Technology educa-tion jobs are “in the gut-ter,” as I say. “Why do I care?” you may ask. We should all care because it’s affecting every sin-gle one of us: due to a shortage of teachers, we have suffered the loss of a few classes this year. I asked Mr. Letko, Northwestern High’s very own tech ed in-structor, why there has been such a decline in these professions. He told me it was “because of the variety of jobs in the field and more peo-ple have been going to desk jobs instead of teaching positions.” I also found that there were about 60,000 open-ings nationally.
The thing to remem-ber here is definitely the utter lack of tech ed.
There are too few people with the degrees and too many openings for a job. Only six people graduat-ed from UW Stout’s Technology Education course last year. This year, there were 30 open positions for tech ed teachers in schools all across Wisconsin. If there were more tech ed teachers, we would have had more classes this year.
Another important thing to remember is that this school has a very large following of the tech ed courses.
I, for instance, wanted to take Intro. to Manu-facturing this year, but due to my schedule, I wasn’t able to fit it in. This wouldn’t have been an issue if there were more teachers to teach classes during other
blocks. I know some of you have similar stories to mine.
Why is this so? Gen-erally, after four years of studying technology ed-ucation, graduates tend to lean towards taking higher paying jobs than becoming members of a high school staff. Who can blame them? Col-lege costs more and more by the year.
The minimum cost of attending UW Stout to attain a four year degree (simply tuition, nothing else included) is $36,276. Add a meal plan to that and you’re paying $62,252 for four years. If you don’t live on campus? You’re looking at about $93,296 for four years and a meal From archery to
fish-ing to relaxfish-ing with a beverage, the Woerle family has you covered. Their four giant sculp-tures of everyday objects are a sight for everyone driving on Hwy. 2 just east of Brule, past the Woerle property.
The family started making these sizeable sculptures because their matriarch wanted a porch swing. So their father agreed and made a porch swing that molded before it could be fin-ished. The swing was burned and they moved on to bigger things. They
began with the 18 foot tall chair that took 12 ½ hours to build, moved
on to the arrow, then added a beer can and, finally, the fishing pole. The creations are defi-nitely large enough for everyone to enjoy, and many people have seen and enjoyed them. Ac-cording to Josh Woerle, the “big things” are very popular; people
fre-quently come to their house to ask permission to take pictures and/or climb on the monstrous models, but not everyone who visits has been friendly.
One unkind individual
Online@ nw-tigers.org/the-octagon
Volume 66, Issue 3 October 3, 2014
By Kaleb Scharp
Today:
Football:
Var-sity @ Chetek
Saturday:
Cross
Coun-try: Varsity In-vitational
Volleyball:
JV&V @ New Richmond
Sunday:
Applefest
Tuesday:
Cross Country
Varsity Invita-tional
Volleyball:
JV&V @ New Richmond
Volleyball:
C,JV&V @ Barron
Thursday:
Football:
Freshman @ NHS vs. Lady-smith
Pg. 2 Band Pg. 3 Senior Prof’s
Pg. 5 Mr. Florestano
By Lilli Kovaleski
‘Chairs’ Continued
Pg. 4
The Woerles’ creations.
‘Tech Ed’
Contin-ued Pg. 5
Attention
Mrs. Jurek’s
fourth block
Anyone who’s been to a football home game here at NHS has heard the loud, music of our Tiger Band. The school
song, well loved by the band, always gets a cheer from the audience, but the true favorite of the band seems to be be-tween “Pirates,” “Ipso,” “Hey Baby,” and “Ultimate.”
“He’s a Pirate” comes from Pirates of the Car-ibbean. It’s fun to play and easy enough for eve-ryone in the band to pick up. With its simple har-monies and recognizable melody it’s fun for the band and the listeners. Another favorite is “Ipso Funko,” the exact opposite of the simple natured pirate song. It’s loud, fast and, as the
name suggests,
funky. The low brass (trombone, tuba, bari-tone, mellophone, and baritone sax) has a so-lo! Which, if you didn’t know, doesn’t happen
often. This solo makes the song unique, while its difficulty makes it a challenge. One that I’m sure the freshmen will rise to and conquer. “Hey Baby,” my per-sonal favorite, is even more simple than “Pirates.” What makes this song unique is the section in which only the low brass is playing and the rest of the band is singing. Though the singing pitch is question-able, their tune not quite to perfection, the vocals make the song fun and lively.
