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BFFs & Bromances
Morgan Barbour
The Business of Teaching: Get-to-Know our Teacher of the Year Frien Wallace
Stude
Carleigh Ballard and John Castillo
Carleigh and John have been best friends since freshman year where they met in math class. Shortly after they became best friends they started dating. Their love of talking, laughing, and being goofy brought them together. They’ ve gone on many adventures together, but their favorite memory was going to the apple orchards in the mountains.
Gabby Aiello and Nicole Hernandez
Gabby and Nicole have been friends since freshmen year. They both love fashion and playing soccer together. Gabby’ s favorite thing about Nicole is her sense of style while Nicole said she loves how Gabby can make everyone laugh. Their favorite memory together is when they went to the skating rink and Nicole hit her leg.
Brant Black, Spencer Broome, and George Mckee
Brant, Spencer, and George have such a strong bromance that they spend most of their time together either cracking jokes or eating at Enzo’ s where they go at least once a week. The trio have been friends for two years since they were just freshmen. They share many memories together, but their all time favorite is celebrating Brant’ s birthday really late at night in the park.
Dan Froehlich, Teacher of the Year
Mr. Froehlich is a teacher in the Business and Legal pathway. Earlier this year he was voted as Highland’ s Teacher of the Year.
Q: How does it feel to be Teacher of the year?
A:“ It feels incredible; I mean it’ s a nice recognition to have, and a great honor, especially here at Highland, where there are so many excellent teachers.”
Q: What made you want to be a teacher in the Business and Legal Pathway?
A:“ In the world there’ s a lack of information about the basics of business
Film Scripts and Java script: New Classes at HST Jason Wilson
and finance. With this job I have a opportunity to expose students to that knowledge. The best thing about being a teacher is to be in a position, on a daily basis, to have an impact on a young person’ s life.”
Q: What do you enjoy most about your job?
A:“ The best part of my job would have to be getting to hang out with teenagers all day. I love interacting with the students. I enjoy class discussions and hearing their perspective on the world, and how the course relates to them. I like to see them experience success, big or small.”
Film and Literature( taught by Lia Smith) and AP Computer Science Principles( taught by Joseph Yavelak) are the newest courses added to Highland’ s roster this year.
Film and Literature( Film & Lit) is described by Ms. Smith as“ a course in which students learn to watch films the same way we read books- look at the details, find the symbolism, trace the arc of the story and the development of characters.”
Tony Carpenter, a senior who took Film & Lit in the fall said,“ A lot of projects we did were fun. We [ also ] made a music video film [ as one of the projects ], and the final project was taking a short story and making it into a film.” When Tony was asked what benefit he has gained from the course, he said,“ For about ten years now I have been making short films on the side, and this class has really helped me with that.” When asked what was the most memorable part of the class Tony responded,“ it was probably making the short film and brainstorming the ideas for the film.”
Tony Caprenter( Right) and Jeren Bierschbach( left) filming for their Silent Film Project in Film & Literature.
Senior Brandon Moore is currently enrolled in AP Computer Science Principles. Overall,“[ the class ] has not been really what I expected. I expected there to be a lot of textbook work and learning about computers, not about the computer software itself. We have actually done a lot of programming using a program called Snap, and it has allowed us to really see the [ inner ] workings of other projects.” Brandon has already gotten the opportunity to use the experience from this class in the real world. He stated,“ My internship has me building a web site. I was able to take some of the coding and HTML Javascript we have learned and apply it to the project.”
Brandon’ s most difficult assignment to complete was“ the explore task. It is a lot of work that you have to do on a topic that you then have to explain to the class. You have to be able to tell them the computing innovation and what kind of data it uses. You also have to make a model to represent the data and have a digital copy of it is a well.” When asked about the best thing he had done, Brandon said,“ It would probably have to be the Create because [ Mr. Yavelak ] allows you a lot of freedom on the project. You get to chose what you want to make, and you also get the option to work with a partner.”
In conclusion, these two classes have had a successful impact on Highland. Having them allows students more class options and gives