Art is one thing that the high school is not known for. Michelle Surrena has a new project in mind that could change that.

Recently, the high school added an up-cycle art class as an elective. This class is taught by none other than Michelle Surrena. This class utilizes old, recycled material to make new, beautiful creations. Currently, they are working on creating a bouquet of flowers using recycled book pages.

“This class is really great. I’m so glad that I took it. It feels good to make beautiful things out of junk,” senior Molly Divine said.

Surrena plans on putting her book page bouquets throughout the school, mainly in Joshua’s. She’s already doing things to integrate artwork into our school, however, her next project requires some help from the student body.

“I’m going to need between 200-500 water bottles for this project. I need a lot of help from you students,” Surrena said.

Surrena plans on creating a chandelier to place in the middle of the commons to bring beauty into the school. She’s basing her vision off of glass blowing artist Dale Chihully who creates magnificent sculptures from glass and paint. She cannot do this with actual glass however, so she is attempting to use water bottles instead.

“I’m on a mission. The possibilities of this are great.” Surrena said.

Surrena does have more than one art class and plans to use that to her advantage. She wants to have a “Chihully day” where all of her students contribute to her cause. They are going to bring in water bottles and help construct the chandelier.

In order to make a great sculpture, they need a lot of water bottles. The process of creating the sculpture is simple, get the water bottles, cut them into shapes, paint them and string wire through them. After all of that, they wire them together to create fascinating and intricate sculptures

“We have a really cool opportunity to bring a really unique and beautiful piece of art into our school. I’m very excited to be a part of it.” Sophomore and up-cycle class student Lily Warren said.

Integrating beautiful artwork into our school is Michelle Surrena’s mission. She can make her dream a reality with the efforts of us, the students. Surrena needs 500 water bottles. Make it happen.

To attribute the multiple cultures across the world, the high school’s foreign language classes will participate in a World Language Week celebration.

World Language Week is celebrated from March 16 to March 20.

The activities students participate in earned them stamps, which form into something representing a passport.

In order to prepare, classes hosted many different activities, beginning as early as March 9.

Students are able to create a “Mini Mural,” which would promote WLW. These murals would later be sent to elementary schools so they could color them. Along with this, students could design a poster and submit it in a contest. The deadline for this contest was March 12.

The last activity students could do to prepare for this celebration was donating to the funds to build a Stow school in Mali. They can bring in money Mon., March 9 through Thurs., March 19, and the class who raised the most money was awarded with a donut party.

If all the classes raise $500, Latin teachers Peter Lund and Christopher Fonda will have their heads shaved in the commons.

Students can also teach a lesson to another class, which would earn them two stamps. If a student correctly completed the Teacher Travel Trivia Quiz, he/she earned one stamp. Two other week long activities to earn one stamp are having a conversation with any teacher outside of the foreign language department and wearing a t-shirt that related to one of the world languages.

Day-by-day activities are also available for students.

On Monday, they can participate in a door decorating contest with up to three friends. Doing this would earn the students one stamp each.

On Thursday, students can write a paragraph summary of their favorite and least favorite movie. The review is to be written in the foreign language the student is taking. Also on Thursday, students could visit the local Sweet Frog, where DECA was holding a fund raiser for their Stow school in Mali. In order to earn a stamp for doing this, students were required to bring in their receipt or show their teacher a picture of them enjoying their frozen yogurt.

On Friday, each foreign language class will participate in a trivia day. The students who won each received one stamp.

Spanish teacher Jennifer Hasebein said, “It allows us to celebrate and promote cultural diversity in our school and community.”

DECA students from the high school  travelled to Columbus to compete at states. They competed in different categories to determine the best business salesman/woman.

Students who placed high enough will go on to further competitions. Any student who placed 4th and up in a competition was invited to go to the next one as well.

Distributive Education Clubs of America, DECA, is a way for high school and college students to prepare for their future, or current, college major.

