What's recently happened:
From December 21, 2021, to January 4, 2022, Kouts High School (KHS) students and faculty had the opportunity to enjoy winter break.
Whether it was getting extra sleep, watching the first snowfall, spending time with family or opening presents on Christmas Day, winter break means something special to everyone at KHS.
"The best part of break was getting to go to Ohio to see my cousins," said Alexandra Burrick, a sophomore at KHS
Even though great memories were made, the time for vacation is unfortunately over. The time for focusing on learning has returned once again. Staff members returned to the building Tuesday, January 4, to prepare for the students to resume class the following day. Wednesday, January 5, marks the beginning of the second semester in the 2021-2022 school year. The halfway point has been reached.
What’s coming up:
The end of winter break means the beginning of spring sports at KHS, though Mother Nature might disagree. Track and field and baseball will fade in as basketball and cheer fade out.
Conditioning for spring sports will start the week after students return from winter break, and the regular season is quickly approaching in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, as its season is wrapping up, the boys' basketball team is undefeated in the Porter County Conference (PCC) as of December 28, and the girls' basketball team is 4-1 as of December 20. It can't be denied that there is never a dull moment in the athletics department at KHS.
Along with spring sports, there are extracurriculars as soon as break ends.
First, there is the academic super bowl, a series of team competitions covering multiple subjects under an overarching theme. This year's theme is Canada.
And there is quiz bowl, a fast-paced Jeopardy-like team competition with a random assortment of questions.
With little time to prepare before the start of the competitions, academic bowl and quiz bowl team members have already met before the break to kick off learning this year’s material.
Staff Spotlight
Lauren Angeles has been a teacher at KHS since 1997, where she teaches exploratory Spanish for middle school and Spanish levels I through IV for high school.
Angeles also leads the Spanish club to further interest and discover more about the culture of Spanish-speaking countries in a more flexible environment.
Angeles found her love for teaching while in college when she took an intro to teaching course where she had to observe classrooms
“I had such a good experience with those kids; I caught the teaching bug," she said.
Angeles loves what she does to nurture successful students.
“It draws on so many different things I like to do. I love everything that I have to do," she said.
Angeles loves traveling and learning about different cultures and languages, grammar, and working with people. She translates these passions to create lessons where her students are curious and excited to learn.
"Teaching always brings something new," she said. “I was always afraid I’d be stuck in a cubicle for the rest of my life as some kind of business person, and that wouldn’t appeal to me at all."
Of course, teachers never stop learning, and an important thing Angeles has learned while being a teacher is resilience.
"In the sense of never giving up, never surrendering; just keep plugging along until you get it. I hope I model that grit that I think people need to be successful in whatever they do,” she said.
Student Spotlight
Jaslyn Burdette, a junior at KHS, has had an art project featured in the upstairs hallway. Her project was an in-class assignment to create a pointillism piece after viewing inspiration art by Vincent Van Gogh, a famous pointillism artist.
Pointillism is the art of applying several tiny dots onto a canvas to create a whole image. While most pointillism works use color, Burdette chose to work with the positive and negative space, or the filled or unfilled space in a canvas and created a black and white image. Her image is the back of a female subject wearing Nike.
“The challenge was getting all of the dots in the right places hoping I didn’t put too many as I was using a marker and didn’t have any way to remove them if I messed up,” she said.
A strength of Burdette is her attention to detail but keeping the bigger picture in mind. This strength works tremendously for pointillism.
Seeing the finished piece was Burdette’s favorite part of the whole project, and she learned she had a talent for pointillism.
When not using her creative talent in drawing class, Burdette is known to doodle and give these drawings to her friends often on their lockers.