Continuing what they Started

By Emma Soberano

When they started their ninth grade as a part of the first class of the Junior High Da Vinci two years ago, many students weren’t sure what they were in for.

 

“I was expecting it to be really strange and it was really strange mostly,” says junior Summer Zuber, who was part of the starting class of the Junior High. For Summer, who had until then been part of the close-knit community at the Davis Waldorf, working with people she barely knew was hard at first. But now, she says, working with people is one of her favorite parts. “It’s probably still the hardest part but now I realize it can be fun.”

 

Krista Schultze, on the other hand, applied because her friends were going. She also thought it’d be an interesting experience, remembering her expectations as “Really different group work.”

 

Even though she had her friends with her, Krista was still a little worried, considering it was the first year. “What if it’s a flop and the teachers are crappy and the projects are crappy?” she remembers thinking. But all in all, the transition was fine. “It ended up going pretty smoothly because there was still individual work.” The only problem for her was that she found that it was easy for people to get away with not doing as much work. “You have a contractual obligation to do it but if you don’t have the pressure or drive to do it it’s not going to get done,” she stated.

 

Towards the end of the year, each student at Da Vinci Junior High was faced with the choice of whether to stay on through high school or not. Both Krista and Summer stayed. “I loved how it was a family almost oriented community” says Krista.

 

After having spent a year with the Project Based Learning style of Da Vinci already, Krista had some expectations for the more established DVCA. “A lot more established and more prepared with the projects” she said, “It definitely lived up to that. It definitely had more complexity and more interest.”

 

Summer agreed. “It was definitely a more positive environment. It felt more established, people knew each other better. People knew what they were doing” she said about the High School, “People at the junior high were more testing everything out.”

 

But both feel that having gone to the Junior High gave them a definite advantage in some ways. “I was used to working in groups and doing projects. I think if I’d had to start with it in tenth grade, learning all that might have taken away from the curriculum” Summer says. Krista feels the same way but also adds that “At the same time I was not as open to some of the ideas, being used to the Junior High DV and how I knew how to do things one way.”

 

For Summer, one of the best things about Da Vinci High School is the campus. The Junior High Da Vinci shares its campus with Emerson Junior High, which follows the traditional model of learning. “I didn’t really like it because it sort of took away from the individuality of Da Vinci” Summer said about sharing the campus at the Junior High. She feels that having our own campus feels “More secluded – which is a good thing.”

 

All things considered, neither Summer nor Krista would ever consider leaving. When asked whether she would ever consider going back to the “normal” style of learning, Krista didn’t hesitate before emphatically answering “No”. Summer said the same, adding “I’m so much more normal now than I was before!”

Welcome to Da Vinci and DON’T DO DRUGS!

By Nik Harter

What was intended to be a warm welcome to our school may have come off a bit rough for some of our newcomers. The welcome back assembly during the first week of school sent off two very clear messages: be proud to be at this school, and stay away from drugs. For those of us who were here last year this hardly came as a surprise, but what about our new students?

“It’s almost like they tricked us, they told us it was about the school and then it ends up being about drugs,” said sophomore Dre Caven, referring to the assembly. Dre enjoyed the parts of the assembly that fostered school spirit, like the student and alumni speeches, but seemed to be a little surprised when the speakers turned abruptly to drugs. She seemed to question the wisdom of having a drug assembly and a school pride assembly at the same time.

Jeff Ewing, another sophomore, was of a similar opinion. He said he was surprised when it “jumped straight into the drug part.” Then he said, “I guess drugs are kind of a big deal here if they had an assembly for it.” Giving sophomores the idea that drugs are prevalent may actually counter the anti-drug message they were trying to send.

Many students who have been in Davis since elementary school are familiar with the recently ended D.A.R.E. program. This is a compulsory anti-drug class that many students across the country went through during fifth grade. An article in Time Magazine described how the D.A.R.E. program was a failure as a result of the “panic level assertions that drug abuse is everywhere.” Researchers speculate that by making drugs seem more prevalent then they are, the D.A.R.E. program actually pushed kids who were anxious to fit in towards drugs.

It would be highly unfortunate if the anti-drug message our administration is trying to give us is actually going to push Da Vinci students towards drugs. Especially considering that the sophomores who were interviewed had not seen or heard anything about drug use by students besides at the assembly. Jeff even said that so far this year he had seen and heard more about drug and alcohol use by students at Harper then he had at Da Vinci.

The administration should be encouraging us to stay away from drugs, however it is upsetting that their warnings have skewed the perceptions of some of our sophomores. It seems clear that although the warnings are necessary, it is also necessary to communicate that most Da Vinci-ites choose to stay away from drugs. Our administrators need to learn from the mistakes of the D.A.R.E. program and use that to more effectively fight drug use on campus. Perhaps a good first step would be to separate our drug use assembly from our school spirit assembly. The D.A.R.E. program has taught us that the last thing we want to do is associate drug use on campus with school spirit.

School away from school

By Zachary Zehnder

Most students do not develop serious illnesses during their time in high school. For those that do, between frequent medical appointments, difficult treatments, and sometimes painful surgery, completing their missed schoolwork is the last thing on their mind. Yet once they have finally recovered, they are confronted with the problem of having to make up for what they missed during the weeks or months they were gone. Halfway through the month of May, nearing the end of my junior year, I was one such student when I was pulled out of school and shortly thereafter diagnosed with testicular cancer. (I’m fine now, just in case you were wondering.)

After completing my four rounds of chemotherapy and two surgeries, I was faced with the fact that not only had I missed the last month of my junior year, but it would be six weeks into my senior year before I could return to school. In the meantime, I needed to get working quickly, in order to get final grades for my 11^th grade classes and to keep myself from falling too far behind in my 12^th grade classes. The experience of completing textbook assignments and essays during the last days of summer was slightly out of the norm for me as a Da Vinci student, but not terribly difficult. It was, for the most part, comparable to summer school classes, but somewhat more stressful, as shortly thereafter, I was met with a wake-up call in the form of makeup work for senior year.

At the time of writing, I am still in the process of completing the aforementioned makeup work, but it has helped to prepare me to jump back into the school environment. The lesson I am quickly learning, as I have learned many times before (and failed to heed many times before), is not to procrastinate. It has been truly a unique experience.

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