“The Ultimate Warm Up” combines a bit of everything from the oth-er songs. It has simple easy notes, but they’re to be played at an incredi-bly fast tempo. This contradiction makes the song interesting both to
play and to hear, as well as making it easy enough
By Lilli Kovaleski
10/3
Daniel Burbul Nathan Johnson
Joseph Peterson-Cloutier
10/4
Ricky Schiff
10/7
Jonathan Burbul Nickolas Korhonen Holly Pellman Connor Smith
10/8
Jacob Makela Brooklyn Smith
10/9
Jonah Jamison
Happy
Birthday!
Senior Editor/ Formatter:
Nik Sauer
Text Editor:
Brooklyn Smith
Staff Members: Katie Johnson
Emily Gaare J. Gaare Lilli Kovaleski
Molly Niven Kaleb Scharp Richard Schiff Luke Rutten Philomena Lindquist
Advisor:
Mrs. Thompson
‘Band’ Continued
Pg. 6
“Walk,” “run,” and “compete” are all words you have likely heard in the slogans of charity events or campaigns, but can you confidently say you’ve ever heard “dump a bucket of ice water on yourself” before? The action gained recogni-tion, however, shortly after the launch of the ALS Ice Bucket Chal-lenge this past July. The challenge, proba-bly seen around social
media as
#ALSIceBucketChalleng e, is a way to spread awareness of a disease short-handedly called ALS. Once you’re nomi-nated to take the chal-lenge by someone, your job is either to donate a monetary sum of your choice to the ALS
Asso-ciation (ALSA) or to complete the challenge: record a video of your-self being doused with icy cold water and up-load it to a social media website within 24 hours, then nominate others to do the same.
Though seemingly lighthearted and perhaps silly, the challenge is ac-tually for a very serious cause. There are varying accounts of who started it and when (ALSA says the trend of the ice buck-et has been used in the sporting world in the past) but the underlying reason remains the same: to raise awareness and donations for ALS.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a frightening disease that affects as many as 30,000 Americans at any
given time. Often called “Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” it is classified as a pro-gressive neurodegenera-tive disease, which means that it attacks the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, pro-gressing over time.
Patients will notice their muscles weakening; they may experience tremors or cramping in the early stages. As the ailment worsens, their speech will become “thickened” and im-paired; they might fall or trip more often than usu-al, and they will experi-ence shortness of breath and trouble swallowing or breathing.
Not all symptoms are universal for all patients, nor will the severity or rate of advancement be the same, but progressive
muscle weakness and paralysis are experienced in all cases. Once that becomes serious enough, the patient will no longer be able to breathe on his or her own, needing per-manent respiratory assis-tance to live.
Although there is treatment available for ALS patients, there is no cure and the life expec-tancy is usually around three to five years after diagnosis (though many people can live longer -- up to ten years after diag-nosis).
For many people liv-ing with ALS, it is terri-fying to experience these symptoms and realize that it’s only going to get
By Emily Gaare
What is your favorite kitchen appliance? Not a toaster.
What do you plan to do after high school? Go to UW Eau-Claire or UMD, not sure about my major yet. Possibly engi-neering.
What is your favorite way to prepare a pota-to?
Nope.
iPhone, Android, or Windows phone and
why? Uh, north.
What is your favorite type of tree?
The ones with roots
above and branches below. If you could listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it
be?
“Soil” by Counterparts, it builds up and turns into a very soft, emotional song at the end. I love it. If you could live in one country other than the U.S., what would it be, and why?
I wouldn’t.
Make up your own question and answer it. Q: Advice for under-classmen.
A: Be kind to one anoth-er, it’s that simple. You never know what some-one is dealing with and it makes school and life so much smoother.
What is your favorite kitchen appliance? Toaster.
What do you plan to do after high school? Go to college to become an Aeronautical Engi-neer, hopefully at the Air Force Academy where I can shoot on their rifle team.
What is your favorite way to prepare a
pota-to?
Go to Taco John’s and order some pota-to oles.
iPhone, Android, or Windows phone and why?
Windows, because who wants an iPhone.
What is your favorite type of tree?
I don’t have one. I prefer to turn my thoughts to the roots and not get caught up in the branch-es.
If you could listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?
“A War Inside” by We Came As Romans. It has a great storyline about self-redemption and has a wonderful blend of mysterious clean vocals and aggressive emotional screams. Amazing Chris-tian song and an adven-ture in five minutes. If you could live in one country other than the
U.S., what would it be, and why?
