All posts by Diego Hernandez

News

Leukemia and Lymphoma Fundraiser: Faculty will kiss a goat

Sally Abdul Khalek

Student Council and Spirit are fundraising to collect funds for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Donations will be collected by students putting money into the bucket of a faculty member they want to see kiss a goat The winner will then attend the pep rally before school on October 11.

The organization is hoping to make money through this fun fundraising event On Oct 2nd through Oct. 11th, students will be able to make donations during all three lunches.

The funds will go to new treatments such as the new T- cell therapy.

According to cancer.org, “A rapidly emerging immunotherapy approach is called adoptive cell transfer (ACT): collecting and using patients’ immune cells to treat their cancer. There are several types of ACT (see the box below, titled “ACT: TILs, TCRs, and CARs”), but, thus far, the one that has advanced the furthest in clinical development is called CAR T-cell therapy.“

“Kissing goats for cancer (fundraising) is great,” senior Harvest Barry said.

The teachers volunteering for this fundraiser are Amanda Nobles, Amy Pawelek, Helen Womack, Sandy McGuffin, Coach Malesky, Coach VanAunken, and Principal Jackie Horras.

Support to find new treatments by donating and choosing the teacher you want to see kiss a goat.

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Students react to campus initiative FLEX

Faith Collins

The newest campus change, FLEX, was adopted by faculty and staff to provide students with extra time for homework and assignments between class periods. Other schools such as Clark, Harlan, and even the local community college, Northwest Vista, have already incorporated FLEX into their schedules with the intention to create a 30 minute time period for students to visit any teacher on campus and get much needed work done. A teacher can “flag” a student to their classroom, or the student can flag themselves to the teacher.

  The campus provided five days of FLEX training before fully applying the program to everyone’s schedules. FLEX days are every Tuesday and Thursday after second period and before third period.

  While faculty and staff may have introduced this program to reduce the stress on students and teachers, there is some mixed feedback.

  “I think FLEX benefits the students by giving them more time to focus on finishing up any work that’s due,” freshman Caitlyn Poehler said.

  For junior Emily Kramer, an athlete in Water Polo and Swimming, FLEX sends a negative message for students who are on top of their work.

“It’s a crutch for kids who don’t necessarily want to get their work done. It wastes time for kids who actually do their work outside of school like they’re supposed to,” Kramer said.

  Kramer said she plans to do Drivers Ed during FLEX since she’ll already have her work done.

  Senior Daniel Guerrero, however, has a slightly different perspective.

  “So far I’m comfortable with FLEX. It’s really easy to manage the sessions that I want to participate in,” Guerrero said.

  Some students like Guerrero are neutral about FLEX and may only have a few components they want to see changed.

  “I would change how students who are eligible to go off campus cannot leave campus during FLEX. This is really unfair to the students who don’t need tutoring or to make up any missing work” Guerrero said.

  Mrs. Thornton, the director of FLEX at on campus, shares advice for getting comfortable with the program. She also answers questions that some students might have about FLEX that may not have been clear in the training

“If a student isn’t flagged by their teacher, and hasn’t flagged themselves by the time Flexisched locks at 5pm the day before FLEX, I assign the student a place. The first place I fill is the computer labs. If students are near a computer or in a quiet computer lab they can still work even though they may not have found a place on their own through FLEX. The second place we fill is the library, and then after that, the Cafeteria. If the student’s teachers have open spots, I’ll flag them there too,” Thornton said.

  Some students may also wonder what classes can override what other classes in order to flag a student that had already been flagged somewhere else.

  “Core teachers will have priority days that go in alphabetical order. The first day of FLEX, English held the priority, the second day will be math, science, and then social studies,” Thornton said.

Thornton also states that if a teacher wants to flag a kid from another teacher, but neither have priority, the teacher who flagged the student first takes the priority.

  If students or parents have any questions about FLEX, they can as their teachers or Mrs. Thornton in room B102.

Sports

Dance team hosts dance clinic for youth

Melody Norman

The Golduster team host a annual dance clinic to encourage young people to consider joining the team in the future, and inspire a love for dance. The new director Amanda Nobles continued the tradition of the annual clinic for the future dance team members. Every game the Goldusters perform and thousands of people come out and watch them including the young girls and boys who inspire to make the team.

  “To attend the clinic there is a form you have to fill out with the first and last name of the child, address, grade any allergies, name of the parent/guardian and emergency contact information, and their shirt size,”Melin Montemayor said.

There are many people that help out with the clinic every year including the parents of the Goldusters. The parents put together bags full of snacks for the kids, and help decorate the Amp,” Montemayor said.

  Not only do the parents help out with the clinic there are also sponsors including Target, eReality network, and my kids dentistry.

  The clinic was held on October 26 and starts bright and early at 8:00AM and ends at 1:00PM in the afternoon in the AMP(Agriculture Multi-purpose).The team made sure there were signs placed in the direction of where the AMP is located.

  “When walking into the clinic the girls are split up into 4 groups by grade level, the first group is Pre-K through Second grade, the second group is Third through Fifth grade, third group is Sixth through Eighth and lastly the high schoolers,” Montemayor said.

  They all do an individual dance in their four groups and then they all combine and learn a half time performance for the November first game.

  “Since the first clinic we have definitely come along way, with more dances, and all-around new ideas,’’ Montemayor said.

  The clinic has on average over 100 girls that attend each year“The purpose of the clinic is to give back to the community and help girls find their passion for dance the way I found my passion and to show what it is like to perform on the field,” Montemayor said.

The team consists of 43 members who were assigned to distribute sign up forms to friends and relatives.

“Performing brings me so much bliss I don’t think I could get it from anything else,” Isabella Benavidez said.

  She shared the clinic was a fun occasion as well.

