An Interview with the Heart of the Magnet: Geri Valles

By Dolores Álvarez & Serena Morales

You might know Geri Valles as the outgoing lady who always takes time out of her busy schedule to help you. She is someone you can always relate to and she always listens and helps. One Magnet student said, “She is not like others. She helps and screams at you to do something better but in a nice and funny way.”

Geri Valles has been working in Lincoln High School since September 1999, since the Magnet program first opened. Geri attended East Los Angeles College and got her Associates Degree. She enjoys her job in the Magnet office and is very pleased to work here. “I love the Magnet student, the parents. I look forward to coming to work everyday.” Her hobbies are camping, which she loves. She plans on trying new things like camping outdoors in the wilderness just for the experiences. She also loves reading mystery novels and enjoys going to the beach. But what she loves the most is spending time with her kids and just having fun.

You might find Geri in our Magnet events this year such as Dodger Night out, Lazer Tag, and so on. Her goal is to attend every Magnet activity possible this year. Geri’s most memorable moments she has with the Magnet program is the annual Magnet banquet at the San Antonio Winery. She said she loves when the students and parents share the fun, when everybody is together and enjoying themselves in one of the year’s last events.

Geri’s laugh is contagious and she is loved by many of the students. Always having a smile on her face makes anybody want to smile. She’s located in room 146 and don’t forget to stop by to say “Hi!”

Upcoming Magnet Events

By Jeff Flores & Michelle Yu

With the start of a new school year, we are going to have many upcoming events. Some of the events are laser tag, ice skating, and campus clean up! YAY! These events can help you get to know people, hang out with friends, and some can even give you community service credits. These are some brief descriptions from past experiences. Come join us and help out magnet! Meet new people and have fun! If there are any questions or concerns, you can contact the Magnet office.

Ultrazone Laser Tag: Want revenge on someone in particular? This would be the perfect event to get back at your teachers and friends. Come join the fun with arcade games and a few games of laser tag!

Ice Skating: Skate your way with friends and join us in a fun filled day of joy and laughter. Sounds a little cheesy, but its true!! If you get a little cold don’t forget there is a yummiful hot cocoa machine! Stay warm and don’t forget to have fun!

Campus Clean-Up:  Come help us clean up our school! This is a time where you can get community service credits for beautifying our school. Split up into groups and paint, help teachers clean up their rooms, or sweep up trash. Clean with friends and have a great time! Be a part and participate to make the school sparkling!

Join Us! Magnet Pride!!!!!!

Senior Seminar

By Angel Quezada & Felipe Aguilar

Urinating on plants, building a computer, creating a Tesla Coil, and comparing breastfeeding and intelligence are just some of the projects that have been done for the Senior Seminar, which is a class for senior Magnet students. The class has been running every fall semester for seven years. Each student gets to develop a project that integrates science or technology. The seniors are required to take this class in order to graduate from the Magnet.

The purpose of this seminar is to give seniors a taste of what the future will hold by helping them develop responsibilities and other work habits. They have the opportunity to explore an interest that has impacted their curiosity. Some projects for this year include smoke detector construction, the aerodynamics of an airplane, spider-web strength and hearing loss due to earphone use and old age.

The senior seminar began in 2003 in Ms. Paulson’s room. In the beginning there weren’t many seniors participating in the seminar. Then more and more seniors joined in which made the room get overcrowded during presentation time. At one time they had to break the presentations into two Saturdays! Now they get to present at Cal-Tech where they get to present in an auditorium without having to be so overcrowded.

Even though the seniors get to choose whichever project they would like to do, it’s not that easy to come up with one. The project integrates science and technology and the whole project lasts five months before presenting them. They have to do a lot of research on their project and do a hands-on portion where they test or build things.

One of the seniors from last year is Chris Garibay who did a project on effects of light and heavy weight training. His project was studying if light weight training of heavy weight training gave people more muscle. Chris said “I enjoyed working on this project which was a lot of work and harder than I thought. My partner Allen and I had three other ideas, but this was the one where we could work with our hands-on. It was very tiring and when we tried to make our graphs on Excel it wouldn’t cooperate with us.”

