The beginning of the end: juniors take over the Senior Cafe

Juniors enjoying some extra space in the Senior Cafe. photo by Margarita Forbes

by Michaela Zelandi

With the 2015 seniors of Woburn Memorial High School saying their final goodbyes to their schooling days here, the current juniors are now consequently rising to the top of the food chain.  After years of being the underclassmen, the moment that we thought was so distant has now finally arrived.  With this new social order in place, juniors are now taking on some pretty basic senior responsibilities.

• One of the most coveted of senior perks is the senior café.  A small staircase above the rest of the lunchroom, the senior café is meant to demonstrate the “superiority” of the seniors.  By moving up to the senior café, the 2016 seniors are able to just get a little taste of advantages of being seniors.  Let’s take a look at all the benefits of the senior café, shall we?
•  The seats in the senior café are different from the rest of the lunchroom, which is quite the blessing.  The seats in the regular café are tiny and stiff, making seating on the seats an experience far from enjoyable.  Not to mention the seats don’t even have a back! However, the senior café holds nothing but comfy seats with a backrest; lunch becomes a more enjoyable experience.
•  Not only are the seats comfy, but the senior café also has a surplus of them.  While students in the regular lunch room are forced to wander aimlessly in the pursuit of a rare orange chair, the seniors have absolutely no problem adding one more friend to their lunch table by simply pulling up an easily accessible seat.  The more the merrier!
•  The fact that the tables can be moved without a problem also allows friends to sit with more people.  Whereas the regular lunch room is limited to 8-12 to a table maximum, the students in the senior café can as many tables and chairs together as they want.
• When one walks up the staircase to the senior café and takes a seat, there’s a small feeling of pride.  It shows that one has made it to the top, has survived three years and is on the home stretch.  The senior café provides a sense of accomplishment when one finally makes it there. 
• The induction into the senior café is when juniors realize that the end is in sight, a scary moment, but one that awakens students to get going on their college search. 

Yes, the senior café is quite the location destination, but it is not without its faults as well. 

• The senior café is small when compared to the whole of the lunchroom and exclusively meant for seniors.  This means seniors are forced to face those in their grade; a potentially awkward experience. However, this can be a good or a bad thing depending on the situation.
•    One final drawback about the senior café is that in order to go up for seconds and buy another bag of chips or goldfish, everyone in the lunchroom will see you walking down from the senior café.  Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but to some this may be a big deal.

Seniors of 2016, it’s the beginning of the end for us.         

For students, standardized testing fails to make the grade

by Erika Crampton

Many people believe that standardized testing in schools have little to no benefits. The obsession with standardized tests have led to an increased amount of stress among students, lack of creativity in the classroom, and an enlarged focus on the students’ performance creating the illusion that the score received determines one’s academic intelligence.

Many students have been convinced that their test scores define them. Yet standardized tests are failing to determine the abilities of students. Every person is different. Students test, learn, and think differently. Lee Dalton, junior at WMHS, explained his views on standardized tests.

"Standardized tests are not particularly effective in testing the abilities of an individual Each person is different, so giving the same test doesn't show anything except for how well they take that certain test," said Dalton

Keara Sullivan, junior at WMHS shared her experiences and views on standardized tests.

"In my opinion, standardized tests do not reflect the intelligence of an individual. Personally, I am in honors and AP classes and I struggle with standardized testing. Recently I took the SAT and realized that some of the material on the test is not material teachers have covered in class. Standardized tests do not form to the material students have learned in school and therefore inaccurately rate a student's level of intelligence," said Sullivan

Jake Marquis, Junior at WMHS gave his input of standardized test.

“I think the popularity and overabundance of standardized testing in the national education system will result in the death of creativity and individuality among students. Standardized tests have proved that the education system is focused on placing students into categories,” explained Marquis.

Teachers have to prepare their students for the standardized tests given. This causes teachers to have to alter the information students learn. Standardized tests do not prepare students for their future careers and has no benefits for the students. Mary Garrity, sophomore at WMHS explained: 

"I think standardized tests are extremely unnecessary. They take away time from both the student and teacher. A teacher's curriculum has to accommodate standardized tests, which is taking away from teaching something that may actually help a student in life. As for stress, I believe standardized testing is every students’ worst nightmare,” said Garrity. “Students are not cookie cutter. We cannot be measured in tests and averages. Everyone learns differently. We are all unique. Some people are good at taking tests, others aren't. Does that make one necessarily better than the other? No! There are no tests in the ‘real world’ Thus standardize tests are just a nuisance and yet another meaningless thing for a student to stress over."

