Student Shoutout
From August 3 to August 8 the head debate coach, Chris Lowery hosted a Policy Debate Camp at Chesterton High School. The purpose behind the camp was to give the debate team the opportunity to become more knowledgeable and experienced about their topic before school started.
“During debate camp,” junior Sajag Agarwal said, “Mr. Lowery works with us both personally and as a group to further boost and fine-tune our debate skills. Not only that, we also work as a group to compile thousands of pages of research that is extracted from online databases and websites. This gives us a head start on getting started with our work, which helps greatly as, throughout the year, it is very hard to accommodate time to do this work especially with everyone’s respective schedules.”
Junior Sajag Agarwal took part in this camp as a Policy debater and to gain life skills he plans to incorporate into his future.
“Debate plays a vital role into my future,” Agarwal said, “since I plan on going into the business field. In order to do so, I must have good public speaking skills and be able to convince potential business partners. The Chesterton Debate Program prepares me for this by teaching me to be confident in my public speaking abilities. During competition rounds, it is my job, as well as my partner’s, to convince the judge to vote for our team. To do so, we have to be very convincing. Since debate covers a wide variety of topics, it allows me to gain persuasion skills on a wide-variety of topics. It is very hard to know your stuff and be convincing on every topic, so debate helps a lot. ”
Agarwal additionally believes that being a member of the Debate team can have a positive impact on colleges, especially for college applications.
“Debate also helps with college acceptance very much,” Agarwal said. “After actively participating in the Chesterton Debate Program for more than two years, a student can be considered the captain of the Debate team. Essentially a captain’s job is to take control and teach the younger newer students. However, the way is designed, every second-year Senior student participating in the debate program and above is responsible for working together to teach the newbies so they can all be considered captains of the debate team. On college applications, the Chesterton Debate Program is seen as extremely prestigious with all its state and national titles, which increases a captain’s chances of acceptance significantly.”
Teacher Shoutout
Chesterton High School held a College Application Camp from August 4 to August 6. This was the first year the camp was held, and it was created to lessen the stress for students applying to college.
“One of the reasons I decided to start this camp was the stress level I saw kids having as they were trying to do their applications in September and October,” Guidance Counselor Karen Moffet said. “So, we wanted to reduce that stress level for the kids.”
Moffet along with Career Center Director Gretchen Arthur, a college admissions officer, and a CHS graduate student helped the students who attended the camp to understand the college admission process. On the first day of camp, Moffet conducted “The Great Sorting Game,” in which she demonstrated how colleges select their students. Then, teachers and counselors collectively helped the camp attendees create a Common Application account, which was a process that continued through the remainder of the days at camp.
The second two days focused more on the procedure of writing an application essay. Students had the option of having a college admissions counselor personally give them advice on their essays. In addition students learned how to create a resume, make a Parchment account to send their transcripts, and how to ask for letters of recommendation.
Moffet’s advice for students applying for college is “to keep track of your schools and their deadlines and check things off as they are finished. Try not to be a procrastinator, do things little by little, and don’t let those deadlines hit you in the face.”
Although this was the first year for this camp, Moffet is confident its future success.
“I think we will [continue],” Moffet said, “because the kids that we had here this year were awesome, they were awesome workers, they were here for the most part voluntarily, they wanted to be here, they and wanted to get a head start. I think we have the need for that in our school.”
New School Year
August 19 marked the first day of the 2015 and 2016 school year. Registration for freshman and sophomores was held the prior week on August 10 and upperclassmen August 11.
This year there are seven teachers: Ben Bellinger (Social Studies), Maggie Wolgamot (English), Patty Stellfox (English), Jon Cannell (English), Steve Lombardo (Spanish), Pat Miller (Art), and Mickey Hanley (Special Education).
Principal Jeff Van Drie’s advice to these new teachers to help prepare them for their career at Chesterton High School is, “to make the professional connections in their department and building, so as to improve the resources that are at their disposal and to develop those relationships that can help them navigate through the obstacles they will eventually face in our profession.”
As the principal, Van Drie has three goals in mind that he wishes to accomplish during the new school year.
“Our three big goals for this year are, Van Drie said, “to continue to work on utilizing data to assist instruction, look for more ways to integrate technology with our curriculum, and make sure we pass the torch to our younger teachers on what makes Chesterton High School a great school.”
Van Drie also hopes to teach more students about the concept of digital citizenship throughout the year.
“One big priority is digital citizenship,” Van Drie said. “We will expand our school-wide, student-led campaign to get the point across to our students on how to make wise choices with their technology.”