Well-rested and assured their work will still get done, these students walk into their homeroom the next day only to find they will not be able to finish it at all due to another administration-scheduled event.

Academic homeroom, ideally a period intended to visit teachers and do schoolwork, is seen as a saving grace for students. For students involved in sports, music, honors and AP classes or other activities outside of school, homeroom can make a significant difference in their workload. With the constant pressure to succeed, Homeroom gives students just what they need: quiet, independent time to think and be productive.

Instead of being a useful time for studying, however, academic homeroom has become a chaotic and confusing period used for administrative convenience.

According to Dr. Mike Havener, principal, homeroom was created in 2002 to take less class time away from both teachers and students. The initial reason homeroom came to be was to help students with schoolwork and give them time to visit teachers. The second, however, was the intention to also use this time for assemblies.

The administration’s heart may be in the right place by not wanting to take time away from the classroom, but the time designed to help students academically has been turned into nothing more than an administrative period. In the second semester alone, 60 percent of independent homeroom time is expected to be taken up with administrative events. With “must-hear” announcements, surprise assemblies, scheduled meetings and club pictures, students struggle to get anything productive done.

With most classrooms holding 20 students or more, homeroom provides them with the one-on-one time with teachers that may be difficult to find. Homeroom is a unique time for students to ask questions in private and get help when they would not be able to    otherwise.

Granted, certain assemblies or other scheduled events are necessary, and homeroom may be the most convenient time for those to be scheduled. However, while the staff receives a homeroom event calendar through e-mail at the beginning of each semester from Cathy McGrath, assistant principal and head of homeroom events, the students do not. Teachers are supposed to relay McGrath’s messages, but rarely do. If students were informed as often as the teachers were of what to expect, the wariness of lost time may be met with more cooperation.

Since there are so many required assemblies for students, the administrators should consider a more efficient idea, such as setting aside one day each month to use the last hour of school specifically for announcements and assemblies. A negotiable plan would even be to sacrifice one Wednesday every month for the purposes of the administrators in order to use the other three in the month for the benefit of the students.

Imagine a world where an assembly during homeroom was an exception instead of a rule. With the flexibility of both students and staff, this dream is not far from reality.

You are sitting in English class listening to the teacher drone about the latest in-class project part of the upcoming final. The class rushes to the library computers, wanting to get the project over with as soon as possible before the day-before-it’s-due panic attack occurs. So when you get on the Internet to search a picture of a star and half the images are blocked, you don’t want to call the teacher over. No academic rejection hurts worse than access denied.
Although the Internet is a sea of information with new data pouring in every minute, the school’s filtering system is not going to help anyone. Students have to do research on those computers daily, and when pictures of trees on Google Images get censored, learning something new is more difficult to accomplish. Plus, no student wants to have to call his/her teacher over several times to unblock Youtube for the required multi-media portion of the project.

According to Michael Gavin, junior principal, Light Speed, the KHS filtering system, is based off of a federal law called the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), schools that receive funding for the Internet must take measures to keep offensive content off of their computers. While this is reasonable, there are flaws in the law. Anything on the Internet can be offensive, even topics discussed in classrooms. For example, when a science teacher was trying to look up ‘climax community,’ an innocent biology term relating to an area that has been deforested, ‘climax’ was a blocked word. Not even typing in a password and user name manually could get the information.

Nowadays, a little electronic device called a cell phone exists, and most students own this handy piece of technology. If a student was feeling rebellious and was planning on searching something inappropriate they would not be ignorant enough to do it on one of the district’s computers. As logical as a filtering system may seem to the federal government, Light Speed does not keep students from doing what they want.

Not to mention, students are young adults. Yes, some people do not know what maturity really means, but this is high school, not middle or elementary school. In college and the working world, it will be up to the students to focus and not let themselves get distracted by silly blogs and gaming websites. Filtering this much on computers is not going to teach anyone to restrain themselves from tempting situations.
While high school is a jungle of rejection, being rejected by something so important and vital to everyday learning is not easy to accept. The system should definitely still exist, but the administration should re-filter and unblock harmless words and websites.

