Cedar Rapids Washington and is away.
Gold Star Sponsors ($250) •Cedar Falls Community Credit Union •Element Portraits and Design •National Dance Academy Cedar Falls •Sandee’s •The Shirt Shack •Together for Youth at Allen Women’s Clinic
Action
Women’s Track Home 3/23 @ Indoor State/ Dickinson @ UNI-Dome, 11:00 a.m. Away 3/27 @ Cedar Rapids Jefferson Meet, 11:00 a.m. Women’s Soccer Kick off 3/30, time and place TBA Men’s and Women’s Tennis Practice began yesterday. See Coach Knox or Coach Yossi for details.
Silver Star Sponsors ($180) •Gary and Margaret Clark Bronze Star Sponsors ($100) •Raymond and Judith Burfeind •Jiva Salon Spa •Larry and Judy Timmins
To find out how you can be a Journalism Backer, call 553-2590 or email hiline.devine@gmail.com or hiline.stigliani@gmail.com.
tiger hi-line feature 4 THE
March 23, 2010
In the life of a congressional page Cedar Falls junior shares his new experiences Earlier in the year The Tiger Hi-Line wrote a story about junior Ben Olson traveling to Washington, D.C., to finish out his school year as a congres-
sional page. Now that he has been there for a few months, we checked back with him and got the details on his experience in D.C. so far.
Q: What does a congressional page entail? A: As a page, we do a lot of different jobs during the day. Most pages are runners, where we walk to different House office buildings and pick up or deliver messages, packages or flags to various offices, and there’s lots of walking involved in that. If you are on flag duty, you go down to the flag office and pick up packages of the American flag and deliver them to congressional offices so the members of Congress can fly them over the Capitol and send them back to their constituents. If you do statements, you sit on the floor while the members give speeches or debate bills, and after they are done talking, you walk over and pick up their statement and take it to the front desk where the statement is published in the daily record. If you get votes, you go down to an office while members vote on a bill and print off the results and deliver them to various offices. Those are the typical jobs; we basically assist in the everyday jobs that come up in the House. Q: How is school in D.C.? A: The page school is a lot different than CF. I feel like the school is more modeled after a college because the tests are only in essay format with rarely any multiple choice, so it’s something I’ve had to get used to. Since we work a part time job, we can’t get overloaded with homework, even though it seems like we do, so most of the work is reading or group projects. There aren’t any letter grades or class rankings, so it’s not competitive, but it can be challenging. The fact that our school is in the attic of the Library of Congress makes up for anything bad about it. Q:Are you facing any challenges while being in D.C.? A: The main challenge I am facing is adjusting because everything is brand new to me. I’ve had to get more backbone and become more independent and rely on myself more. It has been stressful, but I am finally starting to get into a routine. Overall, though, I never take for granted the behind the scenes access I get to the Capitol building. Q: How did the big snow storm affect you? A: In February there was nearly 30 inches of snow on the ground here, so we didn’t have school for about a week, which was fine with me because we don’t have to make up snow days here. I kind of feel bad for you guys back at home.
Junior Ben Olson in his uniform for work in Washington D.C., as a Congressional page. Submitted Photo Q: Anything interesting you have experienced or that has this influenced your future? A: Overall, I have been surprised about some things I’ve learned about the House. For instance, none of the members are required to be there when it is in session, so there might be a congressman giving a speech to two other people in the seats, but the rest of the room is empty, but when there is a vote, all members are required to attend, so a flood of people come rushing onto the floor all at once during votes. As a page, we only see the end result of the legislative process when the bills are debated on the floor, but before that the members of congress are assigned to committees that craft the bills. I honestly don’t know if I could be a Congressman because I wouldn’t even know where to start — they have to know things about all issues that come up, and they have to please everyone back at home. It would be challenging. As far as a career, I’ve never thought about being a politician, but it is cool to see these people up close and see how they interact. Q: Evaluate what you’ve been doing. How’s it going? A: So far, it has been a really big adjustment moving from Iowa to D.C. I’m doing things that are totally new to me, such as living in a dorm with three other roomates, which is polar opposite of having my own room. I’ve also had to become more independent because I now have to do all of my own laundry and go out and buy my own food where at home my mom would do those things. Adjusting to all of that has been really hard, but I really think it’s preparing me for college life. Also, the school is pretty hard here, so I really have to budget my time wisely.
Q: What does your day consist of? A: The weekdays here are pretty hectic. I wake up at 5 a.m., eat, change into my uniform and head to school in the Library of Congress by 6:45. Depending on the congressional schedule, we either have school until 9 a.m. or 11:30 a.m. After school, we head to the floor of the House of Reps and sign on either the Democratic or Republican side depending on where we work. We usually get off work at 5 p.m. and then come back to do homework. A: Have you learned anything about government? Q: I would say I have learned a lot about government so far. Not necessarily factual information, but just witnessing the daily operations first hand. It’s awesome to see Nancy Pelosi walk down the hall or being in the same room as the 435 members who you read or hear about. It’s a lot to take in. The most amazing thing so far was being able to go to Obama’s State of the Union address in January. It was only our third day; we got to stand in the back on the House floor and watch the speech and see all the senators and supreme court justices walk in. It was unbelieveable. Some people who had worked there for 30 years have never gotten invited to the speech, so it was incredible to be there.