Hoofprint

This interview is about Mrs. Lyon, the new French teacher. She has a lot of interesting things about her, that’s why I wanted to ask her these questions. First, I ask her what inspired her to speak French, she said because her grandfather speaks French and he was in station 2 World War II. She has been traveling a lot, of course in France. She lived there and went to school like... In the state she went to Longwood University and in France she went to American University in Avignon. I wanted to know if she knew any other languages and she does! She knows English, French, and Spanish. She also loves some French food. Her favorite French food is “les Esescargots” which means snails in French. I was curious finding out if her rest of her family speaks French. Her mother speaks Italian and German, her father speaks Spanish and Italian. Another question that I asked her was her hobbies. Her hobbies include needle point and love to read outside of school. I have her for 6th period and we’ve been using IPods. She lets us use it because, she thought it will give her students new experiences and learn the language and to have fun with it. The kind of apps that she downloaded is flashcard, games, tours to the Eiffel tower. I really enjoyed the interview and I hope you do too.

Most people love winter break but do different things during the time. And, believe it or not, this rule applies to teachers too. For example, Ms. Cleveland likes to hang out with her family. She thinks that we all need a break for refreshment. Some things my classmates do over break is go sledding, put up decorations, play video games, go on vacations, read books, open presents, and other things. I think that winter break is also beneficial because it gives us time to unwind and get us ready for school again. It also gives us a chance to let out all the energy that we had to keep bottled up during school to go free, which in turn helps us be better students. Wish for snow, because, as you may have noticed, it almost never snows here in North Carolina. Local Meteorologists say that there may be some rain, but there is not likely to be snow. There go the sledding ideas. I think that the holiday spirit and the long break in itself will make up for it! It will be somewhat sufficient to look at pictures of snowy wonderlands. Anyhow, in short, it will probably not snow this break. You never know, though!

Carolina crafts is an art class taught by Mrs. Bennet. Students do amazing projects based on their relation to Carolina. The first project the classes did was face jugs. These jugs were said to be invented by African slaves. They used the face jugs to hold liquids. The faces on the jugs were to keep children out of them.

The students worked about three weeks on creating these marvelous master pieces. They put a lot of effort into the jugs. Here is what one of the students said about the jugs. Toniyah said “I did enjoy making the jugs, but I went through a lot of trouble to get it to stay in the right angle. I tried to be as ordinal as possible and not do what most people would.”

The current projects that the students in Carolina crafts are making are baskets. It’s a lot harder than you may think. Let’s look at some of the students’ opinion. Loren: “It’s sort of difficult.” Reem said “It’s fun because it’s difficult and you have to be patient with it and I like challenges.” Hannah: “I love making baskets, but it takes work and it isn’t easy.”

First the students will make paper baskets and then they will make reed baskets. I wish all the students good luck that their baskets are successful. They really seem to enjoy the art class.

The school news is a new wave of news according to the students. Some like the changes and some like it old school. Students say they like the more recent songs and better graphics. I personally think the news has improved but also think they need to stop joking around and get serious. They need to practice speaking without messing up a lot. Lots of students like the old martin song. We try to take our comments and make the best show we can do. There are a lot of ideas we plan to do. When you get in the room you can just feel the creativity. We think you the students should receive what you want and also get the announcements.

Were also doing the skits to get some fun in the news. We have lots of skits we have and will do. Some future sketches involve the office, glee and many more recent and exciting skits. I hope are skits will live up to your expectations. Our new teacher Mr. Velarde puts a new twist in the game. He decided that we should have more recent topics in the news. He decided to use Macs instead of the equipment from the 90’s. He real has improved everything we know about the news. We try to act professional and appreciate while were developing the news. We also think you the students should just leave comments so we can improve our announcements. By the poll I developed the students enjoy this year’s school news than last years.

