April 23, 2019
VOL. MMXIX, No. 3
RAM’S EAR R I O V I S TA H I G H S C H O O L
Rio Welcomes Exchange Student Atka Ali Tahir
Photo by: Henry Rossi
by Henry Rossi, Assistant Editor
AFS exchange student Atka Ali Tahir from Zanzibar, Tanzania is enjoying her time in Rio Vista.
Rio Vista High School has recently welcomed a friendly new face to our campus: Atka Ali Tahir. She is part of the AFS exchange student program and arrived at the beginning of this block in early January. She will spend the rest of the school year attending Rio Vista High School. Atka has traveled halfway across the world from her home country of Tanzania. She lived on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean off of the east coast of mainland Tanzania. Atka’s exchange trip this year has been the first time that she has visited the United States. She stated that she wanted to embark on her trip to America in order to gain new experiences while she is here. She also wanted to come to study a new and interesting culture, and she wishes to expand on and improve her knowledge of the English language.
Atka loves the lifestyle here, and she says it’s her favorite thing about the United States. “The people are always so friendly and nice.” stated Atka, “That’s what I have enjoyed the most about Rio Vista.” Some differences in cultures that she has noticed since arriving here are that scarfs are not as common as in her home country. Also, she said that shorts are never worn back home but are worn by students in the United States. Atka is enjoying her time attending Rio Vista High School. She especially likes her leadership class and her ceramics class which she says are her two favorite. She is having a great time connecting with everone she meets in Rio Vista. She told me that she wants to take everything that she learns back home with her where she wants to finish up her studies.
AFS Students Enjoy Wicked Fun Trip to Massachusetts RVHS Goes on Lockdown by Isaiah Mendola, Staff Writer
by Kaytlin Preciado, Staff Writer
On March 21, Rio Vista High School students participating in the AFS program traveled 2,000 miles to the busy city of Boston, Massachusetts. Put together by AFS Supervisor Mrs. Surla, more than 15 students attended. Students were welcomed with windy 30 degree weather and Dunkin Donuts coffee. After arriving, they stayed in the town of Mattapoisett, located an hour away from Boston. The high school campus in Boston is completely closed-off indoors, which is a big change from walking around RVHS. With the crazy cold weather, it’s understandable why students aren’t expected to walk around outside. Some RVHS students claimed it was too cold, while oth-
ers enjoyed it. All students agreed on one thing; Fenway Park was their favorite part. “It was wicked,” said students Wyatt Hagan and Aidan Walker. They also visited the Atlantic Ocean and Boston’s famous Faneuil Hall Marketplace during their stay. Student Zoe White described it as “A clean San Francisco.” The lack of trash in the streets of Massachusetts was noticeably different from Rio Vista’s surrounding areas. Mattapoisett was similar to Rio Vista in the sense that they are both small communities outside of a big city. It was also mentioned that there was a slight difference in the slang used there. Students returned on March 25 with new friends and new memories.
Rio Vista High School Explores New Idea For Block Schedule by Henry Rossi, Assistant Editor
Ever since the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year, Rio Vista High School has operated on a 4x4 block schedule. This experimental design splits the year into two equal blocks: Block A and Block B. Instead of the traditional number of classes, students take four classes that are roughly twice as long during the fall semester and four different classes during the spring semester. Recently, there has been some interest in exploring an A/B block schedule. This schedule alternates every other day of the week between Block A classes and Block B classes. A typical two week period would follow the schedule A/B/A/B/A and then B/A/B/A/B the following week. This type of schedule has been implemented at many schools such as Heritage High School and Liberty High School in Brentwood as an alternative to the block schedule that Rio Vista High School uses currently. Most advantages of the A/B block schedule over the 4x4 block schedule come from the fact that students still have all eight of their classes all year long
rather than taking a class in one semester. One area of academics that is hurt the most by the 4x4 block schedule are Advanced Placement classes. On a 4x4, an entire year of rigorous coursework must be crammed into a half a year of classes. This leads to the amount of homework students have being unequally distributed between the two blocks, and if the student is taking multiple AP classes in one block the homework can become extreme. Most schools are forced to remedy this problem by having students take the class for both blocks especially classes such as AP United States History. An A/B block schedule means having the class every other day for the entire year which spreads out the concentration of homework. Having the class span the entire year also fits the AP schedule a lot better since all of the AP Exams take place in May. Currently on the 4x4 schedule, if you take an AP class in the fall, then you have to wait until May to take the AP exam, by which time you will not have seen or studied the material for five months. The current 4x4 block schedule
At around 1 p.m. on March 21, there was an alarming lockdown which was at first suspected to just be a drill by a majority of the school. It wasn’t until the teachers had informed the students that the situation got serious. The Rio Vista Police Department responded to a report of an armed robbery that happened in the Family Dollar parking lot. The victims agreed to meet the suspect so they could be sold a phone. It wasn’t until the suspect pulled out a gun that the victims were alarmed. Earlier that morning, the suspect, Vandrick Jones, age 22 from Antioch, a parolee with a previous record of gun charges and robbery, forcefully held a female at gunpoint and made her drive him around the Bay Area where he committed another armed robbery in El Cerrito. They were both spotted on Highway 12 by Rio Vista’s very own Chief Dailey. The cops and the suspect entered a pursuit until they came across a dead end at the school bus yard next to Rio Vista High School. The police rescued the girl and sent her to safety. Meanwhile, Jones was running and jump-
ing fences where he hid in a backyard on Tahoe Drive. RVPD was communicating with Rio Vista High School to make sure that everyone was safe kept inside until they gave them the all clear. Solano County Sheriff’s showed up with patrol deputies, K9s, and a CHP helicopter to help out RVPD and make sure that the entire area was clear and safe. The police made sure that Jones didn’t leave the backyard area he was hidden in. They sent in the K9 to get him and found him under a swimming pool. Jones was taken into custody and charged for kidnapping, armed robbery, felon in possession of a firearm, felon in possession of ammunition, and a parole hold. In the end no one was hurt and everyone ended up being safe. The lockdown was held for around an hour. Students were asked what they did to be safe during the lockdown, Ethan Medders said, “ I hid under the table and was listening to instructions and Mr. Sherman’s leadership.” Kaylee Kitchens said “I laid down and was being quiet until I was instructed to get up because it was safe to.”
also interferes with the Agriculture program and classes. Students who participate in FFA are required to take an Ag science or mechanics class that ties in with the program. The problem arises when student have these classes in the fall block because most of the FFA activities they participate in take place in spring. For example, the students don’t receive the animals they raise for fair until after Block A has finished. This would work out much better if the student were enrolled in their classes all year long. The A/B/A/B/A block schedule is also much more beneficial for athletes who have to constantly miss the same periods of school on game days. In the current 4x4 block schedule, students miss the same class every time they leave, and because missing one day on a block schedule is really like missing two days, they end up missing a significant portion of their 4th period class. For example, the baseball team has missed 4th period four times in
the last two weeks because of games. They missing a significant amount of class time in this span, and this can be quite challenging for student athletes who already have a lot on their plate. The way the A/B block schedule remedies this problem is by rotating the class that you miss. This becomes much more bearable for students as they have an extra day to make up work in between their classes, and they are not missing the same exact class over and over. Like every problem, there is an argument to be made for both sides. An A/B block schedule doubles the amount of students that teachers have to grade. The number of students is similar to the amount for a traditional schedule, around 170 students. It’s hard to accurately predict all of the effects an A/B block schedule would have on our school, but in many aspects it seems be an improvement over the current 4x4 block schedule. AP classes is the area that benefits the most from an A/B block schedule rather than a 4x4 block schedule.