Sentinel april 2010

Page 1

The Sentinel St. Luke’s School

377 North Wilton Road - New Canaan, CT - 06840

April 2010

The Death of SNEFS Caroline Hopkins Contributing Writer By now you’ve probably heard a lot of talk of the great “food switch” hitting SLS come next fall. Terms like “smoothie bar” and “Panini station” are ringing through your ears as you dream of the truly delicious potential of the upcoming school year. Why the sudden change? Come the end of this school year, St. Luke’s’ three year contract with SNEFS’ Catering Service (our current food source) will draw to a close. As a result, our school has been faced with the genuinely difficult decision regarding whether to renew the contract, employing SNEFS for another three years, or to bring in a new food service entirely. Once the high authorities (those up in the business offices) decided it would be best to switch food services, the daunting task arose as to how SLS would decide

Exams: The New March Madness Alexandra Jaffe Editor in Chief

Next year, exams will be held in March for St. Luke’s Upper School students. Instead of midterms in January and final exams in June, there will be one set of exams in March, the week before Spring Break. The switch has been under discussion for several years now, but a special task force this year studied the issue even more in depth and motivated the change for next year. There is substantial reasoning behind the concept of March exams. Mr. Bailey explains, “When you take an exam in June, for the most part, you never see that exam again. It’s not useful to you in the learning process at all. By having the exams in March it enables the teacher to then use that after it’s corrected and given back to the student as a formative assessment, something that can be useful to both the student and the teacher.” Other logic for March exams is that during the last couple months of school, especially as June gets closer, students have an increasingly difficult time focusing in class and staying committed to their work. Statistically, students at St. Luke’s do more poorly on final exams than their other grades throughout the year reflect. In addition, if students do very badly on the March exam, they still have half of the third quarter and the entire fourth quarter to redeem themselves. March exams do not mean that learning stops at Spring Break. For April, May, and June, students will continue to learn new material and teachers will continue giving tests and other as-

Inside this issue...

PROMania

sessments, however, there is no huge final exam looming overhead. This also means juniors and seniors can take more time to prepare for AP’s, SAT’s and ACT’s, and SAT Subject Tests, which all seem to fall in a very tight and inconvenient window. Other private schools in the area like Rye Country Day School and Greens Farms Academy use the March exams system and have found it to be very effective. The weight of exams in students’ grades is being changed as well. In the past, final exams comprised of twenty percent of the second semester grade. Now, semester grades will be calculated excluding the March exam. March exams will factor into final grades only, comprising ten percent of the calculation. This dramatically reduces the impact of the one exam in students’ report card grades. Although it seems to be a foreign concept, once you look at the facts, March exams seem to be a positive change for students. That is, students other than seniors. Mr. Bailey confirmed that seniors will have to take March exams. Seniors are predictably not too pleased about this. “I don’t think that seniors should have exams in March because they already have so much stress on them waiting to hear back from colleges,” said current junior Theo Kelly. Teachers of AP classes will use March exams as an opportunity to administer a practice AP test. The only classes that will definitely not have March exams are semester-long electives. The new introduction of March exams is sure to bring questions and concerns, but they are truly designed with the students’ best interests in mind. Hopefully students will realize that the new system of exams is to their benefit.

Day in the Life of Lebris

which food service to choose. Food services from all across the state sent in their menus and their bids, hoping that they would be chosen as the lucky ones to provide St. Luke’s students and faculty with the best part of their day- their meals. For months, the Mrs. Gabriele and the rest of the decision making committee made it their mission to journey far and wide in order to visit other schools, scrutinizing their cuisine in the hopes that they would be able to score the ultimate food service. After many months deliberating amongst and consulting with the heart of the SLS community- the students themselves- the decision was made to employ Flik Independent School Dining Service. The competition was rough, but Flik won its victory through its promising menu, presenting us with deliciously fresh, healthy, and diverse assortment of choices- including sushi- and let’s not forget that smoothie bar and Panini station! Along with the menu change, our SLS cafeteria itself will be experiencing a makeover this summer. Beginning this coming fall, there will be no more waiting in line or entering PINs. In fact, the dining area will be taking on a 360 degree configuration in which stu-

See CAFETERIA page 2

Jokes Issue on Back


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.