The comedy Fools tells the story of a young schoolteacher named Leon Tolchinsky (played by Connor Anderson-Proctor, sophomore) who travels to the town of Kulyenchikov, Ukraine to be a private tutor for Sophia Zubritsky (played by Adrienne Colombus, senior). The moment Leon sees Sophia, he falls for her, but there is only one problem; she and the rest of Kulyenchikov are cursed with stupidity. Leon has only 24 hours to teach Sophia something, anything, or he will fall under the curse, too.

Kelly Schnider, director, is looking forward to the production, and Fools is one of the only shows in her career she has ever directed a second time (around 10 years ago, she directed a middle school version of the show as the Nipher drama teacher).

Fools will run Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. with a matinee performance at 2 p.m. on Sunday.

“I hope people bring their funny bones,” Schnider said.

“I would consider him one of my best friends. I feel like I can tell him anything and he won’t judge me,” Heuermann said. “We can be ourselves around each other and I like it that way.”

Recent surveys show 92 percent (171/185) of students have friendships with those of a different race while 31 percent (57/184) have been in an interracial relationship.

According to studies done by the Center for Public In- formation and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, this generation, ages 14-24, is the most diverse in America and is more accepting and open-minded about other people and minorities than previous generations.

“I think older people are deeply rooted in tradition, and they don’t accept people and things different from them- selves as much because they are used to the way things used to be,” Bennett Pruitt, sophomore, said. “They aren’t as accepting of change.”

Pruitt started hanging out with a different group of friends his freshman year who are mostly of a different race than himself.

“Friendships are important because if you don’t have any friends it’s kind of lonely,” Pruitt said. “It’s good when you have people there to support you or occasionally make fun of you.”

Amy Leatherberry, English teacher, met current husband eight years ago in math class during her junior year of high school. After mutual friends set them up, they began dating and as time progressed, so did their relationship.

“He’s the most important thing in my world,” Leather- berry said. “He’s pretty much my everything.”

Heuermann and Leatherberry are white, Pruitt is Thai and Alton and Leatherberry’s husband are black. To them, race does not matter.

“We all have stereotypes, but really, [people of other races] have personalities too. If you get to know someone first, than you don’t really care what race they are,” Heu- ermann said. “It’s the building blocks of friendships and relationships. Race is a minor detail because they are still a person; we are all people.”

In another study by Teenage Research Unlimited, re- searchers found 6 out of 10 teens say their friends include members of diverse racial backgrounds.

These studies show today’s teens, unlike older generations, have grown up with words like “diversity” and “equality” and many students take courses on different ethnic groups and cultures, therefore exposing them to and making them more comfortable with a wider range of people.

“I think we are not yet in a point in our society where everything and everyone is equal,” Leatherberry said. “So we still have to have conversations in order to improve things like tolerance and respect.”

According to these studies, as people become increasingly comfortable with racial and ethnical diversity and inequality, more interracial friendships and relationships are built as well as stereotypes decreased.

“The way you look isn’t something that you can control, and I don’t think it’s fair to judge someone or treat someone unfairly based on something out of their control,” Leatherberry said.

According to Heuermann, Leatherberry and Pruitt, when it comes to one’s view of diversity, people are influenced by those around them, especially their parents, teachers or friends.

“My parents always taught me that it’s not about what’s on the outside of a person but the inside,” Leatherberry said. “I’ve always judged people on the things that they say and what they do as opposed to how they look.”

Although young people have friends of other races, it does not necessarily reduce the negative attitudes they have toward a racial group. Some view their friends as an exception to the existing stereotype.

“We need to stop stereotyping and get to know people first,” Heuermann said. “All that should make a difference is having a friend by your side. It doesn’t matter if they are white, black, green, blue or red, you just have someone that understands you and that you can just call on.”

Every Thursday after school, members of the Sony Gamers’ Club swarm to Sutfin’s classroom with armfuls of video games, chargers and game consoles. Once the Playstation 3 is warm, club members enjoy an hour of social game-play.

“This is a complete getaway from real life and the stresses of school,” Sutfin, science teacher and club sponsor, said. “The kids just love it, and it’s so fun to see people so happy at school.”

According to a report by the Entertainment Software Association, video games have grown in popularity to the point where 68 percent of American households have members who play them.

“There is something to be said for the way video games are structured that allows people to take risks and fail,” Carrie Medelman, psychology teacher, said. “There are few things in life like that. If you fail at Kirkwood, it’s an F, but video games don’t work that way. In the game you figure things out because you are allowed to fail, and people who play them look into their lives for that hook.”

