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This Week:
Sports Issue 34
Volume 10
Thursday, November 19, 2015
From the Oconee to the Apalachee
Football
OCHS advances Page 6
Arts
ROB PEECHER/Oconee Leader
Oconee County honored its veterans last week with a special ceremony held at Oconee Veterans Park. Former Watkinsville Mayor Jim Luken was among the speakers at the ceremony, and the Malcom Bridge Middle School band performed. During the ceremony, special recognition was given to the Vietnam veterans in the audience, who were asked to come forward and stand in front of the Veterans Memorial to be recognized. For the full story, see page 2.
Cornerstone
Performance Page 3
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Oconee high schools now offering AP Capstone BY MIKE SPRAYBERRY The Oconee Leader
Oconee County High School and North Oconee High School both have become two of only 10 schools in Georgia approved to offer the Advanced Placement Capstone program. The AP Capstone program is a diploma program from the College Board intended to equip students with independent research, collaborative teamwork and communication skills valued by colleges.The program consists of two courses, AP Seminar and AP Research, designed to complement other discipline-specific AP courses. “The Capstone program is designed to enhance students’ higher order critical thinking skills and ability to access information to conduct research,” said Dr. Claire Miller, Chief Academic Officer of the Teaching and Learning Department for Oconee County Schools. “By
the completion of these courses, students are awarded an IB diploma. Being AP courses, they are College Board approved courses.” The College Board is a not-for-profit organization that provides college preparation programs and services including the SAT and the Advanced Placement program. AP Research and AP Seminar are the latest of 38 AP courses offered by the College Board. “AP Capstone is fairly new and you have to submit an application for approval,” Miller said. “We’re actually very excited about this opportunity because it will expand higher learning opportunities for our students and offer more rigorous coursework. “Another thing important to note is that the addition of this program was initiated at the school level by administrators and teacher leaders. It wasn’t that we initiated it from the district level. We want to give them credit for being innova-
tive and seeking out opportunities to provide higher learning experiences for our students.” According to Miller, though approval to offer the AP Capstone program came from the College Board, trained teachers will shape the specifics of the courses. “It will be designed at the teacher level. They will be going to training by the College Board this summer and are currently reviewing texts that they will use in the classroom. “The texts will promote advanced research skills and critical thinking, but students will select a topic of interest to them and will be conducting their own research on that topic. The culminating project is called a Capstone project where they actually do a thesis and present their results.” ‘AP Capstone’ Page 2
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ACTS of generosity: 30,000 cans from can drive BY ROB PEECHER
Santamaria
Academy grad
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Veterans Day
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The Oconee Leader
More than 110 volunteers showed up Fridayat the Area Churches Together Serving food bank in Bogart to help sort cans and other non-perishable items collected through the annual Can-A-Thon at the local schools. Reiny Hiss, the director at ACTS, said the items donated through the Can-A-Thon at area schools were consistent with what ACTS received last year. “We had about 30,000 cans delivered,” Hiss said. “This will be enough more than enough to get us through the end of the year.” The shelves at ACTS appeared pretty well-stocked even before the Can-A-Thon donations arrived, but Hiss pointed out that ACTS had just spent $9,000 buying food the day before the donations arrived from the schools. “We spend $4,500 a month on rice, sugar, flour, pasta and hearty soups,” Hiss said. “We have to do this to supplement the donations. Kids don’t bring rice or other things that can break open.” With a hundred volunteers sorting enormous boxes of donations outside, Hiss said people might not understand how much food actually leaves ACTS. Hiss said during the course of the day Friday, he had
ROB PEECHER/Oconee Leader
Rachel Harper and her grandson 8-year-old Gage Harper help sort cans at ACTS last week.
110 volunteers sign in to help organize the donated food, but he noted that probably there were some volunteers who did not show up. “The Tuesday before Thanksgiving and the Tuesday before Christmas, we will have 15,000 cans leave here,” he said. Those two weeks alone will run through about
half the donations ACTS gets from the schools. On average, ACTS is serving about 500 families a month. Hiss said the economy has improved over the past several months, but the number of families coming in for help has remained consistent. “Our growth is about 80 percent from seniors,” Hiss said.
Hiss said families move on and off the rolls of people receiving help from ACTS as they get jobs and their situation improves, but he attributes the growth of seniors on the rolls to recent cuts to the food stamp program. “The food stamp cutting last year was ridiculous,” Hiss said. “They’ve forced seniors to make a decision between buying food and buying medication.” Hiss said to meet the changing needs of the community, ACTS has created what it calls “Senior Boxes” that includes a few special items for seniors. “We put dried beans in the Senior Boxes because seniors know how to make a meal out of dried beans,” Hiss said. “We designed this box to have enough food for one or two seniors to last a week, and we’re qualifying people for these so that we know they are giving up food for medication.” Hiss said some of those boxes get delivered to another local group that distributes the boxes. “This is something we started about a year ago, and I’m just tickled to death with it,” Hiss said. ACTS is a local organization run by 29 member churches from ‘Can Drive’ Page 4
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