York Low

       A little letter to all teachers,

               As students, we don't hate you all. It isn't just programmed into our brains that no matter what 75% of you will be despised by students. There are reasons why 75% of students despise any teacher at any time. But don't worry, I am here to help. Please let me tell you why this is, so you can work on it and reduce these figures. And to help you out, I'll also address each issue to former Cubs catcher/team cancer, Todd Hundley.

1) Don't be harsh on tardiness or be stringent on every student having to be in their seat when the bell rings. Todd Hundley bitched about not starting one game. Tardiness and starting one game don't matter, so why make a big deal of it?   This is the first step toward us hating you.

2) Don't be inconsistent. If you are going to be an asshole, consistently be an asshole to everyone. If you are going to assign nightly homework, check it everyday, otherwise we will stop caring because we don't know if we are ever going to get a grade for it. No matter what it is, don't lapse in it, at least let us know that you think you know what you are doing. With Hundley, we consistently knew he was going to bitch, so we at least weren't afraid to boo him, because we knew he would do something like flip us off or something of that manner.

3) Don't give pop-quizzes. There are several things that can make a student hate a teacher instantly, and this is up there. Under NO circumstances should pop-quizzes be given, because the only message it sends is that you want to penalize us.   If you want to tell us the day before that there will be a short quiz on the homework, that's fine, but at least give us some fricking warning. You look like a sadist by doing this. This can ruin a student's morning quicker than it takes Todd Hundley to strike out.

4) Don't make the class routine. This is when we start to sleep, this is when we start to daydream, and this is when you lose us. If there is some variety to the class, at least people will have to pay attention because we don't know what's coming next. Todd Hundley would occasionally have those games where he would step up, and have a 2 home run, 5 RBI game against the White Sox where we would almost think he could turn it around. He never did, but it always seemed to give us something to look forward to.

5) Don't wake us up immediately if you see us sleeping. If we are sleeping, you have two choices.
          a.Embarrass the hell out of the student and/or make use of a squirt gun (the spray bottle for the overhead should do fine). This will make the class more interesting, because we will have fun seeing their fellow classmates soaked or embarrassed, along with the suspense of if you will see us sleeping. It also will work as a deterrent to keep us from sleeping and actually have us learn something
          b.Let us sleep. There are few things that make a student angrier than being woken up when they just dozed off than being forced to wake back up, pay attention to the lecture that they just fell asleep to, but know if they can't try to go back to sleep because you are watching them.
          c.In Todd's case, you know you suck, we all know you suck, so why couldn't you just sit on the bench when it was clear you weren't wanted/ sucked massively? I mean, come on, throw us a bone here, you suck, why should you have been played?

6) Don't give us busywork. Giving us busywork while you just dick around on your laptop is basically telling us to not learn. If you are done with the lesson, there is nothing wrong with saying to us that we can just sit around and talk for the rest of the period. When you give us work, it falls into the pop-quiz area of where it seems to just piss us off and not help us learn. We are either going to
         a. sit around and talk, not doing it, not learning the material, and hurting our grade (otherwise known as a Todd Hundley specialty. Not running out a ground out, not working the count, just hurting the team).
         b. sit around and talk, eventually copying it, not learning the material, helping our grade
       c. or actually do it However, these are like the people who keep score at a baseball game. They are there, but you don't often see them, and you wonder what their reasoning for doing it is.

7) Don't work against us. Giving us the benefit of the doubt it will always make students appreciate you more and think of you as a human, not some bastard who we have to fight against. On a math or science test, if we don't round correctly, does it really matter? We did the problem right, we know the material, and we just put 7.76 instead of 7.764. The student knows how to solve the problem obviously, and is in a rush since it's a test so they are on a time limit. Why not just give them full credit? Is it going to hurt you somehow? No, its just you being a prick if you mark down for something like that. It makes no sense, like Todd Hundley switching back to being a switch-hitter when he was struggling from his far superior side of the plate. How would the remotely make sense? "Well, I suck from my better side of the plate, why don't I just go to the side where I hit for a lower percentage and less power?!"

8) Don't mess with our grades! When it comes to our quarter/semester grades, ROUND UP. My GPA would have been .2 higher sophomore year if one of my teachers had rounded up my 79.8 to an 80 (yes this actually did happen, and yes I'm still pissed off about it). The student obviously worked hard and fell just short, why not have a soul and give them the higher grade and put a smile on their face? This is our lives here, and a B or a C can make a big difference when it comes to applying for colleges, and also whether some of us are yelled at or praised when the good old report cards come home. For instance, Todd, its bottom of the 9th , we are down 1 run with men on 1st and 2nd and 1 out. Just help the team and take every pitch, either walk, or strikeout. DON'T swing. You will ground into a double-play, its inevitable, so why swing? It hurts the team, and does nothing for your stats