The rise in popularity does not mean more people are glued to their couches, unable to resist Call of Duty. Studies conducted by the University of Rochester found that high-action video games can also leave players with a heightened sense of visual perception.

When researchers administered a visual test, video gamers could identify 30 percent more of the moving objects on the screen than those who did not play high-action video games.  Researchers believe this may be due to a magnified sense of danger many players experience during game play, which could increase awareness and quicken a player’s ability to visually process an event.

Another study done by the University of Rochester suggests people who play action-packed video games are better at making quick decisions. The researchers placed dozens of 18-25 year-olds who did not regularly play video games into two groups. One group played 50 hours of Call of Duty, while the other played 50 hours of Sims, a slower-paced game.

After the 50 hours ticked away, each subject was asked to make a quick decision in several tasks designed by the researchers. In the end, researchers discovered the people who played Call of Duty were almost 25 percent faster at coming to a conclusion about the action on the screen. They even answered the same amount of questions correctly as their Sims-playing peers.

“Once gaming became national, it changed the way our attention was impacted,” Medelman said. “Gaming and the media, in general, have made our attention spans different because we are used to toggling back and forth between screens, so we are better able to focus on more things at once.”

Excessive game play does have negative effects, too. A study published in the journal Pediatrics followed 3,000 students in the third, fourth, seventh and eighth grades in Singapore.

The study found children who were less comfortable with other children spent more time playing video games. Two years later, these heavy gamers, who played an average of 31 hours a week compared with 19 hours a week for other students, were more likely to suffer from social phobias.

“It’s the type of person going into the game that really matters,” Medelman said. “If you’re already shy, than sitting in a room playing video games isn’t the best thing to do. But if you’re outgoing, you can probably get away with playing more often. Moderation is good in everything and that’s no different with video games.”

Even though Nathan Kraus, junior and president of Sony Gamers’ Club, resides over a group centered around video games, he believes the organization offers an essential social element to gaming.

“Video games can only get you so far entertainment-wise,” Kraus said. “You need reality and you need to come back to the world once in awhile. A video game is just a game, and it always will be.”

“I do not know exactly how it happened,” Moll, senior, said. “It was a really old bass that was donated to [the orchestra], and it always had big seams that were open.”
Moll said that small damages like this are expected in an older bass, and they are caused by the wood of the bass warping or changing over time. These damages do not have a critical impact on the bass’s sound.

Moll said this year, however, the bass was subject to more severe damages caused by vandalization.

“[My first reaction] was ‘why would somebody do this?’,” Moll said when she saw the three inch by six inch hole in the instrument. “Bass and cello players normally use the school instruments for class rehearsal, but now I have to bring my own bass to school every day, which is kind of a pain.”

As unfortunate as these damages are, they seem even worse once the uniqueness of the instrument is understood.

“The bass was made in 1880-something,” Patrick Jackson, orchestra director, said. “I taught a student back in 1998 in the Parkway District. Then in either 2003, ’04 or ’05, I was contacted by the family and was told that the student still had the bass but was no longer playing it and wanted me to have it.”

Jackson said he then donated the bass to the orchestra. He also said even though the bass is old, it would not crack if it fell, and the damage would have had to have been done by a person.

According to Jackson, the repair is very complicated and is being payed for by the district. Jackson also said this is not the first time he has found an orchestra instrument that has been vandalized.

“Earlier this year, there was a cello in the band room with a hole put in it about as wide as your thumb. That [repair cost] came out of our orchestra budget,” Jackson said.

Andie Barnett, sophomore, works at St. Louis Strings Violin Shop, where the bass currently resides and where the orchestra sends most of its instruments for repair, so she is able to see instruments from several different schools come into the shop for repairs.

“I have never seen anything like this. Basses and cellos usually come in for general repair, but I have not ever seen damage to an instrument as purposeful or intentional as this one,” Barnett said.

Barnett also said that the incident had an impact on the entire orchestra, making students fear the same thing may happen to their instruments.

“[The vandalization] scared a lot of people, because they are wondering if it is safe to keep their instruments at school,” Barnett said.

Jackson, Barnett and Moll all said since the occurrence, the instrument storage area in the orchestra room is constantly locked. Students needing to get an instrument from storage must be supervised by a teacher.

“People need to know how serious the problem is, and how the damage the student did to it was so detrimental. It is really a shame that this had to happen to such a great instrument,” Barnett said.

Dr. Michele Condon, Nipher principal, estimates teachers retired the paddle sometime before the 1970s, but the school has chosen to leave it on display.

“We don’t display it as a threat to the students,” Condon said. “It’s just a part of our history that should be displayed.”