It’s halfway through second hour and suddenly that Venti Pumpkin Spice latte no longer seems like quite as good of an idea as it did on your morning Starbucks run. You’re squirming in your seat as the teacher clicks through a PowerPoint on the ActivBoard, waiting for the first pause in the lecture. Finally it comes as the teacher stops for the class to take notes. Your hand creeps into the air. With an exasperated look, the teacher calls on you, and punctuating the sound of pencils scribbling is the dreaded and unnecessary question: “Can I go to the bathroom?”

On one hand, the teacher can say yes, and you can make your merry way to the bathroom. On the other hand, the teacher can say no, whether it’s because you just came from lunch, or class is almost over, or she thinks you can certainly wait until after the PowerPoint.

Certainly whether or not they need to go to the bathroom is a decision KHS students, some of which are legal adults, can make on their own.

This is a plea to teachers. Some already employ a policy which mimics real life. You have to go to the bathroom, so you go. Students are given free rein to recognize their own bodily needs, stand up without fuss, grab a pass and head to the restroom. Class continues without any interruption, and students’ needs are addressed quickly and appropriately.

Students are completely able of knowing when exactly they need to go to the bathroom. Having to ask permission to fulfill such a basic human need reduces students. Despite the argument that teachers need control of their classrooms, until students show they are unable to handle such a large responsibility as relieving themselves, they should not be punished. Even if that turns out to be the case, individual students should be dealt with, not the student body as a whole.

For now, teachers should let their students make their own decisions regarding when they take bathroom breaks. The best policy is to let them grab a pass, absolutely no questions asked.

While it may be true that the lack of a structured time schedule could lead to teachers holding students late, the flexibility prepares students for the real world. At the end of classes, they are not herded out of the classroom like sheep. Instead, they are dismissed like adults. Most colleges do not have a bell system, and most professors will not care what time class lets out if they are not finished with their lectures. The ability for students to adapt to different situations prepares them for college life, and this is just another opportunity to make high school feel more like the outside world, away from pampering and overprotection.

Several other high schools in the country have eliminated the use of bells to mark the ends of periods. In South Carolina, West Bladen High School implemented a no-bell policy this year. Todd Finn, principal of West Bladen, said to local news station WETC that the lack of bells has drastically reduced the number of tardies. In the short time during which KHS has been bell-free, Dr. Michael Havener, principal, said tardies were cut in half.

The decision on whether or not the bell policy should change is a critical one. The lack of bells is, without a doubt, an improvement from the former policy. With this new no-bell policy, students are self-responsible, a change that is welcome at KHS. With change comes improvement, and with improvement comes innovation. Ineffective systems should be developed, and as of now, this new development to an ineffective system seems to be doing just fine.

Although the law was generally rejected by the public, its purpose is one everyone should agree with: the protection of students.  There is precedent for teachers behaving inappropriately toward their students, and virtual communication opens another door for exactly that. An administrator should not, however, need to view every virtual conversation between a student and teacher; a district needs to trust its teachers and allow them to make the most of educational opportunities.

Granted, districts need to monitor their teachers in order to ensure the safety of the students. However, an administrator is not there for every one-on-one classroom conversation. The idea seems laughable, no? A social studies teacher and his student are oh-so-scandalously discussing patterns in U.S. history. Somebody get Mr. Wade on the phone.

According to Rick Stream, Missouri Representative, most of the legislators who voted on the law aren’t acclimated with Facebook, and the legislators did not ask the opinion of students and teachers.
“[The law] was more of a preventative measure,” Stream said.

That’s right. This law was not a response to anything; there was no incident. Sorry, Missouri legislature, but students do not need to wear gloves every time they pet a dog just in case it bites. For now, districts need to trust the people they hire to use social networking and electronic communication responsibly.

Facebook, Twitter, texting and GoogleDocs are immensely useful educational tools. AP classes use Facebook groups or texting to discuss difficult homework problems, and an administrator does not want or need to receive every text from an AP Chemistry student needing to know the difference between enthalpy and entropy. Also, if students can ask such questions over text or Facebook, the teacher can move forward more quickly in class (instead of covering the oh-so-obvious differences between entropy and enthalpy). Districts should not discourage use of social media; they should encourage it.

The Missouri legislature removed the law because it recognizes that, without question, it was wrong to write a restrictive law without surveying the people involved first (or at least using the technology involved). Districts need to trust their employees to responsibly use a tool that can enhance the education of their students, and Missouri legislators need to avoid making laws about technologies they do not use.