Abby McDaniel, sophomore at WMHS explained her views on standardized tests.

"I think standardized testing is unnecessary because it doesn't show what we've learned, just how much we can remember. These test scores can literally control your future since colleges heavily rely on SAT and ACT scores in order to get enrolled in the school. You could have the smartest person in your class with straight A's and then [she] takes the SATs or MCAS and completely bombs it because [she] just isn’t good at tests like that,” said McDaniel.

Standardized tests also bring put a tremendous amount of pressure on students. Gabrielle Rabito, sophomore at WMHS shared her view on the stress brought by these tests.

“I think standardized tests are pointless. They stress students out and don’t show their true academic abilities. Students need to pass standardized tests to graduate and they are so long and you second guess yourself while feeling rushed to finish,” shared Rabito.

Adding to students stress about standardized testing is the number and variety of tests a student will take before graduating high school. The most recent standardized test is PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers), a national exam aligned with Common Core Standards.

“The kids at the Boys and Girls Club were telling me about the new PARCC test and how it was on the computer, timed and extremely hard and how much they didn't like it because they felt rushed because they wanted to finish it in time,” McDaniel said. “Students who have a hard time with standardized tests or have a hard time with school in general don't benefit from these kinds of tests. Standardized tests don't show a student’s true potential to do something great and to show how smart they actually are.”    
     Despite students’ beliefs that standardized tests are a poor measure of students’ abilities, and that they add unnecessary stress, students at WMHS get to spend Wednesday morning like they did today: sitting in one classroom for an extended period of time taking the second half of the math MCAS—a beneficial way to get college and career ready.

Smartwatches to finally gain traction with the introduction of the Apple Watch?

by Evan Deane
Smartwatches have been struggling to gain popularity since early 2013 when Pebble released what many would consider the first form of smartwatches as we know them today. Since then, hardware manufacturers have been hard at work trying to convince the mass market as to why they need a smartwatch, but that seemingly simple task proves to be easier said than done. That is because all smartwatches, at their core, have one true functionality -- to deliver notifications.

Many consumers find themselves asking “why?”. Why is something as arbitrary sounding as a tiny screen delivering notifications needed, especially when you may have a much nicer, higher quality screen sitting right in their pocket. This is the rationale that has resulted in the niche market that is the smartwatch industry.

The vast majority of people who have bought smartwatches in the past, buy them for the convenience factor. On many smartwatches you are able to not only see notifications, but take action and dictate replies straight from the watch, which is often more convenient to the user and less distracting to those nearby. But even then, what little benefit smartwatches provide has just not been worth the investment to many.

But this has all been very quick to change. On the launch day of the Apple Watch, the mobile giant sold more units in 1 day than the amount of watches running Android Wear sold throughout all of 2014. Apple even predicts that once backorders are filled, the watch could sell up to 20 million units around the world.

So what’s contributing to all this success? Aside from the fact that anything Apple makes nowadays is sure to sell. Users would be surprised to find that there’s actually quite a lot of features that the Apple Watch offers not found on competitor models.

One of the biggest features would have to be phone calls. Yes, believe it or not, it’s been two years since the creation of the modern smartwatch and the Apple Watch has been one of the first to actually allow you to make calls with it.

But forget calls -- Apple has created new communication experiences especially for the Apple Watch. The first of which is drawing. Just choose a contact and draw a picture on your watch. When you’re done the drawing will fade away in seamless Apple fashion and it will shortly appear on your friends watch. In addition, you can simply tap your screen, and Apple’s patented vibration motor will actually simulate those taps onto your friends wrist.

Another form of communication, emoji. Nearly everyone and their white girl love emojis. As such Apple took it upon themselves to animate them. Now on the Apple Watch you can choose from a select few of 3D modeled emojis and animate them to different poses. not groundbreaking, but fun at the least.

Finally, the Apple Watch allows you to share your heart rate with your loved ones and friends alike. Just press and hold two fingers to the screen and your partner will feel a vibration to the tune of your heart beat. How romantic? Albeit a bit creepy.

One of the final and most useful features of Apple’s new wearable is the integration of ApplePay. The watch’s  Near Field Communication (NFC) chip allows you to hold your write up to a PayPass at any register, commonly found at McDonalds, CVS stores and vending machines and pay instantly with your linked credit card.

Whether or not you consider these new options “innovations”, there is no denying that the Apple Watch has sold tremendously. And in the end, those sales will benefit everyone. Competition is great when it comes to the technology space because it will only drive competitors to create better and better products -- and with better products come more sales, and before you know it, smartwatches become as commonplace as smartphones and computers are today.