During the snowstorm in the early morning on Sunday, Jan. 11, most AHS students were warm in their beds. Thirteen juniors and seniors, however, were camped out in the woods of Townsend State Forest for the unique final of their semesterlong Survival and Wilderness Camping course. 

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Oct. 7, 2008: Don Bockler remembered as a quiet legend at A.H.S.

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The class, now taught by physical education teacher Bob Tremblay, has an illustrious history. It was started more than 35 years ago by former AHS biology teachers, the late Don Bockler and his wife, Marzina.

A double period at Menotomy Rocks Park, once every seven-day rotation, gives students the chance to practice the skills they learn. Building shelters in groups and then by themselves helps the students to feel comfortable out in the woods. Tremblay also teaches the students how to build and maintain a fire, a key to staying warm and dry in the middle of winter.

When the program began, students were given a raw chicken and a potato to eat. Now students receive two Ziploc bags with Ramen noodles, mac 'n' cheese, oatmeal, cocoa, cheese, a pepperoni stick, bagels, and fruit. With a pot and a jug of water, they are left to create their own menu and dining schedule.

Another change is that students were once given only three matches to light their fire. Now students get six matches, but most students do not use all of them. The purpose of the trip is not to deprive students but show them how well they can live with limited resources.

Some students rise to the challenge of living through the weekend using only magnesium and a striker, making the matches superfluous. The experience of having to be creative in a solo situation builds self-esteem and gives the survivors pride in their accomplishments, according to Tremblay.

Tremblay hires parents, friends and former survival students to form a base camp of people to support the students on solo. Being lonely and needing to talk to someone do not count as failures of the solo; neither does the inability to start a fire on the first try. It is all a learning experience.

The base camp staff is present in case of any emergencies. "We walk the trail 16 times during the night," Tremblay says. Only one student this year needed to use the SOS whistle signal set up by the base camp, and the frostbite on his toes was taken care of easily. This year's students all finished out the four days by themselves in the woods, a first for the all classes taught by Tremblay.

Despite single-digit temperatures and some trouble getting fires started, almost all students had positive memories of their time in the woods.

Molly Knobloch, a senior, said, "My favorite thing about the whole experience was that I didn’t have to talk to anyone.” Another senior, Henrietta Matheson, agreed, “I was really proud about not freaking out about being by myself in the woods."

Tremblay, who has taught the class at AHS for five years, says: "It's a very old tradition to have young people go off on a vision quest. I get so excited seeing these students pull it off. It's so rewarding. By the end of the four days, they belong there [in the woods] as much as anything else.

"Looking back, the survivors concurred with Matheson's opinion: "The days were awesome. The nights were cold." They also agreed with senior Alex Geller, who said, "We had such a successful trip."

Bethany Stobbe is a senior honors journalism student at Arlington High School and co-editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper, The Ponder Report. She took the photographs used in this story.

Squad seeks to rebuild

In the cold, dead heart of winter, let's have a swing at some warm thoughts about golf.

The Arlington High School squad had a year perhaps some would like to forget, yet it's worth teeing up what may be best about last fall's team and look ahead to rebuilding.

As fall blew by us, the AHS golf season ended -- and just in time. The team's final record was 2-14-1.

That record looks a lot worse than the players really did, considering what they had to go through. This was a tough transition year, moving from the Greater Boston League to the much stronger Dual County League. The team also had to overcome the loss of seven seniors last year.

Despite these two obstacles, the golfers were able to pick up wins against two solid teams -- Watertown, a nonleague game, and Tyngsboro. Senior Captain Alex Schreiber called the 2008 season a "rebuilding year," mainly because the younger players were gaining more experience, and their golf program is growing more popular each year. This will besure to bring interest to young players that haven’t reached high schoolyet and kids that may want to play next year.

The team consists of 14 players; eight of them play regularly, while four of them fill in the seventh and eighth position. The other two don't play on a regular basis.

In late August, interested golfers attend tryouts at AHS. According to sophomore Matt Plourde, "The tryouts are basically hitting balls into a net so that the coach can evaluate your swing. Then [you] go out to the baseball field and hit real balls to an orange cone about 110 yards out. The coach checks your accuracy."