Corporal punishment, or physical punishment, has begun to falter in the last few decades in the United States. According to stophitting.com, a website by The Center For Effective Discipline, 19 states still allow the use of corporal punishment in public schools, including Missouri. For Ian Madden, sophomore, the possible presence of corporal punishment in a school disturbs him.

“I understand corporal punishment in Missouri isn’t placed into practice,” Madden said. “But the fact that it’s there is scary. Schools need to encourage rational expression, not violent aggression.”

Dr. Michael Havener, principal, said KSD does not allow the use of corporal punishment because one does not need to hurt another person to teach them a lesson about right from wrong. Havener, along with the school board, believes discipline is a learning process and physical punishment is not an opportunity to learn.

Katie Phelps, special education teacher, graduated from Cor Jesu in ’93. She said teachers tapped students’ knuckles with rulers if they looked down while practicing typing.

“I didn’t question it,” Phelps said. “I wouldn’t say I appreciated it, but I can type without looking at my fingers. It was just the way it was.”

Matt Stoner, social studies teacher, attended Chaminade from 1989-1993. Before a student was completely enrolled, he had to sign a waiver that gave staff permission to use corporal punishment as discipline. His experiences with corporal punishment were different from Phelps’.

“I saw a teacher grab a student by the hair and crack his forehead against the desk a couple times to wake him up. I saw a kid get thrown into a locker once. I saw a kid get picked up in his desk and thrown out of the classroom,” Stoner said.

Stoner said students at his high school often understood and accepted the teacher’s use of corporal punishment because the student punished had earned the discipline. Stoner and his friends sometimes thought it was hysterical and laughed it off, using it as comedy. Other times, Stoner said seeing physical punishment scared them to death. What mainly stood out for Stoner was corporal punishment’s usefulness.

“Yeah, it was effective,” Stoner said. “After a few times, the kid straightened up their behavior. I think that’s why a lot of people saw the logic in it. It worked.”

Despite believing in corporal punishment’s effectiveness, Stoner does not think it belongs in public schools.

“I don’t think it has a place in public schools simply because students don’t come here voluntarily, so it’s wrong to be subjected to something like that involuntarily,” Stoner said. “You go [to private school] voluntarily, so I think there’s a difference. I think if parents agree to it, and students agree to it and teachers do it in moderation, then it has its place.”

Nancy Menchhofer, English teacher, has a different perspective on corporal punishment. For her first two years out of college in the early 1970s, Menchhofer and her husband taught at a small middle and high school in Dixie County, Florida, a place she described as a piny backwoods town with tough kids.

“We were stunned to find that corporal punishment was not only legal, but relatively common,” Menchhofer said.

At the school, teachers were allowed to use corporal punishment as long as it was with a paddle. They also had to have another teacher present to make sure the punishment was not excessive. Menchhofer refused to be a witness or use the paddle herself.

“I think the teachers probably thought I was soft for not wanting to use it, and they believed it was a useful tool,” Menchhofer said. “But my gut tells me it was ineffective.”

According to stophitting.com, 29 countries have outlawed corporal punishment. Hannah Roethemeyer, sophomore, is glad that corporal punishment is slowing down.

“It would put some sort of fear in me,” Roethemeyer said. “I’d see it as wrong, unfair and cruel.”

Madden looked at corporal punishment’s effects on academic performance.

“Students and teachers need an element of trust to learn. If the teacher used corporal punishment, you’d respect their fists, but would you respect their intellect? No,” Madden said. “It’s giving way to barbarism and savagery.”

Even as corporal punishment becomes an increasingly controversial topic with activist groups such as The Center for Effective Discipline springing up, teachers and staff members may still legally practice in Missouri. Roethemeyer hopes it ends soon.

“We’re still kids, still learning,” Roethemeyer said. “We need to know that if we mess up, we aren’t going to be beaten.”

In the KHS orchestras, students play difficult music, travel around the country to participate in contests and rehearse each day at school. But since last year, orchestra students also write letters. In order to keep fourth and fifth grade musicians in the program, each high school orchestra member is assigned a fourth grader to be pen pals with through the school year.

“We wanted a program to bring more of a connection between the high school and elementary school orchestras,” Patrick Jackson, symphonic orchestra teacher, said. “We want to know the elementary school kids as young musicians.”

One current fifth grade cellist was pen pals with a high school student during the year she was in fourth grade.

“When I got the letter I felt excited because a high schooler took time to write me,” the cellist said. “It was a lot of fun because I got to talk to someone who was way older than me.”

