October Newsletter

DRAGON TRAINING 101: Bringing Service to Life The Official Newsletter of the Nacogdoches High School Key Club

Texas-Oklahoma District Region 10 | Division 14

Volume 1 | Issue 8

October 2013

FLAG CORPS

Quote of the

Month “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

-Mother Teresa

On October 4th and 25th, prior to our home football games, a group of Key Club members who make up the NAcogdoches High School meet up at the flag pole at the stadium at 6:45pm. The Flag Corps is responsible for the raising and taking down of the flag at all home football games. It may seem like no big deal, but they are a big part of the games and help honoring our country run all the more smoothly. Flag Corps participants this month include Kayla King, Paulina Chavez, Sarah Prince, Maggie King, Matthew Samford, Nathan Harshbarger, Sarah Beth Shipp, Rebecca Fedun, Emily Kuns, Carson Matter, Thomas Cox, Jaden Whitely, Vero Vargas, and Majori Gironde.

STADIUM CLEANUP Key Club is really busy around football games. We are not only responsible for the flag, but we are also responsible for making sure the stadium is clean and ready for the next event. Every Saturday morning at 8am, Key Clubbers bring their bright and shiny faces to the football stadium to see what mess lies before them.

It is always a tremendous task, but luckily we have great members that are willing to show up and help which makes the task a lot less time consuming. Members at this month’s Stadium Cleanups include: Xavier Cruz,

Ashlon Whitaker, Abby Hendricks, Chloe Skidmore, Jeffrey Smith, McKayla Kilmer, Bryce Barhma, Ellen Kiesel, Caroline Herrera, Tara Smith, James Payne, and Leila Hernandez.

Thanks y’all!

HARVEST HOUSE A couple years ago, we attended Harvest House every Wednesday from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm. This year, we decided that we wanted to begin going regularly again. Harvest House is a community organization for the less fortunate where they can come and go “grocery shopping” using food stamps or things of that nature. Due to the size and nature of the organization, they typically don’t need too many of our volunteers. Members who have assisted so far include Miriam Chavez, Abamael Hernandez, and Jennifer Silva.

FREDONIA FALL FEST On Tuesday, October 22nd, a local elementary school, Fredonia Elementary School requested our assistance for their annual fall festival. This project served as a sort of practice run for our own fall festival that we had two days later. Members helped set up and facilitate the event. They also ran errands for teachers.

BLAST FROM THE PAST UNICEF On Saturday October 12th we spend the afternoon with our local Kiwanis club to serve our community at the local Blast from the Past festival. This festival represents all of Nacogdoches’ heritage and is a very important event to our community. We helped the Kiwanis by serving burger plates to patrons. We met many different people from the surrounding community including members of different clubs and sororities from Stephen F. Austin State University, who were also helping out at other booths. We were able to inform them about Key Club and listen with an open ear to what their organization’s goals were as well. This event was not just a bonding event for the local community, but for members of the club, myself and the Kiwanis.

As many of you know, the connection made with your local Kiwanis club is vital. Events such as this provide a very hands-on opportunity to bond and connect with the Kiwanis members and officers. Working hand and hand with them to serve the community was a very exciting and rewarding experience, which helped our members see up close who the Kiwanis are and how they are related to us. The Blast From the Past event was a very fun and exciting event that allowed us to form stronger relationships with our Kiwanis by working and spending the Saturday together.

During October, our major project was be Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF! It is a great cause that we are very passionate about. We collecting donations through our school’s adviosry classes, our Pumpkin Smash, and Trick-or-Treating. Our main event was our first ever Pumpkin Smash.

This fundraising fall festival included events such as bobbing for apples, face painting, needle in a haystack, a bake sale, bowling, pumpkin decorating, a pie eating contest, a costume contest, and, of course, pumpkin smashing.

All funds raised will be going toward the Eliminate Project and eradicating maternal and neonatal tetanus.

SET SAIL October has been an incredibly busy month. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all our of Key Clubbers for their hours upon hours of selfless service to their school and community. You guys are the absolute BEST, and, as always, remember to SET SAIL WITH SERVICE!

Are you the sharpest crayon in the box?

In a one-story pink house, there was a pink person, a pink cat, a pink table, a pink computer, a pink telephone, a pink shower everything was pink! What color were the stairs?

Know the answer?

Get an hour!

Contact an officer!

ESL

Every week the Nacogdoches High School Key Club meets with some kids who speak English as their second language, otherwise known as ESL. We serve as mentors to these precious ESL students and interact with them, but also tutor them or help them speak English. The ESL students look forward to meeting weekly with the members of key club. The members, including myself, absolutely love spending time with these kind-hearted kids!

One event we have done with the ESL students recently that we all enjoyed was pumpkin decorating!

While decorating the pumpkins with glitter and funny googly eyes, we were able to share our Halloween culture with the students. Some members told scary stories, while others told embarrassing stories from their past Halloween experiences! The room was filled with laughter!