9) Don't just lecture. Try to connect with us. Any person can go to school, learn a subject, and then lecture people on it. It is much more difficult to teach us, because to teach you need to connect with us and make us want to learn, or at least feel like if we don't learn your going to send us right up shit creek. There is a reason you went to college to be a teacher, and your job is listed as a teacher, not as "Guy who knows a lot about Math". Making us work isn't a bad thing as long as we feel like there is a reason we are doing this work. If you can make us feel like you want us to learn, that you want us to do good, and you want us to make your tests look like jokes. If we feel like you are on our side, we truly will want to learn, not just feel obliged to come to you class. Todd never gave us this feeling, he instead gave us the feeling of the teacher who would torment his students, occasionally crack an inappropriate joke, and look to see if girls are wearing thongs. Not the nice teacher, just the weird guy who got a teachers diploma.

9b.   Learn our names, and how to pronounce them. An easy way to piss someone off is to not know their name, and then mispronounce it once you think you have learned it. You can't connect with us if you are calling us Jack when our name is John. (I love being called Jason. I'm amazed of how consistently I can be called Jason. My name is Justin for Christ's sake, if teachers mess that up what the hell are they going to call people with crazy ass names? For instance, Todd, the Cubs sell 25,000 tickets plus every game and are known as having some of the most loyal fans in sports. You have to learn this. Why flick us off and talk shit to the fans that basically pay your salary? You should have been apologizing and giving them 100 dollar bills for the highway robbery known as your contract. (4 years, $24 million. Makes you want to walk into oncoming traffic, doesn't it?)

9c.   We don't all have the same intelligence level. Please realize this and act accordingly. Don't make the kid that stutters read a paragraph out of the book, don't make the kid who sweats like a pig when he has to speak in front of the class, and don't question the kid who is just barely hanging onto a D talk about how to solve an equation or to discuss the meaning of the passage. That is just cruel (An exception is if the kid is a stoner or just doesn't do any work because he doesn't want to. I have no problem with attacking these kids, because they bring it on themselves and they can help it if they would just do some work). I'm pretty sure Todd is combination of the stuttering kid, the kid who doesn't care, the class slut, and the kid who gives you weird looks all the time.

10) Don't make it all work! Have some goddamn fun! You get to work with a bunch of kids everyday! You get to shape and affect our lives as much as anyone outside of our parents! Enjoy it, and be yourselves! (Now for my anger). Todd, you are a major league baseball player, for God's sake enjoy it. You get to play baseball for a living. Can it really be that bad? Bitching and moaning isn't the way to regain your swing or get the town to warm up to you. Could you watch The Sandlot and not feel like a son of a bitch afterwards? You're a professional athlete, enjoy it!
I hope that all this will help teachers and Todd Hundley better understand how to adequately use their time and opportunity given to them, and to learn that if they follow these 10 Rules, their problems in their profession will be for the most-part solved.

        I, as well as many other people at York High School, am pissed off. I'm pissed off that I can't have my coffee in the classroom. I'm pissed off that I don't get to go in the same door that the teachers get to go to. I'm pissed off that I don't have a real locker room and that I have to change in the hallways before I go out to track practice.
           Then you can go to the rules of the school. Again, I am very angry. I'm pissed off that if a girls, "midriff" is showing, that she has to cover up. I'm pissed off kids can't wear chain necklaces. I'm pissed off that I can't bring food into my commons area.
           I'm pissed off that the math lab teachers, the librarians, the Athletic director, and the principal, are always coming up with rules that I just know are for the soul purpose of pissing me off.
       Spending all this time being pissed off got me thinking. My life in school is brutal. I mean, look at me, I'm an upper middle class white boy who lives in a county that is in the top 7 of the whole U.S. of A in wealth. I live in a community where the taxpayers spent a combine 70 million dollars to build me a brand new school, and it is beautiful. We have a new cafeteria, anew commons area with plants and comfortable chairs. We have a T.V. in every single room, and you can't count the number of computers that we have. The library is brand new and has ROCKING CHAIRS! (If you have not yet sat in the rocking chairs at the library, I highly recommend it.) We have classes such as silk screening and auto-tech and cartooning and coming soon, WYRK Today. I talked with my cousin who goes to Oak Park River Forest, and to his knowledge they don't have nearly as many options for classes that we do. But damn, my life when I walk into York is just terrible. (In case you can't tell, that was sarcasm)
      The point I am trying to make here is that there aren't too many people that love going to York, but I guarantee you that whatever high school that you went to, you could find something to complain about. Its school is general that isn't so fun, not our school specifically. But high school is not about how mean the librarians are, (and yes they are horrible, horrible people.) It's not about a lot of the dumb rules that our school has; and yes there are a lot of dumb rules. It's about all of the good things we have and when I weigh the great things about York to the bad things about York, the great ones outweigh them by so much more.    Our new school is awesome, and if you only look at the bad things about it, you are never going to appreciate all of the good things. I'm not saying that we should just ignore the bad things about our school, but don't let them bring you down.    I only have a little more than a year left in my high school career, and then I'm all done. To everyone that reads this I strongly encourage you to not let the things you don't like bring you down, let's enjoy high school as much as we can. You can call me new school, or a kiss ass to York, but I can't think of any other school that I would rather attend.

