Each month, the Chagrin Valley Rotary Club honors a high school student for displaying leadership qualities and service. The club has…
Rotary Student of the Month
Each month, the Chagrin Valley Rotary Club honors a high school student for displaying leadership qualities and service. The club has chosen Chagrin Falls High School senior Natalie Klug as its student of the month for January 2015.
Natalie is an AP Scholar with Distinction, an Affiliate Award runner-up by the National Center for Women and Information Technology and has earned Honor Roll with Distinction status throughout high school.
She has also earned a varsity letter in cross country and three in swimming, along with qualifying for the state championships in swimming two times. She is the current secretary and treasurer of the senior class and served two years as a student council representative. Other school activities include membership in Key Club and Engineering Club.
Outside of school, she is a seven-year member of University Swim Club, plays piano and is a nanny to her siblings. She works as a lifeguard at Chagrin Valley Recreation Center and Chagrin Lakes.
Natalie’s future plans are to attend a four-year university and major in biomedical or environmental engineering, with a minor in computer science.
Learning On Snow Days
With the unpredictability of Northeast Ohio’s winter weather, regional schools are bound to face school closings. Chagrin Falls Exempted Village Schools have already encountered two school closings due to record-low temperatures and inclement snowy weather conditions. With possible school closings in mind, teachers at Chagrin Falls High School, thanks to widespread 21st century technology, are now well-equipped to educate even when students are not physically present in class. Students are now quite literally a click away from educative sources.
Teachers rely on many useful apps, extensions and programs to ensure learning is both possible and effective. Students are expected to complete homework when school is not in session, and the use of Chromebooks, laptops given to Chagrin Falls 3-12 students this past September, has granted them the ability to do so.
Google Classroom, a website commonly known to students and teachers simply as ‘Classroom,’ is a paperless alternative to traditional homework collection. With Google Classroom, students are able to create, upload and turn in homework to teachers directly. Classroom also notifies students of new assignments and due dates while allowing teachers upload grades and see who has completed assignments.
“By posting everything to Google Classroom, students have one place to check for assignments from teachers. Teachers don’t have to worry about emailing and students don’t have to check on multiple different websites for material,” responds biology and environmental science teacher Brittany Anderson.
Google Classroom also includes a live news feed that updates when teachers have uploaded links to their classroom page.
English teacher and writing center advisor Dr. Shannon Beach states that access to the website has allowed her “to post video lectures and group chats through Google Classroom.”
Students also complete assignments and activities through Google Docs, an application similar to Microsoft Word. With Google Docs, students can collaborate with others through “shared” documents to create and revise assignments online.
“Even when out of school, students use shared docs to distribute ideas amongst one another,” states Mrs. Melanie Hoffmann, English teacher and advisor of newspaper and yearbook publications.
Some teachers resort to social media outlets to communicate classroom announcements.
Teachers commonly use apps like Twitter across all campuses.
On the use of Twitter as a means of communication, computer science teacher Mrs. Carolyn Petite explains, “I use Twitter to announce my assignments, and my tweets are embedded on my teacher webpage. Students do not even need to have a Twitter account to see the announcement of calamity day assignments.”
Although students may not always look forward to completing assignments on snow days, all students are aware of the need to complete their homework on their days away from school.
“In order to get back some of the lost instructional time, I think it is important to try to keep students learning when we have calamity days,” Petite reiterates.
District Receives Generous Donation
Chagrin Falls Exempted Village Schools has received a donation of nearly $80,000 from the estate of Mr. Ben King.
King, who died in June, was a World War II veteran who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps and was a graduate of Case Western Reserve University, a member of the Cleveland Bar Association, and a businessman who ran his own construction company and the family business of his late wife, Jane.
A longtime Chagrin Falls resident, he was also a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Beautification Committee. And, as a 40-year member of the Shade Tree Commission, he oversaw the planting of more than 3,000 trees in the village.
King’s children, Bill Hepker and Sue Petersen, presented the donation to Superintendent Robert Hunt. His daughter Kathleen Wenner, a Chagrin Falls graduate, died in November.
“Mr. King made a significant impact on the Chagrin Falls community professionally and personally. These funds with be utilized in a way that furthers the educational opportunities for the students of Chagrin Falls Schools, and continues his legacy,” said Hunt. “We are very appreciative, and our thoughts are with his family.”
