Liza Kolbasov – The Oracle

How to enjoy your Palo Alto winter

Liza Kolbasov, Editor-in-Chief — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 19:52:15 +0000

For many, the word “winter” conjures up romantic images of swirling snowflakes, frosty windows, laughter over lopsided snowmen, attacking siblings with snowballs and the exhilaration of skiing down a hill. Yet, Palo Alto’s conspicuous lack of snow renders many of these traditional activities impossible.

At first glance, winter in Palo Alto comes off as dreary, devoid of the entertainments that make it a season of universal cheer. Look a little closer, however, and you’re met with a bursting list of pastimes to try out that will make a Palo Alto winter just as appealing as a traditional snow-filled wonderland.

Although Palo Alto lacks snow, there is no shortage of winter rains, creating a seasonal atmosphere. Curling up in a nest of fuzzy blankets with a large mug of hot chocolate or spiced apple cider while the rain pitter-patters on the roof outside will instantly provide a much-needed dose of winter coziness. To finish off your relaxing ensemble, find the perfect winter movie to watch: from “Last Christmas” to “Let it Snow,” there’s no shortage of new seasonal movies to explore. And you can always go back to a winter classic, such as “Love Actually” or “Home Alone.” Many holiday-themed movies play at the Stanford Movie Theater as well. On Christmas Eve, the theater shows “It’s a Wonderful Life,” an annual tradition. Come out with your friends or family and enjoy the sentimental blast from the past.

On a clear night, call up a couple of friends and enjoy a fun-filled evening of ice skating at Winter Lodge. Palo Alto is one of the few spots in the Bay Area with an outdoor skating rink, and nothing screams winter like sliding around the ice for a couple of hours and racing your friends. Plus, if you squint, the “soap snow” that comes down in the middle of evening skating sessions almost looks real.

If you don’t feel like venturing outdoors, invite some friends over for a holiday baking spree. Whether you opt for traditional gingerbread men, snickerdoodles and sugar cookies or for something more unusual, you’re sure to end up with a stash of goodies to enjoy with a glass of milk or give out as gifts. For more holiday cheer, create a winter wonderland in your kitchen by decorating a gingerbread house.

For more fun, organize a secret Santa or white elephant event. It’s always fun to pick out gifts for loved ones, and nothing beats the excitement of unwrapping a thoughtful present. Plus, a day of gift-giving is a great opportunity to use some of those delicious treats you’ve whipped up.

Venturing a little farther out, you can explore one of the many holiday fairs and events that pop up around the Bay Area. San Jose’s Christmas in the Park is a local tradition, filled with glittering Christmas trees as well as carnival rides, entertainment events and treats. For something a little less traditional, check out the SJMade holiday craft fair, held the weekend of Dec. 14 and 15, where artists and makers come to show off their creations. This is the perfect place to buy some presents and sup- port small businesses.

Even if the most festive thing you have planned this season is studying for finals, pull on a cozy sweater, grab a mug of your favorite hot drink and remind yourself why this season is so universally beloved. After all, snow or no snow, whether sledding or studying, there’s always a way to make your winter days feel just a little warmer and cozier.

Gunn alumni pause to reflect on their high school experiences: Social studies teacher Haley Perkins

Liza Kolbasov, Editor-in-Chief — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 19:10:02 +0000

When most students graduate from their respective high schools, they don’t think they’ll ever find themselves returning. Yet, Gunn graduate and social studies teacher Haley Perkins got the chance to bring her unique perspective as a former student back by becoming a teacher here.

Since she was already familiar with the culture at Gunn, Perkins’ transition to teaching was relatively smooth. However, she did encounter many changes in her former high school, from the physical layout of the campus to the introduction of the wellness center and new conversations around mental health. “It was good for me to hear that it was something that was really important to teachers, and that teachers were aware of how much work they were assigning and making a concerted effort along with the administration and other student groups to focus on student needs,” she said.

Perkins also had to reshape her relationships with her former teachers, many of whom are now her colleagues. “I had to get used to former teachers being colleagues of mine, and [to] look at them in a different role and look at myself in a different role,” she said.

Perkins’ primary motivations for coming back to Gunn stemmed from her desire to teach in a high-pressure environment similar to the one she experienced growing up. “[I wanted] to start to uncover what’s going on within these communities and be a part of the many solutions that are being produced as a result of that,” she said.

