IN EDITORIALS 3
IN SPREAD 6-7
IN SPORTS 11
A+ GRADING SCALE
HOMECOMING
NEW HEAD COACH
ROYALTY
FIND KEITH
in this issue
Mounds View
VIEWER
www.mvviewer.org by Molly Hancuh sports editor
Friday, September 27, 2013
Cheerleaders gone, but cheers go on
This year, they will not be on the track leading class cheers during football games. They will not be seen dancing with Melvin, the mascot, or waving their pom poms in the air. After over 50 years of high energy cheers, the cheerleading squad has been cut from school sports. Instead, Senior Stable Captains will be doing push ups for every point scored, writing the upcoming cheers on whiteboards for the entire student section to see, and goofing around with Melvin to make the crowd get a little bit rowdy. In the past 20 years, cheerleading has moved from the sidelines--an activity where girls cheered on boys sports--to a competitive national activity. However, few Minnesota schools are involved, and Mounds View never embraced this trend. Also, the number of girls involved in other school sports has increased, taking potential cheerleaders away. “Some schools still do have cheerleading squads, but the ones that do have many girls and are able to do stunts that we can’t do with our limited numbers,” Activities Director Bob Madison said. “If we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it well.” Recently, more high schools such as Forest Lake, Cretin-Derham Hall, and Irondale have dropped cheerleading as a sport due to lack of numbers.
Volume 61, Issue 1
Mounds View is losing the traditional view of what a football game looks like, according to Madison. A new group of students, the Senior Stable Captains -Marker, Audrey Sanders, Arianna Stenerson, Nick Ovshak, Lizzie Krinkie, and Griffin Anderson-- have taken over the cheering section, dressed not in skirts and school colors, but rather in theme coordinated costumes. “Obviously there are restriction on things we can’t do that the cheerleaders could,” said Marker, 12, “But we’re doing everything we can to replace the photo by Malia Endrizzi cheerleaders.” In past years, Senior Senior Stable captains take over the roles of cheerleaders at football games. Stable Captains have chosen themes at games, helped “We feel bad that we can’t offer this to girls, with pepfests, organized tailgating, and tried to gain especially because for some of them, this is their only support for other sports, according to Krinkie, 12. way to connect with the school,” Madison said. Their absence was obvious as Homecoming drew Adding in leading the cheers, Stable Captains have more on their plate this year than past ones. “It really near. helps having Emily Marker, the old cheerleading “We ran the whole Homecoming Dance,” former captain, as a stable captain now,” Krinkie said. cheerleader Emily Marker, 12, said. “We not only Their energy is infectious as they write new set up the dance itself but we made all the hallway cheers on the whiteboard and scream at the top of decorations for Friday. We easily had over 30 different their lungs to pump up the crowd. “The main purpose decorations we would put on the walls that Thursday is to get students and parents excited for certain before the pepfest, like Varsity, JV, Freshmen events,” Ovshak said. “I love getting the entire crowd pendants for both football and soccer.” into cheers and to feel the energy coming from the Along with the hard work the girls put in, crowd.”
Practice makes perfect? Homework counts less, tests count more under new policy by Monica Kemp news editor Tests, quizzes, homework. It all adds up to consume so much time and a lot of…points. Talk of the new grading policy is nothing new. It all started two years ago, in the fall of 2011, with former principal Julie Wikelius. Dozens of discussions and proposals later, Mounds View unveiled the new, school-wide grading policy this year. This year, 80 percent of a student’s grade will be performance assessments. This includes projects, essays, presentations, tests, labs, journals, and almost any other method that demonstrates mastery of the material. At most 15 percent is the final exam. The remaining 20 percent of the grade is now focused on practice
assessments. For those who struggle with test taking, this poses a new challenge. “I’m kind of worried about it because I’m not a good test taker… I feel it will definitely affect my grade in classes and it will just depend on the teacher and the type of tests given out,” said Krystal Jamison, 11. Others are excited about the change. “I think it’s better because I study for tests more than I do my homework,” said TaeJun Park, 11. For others still, the new grading policy brings an opportunity of learning how to study. “You still have to practice stuff,” said Emily Albers, 12. If a student invests time in doing the homework, “it is much easier to do the testing,” said Albers. Teachers also have a lot to get used to. English teacher Beth Baxley said it has not so much affected the way she teaches her upper level classes, but it has changed a lot for her freshman courses.
“[For] freshmen, when they come from middle school, it’s a shock because grades in middle school don’t matter as much.” Optimistic and open to what may come of it, Baxley chooses not to have a defined opinion. “I don’t know what I think because I haven’t seen the results yet,” said Baxley. For math teacher Jodie Bias, the changes in grading scale will not necessarily change what she emphasizes in class. “I like to grade homework because I think it helps students to stay organized and on top of the material.” Bias continues to collect most daily assignments and spot check them for accuracy. Even though the new grading policy emphasizes tests over homework, Bias will continue to stress what she knows to be essential. “I’m still continuing to collect homework because I think its important,” she said. Before adopting the new policy, teachers have attended several conferences regarding fair grading and
a grading task force was developed. The task force was made up of a diverse group of teachers who worked with an outside consultant to look at the success of other districts in the metro, national, and international areas. As they went through this process, they established the current grading scale. “One of the many things we realized is that we are kind of all over the board, so it’s an opportunity to get all the arrows pointed in the same direction and in doing that, saying which direction should that be,” said Doug Bullinger, assistant principal. What started at Mounds View, is now becoming a district-wide conversation with Irondale and Chippewa re-evaluating their grading policies. “A strong majority of teachers in this building have had some sort of input on which direction we’re going to with the grading,” said Bullinger.