If these two tests are passed and the golfer trying out makes the team, he or she will eventually be placed into slots. The position of these slots is based on the team member's skills. A player that is considered to be one of the best on the team will be placed in the first slot. Another good player will be placed into the second slot, and it goes on in descending order.

This setup helps two competing teams match up; one team's top players will face the other team's best. The winner of these individual matches’ gains a point for the team, leading, one hopes, to an overall victory.

The switch from the Greater Boston League to the Dual County League was a major change. Over the past few years, Dual County was a lot more challenging than the GBL.

Schreiber said, "The individuals on every team were a lot more enthusiastic than the players in the GBL. Most of the kids are members of one or more country clubs and play all year round." The average scores for the DCL were a lot lower than the GBL.

At the end of the season, the top two players from each team are selected to play in the Dual County All-Star game. Schreiber and Stephen Leveroni from AHS were selected to play this year.

Coaches from different teams vote for what kids should play in the All-Star game. The game was played at Quail Ridge in Acton. It was 18 holes of stroke play (every stroke is counted, and the lowest score wins). Stroke play is different from the regular season, which is match play (one who wins the most holes).

The Arlington High School golf team finished its season Oct. 16 with a 6 to 6 tie against Bedford. That brought its overall record for the season to 2-14-1.

"I would like to see the team have as much fun as possible while playing a sport that they enjoy." 

This story was written by Arlington High School students Nick Schaejbe and Mike Griffin, both seniors.

Lisa Deeley Smith, director of Village Help for South Sudan, reflects on the recent progress and images that have arrived from the school that Arlingtonians and others have built in the village of Wunlang:

I was chagrined that I couldn’t accompany Franco Majok, the executive director of Village Help for South Sudan, on his mid-November trip to the remote part of Southern Sudan where we are building a school. But I got to play a part when, the day after Thanksgiving, Franco began e-mailing me photos (more than 100, five at a time!) of the school we had built in Wunlang.

I just marveled over the photos. In January 2008, we had serious doubts whether we could build the school we wanted. But by negotiating with a local contractor, shopping hard for construction materials in Sudan and Uganda, and with the work of our field manager and his assistant, construction started in March.

We got the first photos of construction some months later. Franco was present when our desks were being made on-site by a South Sudanese carpenter and his crew. And now, here were boys and girls sitting at their new desks in their new school.

They were using textbooks from UNICEF, which our headmaster acquired because now, with a building, we meet UNICEF’s criteria for distribution. With the help of many, including the members and youth of St. Paul Lutheran Church and Trinity Baptist Church and private donors here in Arlington, we had done it.

Then to work: I spent the day editing and posting the photos to our photo-hosting site, www.wunlang.smugmug.com. The photos were also being incorporated into the Powerpoint presentations we give all over the US, and soon, in Canada.

I got the raw video from Franco’s trip before Christmas. But then there was, well, Christmas, so I began editing and posting the footage this week. Our treasurer Ron Moulton and I had each posted a few videos to YouTube, but now we have our own channel, www.youtube.com/WunlangSchool. I’m still adding videos to that, and adding videos to our Smugmug site also. We hope to have our own Web site, www.villagehelpforsouthsudan.org, revised soon to showcase our accomplishments.

I know many people want to say good riddance to 2008. But for me, that year will always be the year we built a school in Wunlang, South Sudan.

The tiers are reevaluated every two years based on the size of the school and how each is competing. Each section must have the same number of teams so that it is balanced. 

"The goal of making sure the leagues are even in both size and competition is so that there will be as many champions as possible,” Dever says. “It helps prevent one team from dominating for multiple years.”

AHS switched out because the "GBL was starting to break up, and the DCL was looking for two teams, one for the large and small tier, and AHS was a perfect fit along with Waltham," Dever says.
 
Another reason, he says, was that the DCL could get two Super Bowl births for football, one from each tier. This is still being determined, however.

"The goal of making sure the leagues are even
in both size and competition is so that
there will be as many champions as possible.
It helps prevent one team from dominating
for multiple years."

Ted Dever, AHS athletics director

All AHS teams are part of the small tier of the DCL, but their schedules vary, because not all the other schools have a team for each sport. The division also varies depending on the sport.

Hockey is different in both aspects. That's because it is Division I and is also combined with the Merrimack Valley League as well as the Dual County because of the lack of teams.