Anyone who would like to come to see this year’s presentations at Cal-Tech is welcome to come and see the senior projects. It will be very helpful for freshmen, sophomore, and junior Magnet students to come to get ideas for when it is your turn to do your senior project. The presentations will be held on January 30, 2010.

The Magnet Leadership Class and Big Buddy-Little Buddy Program

By Cathy Duong

This year, Magnet has started its very own leadership class. Run by Ms. Lauer during 4^th period, the class is comprised of 15 eager, well-meaning students who share a common vision for the Magnet program as well as the school. Ericka Saracho, a member of our leadership class says that she “really [hopes] to not only grow as a leader, but to help Lincoln’s involvement in our community grow as well.”

The idea for the program’s own leadership class originated from Ms. Paulson, our former Magnet coordinator, who realized that our program would be even better if we had an entire period every school day to plan events and services for our school and community. As a result, she proposed that a Magnet leadership class be formed for this exact purpose.

This class’ basic goal is to better our school and community through service to students and faculty, fun social events, and a cleaner and greener campus and community.  Activities we hope to have this year include peer tutoring, nursing home volunteering, and a much needed recycling program here at Lincoln.

Our first project this year was the Big Buddy-Little Buddy program for the       ’09-’10 school year. The purpose of this program is to guide and lend a hand to freshmen and Magnet students new to the school so that they adjust more quickly and easily to high school life at Lincoln. We matched up buddies according to their interests based on the Little Buddy surveys we collected during Magnet registration. Once the pairings and groupings were made, we planned and organized a Big Buddy-Little Buddy mixer to introduce the buddies. The little buddies have responded positively to the program and event. When asked about the buddy mixer, Gabriela Oros remarked that “it was fun” and that she likes that her big buddy is similar to her. Kathy Reyes also added that the buddy program “is good because [new students] have someone to look up to.”

Because we are still growing as a leadership group, we would love to know if anyone has any ideas that would work towards our goal. So please don’t be afraid to drop by Room 752 if you have any suggestions for us!

Getting to Know Your Counselor

By Steven Garcia

Mayra Garcia is the new Magnet counselor that will be helping us through our many hardships in high school, such as planning our future out.  She’s the kind of woman who takes time from her busy schedule to do an interview. She’s the kind of woman who put the students’ needs before her paper work.

Ms. Garcia was a student at Franklin High School and graduated 1999. Ms. Garcia attended UC Santa Barbara and graduated with her Bachelor’s degree in 2003 and with her Masters in 2006. She loves baseball and is a HUGE Dodgers fan.  It was also made known that Ms. Garcia has a 16-month old daughter whose name is Sophia.

The college counselor at her school, Ms. Hanen, helped her get to college when she wasn’t planning on going.  Her mentality was that she was only junior college material.  Her counselor had her apply to colleges anyway. She said she couldn’t decide whether or not to pursue social work or school counseling.  Ms. Garcia was finally able to make her decision by completing internships which included shadowing another counselor by the name of Ms. Conwell.  While shadowing Ms. Garcia said that she loved working with the students thus she made her choice to be a counselor.  She plans to further her education and get a degree to be an attendance counselor.

We can plan to see her at most of the Magnet events, getting to know the students she will be working with.  Our counselor says that she wants to get to know the students, but regrets being moved to the Attendance Office.  As she stated, “it’s different being away from the Magnet office; I really liked it over there, also it’s harder for the students to find me.”

What she doesn’t like about her job is the paper work which can be both overwhelming and frustrating, but she loves helping the students in planning their future.  She was originally a counselor at Nightingale Middle School.  We can be glad, however, because she’s planning to stay here long term.  I was really glad to hear her say, “I don’t really see myself going anywhere else.”

Glee Club: Show and Showcase

By Pablo Ramirez

The television show Glee, a budding sitcom, has ignited a flame in many students to join the Glee Club at their school. Luckily, Abraham Lincoln High School has its very own Glee Club, started by our choir instructor, Ms. Crabtree. Glee is, mainly, a choir that dances and acts out musical numbers. Glee is a place where anyone can express themselves through song and choreographed dance. The students are hoping to learn how to sing, dance and act in hopes of performing.

