The NEAAAT Times
October 2, 2015
Issue IA
Failure: Reframed
This is Chase the Goose, a Canada goose with a broken wing who lives in the pond near our school. Click to read more about Chase, and how you can help.
Check out some cool storys and interviews about failure in our first Issue!
Also learn more about Tech Team, swap shop, and more!
“Map out your future- but do it in pencil. The road ahead is as long as you make it. Make it worth the trip.”
~ Jon Bon Jovi
This quote may seem simple, but let’s break it down to understand the essential meaning on a different level.
What does mapping out your future mean?
Mapping out your future can be described as combining your short and long term goals and setting an overall goal. Your overall goal is normally what you plan to become and accomplish. Many children would say their overall goal is to become a doctor, lawyer, or celebrity and live in a mansion. This sounds great, but why settle for society’s limits?
You have the ability to become anything you would like. You just have to put your mind to it. I’m sure you’ve heard that plenty of times, but have you really considered changing your mentality?
That’s just something to think about.
When mapping out your future, it is best to do it in pencil. Just because we expect everything to go a specific way, doesn’t mean it will happen the way it is planned. You should take advantage of each opportunity placed before you. I can tell you are able to identify great opportunities; that’s why you’re here. By taking advantage of the opportunities that has been presented, your destiny clearly lies ahead.
You have to A.I.M. for your destiny.
Just remember this acronym:
A--Ambition
I--In
M--Mind
You can do it. Never give up. A true hero is not expressed through their stamina, but through the obstacles they’ve overcome.
~Ivone’ Tatem
A Different View
by Ivone' Tatum
Mapping out your Future
Celebrate October
by Grace Bassett
October is Breast Cancer Awareness,
month in the U.S. Over 222,000 people will be
diagnosed with breast cancer this year, and
more than 40,000 of them will die because of breast cancer. The National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) uses this campaign to try to get awareness of breast cancer because early detection can save lives.
On a lighter note, October is also National Pizza Month! This tradition first started in 1984, by Pizza Today, as a birthday for the famous pizza marketing news site. Sites like these promote pizza and the billion dollar pizza industry. More than 17% of restaurants in the U.S. are pizzerias and the average american consumes more than 45 slices of pizza a year. People in the U.S. eat 350 slices of pizza a second. Even without a special designated month to remind us to celebrate pizza, more than 94% of Americans will eat pizza this month. Celebrate National Pizza Month in October and help support the NBCF and enjoy some pizza!
Mrs.Bynum's Reframed Failure
by Destiny Cook
Mrs. Bynum knew that she wanted to be a teacher from a young age. She was inspired by her kindergarten teacher who was very caring. However, Mrs. Bynum did not anticipate for how difficult training is to become a teacher.
She struggled with failure many times during her journey to become a teacher. Mrs. Bynum failed her Praxis Core Test, which is a required academic test to receive certification, not once, but six times. Failure was an entirely new experience to her, and she was uncomfortable with having to try again and again.
Mrs. Bynum was later entered in teacher’s ed courses to correct her mistakes. The multiple failures made her realize that she suffers from a form of test anxiety. She knew the information but she cracked under the pressure of taking a huge exam, like the Praxis Core Test. Mrs. Bynum ended [the interview] by sharing an inspiring quote by Henry Ford, “Failure is the only opportunity to begin again. Only this time more wisely.” The quote really spoke to her about her failure and, that failure is not the end of all things.
“There is no harm in failure, only the will to do better.”
“What good is knowledge if you don’t share it?” said Miss Lessie Anderson about her accepting the challenge to write for a blog about the new Northeast Academy of Aerospace and Advanced Technologies (NEAAAT).
Anderson is an instructional coach with NC New Schools, a program that is dedicated to preparing students for college, careers, and life while providing the best education possible to them. “As an instructional coach, my job is really different than most adults who visit NEAAAT. I watch the students to see how they act and how they are learning, I never watch the teacher.”
Instructional coaches are designed to work as support systems for the teachers and students, and to verify that each child is reading, writing, thinking, and most importantly, staying engaged every single day.