Responses positive to 2-tier

Responses from teams have been positive regarding the two-tier system. Senior cross-country captain John Jantz says, "It was probably a good idea because it is a big league, and it needs to be split up."

Another senior, Trevor Pitts, of the football team, agrees because "better teams compete against better opponents, and it gives the smaller teams more of a chance."

The transformation has been as smooth as it could be, considering that according to Mr. Dever he is the “only athletic director in the DCL who is not full time.” The games have been easy enough to plan and carry out.
 
It has not been as smooth for the parents of athletes because they have all these new places they must find if they wish to watch the games involving their son or daughter. They must travel farther, and it is costly, considering the gas prices.
 
Comparisons between the DCL and GBL vary from sport to sport, but most athletes would say that it is a new test that they are happy to accept. Jantz likes the change because "it is more competitive, and it means more to get a win."
 
Transitioning has involved major adjustments for all the teams.

"The football team has had to learn the offenses and defenses of new [lineups]," Pitts says.

Jantz adds, "The programs are a lot bigger and serious, and we have to run more in the woods rather than parks."

Every team makes changes 

Every team has had to make changes. Senior Erik Gonsiorowski says, "the boy's soccer team has been playing to contain more and [has been] able to stack up well against physical and fast players who have skill to alter a game in a heartbeat. We changed our formation to try and account for this, but we are still fiddling with new ways to win games."

Another negative is that the towns
are more different than those in the GBL.

John Jantz, Senior cross-country captain 

When comparing individual talent from each league, it appears that the GBL has more individual athletes who can dominate what they do, while in the Dual County the players are more rounded and able to do multiple things well.

The thought that the school benefits from changing leagues is correct, but also incorrect.

Dever says that a "better fit is the Middlesex League as a school due to travel arrangements, but the GBL was breaking up and we needed a place to go."

The traveling for the Middlesex League teams would be much easier considering they all are nearby, whereas Dual County teams are farther away. "Another negative is that the towns are more different than those in the GBL," Jantz says.

Teams in the DCL seem to be wealthier than those in the GBL, and this allows them to have upgraded fields that are not as plentiful in the Greater Boston League. "Some positives would be that it is nice to play some new teams, and it is a new challenge to show we're a top team," Pitts says. "It will [also] broaden our horizons."
 
Teams in the Dual County large include Westford, Newton South, Waltham, Lincoln-Sudbury, Acton-Boxborough, and Boston Latin. The small tier includes: Arlington, Bedford, Concord-Carlisle, Weston, Tyngsboro and Wayland. The GBL now includes only Cambridge, Everett, Medford, Malden and Somerville. Last year, it also consisted of Waltham as well as AHS. A few years further back, Peabody was part of the GBL as well.
 
The beginning of the AHS athletic year has been both successful and entertaining, and it should continue into the spring. Students hope AHS will bring home some new hardware just as they have in previous years.

This project began when Highrock, an Evangelical Covenant Church, first moved to Arlington in 2006. Then, the bread was wrapped in the church by its members.

One of the children in church, however, has a severe allergy to nuts. Because Panera includes nuts in many of the sweets that are wrapped to go ith the bread, Highrock needed to find a new location in order to protect the child from possible exposure to the nuts.

When Highrock looked around to find a new space, they realized that the high school would be a perfect location.

{mosimage}Moving the bread wrapping to the high school cafeteria affirmed the statement on Highrock's Web site: "We want to challenge and encourage people to figure out how to make a difference around them by utilizing the opportunities, skills, and passions they already have."

For the first several weeks when the project moved to the high school last year, students in detention were sent to help with the bread wrapping.

Austin Calhoun, Make-A-Difference Ministry Director at Highrock, said that the students enjoyed their chance to "get out" of detention. Now, though, the group that meets every week consists mostly of members of the Interact Club.

"It's a fun and easy way to do community service," said one of the sophomore girls who asked not to be named. Students walking through the cafeteria after school are also encouraged to join.

For their work, each student gets about an hour of community service. When all the bags are finished, the students gather around the broken leftovers. After handling all the mouthwatering baked goods, they get a free sample of Panera's goodies.

The pieces at the bottom of the clean trash bag offer a tasty buffet of sweets.