I had the best time decorating a miniature pumpkin with a girl originally from Korea! She had the most genuine smile on her face and was so appreciative about learning the American Halloween traditions. I told her about all the costumes I have dressed up in for Halloween the past many years and she was so interested in hearing details about each specific costume! She thought some of the costumes were so cute and said she wanted to be a “pretty princess” for Halloween. I told her I could help her with her costume and that she would have so much fun dressing up! I showed her all kinds of different Disney Princesses and her favorite one was Cinderella! She said “I love her blue dress and blonde hair!” I ended up finding her a Cinderella costume and blonde wig and she was so excited to try it on! She looked adorable in her costume and I was so proud of her for going out of her comfort zone and participating in an American Halloween tradition.

My favorite part of decorating the pumpkins was seeing the girl who I was helping eyes light up when we were completely finished with our pumpkins! She loved the glitter and made her pumpkin look so fabulous! She was so happy and could not wait to get home and set her pumpkin on her front porch for all her neighbors to see! It truly warmed my heart being able to help decorate her pumpkin and teach her about Halloween in America.

This was an overall great event and was extremely beneficial for the ESL students, the key club members, and myself! It was so much fun and I cannot wait to share more American traditions with the ESL students!

Lexie Rocco Key Club Member 12th Grade

PUMPKIN SMASH

In order to raise more money this year for the ELIMINATE project through UNICEF, our Key Club decided to host a Pumpkin Smash or as we called it a mini-Fall Festival. By the end of the night, at least forty of our members showed up to celebrate Halloween and honor this fund raising opportunity. Also the French Honor Society, the Theatre Club, and the Cultural Exchange Club came and were featured at the festival.

That night we also raised more than we get doing our UNICEF boxes annually. However, our fundraising night also gave us the chance to share Halloween and its festivities with some younger members of the community.

One of the events we had that night was pumpkin decorating. One of the high school Spanish teachers brought her children and nieces to decorate. I watched as a couple of our high school girls helped the much smaller girls draw and sprinkle glitter on their pumpkins. It was something the little girls had never gotten to do before and they carried them around proudly after they left. The main event at the festival was the actual pumpkin smashing though. People gathered around as students took baseball bats and hit the pumpkins with all of their strength. It was quite a sight seeing some of the people swinging away at the pumpkins and seeing pieces splatter everywhere.

Another big success of the night was our bake sale. There was plenty of yummy treats. We had about twelve members bake for the night, a festive array of cookies, brownies, and cheesecake was spread before people and it all was sold.

It is safe to say that everyone in attendance of the Pumpkin Smash had a “smashing” time. It was a fun and creative way to celebrate the season and to fund raise for UNICEF that we had never considered. It was also a great way to help get other clubs interacting with ours, while we are all putting our efforts toward the same cause.We’d love to host this event again.

Taylor Layton Key Club Member 12th Grade

KEY DATES Sunday Monday

3 LEXIE’S BIRTHDAY

Tuesday

4 5 Officer’s Meeting @ 6 KC Meeting @ 7

Wednesday Thursday

6 7 Harvest House 5-6

ESL 10

17

24

1

Friday

Saturday

1 OCT

2

8 Band BBQ

9 Veteran’s Day Parade Senior Night Stadium Cleanup Peer Com- vs. Lindale @8 munications Casa Run 6:30Group 11:30

11 12 Officer’s Meeting @ 6 KC Meeting @ 7

13 14 Harvest House 5-6 Fall Play ESL

15

16

Fall Play

Fall Play

18 19 Officer’s Meeting @ 6 KC Meeting @ 7 Thanksing Social Prematurity DayWEAR PURPLE

20 21 Harvest House 5-6

22 NO SCHOOL

23

25 NO SCHOOL THIS WEEK

26

27

2

9

ESL

Peer Com- Teacher’s munications Work Day Group 29

30

Hanukkah begins at sunset

28 THANKSGIVING DAY

3

4

5

6

7 Christmas Parade

10

11

12

13 MITA’S BIRTHDAY

14

NOV 8

KEY CONTACTS NACOGDOCHES KEY CLUB OFFICERS

TEXAS-OKLAHOMA DISTRICT OFFICERS

PRESIDENT Jordan Palmer (903)413-2796

HISTORIAN Bryce Barham (936)585-1210

GOVERNOR Luke Broussard

VICE PRESIDENT Lexie Rocco (936)645-5659

PUBLIC RELATIONS Kim Fuentes (936)615-4957

SECRETARY Usman Hyder

SECRETARY Mita Coker (936)645-6102

WEBMASTER Reid Perry (936)615-7613

LTG DIVISION 14 TREASURER McKenna Skeeters Jeffery Kyle Smith (936)645-2260 (936)645-2245 EDITOR Maggie King (936)371-3675

SPONSOR Ms. Ferrell (936)585-2995

governor@tokeyclub.com

secretary@tokeyclub.com

TREASURER Isaiah Vallequinones treasurer@tokeyclub.com

EDITOR Tashrima Hossain

editor@tokeyclub.com (713)505-2252

CONVENTION LIAISON

Grace Liu

cl@tokeyclub.com (817)962-8945

Maggie King (936) 371 - 3675 | margking14@gmail.com Nacogdoches High School Key Club | Division 14