Owl Orations October 2019 Volume 1 Issue No. 7

october

OWL ORATIONS Texas-Oklahoma Region 9, Division 2S Volume 1, Issue No. 7

THE OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER OF GARLAND HIGH SCHOOL

3 4 5 6 8 9 10 13 18 19 20 22 Letter to the Editor

Monthly Review

T-Shirt Information

Upcoming Events

Updates and Reminders

Major Emphasis Promotions

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Key Club Info

Articles and HOTO

Service Project Promotions

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note from the President

District/Club Officer Info

Contact Info

letter from the editor...

Hello, Key Clubbers!

The school year is flying by so quickly! October has come and gone, the second six weeks is about to end, and the weather is feeling a lot more like fall. Next thing you know, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Although, many things are coming to an end right now, the time to volunteer is all year round! Make sure you are keeping up with your hours. We recommend that each member completes 25 hours a semester for a total of 50 hours. If you are a senior who wishes to have a Key Club cord at graduation, you MUST have at least 50 hours of service.

As of right now, we only have two volunteer events scheduled for November, BUT we will be participating in CANstruction al month long.

For the freshmen who don't know what CANstruction is, different school organizations have their members donate cans. In December, we will be hosting an after school event where we take the cans and create a large sculpture with it. The winning club will receive a prize! All of the cans collected will be donated to the local food pantry. Not only can you get hours for donating cans, but you can also attend the CANstruction event to ear hours as well.

Speaking of fun events, each general meeting we provide snacks and refreshments for our members so they have something to look forward to every meeting. This started as a way to give back to our members, but as officers we have noticed that some of you aren't being courteous of others when it comes to sharing the food. Remember that even the officers would like something to eat after the meeting!

Yours in Service,

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note from the president...

Hello, Key Clubbers!

Welcome back to my monthly note! I hope October treated everyone well and that you’re looking forward to what November holds.

Homecoming season was such a joy as we all worked together to create our annual HOCO door. I always experience a nice fuzzy feeling seeing Key Clubbers coming together to help out on a project, especially one that promotes both the club and school, and I hope we continue with this tradition each year.

Speaking of traditions, November holds plenty of events that Key Club participates in on an annual basis. We will be attending Turkey Trot at Dallas City Hall and helping out at the Kids Zone. We’ve elected to volunteer at the Kids Zone in my freshman year, and I remember it being a fun experience (giving tattoos, writing cards, working the bouncy house, and more)! Going back each year, I always enjoy the new memories that I create with each group that I attend alongside. Turkey Trot has become one of my Thanksgiving traditions, and I doubt this year will be any different so please sign up and spread some happiness!

Additionally, we will also be participating in Canstruction again. For any unknowing students, Canstruction is a school-wide event where everyone works together to collect canned food to donate to a local charity. To make it more intriguing for us students, the school decided to have a competition where we create structures from any donated cans. This year, let’s aim to be recognized and prove ourselves to all other clubs.

One last note: I hope everyone enjoys their time off during Thanksgiving break. Remember to take some time off to spend time with your friends and family! The break exists for a reason so try and not stress over school for a week when the time comes. Thanks again for reading my personal note to you all :)

Yours in Service,

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MONTHLY REVIEW MONTHLY REVIEW MONTHLY REVIEW football concessions We ran the concessions at the North Garland Homecoming

game,

and

WOW,

so

many

of

you guys were so eager to come. The money

10/04/2019

earned from the profits will go towards our YOF project, Treating Our Teachers.

tri - city clean up Our

Key

Clubbers

came

out

to

Lake

Ray

Hubbard on a Saturday morning to help clean up the streets and the lake shores. We picked up over 15 bags of trash!

10/05/2019 walnut glen carnival Some

of

our

Key

Clubbers

took

a

trip

down

memory lane and came to Walnut Glen Academy to volunteer at their annual Halloween carnival.

10/29/201

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Veterans' Day

Thanksgiving

DID YOU KNOW...

Americans eat 46 million turkeys (roughly 535 million pounds of turkey) each Thanksgiving!

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FRI.

UPCOMING EVENTS GHS KEY CLUB MEETINGS (11/6, 11/20) Attend two meetings a month in the library after school from 3-3:30 pm where we will update you on upcoming events and plans

Kimberlin Academy PTA Carnival (11/16) Meet up at Life Message from 7 - 8 PM as we try and bridge the gap between Kiwanis and Key Club

Turkey Trot (11/28) Meet up at Fish ‘N Tails Oyster Bar from 12 - 1 PM for an opportunity to discuss and plan relevant events in our community

CANstruction (entire month) CANstruction will take place throughout November, so bring cans to donate to Freeman Heights Baptist Church. (5 cans = 1 hour ; Max = 2 hours)

NO SCHOOL! Enjoy Veteran's Day and your Thanksgiving Break!

