Welcome! 

We hope that everyone has had a fine holiday season, despite or because of the snow. Despite the weather, quite a lot is going on, including a February 9th replay of the Home and School meeting cancelled earlier in January because of snow.  (The topic: Class selection and qualifications for AP and honors courses.)  The Central community raised more than $ 1,400 from the recent Barnes & Noble Book Fair.  And congratulations to Brandon Turner and Moises Velilla, 271, our two winners of the 2011 Philadelphia Orchestra Martin Luther King Tribute Concert Essay Contest. Central students have won this prestigious award every year.

Not to be outdone, the Mock Trial Team won its opening round case over Nazareth Academy in the Drexel Mock Trial Tournament. Honors went to Danielle E. Williams, 272, Phil Weiss, 271, Talia Charme-Zane and Darien Carter, 272, Charnice Culmer, 270, and Janualla Beko, 271.

Since it is now 2011, it's time for 270 to file FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) forms. That's "free" as in no charge. So if you are on a website that has a fee, you are in the wrong place! File the FAFSA at www.fafsa.ed.gov.

International Day is coming up in less than a month, on Thursday, February 17. This is not to be missed, and you can check it out online.  

We are always pleased to hear from Central alumni, and they write us often. This month we heard from Jonathan Kine, 245, who wrote us from Jakarta!

Got news? Teaching something exciting? If you want to get the news out, the Newsletter is a great way. Let us know, and we will spread your good word - centralhighschoolnewsletter@yahoo.com.

Thanks, and don't forget to write,

Dave Kalkstein and Jane M. Von Bergen, co-editors.

This year, Christine MacArthur's drama class is learning the art of putting words in other people's mouths. Thanks to a project run in conjunction with Young Playwrights of Philadelphia, every student in her class is being asked not just to read or act in a play, but to write one of their own. Actress and University of the Arts graduate Aime Kelly has been coming to the class since early December to lead brainstorming exercises. This month, each student is working to draft a scene.

By May, the class will have staged many of the student productions (a stage is conveniently built into the classroom). Some may go farther: Young Playwrights holds a regional competition at Temple University, the winner of which can earn a professional production. And there is a chance that professional actors may come into the class in the spring to read some plays. "That can be a thrill, to see adults perform a teenager's work," Ms. MacArthur said.

But this project is about risk-taking, not about winning. "I won't be grading on the quality of the writing, but on the students' efforts to unlock their own creativity," Ms. MacArthur explained. "Our goal is to teach students how to participate in ensembles - how to give and take feedback. Also important is the art of revising scripts. Students often have the attitude that if they turn something in once, they're finished with it. That's not how playwriting works."

No holds are barred in these scripts. Profanity and adult situations are in bounds, however, they must work dramatically.

Students find the challenge intriguing. "Sometimes when you work with a play from a book, you're performing something you don't really like," Stephanie Gonzalez, 270, noted. "This way, you're working with material that interests you."

Advanced Placement Psychology teachers Gloria Finkle and Jonathan Fabrey work to show students that psychology is both interesting and exciting. "About 50 percent of our students in recent years have gotten a 4 or 5 on the AP exam, which would allow them to place out of some (college) introductory psychology requirements," Ms. Finkle said. She also said many AP Psych students want to explore the field and plan to major or minor in psychology when they go to college. Students taking the course are invited to participate in the annual Brain Bee organized by the Department of Psychology at Penn, which provides an opportunity for interaction with professionals who have made cognitive neuroscience their life's work.

Ms. Finkle often uses hands-on experiments to enhance learning such as having students participate in exercises to simulate the functioning of someone with a split brain or to be active runners inside a maze. "We will ask students to watch the running of a maze from the perspective of a mouse, where the visual cues available are much less informative than the ones you'd get from an overhead view," Ms Finkle said. She added that students enjoy active learning and that the experiments give them better insight into psychology and how it's studied.  

AP Psych students also study mental disorders using books and films. "My students who saw "Black Swan" knew right away that the movie was about much more than the intense competition amongst professional dancers," Ms. Finkle said proudly. "They knew what mental disorders were being depicted, and they also knew which treatments might prove most helpful." Psychology helps students understand others and relationships, but, according to Ms. Finkle, one of the most important lessons is that no problem is impossible. "There's always something that can be done," she said.