In what ways did ideas and values by Puritans influence the political, economic and social development of the New England colonies from 1630 through the 1660s?

In the 2012-13 school year, The College Board will introduce a program titled the “New AP,” beginning with biology and United States History. AP Biology and AP United States History students will have a shorter curriculum that leads to a better understanding of concepts and a more manageable AP exam.

Currently, the standard AP United States History textbook contains 32 chapters and covers from the late 15th century until the late 20th century, and the AP Biology textbook has 55 chapters and approximately 1,400 pages. Because the test is a nationwide exam instead of one given by a specific professor, AP students often learn more about a subject than most college freshmen.

“In a class like AP U.S. the way it is now, you aren’t going to be able to go into the exam and feel like you know everything that happened in U.S. history,” Tucker said. “That’s not possible in a one-year course that meets for an hour a day.”

Steve Platte, AP United States History teacher, volunteered to give the program a test-run.

“I think concepts are the most important things we teach,” Platte said. “You should know basic facts and chronology, but the historical significance of the concepts is what makes history relevant.”

Platte believes a more concept-based course will be more like a college class, which AP classes are supposed to resemble.

“What historians and college history students do is not memorization of facts,” Platte said. “They delve deep into ideas that helped to shape our country’s history. I’ve always tried to help my students do that, so my teaching should be more in tune with the new AP curriculum. And I’m excited about that.”

The College Board should not stop the curriculum reforming at AP Biology and United States history; it should reform all of the AP curriculums and tests to allow for a better understanding of the material and a more in-depth subject coverage.

The Advanced Placement classes still need to be challenging for the elite academic students of the school. The extreme difficulty of the classes, however, can be sacrificed so that the students can have a better understanding of the general concepts instead of memorizing specifics.

The AP Chemistry book, for example, has 22 chapters, covering everything from Osmotic pressure to catalysis to the chemical equilibrium constant. To make matters more difficult, any of the material is fair game on the AP exam. However, if The College Board applies the New AP theory to chemistry, the teacher will have a more guided syllabus and will be able to teach the students general concepts that have a high likelihood of appearing on the exam itself. This is the first time The College Board has given teachers an AP curriculum framework.

In fact, The College Board has preliminary plans to extend the New AP beyond Biology and US History. By 2014-15, AP Physics, AP Chem and AP World will all have curriculum based on the New AP.

The College Board needs to continue to expand the New AP to all AP courses. That way, students will not need to meticulously pore over textbooks containing every single law that governs our universe or every single empire, dictator and ancient society that has ever existed.

It sounds like something out of a World War II novel. So why is it part of our school system? Class rank has reduced students to nothing more than digits racing to the next AP class, obsessed with where they rank among their classmates and stressing about becoming better. The contradictory statements of “do what you love” and “do what is best for your grades” are nothing new to students who worry about GPA. It has become so important for students to set themselves apart from classmates that enrolling in courses to raise GPA has replaced the idea of taking classes due to interest in the subject.

And the results?

Five hours of uninteresting and difficult homework from GPA-boosting classes. Purple under-eye circles caused by a lack of sleep. Students roaming the halls with bald patches from stressed hair-pulling when juggling schoolwork with a job, extracurriculars and a social life become more than a teenager can handle.

“[Class rank] makes it really easy to compare kids mathematically or statistically but not really accurately,” said John Carpenter, independent college counselor and owner of the web site www.askjohnaboutcollege.com, who helps high school students during the college process.

It all leads to the main question: why does class rank matter?

“For every [student] it motivates, it could discourage others,” Tom Gaither-Ganim, KHS educational support counselor, said. “Class rank is probably the most relevant to colleges, which begs the argument that rank be confidential and exclusive to admissions.”

Much of the time, it isn’t even relevant. Many respectable schools do not care about class rank. Princeton, the second best ranked school in the nation, does not believe in the use of class rank for applicants. Neither does Washington University in St. Louis, ranked 13. Even number 15, Brown University, does not require a high class rank to apply, believing student admissions should not be fully based on class rank without other factors taken into consideration.

Some schools have even eliminated the concept of class rank all together. Locally, Clayton High School and St. Louis University High (SLUH) have abolished the system entirely.

