GreatNews.Life Student Voices: Lake Central wraps up school year through meaningful moments and planning for the summer

What’s Recently Happened?

Throughout the hallways on May 14, students excitedly flipped throughout their colorful yearbook. The yearbook distribution took place in the Mainstreet hallway during students’ lunches where members from the yearbook staff each sat at color-coordinated tables that told students where to pick up their own book.

“As a yearbook staffer, I feel really excited to pass out the yearbook. We worked really hard on it as a group, I’m excited to see what other people think about the book. I worked on a variety of pages including the Football team, school spirit, and girls’ basketball,” Sophomore Heidi Wright said.

The book’s theme was kaleidoscope and featured lots of different circles throughout, with the primary colors being yellow, pink, and green. There were over 1,350 books, which is nearly half of the school’s population, and the book was nearly 300 pages long.

“Within the yearbook for different pages, I got interviews, wrote stories, came up with captions, and took photos for each of my pages. This day is really rewarding because I get to see the final product, and I get to see how happy everyone is with the book throughout these next couple of days,” Junior Copy Editor Izabel Ontiveros said.

What’s Coming Up?

As the end of the school year draws nearer, seniors begin thinking about festivities to come during the last week of school. On the last day of school, there are a variety of activities planned for graduating seniors, including breakfast, class photos, and graduation ceremony practice After, the students get to leave the high school and visit all of their different elementary and middle schools in the area.

“Overall, I’m really excited for the senior send-off because I get to see all the old elementary and middle school teachers I have missed over the years. I know a lot of them won’t still be there, but I can visit the ones that are. I’m just going to miss spending time with my friends in the grades below me that I probably won’t see again for awhile,” Senior Piotr Zarozny said.

Walking the hallways on the last day of school will be 697 graduates, and graduation will take place on June 3. Depending on weather, the graduation ceremony will either be indoors within the main gym or outside on the football field at 5:30 p.m.

Staff Spotlight:

Between her years of teaching, English teacher Rhonda York has pursued her passion of traveling to many different places both inside the U.S. and abroad, which has helped her in the classroom as well. She even has traveled with the school on trips, too.

“I have been traveling abroad since 2010. I have traveled on a school trip once, and I went to Spain last summer with Mrs. Lale,” York said.

She also shared how she visited different places that she has taught about in school throughout the books her classes have read.

“I have discussed a couple of trips in class. After I returned from London, I was able to talk to the class about visiting Shakespeare’s Globe Theater and show them photos. When I used to teach 10th grade, I taught the book “Night,” so I was able to show the students photos of the site of the concentration camp I visited when I was in Germany. I visited Hamlet’s castle in Denmark, so I have shown my class photos of that location as well,” York said.

There are places York wished she could travel to again, thanks to the rich culture she had experienced during her visit.

“I would definitely love to go back to London or Rome. Rome was the first place I visited, so it’s time to go back. I’d also go back to the Netherlands, because I didn’t get to spend as much time there as I would have liked,” York said.

Student Spotlight:

Junior Julia Ponnezhan has exciting plans for her upcoming summer taking up most of her break. She learned about a study abroad program occurring in Spain, and decided to look into the opportunity.

“I found out about going to Spain through a family friend’s daughter. She did a program through Indiana University, but unfortunately they closed it down because not enough students were signing up. I still wanted to go on an excursion, so my mom found out from another friend about a program called LITA. A lot of the other ones were too big or didn’t have enough language immersion, so we found Leader, which was smaller,” Ponnezhan said.

In addition to speaking entirely in Spanish while on the trip, Ponnezhan will also have to complete a research project abroad.

“I’m really excited for the research part. I think that it will be a really good opportunity to learn more about local life in Spain because we aren’t going into a big city. We will be staying in a small town, and really trying to understand local people through their way of life. We will also learn how their lives are different from ours in terms of pace of life, food, and activities.” Ponnezhan said. “I’m excited to get to speak in Spanish and get better at it,”

The LITA program Ponnezhan is going on is a lot different from others her family researched for several reasons.

“The program really cares about you learning the language. They set restrictions on how much you can be on your phone because they really want you to immerse in the language. In LITA, they only want you to speak Spanish, so that’s a really unique part,” said Ponnezhan.

At the end of the program, the students all spend time presenting their research projects that they focused on the whole trip.

“For the presentation aspect, we get to present any way we want – so we could do photography, debate style, or a slide show. I’ve started thinking about the topic I might pick, and there was a local market that seemed interesting,” Ponnezhan said.

Overall this program will help Ponnezhan not only gain more travel experience, but will also prepare her for Spanish language classes she will take in years to come.

“This program will help me efficiently communicate with people based on the skills I have instead of trying to make my Spanish speaking perfect.” said Ponnezhan. “I’m going out there and meeting new people I’ve never met before in addition to traveling out of the country by myself. This will help me be more confident since I will be experiencing new things and exploring all on my own.”