Deutschland. The people that I have met so far that are from/live there are really nice, and I love their food.
Make up your own question and answer it. Q: Advice for under-classmen.
A: “Don’t climb for a lifetime only to fall short of infinity.”— Mike Hranica
Andrew
Ogren
Nick Learn
Nick Learn (left) and Andrew Ogren (right).
Do you know what viscosity is? How about cognitive dissonance or even chlorophyll? If you answered yes (or even no) to any of these ques-tions you should check out Quiz Bowl, which meets in Room 2053, because it is a terrific club that will keep you far from boredom during Tiger Time.
There is room in Quiz Bowl for everyone; whether someone just wants to have fun or wants to put his/her
intel-ligence to the test. Its purpose, according to J. Gaare, is to “help kids expand their knowledge and offer another activity that isn’t sports-based.” Don’t worry if you don’t know anything! Half of the fun of Quiz Bowl is learning all sorts of seemingly useless stuff and why it actually matters.
“You get to learn new things from such a wide knowledge base,” said Molly Niven about why she joined.
Last year, our team knew enough to place
4th in CESA at Ashland. It wasn’t just about what they knew, however, it was also about what they learned. Quiz Bowl is all about increasing your familiarity with a variety of different subjects while enjoying yourself. Is there a better way to spend your mornings than hanging out with other awesome students? After talking to a few people about their favor-ite parts of Quiz Bowl, it became very clear that the members are amazing people who love having fun. They see it as a club
where nobody gets left out, the people are terrif-ic, and it’s educational! As Emily Gaare puts it, “Quiz Bowl is a club that helps people discover knowledge that they might not have known they had in a fun way.” It is one activity that can educate and entertain you at the same time, so make you sure don’t miss out on this oppor-tunity! And just for fun, if you see anybody in Quiz Bowl make sure to ask them what the “awk” is.
By Nik Sauer
Dear all upperclassmen who will be turning 18 by November: you will be eligible to vote in the fall election. Take note: start-ing on September 15 all voters will need to abide by the new voter ID laws. Previously, voters only needed a proof of resi-dence, such as a piece of mail, to cast a ballot. Now, they need to have a valid photo ID such as a legitimate driver’s li-cense, military ID, state ID card, U.S. passport, or student ID as well.
Since not everyone has a driver’s license, pass-port, etc., and because of cost entailed in obtaining one, the U.S. Supreme Court has issued an order whereby the Wisconsin Department of Transpor-tation is now providing free state IDs.
Simply bring the fol-lowing to a DMV service center: proof of your
name and date of birth, such as a passport, certifi-cate of naturalization, or birth certificate; and if you do not have access to your birth certificate, all you have to do is explain that you need it for voting purposes and the state will get a copy of that public record for you at no expense.
You also need proof of identity such as a signed document with a photo, proof of citizenship (your birth certificate, etc.) and finally, your social secu-rity number. Once you have your identification card, you may renew it online when it expires. The items on this No-vember’s ballot include state offices for governor (lieutenant governor, etc.), U.S. Congress, and State Senate and Assem-bly.
For more information about how to vote and the regulations, please visit:
http://gab.wi.gov By Molly Niven
An invasive river bacteria,
Didy-mosphenia geminate, has taken
over many of the world’s rivers.
By Nik Sauer
Hong Kong students and citizens lead clean, orderly protests for
the pursuit of democracy.
Ello, a new social net-work, is gaining support
as an “Anti-Facebook.”
EU sanctions on Rus-sia due to the Ukraine conflict
con-tinue.
worse. These thoughts alone can often be what diminishes hope.
But some of that hope can possibly be brought back as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge brings in momentous response. Already over $3 million has been donated to the ALS Association, with those funds going in var-ious directions of AL-SA’s mission.
Though dying down
somewhat, the
#ALSIceBucketChallenge
lenge are still greatly welcome. Sophomore Sara Lahti, who partici-pated in the challenge, recommends that other people try it and make sure to look up the real reason behind the fun before they do. She says that learning about the disease helped her to un-derstand what the pa-tients go through. To
pulled down the line of the fishing pole, making it necessary for them to have to re-string it. On a regular pole, this would be no big deal, but when it’s as large as this pole, it will be hard work. Josh, Kody, Rhett and their parents are working on a secret fifth sculp-ture. So what will the
next addition to their co-lossal collection be? I asked Josh for a few hints on the subject and he grudgingly obliged. The future object will be big, brown, and point-ed. It will have a win-dow and a door, and will be even bigger than the chair but shorter than the fishing pole. Any guess-es as to what it is will be accepted, but no one will provide a definite an-swer!
