Heartbreak and High Water in Watseka by: Rachel Brammer. several more, the massacre is said to

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1 The Ute Salute Inside this issue: Heartbreak and High Water in Watseka by: Rachel Brammer ND Library Gets New Books Show Choir Invitational 2 3 Only a few weeks ago, tragedy struck the small town of Watseka. Due to torrential rains and melting snow, our town flooded again. With more than half the town underwater; the only way to get around the vast majority of the town was by boat. With the junction of Route 1 and 24 closed, the only way to get from the East side of Watseka to the West side was to drive out around in the country. A shelter was setup at Trinity Church to help those that had to evacuate from their homes due to rising waters. Flood help was available from many different relief agencies at the old Big R building located next to Casey s right after the waters first receded. Many people say that flooding hasn t been that bad since People that live in certain parts of Watseka have lost everything and others were displaced by the flood. The flood affected a little over half of the town. People have been back to their homes for a few weeks now trying to salvage what they can, as well as clean up. Many people have come together to help with the relief efforts such as helping to repair the damage at Nettie Davis School. For now, Watseka is on the road to recovery, but it s not going to be easy. A rescue boat attempts to evacuate more citizens stranded by flooding. Abe Lincoln Comes to GRS Builder s Club Flood Relief Opinion: Chromebook Bag Controversy Loyola and Sister Jean Dates to Remember normally full of joy and love, Wednesday February 14th, 2018 was not anything close to a day filled with happiness. Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, a man named Nikolas Cruz allegedly opened fire on the school full of young students. The 19 year old had been said to have bought many guns and gear in his past. To get the students and teachers out into the hallways, Cruz pulled the fire alarm and chaos students and injuring and frightening Florida School Tragedy By: Natalie Petersen and Elizabeth Wittenborn several more, the massacre is said to ever recorded. Cruz is now being held in jail where he awaits a trial for his crimes. Since the Florida school violence. On March 14th, students at Parkland college organized a 17 10:00 a.m. to pay tribute to the 17 students who were killed in the walkout, many students, teachers, and parents have begun to fight for gun control and there have been several protests such as the March for Our Lives Movement that occurred across the country on March 24th. This was meant to send a message about gun violence and the government taking care of children. Many of the survivors of the Florida ing the March for Our Lives protest and one fought to urge others to join in the fight to restrict guns to the hands of the safe and reasonable. anything is going to be changed. 4/10/18 GRS Track Meet 4/21/18 State Science Olympiad at U of I 5/12/18 GRS Track 5/15/18 GRS Spring Concert 5/28/18 NO SCHOOL Memorial Day

2 Community Rallies Around Unit 9 Schools by: Stephanie Ducat materials they could salvage, but most of the February. The water is gone, but the damage remains as it took people's belongings with it. The majority of the damage for Unit 9 Davis had water completely throughout the school, reaching almost two feet in the cafeteria area and six inches in the classrooms. Unit 9 worked with ServiceMaster professionals and some volunteers to come in and clean it properly so that the students could resume school as soon students would take place at the Methodist church and the Catholic parish center. The teachers and staff have taken as much of the teaching disaster. sumed school on Tuesday, March 27th. We want to give a huge thank you to our community, the Red Cross, and our surround- Davis library books that were lost in the flooding. even though it seems like it's being ripped apart. This proves how strong of a town we really are! WCHS NHS students launched an Amazon wish list Davis. (picture courtesy of the Times-Republic) 2018 Winter Olympics by: Kylee Shoemaker and Caitlin Corzine Recently, a big topic world wide was the 2018 Winter Olympics held February 9-25 in Pyeong Chang County, South Korea. There were some big stories from the Olympic Games, such as North and South Korea, no NHL players, and the athletes. North and South Korea had problems they had to face, including those of which they would not participate under separate flags; they would unite as one. Problems between the two neighboring countries ran high. Both sides agreed to participate under the same flag, with a few rules. These included they would have to prove they are free from any involvement with any nonprescribed medicines. They had to compete under a neutral flag knowing they would also not have shown records of their medals achieved. They have became a joined team in the past but definitely not after what they had gone through. Another controversy brewed with the NHL. The NHL agreed that their players would not be participating in the 2018 Winter Olympics. They stated they did not want to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics for several reasons. One being they were back in America playing in the NHL since they don t want to break their regular season games to meet other players wishes. Another being the IOC announced it would not pay for the costs any longer. Overall, the 2018 Winter Olympics were a success. The country of Norway was the top medal winner. Some big name athletes also competed at the 2018 Winter Olympics, such as Chloe Kim, a snowboarder, Meghan Duggan, USA women s hockey; Shaun White and Kelly Clark, snowboarding, and so many more wonderful athletes who did an outstanding job! Unit 9 State of the District On Friday, March 16th, Unit Nine Schools offered a State of the District night to our community to learn more about our schools. Following a meal and a performance by the WCHS jazz band, presentations were given by various board members and administrators about our buildings, curriculum, technology, the Nettie Unit 9 Board member Rusty Maulding speaks to the crowd at the State of the District. Davis flooding, and the idea of possibly consolidating or annexing with other districts. Almost 150 people attended the evening and were able to hear from a variety of speakers. The night ended with a video composed by the WCHS Studio Nine class that provided a Day in the Life of each of our schools.