Breaks are also a good time to go out into your community to volunteer if you don't have any plans ;)

*Calendars only have events planned at the beginning of each month and are, therefore, subject to change. Events can be added or cancelled and details can be changed.

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We are Global Key Club is a growing organization with global reach. With

1000s of clubs in more than 38 countries, the impact of Key Club members can be felt all over the world.

We Learn Through Action High school student members of Key Club perform acts of service in their communities, such as cleaning up parks, collecting clothing and organizing food drives. They also learn leadership skills by running meetings, planning projects and holding elected leadership positions at the club, district and international levels.

Our Mission Statement Key Club is an international, student-led organization that provides its members with opportunities to provide service, build character and develop leadership.

Core Values Members of Key Club learn to become leaders in their school

and community, build their character through acts of kindness, develop compassion for others, and welcome people of all different ethnicities and backgrounds to serve the community.

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*All information was found on the official Key Club website www.keyclub.org

Only $15!

This year's Key Club T-SHIRT! FRONT

Bring your money at the next meeting!

BACK

shirt designed by Alina

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UPDATES & S

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General Meeting on Wednesday, November 6!

Remember, the meetings are MANDATORY!

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Make-up meet Room 407 on t general meetin promptly at 7:0

Turn in y our SIGNED consent fo rm

Follow our Ke y Club Instagram:

@garlandhskeyclub

ENERAL MEETING?

tings will be held in the Friday after ngs and will begin 00 am. Don't miss it!

access o t e r e h k Clic form! s r u o h e th

r that you e e b m e m e R tur bmit a pic e u s T S U M oing servic yourself d lunteered. if you vo

REMINDERS 11

Governor's Project

Culture 4 Caring Culture 4 Caring is a student-led organization that promotes inclusions and acceptance. Ultimately, Culture 4 Caring emphasizes instilling kindness purposefully. Its mission is to foster a welcoming culture for one student, one friend, one school, one community, and one moment in time by honoring olriginality, unity, kindness, culture and equality.

*description from Division 13/32 September Newsletter

YOF Grant Project

Treat our Teachers The Youth Opportunities Fund (YOF) is an endowed fund for Key Club that grants a portion of the total cost of a service project organized by the club. For our Key Club, we have decided to take on the project of treating our teachers. Due to the construction around the school and lack of money, the majority of the teacher break rooms are without a working fridge and a water dispenser.

For our project, we will fundraise to buy the teachers new fridges and water dispensers, so they have one less things to worry about during a long day of educating.

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Fall Fun This past month was pretty hectic for me.

Every year my October is filled with things I have to do as a class officer plus all my responsibilities such as school, clubs, and college applications. Since homecoming mostly falls in the month of October, I never have time for anything else within this month.

As a Key Club officer, there’s also some tasks we have to do for homecoming such as decorating our sponsors door. The door competition is an event that occurs every year for homecoming and it’s a contest where all organizations decorate their sponsors door in order to achieve the grand prize of $50. I take this competition very seriously because I don’t only want the money incentive, I also want others to be proud to be a Key Club member or a senior.

In other news, this month I volunteered at the GHS alumni reunion. At the reunion I was surprised how many alumni from many decades ago are still alive and around to attend the reunion. My group and I were in charge of setting up the balloons on the tables and arranging the tables like they wanted us to. Another thing that shocked me was how much high school spirit these alumni still had. They wanted every single thing perfect and in its place it was quite scary. They had a measuring tape just to make sure that everything was exactly the same feet apart and aligned. A teacher also told me that these alumni are so obsessed with Garland High School that they keep all the Garland merchandise and their house is full of Garland High Schools merchandise and knick knacks. I found that really weird but I don’t really care. It was interesting seeing all the alumni and also seeing how successful some of the alumni were. Our school also has such a thing where they have recognizable alumni awards. I hope that I never attend those because I hope I never come back to Garland once I move

away. The Dashing Debs were also there and the alumni loved them. I also got to see yearbooks from many decades ago and it was interesting to see how much Garland High School has changed and the cultural differences from the 1900’s compared to the present time. Overall it was a good experience seeing the history of my school.

Nallely Maciel, Historian

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Tri-City Clean Up

Environmental issues are close to the heart of today’s teenagers, especially since many of them can see the devastating effects these issues have on the things and people they love. I am no exception; I grew up admiring the shimmering waters of Lake Ray Hubbard, only to be struck with disappointment when I looked closer and saw the small grey pieces of trash that overwhelmed its shores. I hated seeing something that represented the center of the community being treated like a trash dump. I wanted to do something but didn’t know what one individual could do to help. As a result, I was thrilled when the idea of volunteering at the Tri-City Clean up came up at a fall board meeting. The Tri-City Clean up is a joint effort of the cities of Dallas, Garland, and Rowlett to clean up Lake Ray Hubbard. Volunteers spend a few hours walking along the coast of the lake and filling trash bags with litter. It provided the perfect answer to the feeling of hopelessness that I felt when I looked at the lake.