‘Chairs’ From Pg.
1
The first independent case of Ebola in the United States was found in Dallas, Texas this past week.
A man made it deep into the White House on Sept. 19, after
jumping the fence and over-powering a security guard.
Pluto may become a planet again!
In Which I Ask Sum Questions
There is a rule in Writ-ing for Publication. It is a treacherous and often scary rule for those of us who don’t have excess confidence in our people skills. We must do at least one article where we interview someone. I trembled and shook as I made my way to the basement of our school. I was on my way to inter-view one Mr. Florestano. He would be my first -- and hopefully only -- in-terviewee.
However, throughout the process, I noticed something. Interviewing wasn’t that bad. Luckily, Mr. Florestano was great throughout my learning process about this rather essential part of the class as well as journalism as a whole.
Mr. Florestano, our new Algebra II and Pre-Calc teacher, likes math. It’s a weird coincidence, I know. He says that he was good in his math classes in school, which would also make a whole lot of sense upon exam-ining his current profes-sion.
I, personally, didn’t truly understand why an-yone would choose to teach any sort of math, and yet Mr. Florestano is trained to teach many
different types of it. So naturally, I asked him why.
He answered that he liked seeing people learn. How nice! That’s a good thing for a teacher to be able to do. Then, with a vague sort of wonder lighting up his eye, he said something about how there is “only one right answer in math,” and, “that doesn’t seem to happen too much in our society anymore.” Things got deep pretty quickly. I was a bit star-tled.
Not wanting the inter-view to turn into a deep pit of philosophy and politics, I changed the subject to something much lighter. I asked one of the old standbys: “Do
you have any pets?” He
did. He has a dog. A springer spaniel, if you want to get technical, which apparently I did. The next question, giving the unfortunate, stereotypical interview path I now seemed to be following, shouldn’t sur-prise anyone: I asked about his family, to which he responded that, yes, he did have family. This answer didn’t sur-prise me, either. I was saddened by my abysmal interviewing skills and asked him to elaborate. To this, he told me that
he had three younger brothers, a mom, and a dad.
“So why did you come to Northwest-ern?” It is, after all, a rather off-the-grid type of place, and personal preference prohibits me from completely under-standing people’s uncan-ny desire to live here. He said that
he did know some people around the area, so he wasn’t com-pletely abandon-ing all previous civiliza-tion. He
also said that our stu-dents are . . . well-behaved. It was then that I realized that he meant that we are not hindered by a constant fear of gang violence or daily fights. This made me feel kind of grateful, I’ll ad-mit.
So I asked where he had taught before, or rather, student taught. He told me that before com-ing to the district, he taught at both Superior middle and high school. “That must have been a bit different from here,” I observed rather dimly.
“It was,” he agreed, hopefully overlooking the vagueness of my statement. “All high school students seem to have a lot less energy than the middle school-ers, and it’s usually easi-er to teach a class that is able to get excited, but there are more
discipli-nary issues with the younger kids.”
Yup, I could definitely see that. Middle school was when I had a lot more energy and used it on stupid things. Alt-hough, I still use what energy I have now for stupid things. It’s just kind of the way we seem to work.
He also mentioned that the block schedule was not especially an easy thing to adjust to when you’re used to shorter classes.
In his free time, Mr. Florestano enjoys golf-ing, paintgolf-ing, playing the guitar, and playing sports of all kinds.
Finally, I asked him which Doctor he would time travel with (from the amazing BBC series Doctor Who), and he chose Matt Smith be-cause Matt is very funny. So that was my inter-view with Mr. Floresta-no. In the end, I left feel-ing as though my people skills had been smeared with dirt and left out in the rain. Mr. Florestano, however, seemed very likable and friendly. He provided interesting an-swers and was kind, de-spite my inability to be a better interviewer.
plan.
Starting salary for tech ed teachers is about $32,000 (such as NHS) and ranges to about $50,000 on the very high end. If you do the math, one reason for the scarci-ty of qualified people pursuing a teaching job in the public school realm
becomes apparent.