3 Watseka Show Choir Invitational By: Moriah Pueschell The middle school and high school show choirs have just completed both of their competitive seasons. The middle school s invitational was on Friday, March 9th and the high school s was on Saturday, March 10th. The high school s show is called Melting Point. The middle school s show is called Journey. Our show choir songs are called Unwritten, How Far I ll Go with soloist Moriah Pueschell, Home with soloist Peyton Anderson and, Life Is A Highway. The high school s choir is doing the songs Cold As Ice, Ice, Ice Baby, with soloist Clay Dorsey, Set Fire To The Rain, with soloist Lauren Pueschell, Just Like Fire with soloists Taylor Rogers and Courtney Thompson, and My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark. The middle school show choir s last performance was at Herscher, Illinois on March 17. The GRS singers performed at 9:30 AM and took third runner up, and the Sensations performed at 2:15 PM and took second runner up. Science Olympiad On to State! By: Caitlin Corzine Science Olympiad is a competition in which students from different schools in our region compete in science related events - both academic and others requiring building skills. These events include rocks and minerals, herpetology, meteorology, dynamic planet, anatomy, bridges, and battery buggy. On February 17th at the regional competition, it was announced that the top three schools would get to go to state - Glenn Raymond took home the 2nd place trophy that night. The JV squad got 1st place overall. Varsity won 1st in Rocks and Minerals, Varsity won 2nd in Herpetology and Dynamic Planet, Varsity got 3rd in Road Scholar, and JV won 1st in Solar System Herpetology. The state competition will be held at the University of Illinois on April 21st. Good luck GRS! Caption describing picture or graphic. GRS Volleyball Wrap Up by: Almenda DeLeon 2018 was a great year for the GRS volleyball teams. We had a lot of success and steadily improved throughout the season. Though neither team won their regional, we did win many games and learned a lot about volleyball. Our coaches were Mrs. Bruens and Mrs. DePatis and we worked a lot on serving, rotations, and blocking. We faced a lot of good teams in our area, such as Milford, PBL, GCMS, and Prairie Central. Coach Pufahl and Coach Kingdon also did a 5th/6th grade program this year to help introduce the sport to our younger GRS kids. GRS will be back next year and they will come back better than ever.

