What’s recently happened?
This month at John Adams High School has been a wild one. Although the Homecoming dance was never able to happen, John Adams’ winter sports and academic clubs have been starting to compete. Athletes have been working hard with conditioning and training, especially its swim team that has multiple practices a day. The team starts off early in the morning, before school starts and ends late at night. The swim team works very, very hard.
Now even though John Adams’ academic clubs aren’t necessarily as physically strenuous, they have also been working hard.
The Science Olympiad team had its first meet at Northridge High School and placed overall second! Quiz bowl has also been on the grind, currently being undefeated in the regular season. They have competed in three competitions so far and have excelled in all of them. The quiz bowl team is now qualified for Nationals.
Some of the other clubs John Adams has includes American Sign Language Club, Pride Club, Philosophy Club, and so much more. John Adams has a very wide variety of clubs and activities to participate in. The show choir put on an amazing show of “Legally Blonde The Musical,” which it practiced nonstop for.
Thanksgiving season has come to a front as many teachers host mini parties before Thanksgiving break, and so much delicious food has been shared. Thanksgiving break itself was a nice relaxer right before finals season.
What’s coming up?
Next month is the cold month of December, but it is finally finals season. Students are getting ready to prepare to study for their first semester final tests and projects. Although John Adams has some rigorous workloads, students still manage to do exceptionally well.
Fortunately for everyone, the school offers an abundance of resources to help. After school most days of the week, teachers will stay after in the library to help students with homework, projects, studying and more. People who have experienced study tables say that they help a tremendous amount. Another thing to look forward to is John Adams’ winter concerts.
John Adams Band, Orchestra and Choir will be performing during the month of December for everyone to come and enjoy! The orchestra will also be trying to perform at the University Park Mall for the holiday season, so look out for performance dates!
Staff spotlight:
Michael Ferrer was a student teacher last year and now is a full-time teacher at John Adams. Ferrer is a wonderful teacher and works extremely hard. Last year he helped teach Astronomy and Meteorology at John Adams, and now this year he teaches Algebra II and Geometry.
"I teach Algebra II and Geometry. My Algebra II class is starting with quadratics, which is my favorite unit for all of Algebra,” Ferrer said. “I find the factoring and foiling to be incredibly fun to do, and I hope to be able to include some interactive activities in the unit. Geometry is working on equations for lines and transversals and all that fun quintessential geometry work. Geometry lends itself really well to interactive projects which is what I love doing with my students.”
Ferrer enjoys leading the Robotics Club.
“Robotics has been fun,” he said. “It's a learning curve for sure, since it's my first year being any kind of mentor for this program, but I loved circuitry in college, and I have not been able to use that knowledge in far too long. The students are wonderful, kind and full of curiosity. I love to watch them solve our challenges and see what kind of growth they make as they learn how to work as a team.”
Not only is Ferrer an amazing teacher, he also is a co-mentor for the robotics team along with a physics teacher at John Adams, Sarah Cukrowicz. He said that robotics has been fun this year and the students in the club have been working very hard to solve challenges, build machines, and work together.
Student spotlight:
This month, Logan Hoffman has been working tremendously hard. He is a captain of the Science Olympiad, a full IB student, and a great person – he works very hard in all of his classes and extracurricular activities. With all that he does for John Adams, he also works on top of it which adds more onto his impressive workload. Even with everything he does, Hoffman still finds time to spend with friends and family and overall being a great person. He is very humble and very kind.
“I’m a student and I work at Mcdonalds,” Hoffman said. “I partake in Science Olympiad, Robotics, and ISO.”
In Science Olympiad, he does many events including Helicopter, Optics, Fossils, Chemistry Lab and Experimental Design, which means he is after school every day to contribute to the team.
“In Helicopter, we build and test a model helicopter, trying to get it to stay in the air as long as possible,” he said. “In Optics, we learn about optical physics and geometric optics. In Fossils, we learn how to identify and state characteristics of various fossils and specimens. In Chem Lab, we learn Stoichiometry and other chemistry concepts. In Experimental Design, we create an experiment using materials given to us.”
He’s been on the team for about three years, on top of being in Robotics for one and ISO for one year.
Hoffman wants to go into civil engineering, where he would be working on public and private government projects.