Not having as many tech ed classes as we should comes down to three basic points: lack of qualified people, excess openings, and the cons outweighing the pros of becoming a teacher for some individuals pursu-ing technology degrees.
‘Tech Ed’ From Pg. 1
Mr. Florestano demonstrates his
proficiency in his profession.
for incoming freshman to pick up after only a few classes.
Regardless of what song is your favorite, all of the music played by our Marching Tigers comes from hard work
and no play though, ask anyone who joined! It’s a great way to get in-volved in your school if sports aren’t really your thing. Regardless, band is a great way to meet new people, learn new
just listening to the radio.
Homecoming At homecoming the band director Mr. Hintz-man made a questionable decision that turned out to be a grand success.
the Man” by Corey Vi-dal, is a YouTube sensa-tion that any geek has heard.
With the lyrics pulled directly from the Star Wars movies, it’s a great representation of the movies as well as the brilliance of John Wil-liams. His compositions are the basis of many well known movies in-cluding Jaws, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, and E.T.
Mr. Hintzman ar-ranged the piece from a vocal quartet into a full band arrangement. This piece impressed not only the band director but also some fans. One fan who attended the game, Bill Kovaleski, said “It was a stirring rendition of all my favorite movie themes.”
The song isn’t celebrat-ed only by adults, but also by young adults of various ages. Mr. Ko-valeski’s son, James, complimented it saying, “I liked the YouTube video before, but when the band played it, they made it much bet-ter.” Seeing as so many people in different stages of fandom, from middle school to middle aged, enjoyed this perfor-mance, it’s obvious our band made the right choice in using it. As anyone in the band will tell you, John Williams is the man for everyone! It’s indisputable that
the worst aspect of social media is far and away the fact that you’re willingly bringing hundreds of people and their petty problems into your home, but for some rea-son, the concept of the “selfie” is what gets the most flak.
The likely justification for this intense animosity seems to be the presumed egotism that goes with an individual taking an ac-tion for the sole purpose of having other people look at him or her. And I get that. It does seem in-herently arrogant to force people to waste half a second of their lives glancing at unnecessarily visible faces. It is per-fectly logical, therefore, to react to selfies with outright anger and rants
about
self-aggrandizement rather than proceeding calmly about your day.
Did you feel some-thing just now? That was me lovingly slapping you with sarcasm. This hos-tility toward the selfie is the slightest bit hugely ridiculous. If your wild-est negative response to a picture of a person on the internet is something oth-er than ignoring it, you are overreacting.
Now that we’ve cov-ered that, let’s look at why so many of these zany youngsters are em-bracing the selfie. “They
want attention!” you shriek. Probably, but I fail to discern why that makes you scream “Criminently! We must crush the debauched youth of America.” Nay, from what I’ve seen, the selfie is all about the journey to building killer self-esteem. They’re posting that picture to express
their appreciation for one of their features or to simply state that they dig the way they look and feel confident enough to share themselves with sentient beings. If you’ve ever been insecure about your body for any reason, you probably know what a big deal that is and how much courage it en-tails.
Does this mean that I particularly enjoy it when random girls bombard my life with endless aeri-al views of their visages? I wouldn’t lie to you, dear readers, even though I do often forget that you all are actual, cognizant humans. The answer is no, I don’t.
But there is a massive difference between up-loading selfies on a con-stant basis and just post-ing a few on those occa-sionally rare, body-positive days. So if a
movement based on be-coming comfortable with oneself requires me to view countless pictures of random people I don’t know, I think I can deal with that.
“But inner beauty,” you yell at me as if it’s a complete sentence. “Why don’t these colloquial photographers learn to love themselves for who they are instead of for how they look and let their inner beauty shine through?”
The answer to that riddle is easy enough: have you seen the kind of world we live in? The media is conditioning kids to believe that their worth is contingent upon their physical appear-ance. Is that horribly twisted and reprehensi-ble? Well, yeah, duh, but unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world and the love of one’s per-sonality is hopelessly in-tertwined with that of one’s appearance and there’s nothing we can do to immediately change that.
So when you mock the selfie, you’re not chan-neling your inner Mark Twain and reporting a wry, limpid observance of society, you’re mock-ing someone’s moment of self-confidence. So please cease your weak attempt at satire and kindly fall off your high horse.
By Brooklyn Smith
“Criminently! We must
crush the debauched
youth of America.”
learn more about the challenge, the disease, and where donations are being sent, visit
www.alsa.org.