Every week, Calhoun collects the day-old bread from the Arlington Panera when it closes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Even though the bread is still delicious, Panera chooses to dispose of it in order to serve their customers the freshest baked goods.

Highrock is not the only community project to take advantage of these leftovers in order to serve those in need. As the group of bread wrappers trickles into the cafeteria after school on Wednesday, they deposit their backpacks in a pile and troop out to Mark Genter's blue car to grab the bags of bread and boxes of Saran wrap.

On the way, Genter, a member of Highrock, asks the students about their classes and creates conversation around topics comfortable to teenagers. Once the collection has been unloaded into the cafeteria, the old hands don plastic gloves and create assembly lines of collectors, wrappers, baggers, and tie-ers.

The students keep working while talking about their day or about life. Although the number of students involved varies each week, most Thursdays there are about 10 students working to wrap the bread.

Calhoun said that in the 30 weeks since the project began, they have generated 1,800 bags, which averages at 60 bags per week. The record for number of bags created in one day is 81.

The bread wrapped at AHS each week goes to the residents of Menotomy Manor, a low-income housing community in East Arlington, near Alewife Brook Parkway.

Luke Chatburn, another Highrocker, works with the head tenant to hang a bag containing two loaves of bread and a sweet on each door. The head tenant, who represents the residents on the community housing board, keeps a map of who gets the bread each week and works to even out distribution.

Although some residents do not want the bread, most of them are appreciative of this extra help and look forward to the weekly delivery.

Saran-wrapped sets of three bagels each fill a trash bag, ready to feed homeless people at Starlight Ministry in Cambridge.

The bagels are a supplement to a meal cooked by volunteers for 60 to 70 homeless visitors each Thursday night. In looking to the future, Calhoun would love to expand the bread wrapping project to be able to serve more people. As long as the number of students involved keeps growing, more bread can be packaged. New workers are welcome to join the project.

The writer is a senior and journalism student at Arlington High School.

Last June, the College Board announced that it will allow students to choose which SAT II scores are reported to colleges. With this decision, which will go into effect next March, students will be able send scores they are proud of while preventing colleges from seeing lower scores.

Since 2002, the College Board has been reluctant to allow students to choose which scores are shown because this gives an advantage to more wealthy students. A wealthy student will be able to take a test as many times as he or she wishes and then simply send the highest score to colleges.

Since the Subject Tests can cost as much as $40, and many students are already required to take three, there are some families for whom numerous retakes are not an option.

Mary Linders, a senior at AHS, notes, "It's not entirely fair because while some students may do well on their first try, other students could take the test many times before getting a similar score, and colleges will not know the difference."

In an effort to assuage concerns about possible advantages for wealthy students, the College Board has also introduced a fee waiver. Financially disadvantaged students can receive a fee-waiver card from their guidance counselor if they meet certain requirements, including being a US citizen or a foreign national testing in the United States.

Linda Buckley, a guidance counselor at AHS, believes the new policy is "a great idea," pointing out that it allows students to take several tests and discover their strengths. She also notes that with the waiver program, it is unlikely that less affluent students will be at a disadvantage.

The College Board Web site says, "The new score-reporting feature will launch in spring 2009, and will be first available to students in the class of 2010 participating in the March 2009 test administration."

By that time, most college-bound AHS students in the class of 2009 will already know which school they will be attending for the fall.

For underclassmen and juniors, the students who will be affected by the decision, opinions were split.

Andy Winslow, a freshman at AHS, praised the decision: "I feel that it is good because there is less pressure, and well it's just better for the student, because if they fail, they can try again."

However, Jay Nass, also a freshman, pointed out that in the admissions process it is, "important to look at all of the grades -- to see the student's weak points and not just their strong points."

Colleges have changed their policies as well, and most will look now at a student's highest score from each SAT I test. This means a student who has taken the SAT and performed well on the math and English sections but poorly on the critical reading section can retake the test and focus solely on the critical reading section without having to fear that a drop in math or English scores will be penalized by colleges.

Some colleges, such as Bowdoin, no longer require students to submit the SAT at all. Yet for all the changes, it often seems that the application and admissions process becomes more competitive and stressful every year.

The reporter is a senior at Arlington High School enrolled in the honors journalism class.