Why Blogs?

First semester is almost halfway over, and we're finally ready to post new blogs.  As you're being forced to post blogs and comment on them, you may wonder what point of it all is.  Why are you posting your work to a blog?

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My reasoning behind having students do blogs is threefold.  First of all, it creates a real-world application for your work.  It's one thing if only your teacher, and maybe some classmates, will be looking at your writing.  It's another thing if it's out there for the world to see.  Posting your work on a blog gives you extra incentive to do your best work.

Secondly, your blog is a way to create a portfolio of your work.  Instead of creating a paper portfolio at the end of the school year, your blog becomes a living portfolio which is regularly updated with your work.  You can look back at your blog and see how you've grown and changed as a writer and as a person over the course of the school year or, depending on how long you've been in this class, your high school career.

Finally, having students post blogs and write comments creates a forum for us to talk about writing and see one another's work.  Reading one another's writing will help each student improve as a writer.  It's always interesting to see how students come up with many different takes on the same prompt, and it's both interesting and beneficial to see the though process of your classmates.

For the sophomores and juniors, I'm sure it's been a change from last year not commenting on blogs every day at the beginning of class, but that is not going away completely.  Now that your first blogs are being posted, you will often have a bellwork assignment to read and comment on a classmate's blog.

Overall, your blog should be a safe place to share your work and receive comments and critiques.  Take advantage of this opportunity to show your best work to the world!

Meet the Sutherland Speech Team!

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This year, our speech team has exploded in number, and we have so many students who are doing quite well. As of today, we have three meets left until the conference and district meets. At districts, the top three in each event qualify for state. Without further ado, let's introduce the members of the speech team who have competed thus far.

by: Keep Calm-O-Matic

 Entertainment 
The entertainment event is one of the five public speaking events in which you must write your own speech. The goal is to (surprise, surpris
e) entertain your audience. Our competitors in this event are Darien Myers with her speech about how to be a nerd like her, Caitlin Hasenauer with her speech outlining a battle between teen female heroines, Madi McMillan with her speech about procrastination, and Lily Ralston with her speech about how to binge watch Netflix.

 Informative 
In another surprising turn of events, the purpose of the informative is to inform your audience about a topic of your choice. Gavin Myers is competing with his speech about Spina Bifida, and Tonja Hahn is competing with her speech about how reality television affects women.

Persuasive 
This is the event for anyone who is good at convincing someone to take your side on something. In persuasive, student speak about various issues and provide evidence to prove a point. Our persuasive speakers this year are Tonja Hahn, who speaks about mandatory minimum sentences; Daisha Marquardt, who speaks about video game violence; Larren Fear, who speaks about how society treats body image; Jocie Baker, who speaks about declawing cats; and Kenessa Copeland, who speaks about the issues with American media.

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Extemporaneous 
This event, which is called Extemp for short, is for the brave of heart. At the start of each round, you draw three current event topics and choose one of them. You have one hour to write your speech, which must be a minimum of 5 minutes. We have several students who have tried extemp this year: Dominic Naughtin, Mira White, and Malinda Foster.

Poetry
Poetry, once again, is just what it sounds like. Students in poetry present a 6-8 minute selection poetry, typically several poems. Right now in poetry we have Amanda Hahn, Michael Weber, and Jasmine Harness.

Humorous 
If anyone remembers the famous "Albuquerque" speech by Michael Petska a few years back, or Marley Sandberg's speech that she presented at the assembly last year, that was humorous prose. Students select a funny piece, typically with multiple characters, with a maximum time limit of 10 minutes. Our current competitors in Humorous Prose are Marley Sandberg with "The Brother's Grimm Spectaculathon," Emily Kammerer with "Driver's Test," and Madisen Walters with "When Math Students Go Bad."

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Serious 
This event is, of course, the opposite of humorous prose in that it deals with more, you guessed it, serious subjects. We have five team members who are competing in Serious Prose. Marley Sandberg is performing "Like Dreaming Backwards." Amanda Hahn is performing a cutting from "Winter Girls." Madisen Walters is performing sections of "If I Stay." Finally, Miranda Romero is performing piece called "Organ Donor."

Duet 
The final two events are the group events. Duet is an event for two people, where they must perform a script memorized. Our current duets are Mira White and Sierra Poorman with "Bottled Up," and Madi McMillan and Kenessa Copeland who started the season with "Snow White and the Seven Psychoses," but may be changing it up before the season ends.

OID 
Last but not least, there is Oral Interpretation of Drama, or OID. You may remember our group that went to state last year with a script called "Action News." In this event, you may have between 3 and 5 members which present a script together. This year, we have four OID's. Darien Myers, Caitlin Hasenauer, Allison Stewart, Emily Kammerer, and Malinda Foster are presenting a script called "Little Women 2: Wrath of the Undead." Next we have Madi McMillan, Kenessa Copeland, Sierra Poorman, Mira White, and Dominic Naughtin performing "So You Want to Be a Cheerleader?" Miranda Romero, Miranda Gerdes, and Kayla Cheever are performing "Caution: Librarians Ahead." Finally, Gavin Myers, Dalton Evans, and Colton Hasenauer are performing "We Loathe Our Customers."

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 Wish all of these kids luck as they perform in Ogallala on the 21st, Southwest on the 28th, and North Platte on March 7th. After that, we will move on to conference at Perkins County on March 9th, and Districts at North Platte on March 16, where we can bring only two entries per event. The top three in each event will make it to state in Kearney on March 27th.

The Summer of Trying New Things

En route to Chicago, I saw the shop from American Pickers

As I went through this summer, I began to call it “The Summer of Trying New Things” because I tried so many things this summer that I had never done before.  The first thing I did, which you can obviously tell, was chop all my hair off.  On a sort of whim, I decided to try it very short for summer.  Secondly, I joined a swim team.  I have never been much of a swimmer, and to this day I’m not sure how I got talked into it, but it ended up being relatively fun and incredibly good exercise.  I suppose the swimming could be what lead into my next endeavor, which was my first triathlon ever.  It was incredibly difficult, but I did end up getting first in my age group (we won’t talk about the fact that there were only three people in it).  The final addition to my summer of new things was new adventure.  I went on a road trip and was able to visit to Chicago for the first time, where I also participated in my first color run.  It was a really fun time getting to see the city, eat some wonderful food, and get splattered like crazy with color.  I suppose my summer just goes to show how much of adventure even the simplest things can be if you are trying new things and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.