Volunteering at the Tri-City clean up introduced me to an amazing community gathering event. When I arrived at the volunteer meetup point for the event, I was immediately greeted by laughs, “Good Morning!”s, donuts, and a cheerful atmosphere, even though it was still early in the morning. Many other clubs and organizations also came to volunteer, which further solidified the atmosphere of community gathering and gave our Key Club chapter a chance to interact with likeminded organizations. The work went by very quickly since we were surrounded by fellow Key Clubbers, and before we knew it, we had collected around a dozen massive trash bags full of litter. It was so satisfying to feel that I had done something (even if it was a small act of service) for my community and taken action to solve a problem that I saw.

We triumphantly walked back to the volunteer meetup point and were welcomed back by a volunteer appreciation picnic, complete with music, food, and raffle prizes!

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The whole day ended with representatives from the governments of the three cities involved in the event simultaneously raising the flags of their respective cities.

Every part of the service event, from the goal that we had to the flag-raising ceremony at the end of the morning, I could truly feel that elusive and magical sense of community.

People of all ages, nationalities, and backgrounds paused the rest of their busy lives and took a moment to shower love on the community that has shown them so much love. To me, this truly encapsulates the spirit of community service and reminded me of why I love it so much.

Tisha Gautam, Secretary

Treating Our Teachers Earlier this month, Garland Key Club officers finally decided on their project for the Youth Opportunities Fund (YOF). During discussions over the YOF, the board went over several problems in the community that they could tackle including improving the appearance of our school, assisting with the recycling program, and etc.

However, we couldn’t resolutely land on an issue that we all felt passionate about. As we sat around and scratched our heads during these meetings, Ms. Shaeffer offered her own thoughts from a teacher perspective. She had noticed that the teacher lounges don’t have a functioning freezer after summer construction on the school, an issue that was especially notable when trying to store food such as ice cream for Key Club socials. Additionally, another issue that the teachers face is that they do not have a water dispenser to drink from. The most convenient location that teachers have access to for these two items (i.e. a freezer and a water dispenser) is in the main office. Upon hearing the problem that our wonderful teachers face, the officers were excited to help out and decided to dedicate their YOF proposal to this issue. As a homage to the cause, we named our project “Treating our Teachers”.

To thank our teachers for their hard work, we applied for a grant of $1000 through the YOF. We are planning to purchase 3 refrigerators, 6 water dispensers, and 12 water jugs to kick off our project. These items will be placed across multiple subject departments, and we will be supplying the first few batches of water in the first year that this project is implemented, which will take place later during the second semester. However, the YOF grant only covers for half the cost of our expenses, so we’ll be working hard at

fundraising this year! Although some of y’all might not have realized, we have already started fundraising for this cause through concessions. The money from the last two concessions that we had will go directly towards “Treating our Teachers”, so hopefully we’ll meet our goal number by the end of this semester!

With this project, I hope our teachers will no longer have to worry about a place to store their food or obtain water. They deserve the best for their hard work in school, and I hope that Key Club will be able to provide them basic items that will improve their days and lunches in school. If this project proves to be successful, perhaps we will be able to treat our community to other gifts :)

Tiffany Doan, President

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HOCO Week Homecoming has just past, so a lot of people forget about the work students have put in to help decorate the school or they don’t even know about the efforts other students have put in to help homecoming week. As students we decorate the school to help encourage school spirit to be higher than its ever been before. This comes in forms like the student council creating dress up days throughout the week for students to dress up as.

Being a member of Key Club means that you provide service for your school and community. And to help my school, I decided to help decorate the school for Homecoming week. Decorating the entire school the Friday before homecoming week starts is an extremely hard task. To help make the entire thing finish quickly, students from all grade levels and clubs gather together to help decorate. You have around four hours to decorate the entire school, and the area surrounding the school by putting up ribbons to signal the start of the school’s homecoming.

Despite there being a lot of students that come and help it still is a really difficult task.

Everyone that stays after school that Friday is in a rush to finish. Managing all of the students to make everything organized is another difficult task. Even though there are a lot of people decorating, this can create confusion which could ultimately make the entire process a lot slower. There are so many things that have to be done, clubs

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need to decorate their doors to win the best decorated door competition, posters need to be hung up to show the dress up days during the week, people in the homecoming court putting up their posters to win homecoming king or queen. Everyone has a task that they have to do.

Despite this experience being kind of stressful, since we only have so much time to do everything, it was still a memorable experience. Everyone that was helping was able to bond with each other while we were setting up decorations for the week. Not to mention we got free pizza too! Who doesn’t like free pizza? This year, we finished decorating at around nine pm. That means we took almost six hours to completely finish decorating! This took a lot of time we chose to dedicate to help decorate the school and to help with lifting the school spirit.