While her experience differed from students today, she still has a unique connection to them. “I don’t have to try and imagine what it’s like being a Gunn student. I know,” Perkins said. “I think it’s valuable in having empathy for the many pressures that we all might be feeling.”

Her experiences outside of Gunn have shown Perkins that the school can sometimes be a bubble, creating unhealthy and unfounded feelings of inadequacy in students. “When I left that environment, I was like, wow, I have something to offer here in this new place,” she said. “It made me much more comfortable being myself and expressing my thoughts and opinions, because I wasn’t as worried about not being the smartest, not having the best comments or not sharing the most insightful thing.”

Yet, Perkins thinks back fondly to her time as a Gunn student, particularly to the connections she made here. “Gunn, more than most high schools I’ve seen, does an amazing job fostering lifelong friendships,” she said. “It’s great to see people you grew up with growing up even more.” From homecoming to weddings, the friendships Perkins built in high school have grown with her throughout her life.

Palo Alto climate strike protest calls for governmental action, awareness

Liza Kolbasov and Joshua Yang — Sat, 21 Sep 2019 02:57:30 +0000

“Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!” Chants erupted along University Avenue Friday evening as students and community members, tightly packed on the sidewalks, gathered to protest government inaction against climate change.

On Sept. 20, Bay Area ecoactivists assembled in front of the Palo Alto City Hall to take part in a global movement of climate strikes inspired by teen advocate Greta Thunberg. The two-hour long event, which was organized by the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, featured guest speakers, chants and a march around the neighboring blocks.

Gunn junior Henry Poole, who attended the rally, emphasized the importance of calling for change from legislators. “If we don’t tell what’s important to us to those who represent us, they won’t represent our interests,” he said. “Rallies like these, right in front of our city legislature, are important because you’re bringing it right to those representatives.”

For many at the protest, the lack of government action to combat climate change has reached a point of crisis, requiring legislative action. “When you’re rioting in the streets, you’re calling for top-down changes,” Audrey Chang, a member of the Los Altos High School Green Team, said. “If the government isn’t acknowledging climate change as a whole, there isn’t going to be legislative change in order to support sustainable behavioral change that people want to pursue.”

Gunn sophomore Shana Ebrahimnejad also highlighted the importance of expedient government action. “I hope that politicians and people with power will be more motivated to pass deals or laws that can help make it so that we can preserve the Earth,” she said. “If not, we will basically face an apocalypse.”

Gunn senior Sophie Alexis called for businesses to do their part in being environmentally friendly. “A lot of corporations that might be unwilling to change can be swayed by consumer opinion,” she said. “If there’s a lot of public support behind these kinds of initiatives, and behind environmentally friendly business policies, then I think they can change.”

Protesters were motivated to show up for a variety of reasons; chemistry teacher Heather Mellows was inspired to attend by the similar events taking place nationwide. “I saw the videos of marches all over the country today, and I was really moved by that,” she said.

On the other hand, Poole heard about the climate strike through a friend. “I had a friend who goes to [Palo Alto High School] and he told me about it,” he said. “I decided it would be a great thing to come out to do.”

Gunn staff, too, have advertised the event. “I had a poster up in my classroom,” Mellows said. “I encouraged my students to come. I think this is a nice compromise; it wasn’t during school, but it was still available, and it was still a way of showing our voice.”

For many of the strike’s attendees, PAUSD long-term substitute Christopher Duff included, the issue of combating climate change has become critical. “This is it,” he said. “This is our time. If we don’t do it now, it’s over.”

In the pursuit of wellness: What can we do better moving forward?

Liza Kolbasov, Grace Tramack and Jessica Wang — Fri, 17 May 2019 17:54:06 +0000

During the 2009-2010 school year, Palo Alto lost six students to suicide. Our community lost another four students in the 2013-2014 year. Following these tragedies, our school, district and community made various efforts to better understand what the causes were and take preventive measures.

Nearly a decade after the first suicide contagion, The Oracle is taking a look at what has changed between now and then. In the Pursuit of Wellness is an investigative reporting initia-tive that aims to answer the following questions:

I. What have we done to prevent suicides and improve mental health?

II. Are these measures really working?

III. What can we do better moving forward?

This series has spanned three issues of The Oracle. You can find the first installment in our February issue and the second installment in our March issue.

This article is the third of a three-part series called In the Pursuit of Wellness, an investigative reporting initiative on Gunn’s efforts towards mental wellness. Inthis installment, The Oracle discusses plans the wellness team has for the future and goals that they have set.