Yearbook! The best time to check out your pictures and remember your friends as you are moving towards life. I’ve had a yearbook before but I never knew how they were created; like they were always a mystery to me. You know as I got older I wanted to see the creation behind the master piece. So I took the chance to interview the yearbook staff. The yearbook staff included Mrs. Rowe as the advisor, McKenna as the photographer, Mia as the word editor, Elizabeth as the layout editor, and also Lily and Kristina as the co-editors. The differences of their yearbook from this year to last year were the colors, layouts and also different eighth grade baby pictures. For their extra pages they are including pictures that are outside school sports, spirit week, staff…etc. They choose people who randomly roam the halls or during their academic class, but the sad thing is that they have such a big school that their extra pages are very small. I had to ask them why they liked being in the yearbook and each one of them said you get to be bossy, more mature, Responsibility, and they learn that it takes hard work which they think will be a life lesson to them. So it occurred to me that I need to interview each of them to get a better understanding of what each of their job meant. So I interviewed Mrs. Rowe who was the advisor. She had told me that the students in the committee are trustworthy but she only said most of them. She also says that she isn’t the only one that see’s finishing touches to the yearbook she list people like parents, teachers, and staff. Mia who is the Word editor makes sure that everything is spelled right and that they make sense in the yearbook. Onto Kristina and Lilly they told me that the responsibility of being coeditors is hard because you have to make sure everything and everybody is done correctly. They also say that Mrs. Rowe depends on them to make the best decision for the yearbook very responsibly. They also said that I might add that its hard to work with each other because they need to agree on the committee’s idea. Speaking of that, if you are reading this and are probably wondering how to get in the yearbook committee. Well the best I can say is that you have to be nominated by Mrs. Rowe and the people she usually looks for is people who work with determination, Auto mouse, they have to be good in computers, creative and be on the A/B honor Roll. Oh man it sounds so exciting that I might even get me one yearbook this year. YOU SHOULD TOO!

Ms. Dunston is an awesome teacher on the Mantas Team in sixth grade. She was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. She says that she enjoys teaching and likes working with kids. Ms. Dunston has been teaching for thirteen years and has been teaching at Martin her whole teaching career. She says that when she was a kid, she did not want to become a teacher. Her first career decision was an engineer, not a teacher. Ms. Dunston went to Winston Salem University. Ms. Dunston wanted to become a language arts teacher because she loves grammar and reading. She also wanted to become a teacher because she said she had the best language arts teacher in eleventh grade. Ms. Dunston also said she didn’t always want to teach sixth grade and actually wanted to teach eleventh grade. Ms. Dunston favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Right now she is reading The Great Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick and is very interested in it. Her favorite color is purple. She says she doesn’t have any pets and doesn’t play a sport. If she wasn’t a teacher, she would probably be an esthetician, a person who gives facials. Ms. Dunston favorite memory at Martin is when before they had the main building, out the window of her trailer, her and her students saw a squirrel eating a slice of pizza in a tree!

Ms. Certo is the Dolphin language arts teacher. She started teaching here this year. Her favorite color is green and she went to Meredith College. At Meredith, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English, which she says she enjoyed. Her first job was at a donut shops she worked the cash register, which she says was dull, but not particularly bad.

She said that she always knew she wanted to be a teacher because she loves the childhood imagination. Teaching enables her to be around a lot of kids. She chose teaching language arts because she didn’t want to teach any other subjects. Also, when she was in school, she liked language arts. She says that it was particularly fun in 6th grade, when her teacher was awesome. Her favorite part about teaching is making her lessons creative and just hanging out with the kids. Her least favorite part is paperwork and checking e-mails. The behind the scenes part of being a teacher. She can’t imagine being anything but a teacher. Although she does not play an instrument currently, she used to play the clarinet. She says she could have been better if she had put more effort into it. In her free time, she likes to make her lessons creative, read, watch movies, and play with her two ferrets and two cats. Her ferret’s names are Abu and Sandwich. (She calls him Samich.) Her cats are named Lita and Riley. Her favorite musical artists are Eminem and Ben Harper. I asked what her favorite songs by they were, but she said she couldn’t decide.

If she could be any character from any book, she would be Alice from Alice in Wonderland because she truly learns from her experiences. Currently, she is reading Eclipse, the 3rd book in the Twilight series. She says it is her guilty pleasure because it is trashy, but good. Her favorite thing about Eclipse is that when something happens, it seems logical. She calls it “logical drama”. Her favorite book is either Peter Pan or The Catcher and the Rye. Ms. Certo’s room is always fun. If you want to meet her, she will be teaching Folk Tales and Myths next semester in room 2105.

Mrs. Barham, is a well known 6th grade social studies teacher. Emmy, Emilia, and Dillon (6th graders) all agreed that Mrs. Barham is the funniest teacher that they have ever had. Mrs. Barham has been teaching at MMS for 20 years! A Broughton high school Senior, Kayla, said “She liked that Social Studies wasn’t boring. Social Studies World History would be funnier with Mrs. Barham.” Mrs. Barham is a fun teacher who very much enjoys the color pink. Some of her favorite activities outside of school are to run, work in the yard, and especially playing her favorite sport, golf. That’s one of the reasons she likes teaching the elective, The History of Golf. She also teaches Days of Knights. Mrs. Barham has not always wanted to be a teacher, she first wanted to be a lawyer, for a long time, but, then she switched over to being a teacher. Speaking of things people like, Emilia’s favorite thing to listen to is Mackie, Mrs. Barham’s daughter’s boyfriend problems. She quotes “they don’t have squirrels in France?”

