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.”