“We were finding our students were being penalized by rank,” Mary Michalski, SLUH college counselor, said. “If anything, eliminating class rank has helped our students in the admission and scholarship process since they aren’t labeled by a rank. Instead, the colleges and universities focus on the students grades and courses they have taken.”

Class rank is only helpful to students high on the list. For the rest, it is a hindrance. A math prodigy can be eliminated from college consideration simply because he struggles with essays and chooses to protect his GPA by taking regular English classes. Listing him with students who are gifted in all academic areas is an unfair representation of his actual intelligence. For students who excel in specific areas but struggle in others, class rank makes them appear less intelligent and limits college opportunities.

“It’s hard to rank effort, it’s easier to rank results.” Gaither-Ganim said. “It’s more important for students to strive for personal bests, rather than besting others.”

Every student is different and they all have unique circumstances that affect their grades, their class choices and, yes, their class rank. Even some members of the KHS faculty do not see the fairness in pinning a label on students.

“I wouldn’t do what I do if I thought every student was a class rank, a GPA or a test score,” Abby Peterson, KHS college counselor, said. “Everyone is an individual.”

GPA is not the problem. Ranking students without taking other circumstances into consideration is. Keep GPA, but eliminate class rank. This way, students can still see how they are doing on a personal basis without being pitted against other students based on one aspect.

Last time we checked, individuals are significantly more complex than a number.

According to the Collegiate Employment Research Institute, where 31 percent of parents submit resumes on behalf of their children, 26 percent actively promote their kids for positions and 4 percent actually attend the job interviews. This puts into question the parents’ roles, not only to a child’s well-being, but also in coining the phrase “helicopter parenting.”

This phrase is tagged to parents who hover closely above their children, rarely out of reach, whether their kids need them or not. In fear of not just physical harm but unfair treatment at school, these parents rush in to prevent any pain that could transpire.

The truth is, however, it is sometimes beneficial for a child to be frustrated, disheartened or hurt. People learn as they live. If kids are rescued from their emotional states, how do you think they’re going to handle similar emotional states as adults? The answer is simple: poorly.

Parents tend to struggle with knowing when to give freedom to their child and how to teach measured risk. It is a type of risk with consequences that is not too great but extensive enough to demonstrate a lesson in a safe manner. With risk comes reward.

Sure, parents have life experiences and learned values that kids are unfamiliar with. This has a powerful importance in certain circumstances, but for high schoolers to become adults requires greater self-sufficiency. Figuring how best to teach that can be a challenge to several parents.

Children are being protected to a point that threatens their ability later in life to break off on their own and form proper job skills and healthy relationships. Parents do not realize the damage they are doing to their kids by fighting battles for them. This is not beneficial to them becoming independent adults who make their own decisions, accept consequences and rave in their own success. Helicopter parents introduce self-doubt and make kids lazy. If children never learn how to be independent, they will have little confidence in their ability to handle problems on their own.

With goals of perfection in raising their kids, parents try to create an extraordinary figure of a child instead of a child. The focus turns into what the kid could be, not what the kid actually is. The fact is the kid will become an adult and nothing will stop that, not even a little stubbornness.

It’s not very often that a penny spent means 3.5 cents earned, but Kirkwood has some lucky exceptions: Propositions 1 and 2. The Board of Education approved the resolution calling for a bond election in the Kirkwood School District Nov. 2, with a vote of 6-0. There has been controversy over approval of the bonds, but the potential benefits for Kirkwood schools and the community far outweigh any objections. After collecting facts and figures The Kirkwood Call voted to fully endorse the passage of both Proposition 1 and Proposition 2 in the upcoming election.

Many people are confused about the details of each proposition and need clarification. Proposition 1 is a no-tax-rate-increase bond whose cost comes to approximately $33.5 million. The majority of the money will go toward providing enough classrooms so that all students can attend kindergarten in their home school. Currently, North Glendale, Robinson and Keysor elementary buildings do not even have the capacity to serve all of their current kindergarten students. With those additions will also come improved traffic flow at the elementary schools. Every day as Keysor lets out, traffic on Geyer Road comes to a standstill. Not only is this a risk to the students, but to the drivers trying to get by as well. Prop. 1 will improve this by moving student drop offs and pick ups onto the school property instead of on the street.

