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This Week at South

This Week at South - 6.33: Gundi’s

Greetings South Students, Parents, Staff, and Community Members,

Past issues of this newsletter are available at the following link: TWaS Archive. 

TWaS is also sent via Canvas Messenger and linked to my Canvas Module for all students and families to access, and shared on South’s FB page.

Part I: The News

Content Disclaimer: I am not omniscient. Don’t see your event or results in the newsletter below? I rely on parents, coaches, and others to send me information to include in the newsletter. Feel free to share positive news and results anytime via my email. 

This Week in Activities: Soccer, Track, and Wrestling with Theater to come next week. Full list HERE. 

Senior Scholarship Opportunity (DUE TODAY): Seniors are invited to apply for the $3000 Bo Seward Scholarship. Applications due April 14th. Details can be found in the following application.

Scholarships for Future Educators: If you are a senior planning to pursue a career in education, there are several scholarships available through the local and national education associations. Due dates are today and April 25th. More information HERE. 

Come join the South Choir! South Choir just won Gold in San Francisco and would love to have more Wolverines on the team! You can sign up for Mixed Choir or audition for Concert and Swing Choir. Auditions are Tuesday and Wednesday April 15th and 16th. Come by the Choir room C202 or see Mrs. Nelson for more information.  nelson_rebecca@asdk12.org.

Host a Short-Term German Exchange Student for Two Weeks:  South's German program is seeking four additional SAHS families to host female students (ages 16-18) from Saturday, August 30 to Saturday, September 13. Our partner school in Hanau is bringing twenty-one students to Alaska for the American side of our German American Partnership Program (GAPP).  Interested?  Contact Elizabeth Dick for more information: Dick_Elizabeth@asdk12.org.

PTSO Board Election Information: It is hard to believe we have about a month left of this school year!! Where has the time gone? The PTSO Board would like to first thank you all for becoming a member this year and the generous donations we have received, along with some great business partnerships.  The school store has been a HUGE success! We thank everyone who has come to help volunteer with this endeavor.

Spiritwear is still available for purchase through our online school store partnered by BSN https://sideline.bsnsports.com/schools/alaska/anchorage/south-anchorage-high-school.  We ALSO still have merchandise that can be purchased in person at the school store or during lunch hours.  

Now, on to election business. Each board position has ONE YEAR term limits.  Currently, ALL board seats are up for GRABS. Please submit any names or questions to (Courtney Luff: cluff521@gmail.com) by Thursday May 4th.  We will submit your name for elections at our LAST PTSO meeting for this school year, which is Thursday, May 8th, at 6:00pm at Raven’s Ring Brewery. Board members will be voted on that night.  

See below for the list of all the positions. If you are interested in a CHAIR position please let me know as well. We still have a few open: these are NOT an elected position.

BOARD POSITIONS (ELECTION)

  • President: Landon Forth OPEN  
  • Vice President: VACANT 
  • Secretary: Jyll Green OPEN 
  • Treasurer: Jennifer Wagner OPEN
  • Membership: Nikki Marshall OPEN 

CHAIR POSITIONS (APPOINTMENT)

  • School Store: FILLED
  • Spirit Wear: VACANT
  • Senior Events: FILLED 
  • Social Media: VACANT
  • Website Coordinator: VACANT
  • Fundraiser Coordinator: VACANT
  • All School Breakfast Coordinator: FILLED

Shout Out to South Mock Trial Team: The SAHS Mock Trial team had an exceptional performance last weekend arguing a first-degree murder case at the Boney Courthouse. Please join me in congratulating the following students: Vince Hug, Jasper Komes, Bella Marsh, and Juniper Pace.

Shout Out to State National History Day: This year, 84 students from grades 6 through 12 submitted a total of 60 projects exploring the theme “Rights and Responsibilities in History.” The top two projects in each category are awarded “State Champion,” and are eligible to advance to the National History Day Contest in College Park, Md. The third-place project receives “Honorable Mention” and may become eligible to advance should one of the top two finishers be unable to attend.