“Little kid clinic is so fun. I was with the older kids this year so I didn’t get to hang around the babies as much but performing on the field with them is always such a fun time.”

Entertainment

Students find Frozen 2, comical and heartwarming

Zelma Hernandez

In the Disney animated film Frozen 2, Elsa and her sister are put in charge to go away on an adventure far away from their Kingdom of Arendal. As directed by Jennifer Leigh and Chris Buck, on this journey the two sisters soon find out how both of their parents disappeared. This movies really enjoyable, cute, funny and family friendly. Of course Elsa had her own signature song that is bold and expresses her feelings within the scene. Overall, the movie had intense and heartwarming parts.

In order to really understand the movie, you’d have to watch the first Frozen which can be found on Disney+. The new film Frozen 2 was released November 22 and can only be found in theaters. Students shared they liked the characters and were entertained especially by Olaf.

“Olaf is my favorite character because he’s funny. My favorite scene was when Olaf acted out the first Frozen movie. If I could change anything in the movie, I’d make Kristoff more important in the overall movie,” junior Haley Brown said.

Students enjoyed the heartwarming scenes and how some of the fun scenes ended with great singing.

“My favorite character was Olaf because he added funny moments and brought joy. My favorite scene was the part where Olaf was explaining what happened in the first movie and I thought it was really funny and it had really funny references to the first movie. If I could change anything about the movie I’d give a girlfriend just like the rumors said would happen,” junior Emeline Longoria said.

And the award for most popular character goes to…

“Olaf is my favorite character. The part where Olaf was explaining how water has memory. One thing I would change would be how Elsa acts. She was more weird compared to the first movie,” junior Heather Jasik said.

Feature

Dangers of trampolines

By: Dominic Mascorro

Experiencing trauma can affect a human mentally and/or physically. It can affect their lives in major ways. Freshman Justin Schultz, a former football player, went through a traumatic phase in his life. Schultz went out for a day of fun at Urban Air, a nearby trampoline park. Schultz was jumping when his friend jumped at the same time and Justin landed wrong and injured his leg.

Here are his thoughts on what happened and how it will affect him mentally and physically.

“I was jumping on a trampoline trying to impress people and I went down to jump and my friend jumped at the same time and my leg snapped backward,” Schultz said.

These type of injuries are common for both trampoline parks and for home trampolines.

“I felt like my leg was snapping in more than one place and I could see it snap-in on itself,” Schultz said.

Justin was unlucky to have his leg crumble right in front of himself and his friends.

“I went to the doctor the next day and he told me he couldn’t tell what happened so he sent me to an MRI and that took an hour to do and I got my results back in a day and I tore my ACL off the bone and fractured the two other bones in my leg,” Schultz said.

Schultz shared his pain was very bad and he felt depressed he couldn’t play football anymore and was out for recovery for the entire football season. Schultz felt terrible he missed out on all the games and regrets his trampoline accident.

According to a 2018 study conducted by the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine the amount of kids injured 24mo-17 years of
age at trampoline parks is almost the same as those injured on home trampolines. The University of Tennessee hospital treated 439 patients in 2018 with trampoline injuries and of those 13% required surgery after their trampoline park accident.

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Students build modeling portfolio

By: Melody Norman

Confidence instilling, posture building and more, modeling can help students learn more than how to strike a pose. Students take their time outside of school to start focusing on what they want to do in the future with their career. Some see the women on the covers of magazines, or the women on the runway, and inspire to be like them in the future.

There are thousands of modeling agencies in Texas alone, and to join them is a long process.

“Two years ago when I was a sophomore I joined Robin Jan- sky’s team, and to get on the team you have to submit a photo and go through the selection process,” senior Emma Dennis said.

The process is super long and can take weeks to even know if you made the team.

“When I found out I got on the team I was freaking out, I was filled with tears of excitement,” senior Isabella Eisenhauer said.

Besides the modeling agencies, there are many pageants that the students can join including the Greater Helotes Texas Teen pageant.

“Going into the Greater Helotes Texas Teen was such a fun experience, and when they announced my name as the winner I was so happy and did not expect that,” Eisenhauer said.

Some may not know that modeling is a time-consuming activity and that they have to work long schedules and do not have much free time. They have to find the right balance between school, their modeling career, and time to spend with their families.

“It’s hard but sometimes you just have to take days off of school and focus on modeling,’’ Poehler said.

Being a student model is a hard task to do and keeping your grades up is a crucial thing for these students. Being able to not worry about bad grades and homework is apart of this career.

“When going into the pageant, they do not worry about looks as much as they do your GPA, and your grades. They look at your character and how you strive to make the community better,” junior Jenna Perez said.

Modeling is often overlooked about being a career all about looks, rather than how the model is doing in school, and their good character. To be a model there are standards.

Each student model is unique and has their story of how they got into this career.

“I started because my mom saw this ad for Barney and I was on an episode, then I went on to model for some agencies and join pageants,’’ Dennis said. *Correction from printed story

They have a very busy schedule and have to be on top of everything, and they do not have any time to slack in school. For the future, it is very important to have good grades for any job, and modeling is a career that the students want to continue with.

“Being on the committee of Helotes, they are super strict about what you post on social media, and we are required to do good deeds for the community,” Dennis said

Other than being a good student in school, their schedules are packed so they have limited time.

Models have different agencies and groups and there an over thousands of them in Texas. The most popular photography modeling jobs are for Robin Jansky, Kim Bourquin, and Nikki Schellenberg.

“The modeling agency I’ve signed for was Robin because I know a lot of people who were on the team before I was and they loved it,” Dennis said.

Through the countless modeling agencies in the Helotes and San Antonio area, anyone can fulfill their dreams to become a model by following these photographer’s social media accounts to find alerts on open positions and opportunities.