“Reading and writing are extremely important for a student’s development and your skills in them [reading and writing] will influence the rest of your life.” As a math major in college, Anderson had struggled with developing her writing skills. “The failure that shaped me most to be the person I am today would definitely be when I was a Freshman in college I received an F on my first English paper. I was hysterical and honestly felt like this failure was the end of the world.” It was a big failure, but a growing point for Lessie.
“I’ve always been scared about public writing or writing for others, so of course I was asked to write a public blog!” Her blog posts about Northeast Academy will be published in a newsletter that goes out to every school in North Carolina, “I accepted this challenge because how will I grow if I don’t step out of my comfort zone? I won’t.”
Anderson ended saying, “While failure can be difficult to accept for many, failure is part of life. But you don’t have to accept that failure as the end, you can always work to improve yourself.”
Lessie Anderson's Reframed Failure by Hannah Umphlett
Ms. Moore's Failure Reframed
by Grace Bassett
Ms. Moore, NEAAAT’s Director of College and Career Readiness, would not have become part of the NEAAAT family if she hadn’t struggled and failed during college. When Ms. Moore was 10 years old, she originally wanted to be a pediatrician because of her love for helping children, but went to college at NCCU and majored in education. After struggling and failing, she was told that she could not graduate with an education major. Ms. Moore overcame this difficulty and graduated from NCCU with a major in history and later went to graduate school to become a counselor. “I realized that I didn’t want to be in the classroom, but I still wanted to work in education,” Moore said. Thank goodness Ms. Moore struggled in college, or she wouldn’t be here helping us today!
Mayor Peel's Reframed Failure
by Grace Bassett
After working as superintendent for our area, in 2008, Peel worked for the department of public construction and first ran for mayor in 2011. Now Peel is up for re-election as Mayor.
Mayors don’t normally start schools like ours. They are the face of the city, responsible for leading chair meetings, and do a lot of stuff on the state and national level, dealing with military affairs and grants. Peel started NEAAAT because students in our region don’t really have many opportunities in STEM education. “NEAAAT doesn’t really have anything to do with being Mayor,” Peel said. “It became my concern that students in this region didn’t have opportunities in STEM that students in other parts of the state had.”
But creating the school was anything but easy. “There was a whole lot of failures. First, getting this school became very political. Everyone has their opinion on charter schools. We made it very clear that we were not interested in starting a school that was not open to every single student, so we had to raise a lot of additional money to make that happen.” The hardest thing to overcome was raising this additional money for the busses and free lunch so that the school could be open to every student in our region.
Peel also mentioned that the easiest part of opening the school was hiring good staff. “The teachers we have are pretty incredible. We are very fortunate to have a good group of people working here.”
If Peel had not worked hard and overcame failures, I would not have written this article. NEAAAT would never have been born, and 120 kids would have never gotten opportunities in STEM that we have now. Thank you Mr.Peel.
Our school, the Northeast Academy of Aerospace and Advanced Technologies, would not have existed if Joe Peel, the current mayor of Elizabeth City, Doctor of Education, and first proposer of the school, had not overcome several difficulties and failures.
Peel has worked in education for 47 years, and has lots to show for it. He was principal of two schools that were national schools of excellence, with one being a blue ribbon school. He also met President Reagan and earned his doctorate in education from Chapel Hill. He has been a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and area superintendent, teaching thousands of students.
Meet Chase the Goose
by Sarah Spencer
Chase, or Chase the Goose, might have been hit by a car, or maybe he got into a fight with his old flock, and that caused Chase to break his wing. His flock left him, so now he won’t be able to fly south and winter is coming soon. We believe that he is only a year old because geese mate for life, and they find their mate at the age of two. And if he had a mate, she would have stayed with him.
Canada Geese usually live from 10-24 years but, winter is coming soon and it’s going to be hard for him to find resources and keep warm. Of course we tried to get the Wildlife Refuge Center to take him but they wouldn’t because he is just a goose that is technically still able to forage but, winter will take that away from him. How will he survive? Well that’s where we as a school need to come in.
To help him get through the winter, we are holding fundraisers to pay for the purchase of the equipment and resources we’ll need to build a shelter and plant food for Chase. We’re not trying to tame Chase or make him our own little project, we’re trying to get him through the winter and make the campus a more enjoyable place for him to live since he can’t travel anywhere else and may never be able to. We are going to try to take Chase to the vet to see if there is anyway his wing can heal.
