YHS

    Today was a first at Yulee High School!  The Florida-Georgia Blood Alliance was on campus for our first annual blood drive.  Many students had volunteered to donate their blood during school hours. The bloodmobile was full of excited students ready to donate. In fact, the bloodmobile was so busy all day long that they had to rescedule some students for next Monday.

     The bloodmobile is approximately 40 feet long, 8 feet wide and 10 1/2 feet high.  It is fully equipped with 4-6 beds for people to stretch out while they donate and nurses who are ready to help people fill out all the forms.

In past years, students have been off of school on the day of Good Friday. This day, which is the Friday before Easter, is a big day for Christianity and is celebrated by many people in our country.  We should not have to attend school on Good Friday.  If not a day for all in school to be off, it should at least be an optional day for students who are Christians.  What, are they going to make us go to school on Christmas next?  All religious holidays should be optional school holidays for the people who practice that particular religion.  It's absurd to disregard religious holidays and not recognize them as a large part of the lives of most people in this country.

The Journalism class at YHS recently had a photo scavenger hunt and produced some very good photography.  Pairs of students took the required list of 25 items found outside of the classrooms and had to locate and photograph them all within an hour.  The goal was not only to find the items, but to have the top photographs in the class. That was made more difficult by the types of items on the list, like the words "water" and "open" or an example of Braille or a Nassau County vehicle.  The most outstanding photographs were selected as "Best in Show" and poste

Friday Feb. 15th, 2008, was unlike any other Rriday at our school, Yulee High School.  Whenever I arrived at school at 7:30 in the morning, the parking lot seemed empty and crowded at the same time. Students were all hanging out by the vehicles and waiting around, which is unusual for 7:30 because school starts at 7:40, but there seemed to be fewer vehicles than usual in the parking lot.  I pulled in and was stopped by my last year's chemistry teacher who told me that our school had been vandelized. I called my mom and told her what had happened after I talked about it with my peers. All our school locks had been super-glued and toothpicked the night before, and the janitors and staff were having a difficult time getting the doors open. Some of the janitors had to break windows to get some of the doors open. Building 7 - the largest classroom building - was open, however, since one door had been overlooked by the vandals; students with classes in that building weren't affected.  All the rest of the students that morning reported to the gym, where we missed about 20 minutes of our first period. Some students left because they thought that school was going to be cancelled and they didn't feel like sitting in a crowded gym for any amount of time, not knowing how long it would take to get all the buildings open. Everyone was back in class by 8:15.

    It's the first day of February already. Wow!  This year has gone by really fast. When you think about how fast this year has gone by, you start to think about how fast other years will go by, then how fast your life will go by. I wish that in good moments life would move a little slower and I could just take a moment, one instant, to stop and take a mental picture of everything around me.

     February seems to be a very exciting month in my life so far. For instance, today I start my first job which I'm kind of nervous about even though I know I'll probably be fine. Then a new member joins the family this month, my niece, due Feb. 22.  I cannot wait to meet her! Also, my younger brother's birthday is in February and maybe there will be a car for me as well. Yay!

     Here it is holiday time again and for once, looking out at the larger world things don't seem as hopeless as they have before.

     "What?" you ask.  "Are you crazy!  How about poverty and hunger and global warming and...."  Does your list look longer than a kid's list for Santa?

     You're right.  There's a lot for us to do to make things better, but the key word is hopeful.  For once, it looks like we - the collective we on the planet - have the resources to heal our world by 2015.  At least, that's what people in 189 countries have already agreed can happen.  In fact, they've started on the job.  The United States is one of those 189, by the way.

I'm a fifteen-year-old sophomore at Yulee High School who believes that we shouldn't have school on Monday 11/19/07 and Tuesday 11/20/07. I think that going to school for two days the week of Thanksgiving is a waste of our time.  A lot of the students here at school aren't even going to be here. They are going to take the entire week off to go enjoy time with family. Students who do come to school aren't going to want to do anything. The teachers are trying to find fun, learning-enhancing activities to do for the few students that are here. The hassle of coming to school probably isn't going to be worth it. I think that the School Board should give us the entire week off for a Fall Break. I'm sure that'd make all of us happy who have to come on Monday and Tuesday.

    FCAT is the biggest stuggle for middle and high school students.  Being a Yulee High School senior and waiting on FCAT re-take results (I had retaken the FCAT several times) is very stressful.  I came to school today not expecting anything, but all of a sudden I heard, " We got the FCAT results back."  I logged in to FCATParentNetwork.com and received my results. I finally passed the FCAT with a score of 1953! The lowest possible passing score was 1926. 

      This is a huge monkey off my back, and my whole entire family celebrated. As a stressed-out senior, all I need now is to keep my grades up to a 2.0 GPA to graduate. I will be graduating next June, and it's so much easier without the FCAT holding me back. I also appreciate all the hard-working teachers that have helped me in the struggle to accomplish this.

This week at Yulee High we had several activities going on.

The Hi-Q team played against Hilliard on Thursday and beat them.  Zach Martin was a star player for the YHS team by being the fastest to answer the toss-up questions. 

We also had wrestling start this week.  The pre-season conditioning started two weeks ago and on Wednesday the first official practice began.  The practices are from 3:00-5:30pm every day after school.  Some of the wrestlers also played other sports such as baseball, basketball, and football.

Speaking of football, the Florida Gator v. Georgia Bulldogs game is Saturday.  Fans, both students and teachers, dressed up to support their teams.  Most of the students at YHS supported the Gators, while some kids didn't care either way.  It is funny to see kids that have been friends for years pretend to be mad at each other because one of them goes for Georgia and the other one goes for Florida.  This can be a hilarious sight to see.  The teachers didn't want to be left out so they also dressed up.  Mrs. Ceci supports the Gators and had on blue and orange with an orange ribbon in her hair.