Rapoport Academy Public School

Hanging of the Article

We were privileged to have Jane Meyer and Carolyn Meyer hang an article, honoring their father and the namesake of Meyer High School, in the front office. Also present in the photos are junior, Edward Cammon and math teacher, Henry Veselka.

Meet the Ravens Night

The Waco community was invited to join Rapoport Academy for the 2nd Annual Meet the Ravens Night. Dinner was served and all fall athletic participants were recognized. Go Ravens!

Take a Vet to School Day

On November 4^th, the middle and high schools had the honor of hosting local Veterans for National Take a Vet to School Day. The day consisted of meals shared together, Question and Answer forums, one-on-one discussions and classroom lectures all conducted by the Veterans. Students and teachers listened eagerly as the Veterans shared the stories and wisdom that have resulted from their experience.

The Veterans that participated were:

*Gary Mittendorf, Captain, US Marine Corps (Ret)

*Bil Mahon, 1^st Sgt., US Cavalry (Ret)

*Robert Carter, SSG, US Army (Ret)

*Bill Weber, Brigadier General, US Army (Ret)

*Billy Elkins, SSG, US Army (Ret)

*Frank Curre (Pearl Harbor Survivor)

*Jay Fondren, SSG, US Army (Ret)

*Robin Weber, Lt. Colonel, US Army (Ret)

Greek Festival

The 2nd annual Rapoport Academy Greek Festival was the culminating activity for the freshmen literature unit on Mythology and the Odyssey in October. The freshmen dressed up as characters from the Odyssey, sold Cyclopes cupcakes and served complimentary authentic Greek food, including baklava, Greek olives, Greek salad, hummus and pita bread. The guitar class and the choir presented selections from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou, which parallels the characters and events in the Odyssey.

Cheerful Gardeners

The high school “Service Project” club is always on the lookout for volunteer opportunities.  They found one right on their own campus.  One of the flower gardens needed to be weeded, thinned and cleaned—so they jumped at the chance to cheerfully do some manual labor.  There were dirty hands, tired faces and great smiles as they brought the garden back to its original condition!

Eleven students from Rapoport Academy’s Meyer High School attended the Environmental Summit at Southwestern University in Georgetown on Oct. 24, 2009, accompanied by teachers Kylie Murry and Stephanie Schattschneider.

Attendees chose 1 of 4 seminars to attend:

“Ecological Research: the student perspective” (Southwestern students)

“The Human Impact on Nature” (Dr. Eric Loomis)

“Organic Gardening” (Natalie Vreeland, Community Garden Program Coordinator)

“The Story of Stuff: Consumption and the Environment” (Dr. Melissa Johnson).

Next, they selected a workshop from a wide variety of options:

Greening your campus*** Green politics***Group analysis***Starting a group***Messaging and framing***Event and campaign planning***Working with the media.

The workshops were led by Southwestern students from the Student Environmental Club. They divided into discussion groups with high school students from other area high schools to brainstorm and share ideas.

Overall, students had positive comments as they shared ideas for the campus.  Hopefully, several of them will “bear fruit”.

 

Several high school students met the goals of our A+ card fundraising efforts and earned a ride to a pizza party in a Hummer limousine.

 

Math students in Mr. Wade’s class were exploring different ways to understand complicated graphs—so they actually “became” the graph!

 

Berlin Wall

In Commemoration of the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Paul & Jane Meyer High School students have been talking about walls---not just the kind of walls that you can touch and feel, but also invisible walls that people build around themselves.  The students discovered that, like the Berlin Wall, those invisible walls separate and limit one’s ability to reach out to one another.  The students communicated their frustrations with the walls in their lives by writing in colors and freely using artistic expression on a “cardboard block” wall. They understood that this was a freedom that people living behind the Berlin Wall did not have.

Students also gained a deeper understanding of the Berlin Wall and its impact on the world---strengthened by the fact that we had an actual piece of the Berlin Wall displayed under the student’s “wall”.

This activity was paired  two special guest speakers who were in Germany as the wall went down. Mr. Schattschneider and Mr. Reekie presented their personal recollections and reflections to a packed room of attentive high school students. To end the session, Chris Rios, guitar instructor, and students played and sang “Winds of Change” by the Scorpions.

German language students put the final touches on the day by offering samples of German treats that students baked the day before.