Anjali Vishwanath Daily News/Assignment Editor

NEWS THE SIDEKICK

2022 APRIL

Angelina Liu

Visual Media Editor

@angelinaliiu

The District 11 president for the 2022-23 school year is… Dilan Patel.

Whoops and hollers fill the air as Coppell High School students celebrate the first DECA district president from CHS in seven years.

On Jan. 20, at the Texas DECA Career Development Conference student business competition, Coppell High School junior Dilan Patel was announced as Dallas and Rockwall Counties (District 11) 2022-2023 president.

“[Patel] is one of our quieter leaders,” CHS DECA adviser Richard Chamberlain said. “He leads by example. He’s very mature for his age in terms of his professionalism, level of motivation and respect that he shows his authority figures.”

In freshman year, Patel was interested in business, marketing and public speaking. When searching for a club to join, Patel knew DECA was going to be the right fit.

“There weren’t any leaders in [my graduating year],” Patel said “Typically they

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WHAT DOES DILAN PATEL BRING TO A POWERLIFTING MEET?

were upperclassmen. Those upperclassmen were always role models to me and I wanted to follow in their footsteps.”

The journey to become a candidate consisted of an essay, interview, speech and test as well as advisor and principal approval. After passing these steps, Patel was officially a candidate and had to appeal to voting delegates at the competition.

“It felt really good to be elected because I worked hard at it,” Patel said. “I feel like I represented what District 11 needed. When it was announced, I just smiled. I heard Coppell cheering and it was nice to have a moment where people supported [me].”

From an outsider perspective, Patel’s current work ethic models that of a goal-oriented top student. However, this was not always the case. Throughout Coppell Middle School West, Patel was known as the guy who messed around in class and didn’t take school very seriously.

“I met [Patel] in sixth grade,” said junior Aryan Shah, Patel’s best friend. “He was in my social studies class. I knew he was smart but he never focused on [school]. When he started high school he made studying a priority, but he’s still someone who has fun. He took up a lot of leadership opportunities which helped him mature.”

Although this maturation was gradual through his high school years, a pivotal moment occurred in last school year’s virtual learning as Patel felt the pressures of college and the future and realized his ambitions. Patel’s post-graduation goal is to study at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.

Outside of DECA, Patel is an active member in marching band and played saxophone in the award-winning ‘Carousel’ show that scored the highest score Coppell has ever received.

“We have band camp before the [marching] season starts and we have eighth graders come in and have them get a feel for what marching season is like,” Coppell varsity marching band section leader Haavish Arutla said. “I met [Patel] there [in that year] and he was kind to everybody, but he just wanted to have fun all the time. He’s grown up a lot since then. There’s been a lot of [improvement] that I’ve seen in him. He’s matured and he even had the chance to be section leader his sophomore year for JV. He put in a lot of hard work. His playing ability has improved a lot in the last year which means he definitely put in a lot of time outside of school practicing.”

In February 2021, Patel began working out at the gym in order to gain confidence. Through this, he found a new passion: competitive weightlifting. Patel competes through USA Powerlifting and recently met the target/ required weight for national competition later this month in Illinois.

“In my friend group, I would always be picked on because I was the smallest,” Patel said. “I would get wrestled and thrown around. I was tired of it and started working out and building myself up. One day, my friend asked me if I wanted to start powerlifting and I just said ‘yeah.’ We started competing [in September].”

This attitude is evident as Shah has been alongside Patel and watched him meet these milestones in life.

“When it’s time to work he’s one of the hardest workers and smartest people I know,” Shah said. When it comes to school and studying he excels in it, but when it comes to fun, he’s one of the most fun people I know.”

Coppell High School junior Dilan Patel is the new DECA District 11 president. Patel’s passions for DECA, band and powerlifting allow him to see a bright future for himself.