DECA has 200,000 high school members with DECA clubs in 3,500 schools worldwide. DECA also has 15,000 college members with DECA in 275 colleges.

DECA is in all 50 states. Also, it is in The District of Columbia, Canada, China, Germany, Guam, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Spain.

One reason DECA was created is to help people become better equipped to start their own business and handle all the affairs of their business.

The main idea of DECA is to help students planning to major in entrepreneurship, marketing, finance, hospitality and management. DECA will help work with students and give them the skills they need.

DECA is not only for students planning to major in those areas: DECA also works to help further student’s knowledge in teamwork skills, leadership and individual growth.

By teaching students teamwork skills, leadership and growth, the program will help students later on in life. These skillsets are needed in every major for college, and also in the real world.

Each DECA competition has five different subjects students can compete in; business management and administration, entrepreneurship, marketing, finance and hospitality and tourism.

More specific subjects students can compete in are sports, hospitality, sales, human resources, marketing communications, business services, retail, advertising, fashion, entrepreneurship and accounting.

All five categories have more specific and detailed subcategories for the students to choose from. There is about 56 subcategories all together.

Students can compete solo in competitions, and people who placed first through fifth got to advance to state level. Students can also compete in two person teams, and the top three, they advance to state level.

“Those in the top four or five of their event can continue onto nationals which is in Orlando, Florida this April,” Lisa Mowles, one of the DECA advisors, said.

Stow’s DECA has 30 students who competed to win a spot in the state level competition. Of the 30 students that qualified, 25 of them made it to states.

High school students from all over the country compete in DECA competitions, including some college students. There is a DECA organization in all 50 states.

Stow is part of DECA’s district XI. District XI includes: Stow, Tallmadge, Kent Roosevelt, Firestone, Coventry, Wadsworth, Barberton, Springfield, Buchtel, Kenmore, Trumbell Country Career Center and East.

The high school book club was given a great honor for the 2014- 2015 school year; they were given the opportunity to review books written by unknown authors.

The book club has teamed up with the Teens Top Ten, or T.T.T., which is a national teen reader’s choice award to pick the favorite teen book of the year. The high school was one of only 16 schools and libraries  picked to participate.

Publishers send the school copies of teen books that have yet to be published before they hit the shelves. Book club members read the books and review them, which are sent to the publishers to read. The students also nominate the books for awards such as the T.T.T.

The program motivates teens to read and to be able to critically evaluate the literature and analyze it. The students are considered book reviewers. The books are not only for members of the club, students are welcome to drop in the library and take a book to read. During the high school orientation, middle schoolers are also showing interest in the program.

The reviews are written and submitted to YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services association. Christina, the stow Public teen librarian nominated the Stow students to review the books by submitting a bio on the students and what they do.

YALSA was founded in 1957, and is a national association of librarians, library workers and advocates whose mission is to expand and strengthen library services for teens aged 12-18. Through its member-driven advocacy, research, and professional development initiatives, YALSA builds the capacity of libraries and librarians to engage, serve and empower teens, which gives teen the power to review and pick their favorite book, as a professional book critic would.

The book club meets one Thursday a month and many times during the summer at the Stow Monroe Falls Public Library. During the school year, students are able to visit book club during lunch periods or study halls. Students are encouraged to take as many books as they want when at meetings but are urged to make reviews.

The program promotes reading, it demonstrates that reading is still big and  high school kids are reading more independently than they ever have, checkouts are constant, we have a lot of readers here. The high school has also teamed up with the stow public library and Kent state, along with YALSA and T.T.T.

School Librarian Kelly Lanci said, “ I think that sometimes with the new technology and with the way libraries are changing, for the better, for the twenty first century, a lot of times people are very opinionated about libraries and assume or think that we don’t like books anymore, that we don’t promote reading, we don’t want kids reading the newest titles and that is far from the truth. This honor proves that reading is happening, that we love our books, ebook or not.”