4 Builder s Club Flood Relief Activities by: Rachel Brammer A Builder s Club tradition has recently wrapped up at Glenn Raymond School. The Builder s Club concluded their soda grams sales. This is an annual event for the club as well as candy grams in the late fall. The soda grams were sold for a dollar each. The Builder s Club ended up selling over one hundred soda grams! The Builder s Club s next project is to help flood victims. They re conducting a food drive for flood victims. Any directed study or 5th grade class that brings in at least 50 items will be entered for a chance in a drawing to win an ice cream treat. For every 50 items, a class earns a chance to win! The Builder s Club also had dress up days to raise money for the flood on March 12th through the 16th. Students had the option of paying one dollar each day or paying five dollars for the whole week to participate in the dress up days. Builder s Club makes so many efforts to help so many people and that s something that every member of it should be proud of! Abe Lincoln Assembly by: Natalie Erickson On Tuesday, February 20th, a speaker came to Glenn Raymond to tell us about Abraham Lincoln; although, there was a twist! This speaker didn t just tell us about Abe Lincoln - he was a Lincoln impersonator! He told us a lot of things we knew about President Lincoln, but he also gave us some new information about our Land of Lincoln president. He talked about his childhood, the war, and the election. He was very fun to listen to and he would pull kids out of the bleachers to answer questions and to help occasionally. He was very good at what he does and I would want to see him again. This program was put together by Ms. Dunn, Mrs. West, and Mrs. Laurent in the GRS library. Thank you! Black Panther Soars at the Box Office by: Travis Milligan The amazingly popular Black Panther movie earned Marvel $292 million in its opening weekend and his since grossed more than $1.2 billion, making it one of the top five highest grossing adventure movies ever! The character of Black Panther is played by Chadwick Boseman, Killmonger is played by Michael B. Jordan, and his sister The story is about Black Panther taking the tain America - Civil War. Audiences love this movie and I highly recommend you see it! The finish line at the WCHS track is ready for GRS athletes! (picture courtesy of Watseka Track Twitter)

5 March Madness by: Jobey Grant Loyola-Chicago team chaplain, Sister Jean, waves to the crowd after their win against Kansas State. In the world of college basketball, the month of March only means one thing MARCH MADNESS! Upsets, last games for players, and a chance to bring home the hardware are what March is made of. During the NCAA tournament, the story was upsets. The biggest of them all may be a tie between #16 UMBC beating #1 seed Virginia or the underdog Loyola-Chicago Ramblers making it to the Final Four. With help from their team chaplain, Sister Jean, the team was thriving on faith and spirit as they tried to beat Michigan in Final Four action. But, the Wolverines were too much for the Ramblers, who beat them easily In the other matchup, Kansas and Villanova battled each other, but Villanova won easily to face Michigan in the title game. In the end, it was Villanova who came out the champion, beating Michigan to win the NCAA Men s Basketball Championship for the second time in three years. This year s MARCH MADNESS was certainly maddening at times, but also, really entertaining! OPINION: GRS Chromebook Bags by: Emma Donaldson This year, every GRS 6th - 8th grader received a school Chromebook to use. So far, the Chromebooks have been an awesome addition to our learning..with one exception. There are a lot of rules with the Chromebooks, but probably the most frustrating rule is that we can t have anything inside the Chromebook bags besides the Chromebook. We can t carry a charger or a pencil or anything else we may need. The only things we are allowed to put in our bags are the Chromebook, a mouse, and a set of headphones. I find this to be really crazy. Our Chromebook cases have pockets built right in them. Why do we even have these pockets in our Chromebook bags if we can t even use them? We have pockets for pencils and little notepads in our Chromebook bags, but we only can put headphones and a mouse in them. Many students are unprepared because they don t have a pencil, but if they could put a pencil in the pockets they could be more prepared. I have heard from many other students that they would like to have extra supplies in the pockets so they are more prepared for class. I think many students would agree that it s kind of ridiculous that we can t put anything in them or we get a demerit. I don t understand why we are trusted to use a Chromebook, but we can t be trusted to put other things in there! OPINION: More Locker Space by: Caden Curtis Here at Glenn Raymond, it can be difficult to get to class, especially, if you have to stop at your locker. Due to the high numbers of students in the hallways and our lockers being so close together, it was almost impossible to get into your locker. There are always people who get there before you and put their locker door in front of yours. Or, there are the people who are always talking, and then you can t get to your class on time. There are kids constantly being late to class because they can t get to their locker on time. One possible solution is to put bigger lockers in the hallways instead of the narrow ones we have. This would give us more room to stand between each other and get into our lockers for materials. I really wish we could make this a reality to give us more room!