Nandini Paidesetty Anjali Vishwanath

Daily News/Assignment Editor

@anjuvishwanath

The Sidekick Shortcut News between the issues

• Full-time district employees for the 2021-22 school year will be awarded $500 on their

June paycheck, as approved by the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees at their Feb. 28 meeting. • As of Feb. 28, South Belt Line Road has only two open lanes, one going in each direction, from the stretch between Southwestern Boulevard and Interstate 635. • At its March 10 meeting, the Cozby Library and Community Commons board voted against removing the contested book Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. • CISD hosts Visioning Committee meetings open to the public on April 4 and April 14 in the

Vonita White Administration Building and April 7 and April 11 at Coppell Middle School

West. These meetings are opportunities for the community to participate in discussions about CISD’s list of possible priority areas, which cover the district’s three core values: great teaching and authentic relationships, great teaching and redefining success, and redefining success and collective engagement.

stronomy students chasing progress, educating on sustainability

Saniya Koppikar

Staff Writer

@SaniyaKoppikar

Towards the end of the first semester, each year for the past decade, Coppell High School astronomy teacher Angela Barnes has presented her classes with a challenge.

First, she tells them to study the United Nations 17 Goals For A Sustainable Future and find one that speaks to them. Then, she asks them to start the most important part: do something about it.

“Sometimes, we’re stuck in this world where we just want convenience,” Barnes said. “We want what we want when we want it, and we don’t think about the consequences.”

This year’s students’ responses to the challenge will be implemented in a multitude of ways this month as they begin to send what they have learned in the classroom into the community. In the main hallway of CHS, collection boxes and posters have been set up for contribution from the student body.

In December, Barnes’ students selected one of the 17 UN goals and conducted indepth research on the context of the goal and progress made towards its 2030 deadline.

CHS junior Alfred Fairchild and senior Lucas Mears, having taken an interest in the effects of methane gas from cow manure on CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, zeroed in on goals 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and 15 (Life on Land). Their project plans to promote the Meatless Monday campaign at Starbucks, which is a part of the company’s goal to expand plant-based menu choices in order to to reduce carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030.

Meanwhile, CHS seniors Hafsa Qazzafi and Kylie Fowler found their calling in goal 4 (Quality Education) and 15 (Life on Land). They transformed their inspiration into plans to write and illustrate a children’s book about local wildlife to be read aloud in schools and libraries around Dallas.

“It’s important for kids to be educated on the environment around us, so we’re going to try to make it informative,” Fowler said. “But also entertaining enough for a first or fourth grader to enjoy.”

“[Actionability] is also the hardest part, because they could research and they can tell me what the problems are, and that’s fine,” Barnes said. “But to do something about it - like, how do you make that change? Something like not going to buy their clothes from GAP anymore because they can just go and get them from the thrift store makes more of a difference than they realize, and I want them to know they have that power to make different choices.”

Sustainability, an unexpected but fitting part of Barnes’s astronomy class, is emphasized not only through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) challenge, but throughout the curriculum. Human pollution’s effect on astronomy and the forgotten astronomical discoveries of women are some of the topics covered in class that constitute the lens Barnes teaches through.

Her teaching style has not always been met with support. Under past administrations, Barnes remembers having to strongly advocate for her students’ ability to do the project, facing skepticism for her students studying a topic like gender studies while in an astronomy class.

While Barnes has students receive permission from parents for their topics, she wants their projects to follow their passions. This year’s students are working in small groups to choose their own line of research.

“I had a kid focusing on the trafficking of young boys, and nobody had ever brought that topic up to me before,” Barnes said. “It blew my mind. I was close to tears, and this kid was so passionate about this topic. I was not going to tell him he couldn’t focus on it because this is a science class.”

Though the UN Global Goals are supposed to be achieved by 2030, considerable progress – the amount of progress needed to slow, let alone reverse, the deteriorating situations of many of the goals - has not been made.

“I want them to come away from this project with a mindset like, ‘Not only did I learn from my project, but I learned from everyone else’s that there are little things I can do that will make a difference,’” Barnes said. “And it all starts there.”