Albert Yang, Treasurer

MY KEY EXPERIENCES HUMANS OF TEXAS-OKLAHOMA

Key Club has changed my life for the better.

Before I joined key club I never knew how to volunteer in my community. It was difficult to find things to help out with. Key Club brings together people and makes volunteering much simpler. Events are always filled with friends who make volunteering more fun. Also having a goal of fifty hours each year creates an incentive for me to go out and help the community.

I initially joined Key Club to help make me appear more well rounded to colleges, but it has provided many other advantages as well.

This club has given me a type of job experience, which would be difficult for me to obtain otherwise. School and other activities take up most of my time. Endless homework and weekly UIL competitions make a normal job impossible to keep up with. Having volunteer events every once in a while act as mini work experiences. Fundraising at concession stands especially helps with this.

Key Club has also helped me strengthen my friendships. Hanging out outside of school with friends is always fun, but volunteering with friends has a purpose as well. Working hard together is a bonding experience and doing it so often has given me many great friends. These events also give me an excuse to hang out with my friends. With my busy schedule, there isn’t much time for my friends.

If I’m volunteering with them, I'm doing something productive with my time while still having fun.

Key club has a spot for every type of person. The more outgoing people usually join committees and become officers, while the more reserved people will volunteer and make new friends. In my sophomore year, I became the webmaster for our club. In my freshman year, the website was cumbersome, so I redesigned it to make it easier to use and more visually appealing.

This gave me experience with designing and coding a website that I can definitely use in the future.The webmaster doesn’t do much that is seen by the general members, so this position was perfect for me. I don’t like being the center of attention and working behind the scenes is what I’m used to. Being part of the board has been fun, as each person has a specific job and we get a lot done during our meetings. We’ve become great friends as we are the members that attend events the most often as well.Overall, Key Club has had a positive impact on my life. I may not be as committed as some of the other officers, but I still do my part and enjoy being a part of this amazing club.

Jake Wendling, Webmaster

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MAJOR Kiwanis International and UNICEF have joined forces to eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus—a deadly disease that steals the lives of nearly 31,000 innocent babies and a significant number of women each year.

Visit their websites to learn more

When you join March for Babies you stand with

thousands of people across the country who share your commitment to building a brighter future for us all.

March with us to lead the fight for the health of all moms and babies.

about how you can help the cause

More than 10 million kids enter a children’s hospital like Children's Health across North America every year. Since 1983, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals has helped fill those funding gaps by raising more than $5 billion.

18 MAJOR EMPHASIS PROJECT PROMOTIONS

Thirst Project is a nonprofit organization that works with the support of young people to END the global water crisis by building freshwater wells in developing communities that need safe, clean drinking water.

Why Water? Waterborne diseases kill more children every single year than HIV, Malaria, and all world violence combined. Small children typically do not have strong enough immune systems to fight diseases like cholera, dysentery, or schistosomiasis.

SERVICE PROJECT PROMOTION

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2019 2020

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DISTRICT OFFICERS

DISTRICT GOVERNOR Ashna Patel governor@tokeyclub.com

SECRETARY Kareena Patel secretary@tokeyclub.com

TREASURER Katherine Chao treasurer@tokeyclub.com

EDITOR Vivian Thai editor@tokeyclub.com

LTG DIVISION 2S Katherine Bui ltg2S@tokeyclub.com

CONVENTION LIAISON Dillion Grisham cl@tokeyclub.com

TECH PRODUCER Lacey Thomas techassistant@tokeyclub.com

REGION 9 ADVISOR Connor Rubrecht region9@tokeyclub.com

DISTRICT ADMINISTRATOR Kenyon Black administrator@tokeyclub.com

ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR Ryan Edmoundson AAFinance@tokeyclub.com

ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR Kelly Poland AAEvents@tokeyclub.com

2019 2020

CLUB OFFICERS

PRESIDENT Tiffany Doan tiffanydoan12@gmail.com

VICE PRESIDENT Alina Dam alinalandam@gmail.com

SECRETARY Tisha Gautam tishagautam@gmail.com

TREASURER Albert Yang yangralbert@gmail.com

EDITOR Katelyn Tran katelyntran818@gmail.com

HISTORIAN Nallely Maciel Nallelymaciel75@gmail.com

Volunteering is 'scary' fun!

WEBMASTER Jake Wendling wendljac000@students.garlandisd.net

CLUB ADVISOR Morgan Shaeffer mshaeffer@garlandisd.net

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SU TCATNOC 22

@garlandhskeyclub

garlandhskeyclub@gmail.com

issuu.com/garlandhskeyclub

garlandhskeyclub.com

Google Classroom Code: 6p2bcm

@garlandkeyclub

Text @garlandkey to 81010

CARING our way of life.