Mrs. Barham has a good heart and wants everyone to be safe and healthy and she has been working to try and help kids with this in all different grades. Gabby, an 8th grader says “I love Mrs. Barham's concern for the school. I make me happy to think that someone is watching our school, the place where learning is endless.” She has taught 6th grade L. A., 6th grade math and 7th grade social studies but that was a long time ago. All the class periods she has she loves. I quote “we have a wonderful team this year!” Emmy thinks Mrs. Barham is responsible for “taking her pills.” Mrs. Barhanm went to UNC because (I’m not a UNC fan so I disagree with this) apparently it is the “Southern Part of Heaven.” I hope Mrs. Barham stays at mms for much longer, so that the kids can have a wonderful 6th grade dolphin teacher.

The only sports played during the winter at MMS are men’s and women’s basketball. That is a big difference from the fall when there is three different sports going on at one time. Coach Hill, the men’s basketball team coach said that he has an older team with six returning players, and wants hustle, hustle, hustle. The team has a lot more experience than previous years and expects to win. MMS is looking forward to a long energetic season because this is one of our best teams in a while and we can easily produce points whenever we want. Coach Hill likes the hard work from the players which will give them momentum to win their games. To sum it up everyone is expecting a pretty good season for the Boys Mustangs team.

I also talked to the women’s basketball coach, Coach Vickery, and one of the returning players. Coach Vickery also said that there is a lot of talent and experienced returners from last year. He said that he and the assistant coach made new offensive plays that are nearly unstoppable. Almost half of their team is returners, with a total of five. Lily (8th grade) said that, “the team is going to grow, and is a lot better than the teams in the past”.

MMS is looking forward to these great seasons. We have a great crowd here so it will make it difficult for all of the visiting teams to concentrate. I think that the players and coaches will do their part.

We hope to see all of the readers at the MMS games. The price is only four dollars, and we all would appreciate your support for MMS. The schedule for the teams are below.

The bus, a common way for the average student to get to school and home daily but how do students really feel about it? I decided to ask a few MMS students about how they feel about the bus and the results are as follows.

First I interviewed Laith, an eighth grader here at MMS and I asked him if he enjoyed his bus rides. Laith said, “Yes and no , In the morning I don’t like the ride because I want some quiet but I’m constantly hearing noise.” After that I asked him if he found the bus more efficient than alternate transportation and Laith said, “Yes because if you have friends on the bus you have more fun and have the opportunity to make new friends.” I was also wondering if our students all had the choice between carpool and the bus which would you want? Laith said, “The bus because my friends ride my bus and its great and a ‘thrill ride’.”

I decided to get some more information out of a few more students just to see if anyone else thought anything else of it. I decided to interview Nic a seventh grader and these are the answers to my questions. He said, “I sometimes enjoy the bus, because some kids are mean and other times they are nice.” This was a bit of a surprise to me so I decided to learn more about this. I then asked if he thought the bus was more efficient and he said, “Yes I think it helps prevent pollution because multiple people are riding in the same vehicle.” I asked whether he would choose carpool or bus and he said, “The bus because I have a long drive home and I’m with my friends so I have people to talk to.”

I decided to interview one more student named Sarah. She’s a sixth grade and is just starting the MMS bus experience. When I asked if she enjoyed the bus she said, “Yes but sometimes it’s slightly boring but most of the time we start talking.” When it comes to the efficiency question Sarah said, “Yes because it saves on gas and transports more kids in the same vehicle.” I finally made it to my last question and asked her preference and she said, “Bus because the one time I rode carpool I was late. Plus it’s more efficient for me.” Fellow MMS students conclude that the bus is an efficient way of transportation.

The bus is a good way to get from place to place in the mornings and afternoons. If you rode the bus in Elementary School than I would definitely ride the bus in Middle School because you will be with familiar people from your neighborhood. If you’re new to the whole “bussing” situation then I might recommend taking it slowly and getting yourself used to it.

I feel that I agree to some extent with the students I have interviewed but I would certainly rather be in carpool. Despite the fact that the bus is more energy efficient I still find my bus far too chaotic for my taste. That’s just my honest opinion but maybe you have your own.