A new flock has made a pit stop from their migration to eat and rest for their next trip until they make it to the place they desire to stay for the winter. We were wondering how Chase would react to these new geese and went out to see. Chase was and still is trying to be incorporated into their flock. The geese of this flock bite at him and chase him away, then they start the aggressive body language after biting. This is rather sad, and we are hoping that they won’t cause any more damage. Chase is forced to walk away from his own lake. Now, he is being chased all the way to the woods area by the other buildings. Hopefully this stops soon, or they leave so that Chase doesn’t have to suffer. If they don’t leave, we will have to try even harder to get him to a rehabilitator.
Without us, he won’t survive the winter, but with our help he can live a full life. We care very greatly for our goose and want to help him to become a part of our school’s family and hope that you feel the same way as well.
Word of the Week
Ambition: Ambition is defined as strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.
Help Chase by participating in our button fundraiser! Our goal is to earn enough money to pay for Chase’s animal license. If you’d like to see the jar, locate or contact Allie Monahan at alexismonahan@northeastacademy.org .
One guess is a dollar, you may guess as many times as you would like to, the guessing ends on October 31st. After the guessing ends, a winner will be awarded a trick-or-treat sized bucket full of candy! All proceeds will go to Chase’s food, plants, and building material.
Also look for granola bars in the school store. All proceeds will go to benefit Chase.
Tech Team is here to help!
by Grace Bassett
Tech Team is a “purely optional” extra curricular created by Alden Lane and Connor Reavis. Mr.Harris had originally purposed the idea to Mr.Rook for a tech team to take care of chromebooks. This club was created about two weeks ago and already has 36 members. They already have plans to gain administrative access to modify the
Sam Davis III's Reframed Failure
by Hannah Umphlett
One of the prominent members in the Elizabeth City community is Sam Davis III, owner of Sam Davis Realty and at once, a family owned and operated Davis Hardware Store. Davis, as many are aware of, is running for the office of mayor in Elizabeth City, but even some of the most successful people have encountered failures in their lifetime, and Sam Davis is no exception. “I haven’t exactly had a ‘favorite failure’,” said Mr. Davis, “But I certainly had failures that I grew from.” Davis ended up dropping out of college at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill as he didn’t have the grades to get into medical
Organized Madness
by Samuel Avondo
Written 9/23/2015
This week was a week for the campaigns of the various candidates for various SGA positions. I would leave it at that and maybe add something about the speeches, but there’s also one thing I’d like to point out: most of the candidates have demonstrated that they are not above bribery. I don’t know about you, but that’s not a trait I particularly enjoy in someone holding a position in office. I will come out and say that I have not actually accepted any of these bribes―great for me, right?
The speeches that these candidates put out were well-thought, which cannot be said for the bribes. One of them had a wonderful (albeit incredibly sad) reference to ‘Castaway’. I really have to give acknowledgment to how hard it may have been for some of these people to write these speeches and then read to the entire student body that wasn’t out sick that day.
Unfortunately, I seem to have fallen sick to the same trend that has afflicted many others at NEAAAT; there’s a sickness about. It’s likely that it’s nothing serious, just a case of the cold going about. Or, I suppose it’s possible that it is actually a deadly infection that masquerades as a common cold and acts up months or even years later with fatal consequences. We’ll have to see, won’t we?
Pizza month is now upon us, and soon will winter. With pizza month so doth arrive breast cancer awareness month, and what better way to treat breast cancer than calories and cholesterol?
As far as I know, that is all of the events from this past week. This means that my wonderful piece of organized madness has to conclude.
For any questions, concerns, or feedback about this weeks Organized Madness, please contact OrganizedMadnessColumn@gmail.com.
Super Mario Bros is a new intellectual property from little known company Nintendo of Donkey Kong fame. You play as the brother of the titular character, Luigi, on his quest to save Princess Daisy from the evil Wart. On your quest you will pass through 12 worlds of varying difficulty before facing Wart on the Death Star. The graphics aren’t like anything you have never seen before on any kind of gaming machine, and the gameplay just sucks you in and doesn’t let you go for hours. Overall, I give this game a wilted cactus out of twelve used adult diapers. I PLAY THIS GAME WHILE I SLEEP. PLEASE HELP I HAVEN’T SEEN SUNLIGHT IN WEEKS.