North Glendale, Robinson and Keysor need additional gyms, multipurpose rooms and cafeterias as well. Security is not up to standard and getting there means moving the front offices to centralized locations in the Robinson and Keysor elementary buildings. Last but not least, both Nipher and North Kirkwood Middle Schools are in desperate need of new science classrooms.

Proposition 2 will mean a 4.5 cent (estimated) tax increase for an approximately $14.8 million project. This project is under the highest scrutiny since this would bring an aquatic center to KHS. Many argue  the pool is unnecessary and too expensive in this economy, but the benefit-to-the-community estimates show otherwise. More important is the consideration that there’s much more riding on this bond than our swim team’s accommodations. One of these issues is improvement of handicapped accessibility to Lyons Stadium. Not only this, but the bond will replace home bleachers, press box, create a new entrance and renovate restrooms, fencing and sound system. After this there will be improvements to the baseball and softball fields at KHS. Additionally synthetic turf might be added to the upper fields for soccer, field hockey, lacrosse and physical education. The middle schools need help too, and field changes at both Nipher and North Kirkwood Middle Schools will be made, with a new track at Nipher Middle School. Finally, the addition of an indoor swimming pool for physical education classes, school and club swim teams will also be open to the public for swimming and other school and community recreation needs.

Together the two separate issues will provide approximately $48.3 million for renovation, construction and improvements to Kirkwood schools. At a cost of approximately 4.5 cents per $100 in taxes the propositions will put 400 people to work in the community. According to Heidi Meckes, chair of the board considering Prop. 1 and 2, the total benefit to the community would be around $168 million, almost 3.5 times the amount of cost for the projects. It’s not every day that a penny spent can mean that many earned.

A proposal to build an Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City has created a polarizing debate from coast to coast on whether this is appropriate. The staff of

As of late, people in this country seem to be confusing fact with fiction. The current issue with the New York City mosque is not an exception. Their confusion is understandable, seeing as there are dozens of news stations each spewing their variations of the truth, but when it comes to important issues like the mosque, accuracy is vital.

These are the facts:

1. Sept. 11, 2001, four commercial planes were hijacked, two of which were intentionally crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, claiming nearly 3,000 lives from 115 different nations.

2. The hijackers were members of al-Qaeda, an international terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden.

3. Nine years later, Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder and CEO of the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), has decided to build an Islamic community center two blocks from the site of where the Twin Towers crumbled, sparking a nationwide debate over whether this mosque should be built at this controversial location.

The United States might miss a perfect chance to demonstrate to the rest of the world what we are all about. Were we not developed on the belief that we have certain rights that no one can take away from us? Did these rights not include the freedom of religion and peaceful assembly? Or was there a subtext hidden in our Constitution stating that freedom of religion and peaceful assembly are only offered so long as the location is pleasant for everyone else?

“We are Americans, each with an equal right to worship and pray where we choose,” Michael Bloomberg, New York mayor, said. “There is nowhere in the five boroughs of New York City that is off limits to any religion.”

Couldn’t agree more, Mr. Bloomberg.

At any rate, many Americans seem to be buying into the misconception that this Islamic center will be built atop the ashes of the fallen towers. This is completely false; two long blocks separate Ground Zero from the community center. But in all honesty, why should it matter? The people guilty of the tragedy that occurred on Sept. 11 nine years ago would not be the people praying at this mosque.

“Al-Qaeda was responsible [for 9/11], but that doesn’t mean the whole Muslim religion should be indicted,” Republican Rep. Ron Paul said. “[Timothy] McVeigh probably was a Christian and he bombed the Oklahoma federal building [in 1995, killing 167 people]. But does that mean a Christian church can’t be built near there and Christianity is blamed?”

Stereotypes are tearing our country apart from sea to shining sea. Within one year of the World Trade bombing, 1,714 hate crimes were reported to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Many people in the U.S. seem to have forgotten that Muslim does not equal terrorist.

As said by Daisy Khan, the executive director of the ASMA, “9/11 was our tragedy as much as it was anyone else’s tragedy.”

We see no reason this Islamic center should not be built. The whole point of America is freedom. Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, or even the simple ability to be free.

These are the facts.