Central will have a new robotics lab with a machine shop, electrical workstations and six computers set up for programming, thanks to a generous donation from Joan Spain. The new robotics lab will be housed in rooms 030 and 032. The facilities will greatly help the Robolancers, Central's ambitious and competitive robotics team, which continues to toil making new robots for upcoming competitions.

Their robots have been referred to as "the products of our blood, sweat and tears" on their website, Robolancers.com. And while safety is first and foremost, the Robolancers, led by science teacher Dan Ueda, have gone through about four first aid kits this year. The team currently is in the process of building four robots for three competitions using three programming languages.

Preparations are underway for the FIRST Robotics Competition at Temple's Liacouras Center, as well as for the BEST Robotics World Championship at Disney World, both in April. Seventeen team members will be attending the Orlando competition, exclusively representing Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the entire northern part of the United States. Added to the activity is the MATE Robotics Competition, to be held at Villanova University in late spring, for which an underwater robot must be designed and built by Mr. Ueda's robotics class.

The team is so focused on deadlines that even on a recent snow day Mr. Ueda conducted a video chat with students. Mary Conrad, 270, found activity cancellations the day before the storm irritating. "I think I'm probably the only person who was not happy about the no clubs and afterschool activities thing," she said.  

By the way, Joan Spain is the wife of Central alum Bernard Spain, 168, (as in the Spain Conference Center). She was so inspired by a public broadcasting show on robotics that she decided to donate funds for Central's robotics lab.

Summer Hu, 270, was invited to play cello at the State Department to welcome  Chinese President Hu Jintao to Washington, D.C. The schedule had Summer playing a Rossini duet with Chinese cellist Wang Jiah and a solo by Bright Sheng. Confident in her abilities, Summer was not at all daunted by the prospect of performing for presidents. "It's not too scary," she said.

Summer is used to having a full plate. In addition to classes here at Central, she attends the elite Curtis Institute of Music full-time, attending classes there from 3 p.m. until at least 9 p.m. every school day. She is a talented cellist who started playing the cello at age five and has performed for many years with notable orchestras and visiting artists. Summer is also a winner of the Washington Performing Arts Society Feder String Competition and the Symphonette String Competition. She has performed at Verizon Hall, Carnegie Hall, Strathmore Music Center, and at many Washington D.C. embassies. Her Chinese-born parents are extremely proud of their daughter's accomplishments at Central and Curtis.

Do you need an expert in a particular type of law? Do you need a designer, chaperone, someone to bake, someone to help construct scenery? Do you need an expert in ethics, writing, psychology, science? Do you need someone to come in once a week to assist in an office? Central parents can help! As you can imagine, there are many interesting people with interesting and useful abilities among the parent body. Just ask. We make no guarantees, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. You can reach more than 1,000 members of the Central community by writing the Home & School via this newsletter at centralhighschoolnewsletter@yahoo.com. We publish twice a month. Or you can contact Home and School co-president John Newcomb at nuke6692@aol.com and he'll post your request on the parents' listserv. Or, best of all, take part in the Home & School meetings on the second Wednesday of the month at 7:30 p.m.

And now a word from our sponsor, the Home and School Association of Central High School: You may notice the word "School" in the name of our group - that means you, the faculty, and we'd like you to join. (Some of you already have and we thank you!) Membership is only $10 a year and the more participation we have from the faculty, the more we can give back to you in grants. This message has been brought to you by Teri Ranieri and John Newcomb, co-presidents, on behalf of the executive board of the Home and School Association.

A visitor to Central High School on Friday, January 21 may have wondered why students were running in the stairways and doing pushups in the halls during class time. Not that Central students have all that much time to get from class to class, but why pushups? It was all part of the learning process as Jeffrey Blank's students conducted their physics lab, "Muscle Power." The purpose of the lab was to demonstrate that large muscle groups have more power than small ones. The lab involved three activities, the first being to raise a small weight suspended on a string from a stick by winding the string onto the stick using forearms and hands. The second was to do ten pushups, thus using the shoulders and upper arms; and the third was to run up one flight of stairs, using only legs, no hands. In all cases the students had to determine the amount of weight being raised, the distance they raised it, and the time it took to raise it. These numbers allowed them to calculate the horsepower of each muscle group. As expected, their legs had the greatest horsepower; their hands and forearms had the least. In the process, they took the opportunity to laugh at each other's pushup form (or lack of it) and race each other up the stairs. Mr. Blank made a great choice of lab activity for a day when the students were mentally weary by midterms.