       Unfortunately I have to agree, Student Council is a sad, sad organization. As the Junior Class President I had the great responsibility of organizing Prom. Now, organizing Prom is certainly no easy task. However, it is even more difficult when the success of much-needed fundraisers is diminishing by lack of attendance on Student Council's part. Now I'll say that sure every once and a while, you have a wake or you are coughing up blood, but not every week. I apologize to those in the Junior Class in StuCo who are reading this, but I think that our overall effort towards Prom (including myself) was at best poor. In fact, the past weekend I spent quite some time making sure the Prom gifts were all in my basement (and believe me 600 is a lot), and I have still had a few problems. In fact, somehow one whole table of people did not receive their gifts, and I was immediately blamed for it. These problems are not exclusive to the Junior Class. Student Council has completely lost its drive to motivate this school. It has turned into a lunch period.
          Joe also mentioned in his article that Student Council has not tried to reach out to people for their suggestions. I would say that this is fairly true, unfortunately there was the infamous green locker in the old English hallway that said "Student Council" on it. The only notes that were received in this locker, the one meant for suggestions on what Student Council can or should do, was filled with "I love Tim" and "I love Richie" notes. Ironically the writer of these notes is a member of the York Low. His name begins with a "J" and ends in a "oe Lindsay." But I will say, this locker's purpose was never fully explained to anybody, at best it was a place for dance theme suggestions. However, once it is set up, the new Student Council office in the commons will have a suggestion folder outside. Hopefully to be used more wisely.
         Freshman year, we had an amazing executive board in Student Council and tons of things got done. However, the leadership ability has slowly dropped and now Student Council is a lunch period. Hopefully, new leadership will be instituted and changes will be made to how things are being run in the Student Council. A relationship between us, the students and other student-run organizations must be created. If all goes well, NHS and StuCo will be closely tied together next year, so that is a start. Unfortunately, there are few ways for Student Council to get a close relationship with York's students. I have to say that the best way is to figure out somebody you know who is on Student Council. Student Council members cannot be expected to constantly ask for suggestions. A good way would be for StuCo to link up with First Class and use those worthless fifteen minutes for something good (by the way, WTF is the point of DART, that's even worse than First Class activities). But then again, maybe Student Government is just like the real one? Maybe we'll invade

        He stands at 6'8", weighs 225 pounds, and is chiseled like a Michelangelo sculpture. He plays like a guard in a power forwards body, just like a past great NBA player named Magic Johnson. He led his high school team, St. Vincent/ St. Mary, to 3 Ohio state titles in just his four years spent in high school. In those state tournaments, along with the state All-Star games, he was named MVP every single time. It makes you feel bad for the other impressive players in Ohio. The big name colleges were looking for him to elevate their dynasties to the next level right away, colleges like North Carolina, Ohio State, Duke, Wake Forest, and Louisville. Any team in the draft would like to have this kid over any other person entering the draft and here's why.
        His junior year in high school he dominated all other high school basketball players, with stunning averages 29 points and 8.3 rebounds per game, along with a few steals and assists as well. The next year, he improved to 30.4 points, 9.7 rebounds, 2.9 steals, and 4.9 assists per game. That just goes to show his shear dominance over every other high school player in Ohio.
        Well, that's nothing, that's just the BEST players in Ohio? How did he fare against the best high schoolers in the nation? Well, the soon to be number one draft pick, scored a game-high 27 points along with 7 rebounds and 7 assists. He also has the intangibles that no one else in the draft has. He has that ability to take a game over in the clutch, man up one-on-one with the other teams top players, and he can take it to the whole better than anyone in the league (besides Kobe or T-Mac strictly because they know the game better), all in all the kid is just tougher than any newcomer to the NBA, and tougher than a lot of the players already in it.
       From a business standpoint, Lebron is no doubt the way to go. He sells more tickets alone, than the Cleveland Cavaliers do at their home games. Think of the potential if you are a team, and you need to attract more fans. Here is a kid, who is the next big thing, and kids already cannot wait to come see him play and buy his jersey, for the super-inflated price of $40 for a simple replica. He will generate more money for a team, than Carmelo will even deposit in his bank account.
        People keep saying he is not mature enough, and Carmelo is, because Carmelo has had a year of college basketball. First of all, Lebron has had to deal with more media coverage through this season, than Carmelo ever has. And what about that time that Lebron was suspended from play, and was on the brink of not being allowed to play the rest of his senior year in high school? He handled it with such maturity and all in a fluid motion; it's a shame that Rasheed Wallace does not have that kind of temperance.
          Lebron has shown numbers quite similar to Kobe's in his senior year of high school. Kobe posted almost exact same numbers average wise in high school, and he finished with an amazing 2,883 points. Kevin Garnett too, a high school prodigy that has become one of the best in the NBA, totaled 2,533 points. Lebron out did them both according to coverage by ESPN. He will out do anyone in the draft, of course then?
This kid is going to make a franchise. He has the abilities, he has the talent, the intangibles, the love from the press, and kids begging to have his jersey (despite not having a team nor a number). Carmelo Anthony is a great player and will be an All-Star in the future no doubt, but James is going to be in the hall one day (besides his high school jersey being retired into it a few weeks back).