“I don’t think I can sing!” complains Ivonne Nieto. If this is your case, don’t fret. Glee is full of students that have different levels of experience. The experience levels range from students that have been in choirs since middle school, to students who have never sung a note in their entire life. Glee is also friendly and kind, so instead of making fun of you, the Glee students will try to help you. We will help you break out of your shell and sing like a bird, sweet and mellow.

Because of the recent phenomenon of the T.V. show, Ericka Saracho has been more interested in joining the Glee Club, but she is worried that she can’t dance. Glee is able to teach her how to dance and sing at the same time. Remember: Practice makes perfect.

I was wondering whether or not we were going to perform any show tunes and maybe act. My worries were diminished when I found out that Glee will perform many show tunes along with other genres of music such as pop, rock, gospel, and more. Acting is also a big portion of Glee; Glee has experienced students to help us learn how to act and move our bodies. Performing for an audience is our main goal.

Still skeptical? Come on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3:15 p.m. and see for yourself. You just might like it. Hope to see you there!!!

Glee Club

Tuesdays and Thursdays

3:15 to 4:30

Ms. Crabtree’s Room #646

Budget Cuts

by Ericka Saracho

Since the early 1980’s, California has lagged behind on the amount of funding spent per student in comparison to the national average. Available data shows that in 2004-05 California ranked 35^th on spending for education even though the average income for each Californian was within the top twenty percentile. Recent cuts in California’s budget do not help this situation.

As of late July, Governor Schwarzenegger has tried to solve California’s $24 billion deficit by eliminating some programs and cutting back funds in other areas, including a decapitation of $9 billion for education. However, this underfunding for school districts is not felt equally across our state.

Some districts are attempting to trim their own budgets without letting their teachers go, preventing an increase in class size. This includes decreases in funding for school supplies, dismissals of after-school programs, and cuts in teachers’ paychecks. However, these options are limited and short-sighted fixes; the next school year (2010-11) may require still, more sacrifices.

In contrast, schools in other districts have attempted to cut back on their own budgets and still have had to let go of some of their new teachers and other faculty. This has lead to an increase in class size, with 40-50 students in a single room. Over 2,000 teachers, administrators, and counselors no longer have a full-time job in LAUSD. Other cases show a significant decrease in the number of custodians.

The effects of this year’s dismal economic situation on Lincoln and, more specifically, the Magnet program will be followed up on in the next Magnet newsletter.

Food Scarcity Resolve

By Ivonne Nieto

For many years, low income neighborhoods as such Lincoln Heights have received the worst of the worse in food resources; this has made these communities virtual “food deserts.” These communities lack adequate markets and healthy foods, leaving the community with inferior stores that lack high quality food and selection, therefore leaving us with fast food outlets as our primary options. With lack of healthy food options, our community is at higher risk of chronic health problems.

But there is hope to all of this. An organization named Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) is trying to bring an end to this scarcity. With the help of doctors, mothers, and community leaders, LAANE hopes to bring such markets like Vons, Ralphs, Trader Joes, and Whole Foods to our community. They’re doing this by organizing a community tour all around our East L.A. location starting at Lincoln High School and ending in Town Hall like meeting. Our school will be represented by two teachers, Mr. Daniel Alamo and Mr. Justin Baker, with student speakers, Ivonne Nieto and Angelica Reyes.

The tour will also cover the effects the closure of Vons has had in the neighborhood. Vons was not only the one major market in our community, but a major source of employment, where many of our friends and neighbors work and shop. This has not only made our scarcity for food worse, but also has made our search for jobs harder.

In the end, Lincoln Heights needs markets with quality foods, and at a good price, because obviously our community lacks that. If you want more information regarding the community tour or how you can get involve in the future with LANNE regarding this project or similar projects, please contact Ariana Valle at her email: avalle@laanne.org. Remember the only way to get what our community wants is to get involve!