WUBBA LUBBA DUB DUB REVIEWS
Super Mario Bros
school. His father “didn’t see the point in studying Pharmacy when there was already a business [Davis Hardware] right at home.”
From here, Davis learned the importance of hard work and education, but also the significance of family. “I wouldn’t have grown so close to my father without dropping out and working with him for forty years!” Mr. Davis said he didn’t exactly “regret” his decision to end his college education (he later finished his degrees) with the end result of stronger relationships with his family, but possibly business wise as pharmacy obviously makes more money.
Davis concluded with the infamous saying, “When one door closes, another one opens.” Throughout your life, even with failure, you can only continue looking for new opportunities and experiences that you can grow from, as you should “never stop trying” to aim for success.
Tech Block
by Connor Reavis
Now let's talk about hydrogen fueled cars. Everyone hears about how traditional fossil fuels are hurting the environment and one day we will run out of oil. But certainly we will find more and other methods are too expensive anyways. Right? Well, maybe not.
Recently the rumor of cars that run on hydrogen have been spreading. But that can’t work. Can it? The answer to that question depends on the method you consider. The issue here is that hydrogen fuel does not occur naturally on earth, and that is an issue. How can that be better than fossil fuels? Well you make hydrogen fuel with renewable resources however the process is a bit pricy.
The way these cars work is that they convert the chemical energy of the the Hydrogen into mechanical energy. one of these methods is similar to the current internal combustion engine model we use for gasoline today. The other option is reacting hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell. both of these effectively use the hydrogen cleanly power cars.
Their goal is to test chromebook apps and help with internal chromebook maintenance as well as look into converting the chromebooks to Linux. You might remember them going to every class and talking to every student about Tech Team. “We can’t do it by ourselves,” Lane said. “If you want to join, come talk to us.”
Tech Team wants to help members become more “technologically savvy” for college preparation. “Tech Team is not an obligation,” Lane said. “ It is not a job. It is for whenever you have time.”
Reavis and Lane both have experience experience with computers and linux, and enjoy both of them. Tech Team has been created to be a technical outlet for the students and a way for people with a love for computers to express themselves and do what they enjoy. What Lane and Reavis enjoy about the tech team is that it gives them an opportunity to teach and learn the things they have come to know from experience about computers.
In conclusion the tech team is a non mandatory group designed to educational and useful to the students at NEAAAT. If you are interested in hearing more about the tech team see either Alden Lane or Connor Reavis.
Congratulations to our new SGA and Atlanta, our Spokespet!
In this month of tech block, the first thing I am going to tell you about is The Library of Babel. This is a website that uses a complex mathematical algorithm to generate every single letter combination using the entire english alphabet and a period, a coma, and a space within a 3600 word limit.
If you use the search function a text box will pop up asking you to type anything you want using the characters provided (no capital letters), and it will find it within the library. The user interface uses a system that uses a a room (aka a hex) where you pick a wall, then you pick a shelf, and then you pick a volume and a page number. Most of the site is gibberish. If you use the browse function, what you search will be in the same place every time.
The following link will hold will take you to the library of babel and you will be able to search anything you want! and be ready, anything you have said, can say, and will say; is in the library of babel.
Need Advice?
Anynomous advice column coming soon! Please fill out the following form with any problems you might have, from lunch choices to relationships.
SGA Voting Poll: Is Giving Out Candy Bribery?
The following screenshots of the final responses of the voting poll that was sent out last week.
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95% of responders voted.
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59% of responders think that giving out free candy is bribery.
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7% of responder votes were influenced by the candy.
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71% of responder votes were influenced by the speeches.
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50% of responders voted for the candidate with the best views.
Like What you see here? The NEAAAT Newspaper Team is always looking for new members! If you would like to join, or have any ideas, email studentnewspaper@northeastacademy.org or contact Grace Bassett.
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Need a Good Laugh?
Need (sarcastic) advice?
Anynomous (sarcastic) advice column coming soon! Please fill out the form to be part of a (sarcastic) advice column!