        The last time I've checked the objective of basketball is WINNING. Carmello Anthony is most definitely a winner. OK, OK, LeBron did win the state basketball tournament in Ohio. No offense to LeBron, but that is like being the tallest midget, nobody cares. He beat up on kids that were his age and younger. Meanwhile, in a world where there is an actual challenge, Carmello took it to people that were up to the ages of 21, and he is 18. In the national title game he went up against Kansas, whose two best players were seniors and had been in the final four before. He smoked them. That is a way bigger accomplishment then winning a state title in basketball, Schaumburg won a state title, but none of those kids are going to be all stars.
           Then you look at physical skills. Everyone has been jizzing over Lebron's size, he is 6'8, and Carmello is 6'8. LeBron can dunk, so can Carmello. They are virtually the same physically; accept LeBron is a little leaner and muscular. The last thing that people like to rave about is LeBron's court vision. It's pretty easy to pass the ball when people 8 inches shorter than you are guarding you. I would bet anyone that Carmello matches LeBron in assist their first couple of years in the league.
           The last thing you can look at is what type of person they are. LeBron is a punk who has been spoiled and dubbed the Jesus Christ of basketball. He has managed to get himself in trouble for A) getting the Hummer from his mom. Then B) taking those Jerseys for free. That was stupid and selfish of him. How is he going to handle the pressures of the NBA?
           Carmello is a model citizen and loved by everyone in the Syracuse community. The fans, coaches, and media alike were impressed by his skills on and off the court.
           The fact of the matter is that Carmello is equally as talented, more experienced, and a better citizen. What is there to like about LeBron?

      Its times like these one questions the existence of a higher being. How is it that Brian Arenz, arguably the premier male sex symbol of our time, could have this happen to him?
     For those of you who haven't heard about our beloved columnist, Brian's money machine known as his face was damaged by a line drive from the Anti-Christ (otherwise known as Kurt Heisman). From what I heard of it, Brian thought it was a mosquito bite, and wasn't even thrown off by the incident until he heard the girlish scream of one of his teammates, presumably Ryan Scott. Brian turned around, thinking that there was possibly a burning home in which a family needed to be saved (again). Not until he looked down and saw the puddle of blood did he begin to realize what had happened to his face. He was quickly rushed to the hospital despite his persistence to "walk it off". There he found the grim truth that his nose was not only broken, but that he needed surgery and might never look the same. The news devastated the young man, who in the previous weeks had been finalizing his contracts to go to France after graduation where he would become a feature model for the new Calvin Klein clothing line "Orgasmic". But now, this is all in jeopardy. He may never look the same again. The public fallout has been tremendous. Teenage girls have been crushed, crying to their parents about why this could happen, and if they could go out on Saturday night. The Pope dedicated his morning mass to the welfare of Mr. Arenz, and President Bush said that the incident brought him much "troublingnessment", and vowed to invade Elmhurst if it didn't stop this cruel treatment of their athletes. Barbara Streisand has offered her excess nose "features" if needed in the operation. When reached for comment, Michael Jackson was barely able to speak.
       "I�..I�..I just can't believe this could happen. I mean,
Brian, so young, so beautiful, and possibly destroyed before I could have him in my bed and read him a bedtime story," said the obviously shook up Jackson. "I modeled all my nose jobs trying to look like his, but now that it might never be the same, what am I going to do? Ahhh selfish God, what am I going to do now?"
      The flag has been lowered to half staff at York High School, and students have been seen crying in the hallways, praying for the safe return of their beloved Brian. Teachers have had trouble assigning homework, and it is almost as if school is just a formality until the well being of Brian's nose is certain.
      One thing that has been shown is how much the community of Elmhurst and the entire world takes Brian's good looks for granted. One does not realize that by living his high-risk life of baseball, working on a cure for AIDS, solving world hunger, or fighting the Soviets, Brian is in harms way. We can only pray that Brian's ravishing good looks return, and that we can be given a second chance to loving him and realizing how lucky we are.