High school students begin the exchange by writing letters to their pen pals and mailing the letters to the elementary students’ houses. The letters describe how high school orchestra works. They explain why remaining in the program is worth it. For example, the high school orchestra students get to travel to places like Chicago, Atlanta and even New York City to participate in contests. The letters also invite the elementary school students to the high school’s winter concert and encourage them to sign up for orchestra for their fifth grade year.

“I had a fourth grader come up to me after the concert. She gave me a huge thumbs up,” Jackson said. “It’s cool to show [the elementary orchestra students] how they’ll play once they’re in high school.”

Michelle Dodson, sophomore and symphonic orchestra cellist, has exchanged letters with her elementary pen pal throughout the year. She thinks it’s fun to have a pen pal because she gets to encourage the students to play well and keep going in the program.

“I think it’s really cute because they use their big language and try to act all mature for us,” Dodson said. “They share not just music, but my pen pal shared her family and her hair color and then she talked about how she loved the violin, and what song she’s on, so it’s really good communication. It’s really good to help them and encourage them to keep going. And they seem to like it.”

Jackson is positive that the pen pal program is working. He said this year, more fourth graders continued to fifth grade orchestra than in past years. After discussing the pen pal program with parents of orchestra students at a Kirkwood Orchestra Parent Association (KOPA) meeting, he looks forward to continuing this program in the following years.

“It’s going to be interesting when the current fifth grade class [the first grade level to receive letters] are freshmen, and they will turn around and write letters to fourth graders and remember the first letter they ever got,” Jackson said. “I know it’s a really great thing we’re doing.”

American students fall 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math, according to results from the Program for International Student Assessment released last December. This data has raised eyebrows across the country about the quality of America’s schools, and more specifically, homework. According to the Economics of Education Review, homework in science, English and history has “little to no impact” on test scores.

People across America have come to different conclusions: schools are assigning too little homework and allowing students’ brains to slip away, or schools are assigning too much homework and working students too hard. In her article “The Trouble with Homework,” Annie Murphy Paul argues a completely different side: maybe the homework American students trudge through each night simply is not effective in enhancing their learning.

Out of approximately 2,300 schools nominated, the KH Players were one of 48 invited to participate in the largest arts festival in the world: the 65th annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival  in Edinburgh, Scotland July 31-Aug. 13.

“We were in awe when we were asked to go, and it was intense waiting for whether or not we could,” Meghan Tinkham, junior, said. “We were sitting on edge waiting for the call that said we were good to go. When I got the news, I was with my friend and we started jumping up and down crying. We were just so excited.”

The Adding Machine, the play which will perform at the festival summer 2012, was carefully chosen to be performed not only for KHS, but for countries around the world.

Kelly Schnider, drama teacher and KH Players sponsor, was careful to choose the play that worked best for performing at school and for traveling.

“Not only are we going to try our best to perform, but we are also representing Kirkwood High School, and we want to represent all that Kirkwood has to offer,” Lauren Kelly, junior, said. “As a theater department, we don’t always get chances like this and we are very fortunate that we do, so we are going to take this show that we had so much fun doing [at Kirkwood] and just do it again.”

Although the group has an opportunity to travel and perform their play, The Adding Machine, there are many obstacles they have to overcome to get there.

“I think everyone is really excited, but the thing that is hardest for all of us right now is all the fundraising,” Schnider said. “We have and will be doing a lot of fundraising activities pretty much non-stop all year.”

The KH Players began right away and thought of creative ways to raise money. Each student going has to pay $6,000, and they are trying to raise at least $1,500 per person (for 23 students the total is around $35,000) to help off-set the cost.

The Kilt Wars fundraiser, held during the plays, allows participants to donate a dollar to nominate the teacher they want to see wear a kilt for a day.
There was a Murder Mystery interactive theater performance that included dessert and a silent auction Dec. 2.

Some KH Player parents are hosting dinner and then taking attendants to the show that is playing at the Keating Theater at the time. There was babysitting being offered the last weekend of November and the first weekend of December for parents who needed to go shopping for the holidays.

A theater camp will be held at the end of the school year for students interesting in furthering their theater talent. At school functions there are cookbooks being sold for $15 for one or $25 for two and tip jars at concession stands that are accepting donations. So far, their fundraising efforts have raised around $22,000.

“We are trying to get people in the community as well as businesses to donate money to us, “ Tinkham said. “We are trying as hard as we can to get everyone involved.”

Schnider has no doubt the students will overcome these challenges they are facing, and she is excited to watch her students perform.

“I think the thing that marks KH Players versus another high school’s theater group is that they are dedicated and passionate about theater,” Schnider said. “They are really interested in doing it and having a good time together doing it. They always take on the challenge that we deliver them and they aren’t just in it to make themselves stars. That is a really important element to a successful group.”