Group Exhibit

  • First Place: "Indian Boarding Schools in Alaska: The Right to Culture; the Responsibility to Heal" by Emma Eden, Julia Samuel, Olivia Yurkew
  • Honorable Mention: "The African Elephant Conservation Act" by Harper Willman, Carina Hamilton

Group Documentary

  • First Place: "The Armenian Genocide: A People Devastated" by Oliver Freeman, Daron Saboundjian
  • Second Place: "The Injustice of Japanese-American Internment Camps" by Maggie Runty, Eden Rhoades, Preston Nerland, Amaya Hammatt

Group Performance

  • First Place: "Rights and Responsibilities of the FDA" by Levi Shivers, Zane Garlach, Susie Ward, Nathan Reitmeier

Group Website

  • First Place: "The Lavender Scare: The Forgotten Story of How Homophobia Cost the Country" by Adelle Eaton, Avigayil Cohen, Sloka Inampudi
  • Second Place: "The Protection of Those in Need: How the ADA Affected the Country" by Madeleine Jones, Jillian Kline, Regan Manley, Adalya Mutini
  • Honorable Mention: "Tinker v. Des Moines" by Christine Han, Chloe Romerdahl

Special Award: Women in History

  • Group Documentary: "Calutron Girls: Shadows in the Aftermath" by Adele Matthews, Anna Hill, Annika Houssner

Senior Information: We are maintaining an Information for Seniors page on our website dedicated to the Senior Timeline. That can be found here: https://www.asdk12.org/domain/6354. 

Prom Help Sign Up:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0F4DACAC2EA5F9C43-55899763-south

Senior Funday Sign Up:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0F4DACAC2EA5F9C43-49143053-senior

Summer School Information and Form: South High School will be offering on-site summer school. Please see the following form for information. 

Prom Information: Prom is April 26th at the Museum. Tickets for Prom go on sale online today. More information is available on the following flier, including in-person ticket sale dates, guest pass due dates, and more. 

Speed Mentoring Event April 17th: Learn about professions available after high school from the professionals who practice them at a speed mentoring evening on April 17th. See the following flier for more information. 

Part II: What I’ve Learned

In the small town where I grew up there was a restaurant called Gundi’s. At the back of the restaurant was a roundtable where local farmers ate their breakfast each morning and spent time gathering and sharing the latest news. They knew almost everyone else who walked into the restaurant. Births, deaths, marriages, the weather, the latest sports results, and local events were all fodder for conversation. 

It was also a roundtable where challenges could be addressed before they got overwhelming or where someone who needed help could find it. In this spirit, they were latter day knights of their own roundtable. These kinds of spaces and connections are now much rarer than they once were. 

Despite their rarity, you can probably think of your own Gundi’s. A place where casual interactions form the basis of social trust and problem solving. Where interaction is easy and you feel welcome even if you don’t know everyone in the room. In the research, these are called “third spaces”, places where people can meet their neighbors not because they made special plans, but because the diner, cafe, brewery, library or park provided the time and space for chance interactions to occur. This repeated process integrates people into shared responsibility for their community, and it is a feature of our life that has become far too rare. 

Optimization, efficiency, take-out and delivery are all antithetical to the kind of interactions that build informal social trust in a third space. As Eric Klinenberg writes in, Palaces for the People, “immersion in (our) private worlds goes hand in hand with alienation from public life” and at the extreme, we start to “fear one another, and everyone wants protection from the other side”, even if we don’t know who is part of the “other side.” 

The antidote to alienation and social breakdown is to build “palaces for the people”, a phrase Klinenberg borrows from Andrew Carnegie who built 2800 libraries that served as third spaces where community members could meet, talk, share information, celebrate successes, and solve problems. From this perspective, social spaces are the lifeblood of community health. Without them, or with too little use of them, social distrust and dissolution occur. 

So, I am reminding myself and encouraging everyone else to visit their third spaces more often. If you can, take time to sit down and have the cup of coffee. Eat your meal in the restaurant. While you are there, smile, say hello, open a door, and be open to in-person, face-to-face interaction. 

Although Klinenberg wrote his book in 2018 to address social disconnection and its negative effects, this idea and the challenge are not new. Alexis de Tocqueville, an observer of early American Democracy, wrote that:

  • Local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations. A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty.

In this sense, local networks of people in their shared environment and engaged in civic discourse are the best means to address challenges. They are the necessary foundation of social trust and problem solving. 

Likewise, the author E.B. White wrote about his own experience with social connection and its positive effects in the small community in which he lived in Maine, where he took a break from living in New York City. Of that experience, he noted:

  • After you have lived in the country for a while, you learn that keeping track of one’s neighbors is a very sensible thing indeed. I find that keeping abreast of my neighbors’ affairs has increased, not diminished, my human sympathies; and when I get up in the morning and spy one man heading south on foot and another heading north, the pattern of the day becomes clear and I can conduct my own affairs more wisely than if I lacked that knowledge. 

In an era where efficiency and optimization are ubiquitous and social isolation is growing, we would do well to find our own Gundi’s and start re-investing in the informal interactions that underlie community health.