Groups

Two wellness groups built on student input, Reach Out Care Know (ROCK) and Sources of Strength (SOS), always strive towards increased participation. For both groups, annual improvements are strongly based on feedback from the community. “At the end of the year, but often a couple times throughout the year, we survey students and ask for their thoughts,” ROCK advisor Paul Dunlap said. “[Wellness] has to have the investment of the people who it’s affecting. If something is intended to build community and to give students a greater support network, they have to be involved in it.”

These groups have also worked on a wide array of events. Senior Meghna Singh has found that students respond better to events that involve physical objects rather than ones centering around worksheets or papers with mental health-related activities. “[Students] can do an interactive activity, like making a stress ball, and then while they’re making it, we can talk about things like, ‘What are stressors in your life?’ or ‘How can you use this stress ball going forward?’” she said.

With these methods in mind, both wellness groups continue to actively strengthen the support network in our community, with the help of existing and new participants.

Wellness Center

One of the main issues that the Wellness Center has faced in the past has been lack of student usage. Math teacher Daisy Renazco believes that social judgements might dissuade students from visiting the Wellness Center. “Stigma is definitely a part of it,” she said. “Some students might feel like if they go to the Wellness Center, then it means that they have ‘serious issues.’”

Wellness Coordinator Genevae Dixon is also aware of the assumptions surrounding the Wellness Center. She hopes to spread awareness about the Wellness Center’s additional offerings. “A lot of work that we have to do is still around the stigma and breaking down those barriers so that students don’t feel like they are being stigmatized by walking into [the Wellness Center],” Dixon said. “People automatically assume that ‘I go the Wellness Center because I have something that’s going on.’ No, you can be here to get a snack. You can be here to get tea. You could be here to do a lot of different things. It’s not just that there’s something really awful going on in your life.”

Singh has been a lead advocate for the expansion of mental health resources on campus throughout the new Wellness Center’s construction process. The new center, which will open next year, is in the same building as the Student Activities Center (SAC). The new building will offer both academic and wellness counseling, tea, stress-relieving activities and snacks, as well as the pre-existing resources of the SAC.

According to Singh, having a “one-stop shop” for all student needs will increase student use of the Wellness Center. “What I’ve realized is that some people still don’t want to walk into the Wellness Center because there’s a stigma of just opening up those doors,” she said. “But if you’re going into the [SAC], or you’re going to see that building, it could be for whatever reason, whether it’s academic counseling, mental health counseling that you need, or if you just want to get a snack, or you’re ordering a dance ticket. Nobody’s going to know; nobody’s going to judge you.”

Social Emotional Literacy and Functionality

Since last year, the SELF team has revised the packaged lesson plans with the goal of making them more constructive and valuable for students. The new lesson schedule, implemented this year, consists of four units with alternating lessons focusing on relationship building, check-ins, school culture and direct social-emotional learning instruction.

The SELF team is also working on including more student input in their lesson plans by incorporating feedback from a committee of juniors and seniors in their lesson plans. “I think using more student-designed curriculum will hopefully increase [support],” Carlomagno said.

Parent Involvement

Staff involved in wellness also wish to increase parent awareness and participation. “I think we are doing a lot, but I also think that people need to be doing work at home,” Carlomagno said. “It takes a village. We’re not the only stakeholder in this situation. I hope that families are participating in wellness, too.”

For the past four years, SOS has hosted parent information nights with the intent of promoting wellness conversations. The event has been successful in educating the parents in attendance. “Parents come, and they hear what they can do to support their student in these issues,” Dunlap said. “That’s one of the few times where we can give them tangible ways. Here’s what you can do. Listen to them right now. Learn the language, learn about the activities they’re doing and ask them about it. The greatest involvement is if there can be a conversation.”

Still, one of the main difficulties with reaching parents is the range of parent-child relationships. “I don’t think there’s one recipe that will work for everyone,” Dunlap said. “I think it depends on the parents’ relationship with the student and on the student’s comfort level on campus. But I know that some involvement is necessary.”

With family support as a key element of student wellness, the wellness team is continually brainstorming ways to reach parents. They hope to give parents the resources to connect their children with help and to know how to deal with any issues they may face. “We’re looking to step up and improve the way that we reach out and educate parents about mental health,” Wellness Outreach Worker Lauren Rocha said. “That will be a long-term goal, looking into the next school year as well and providing more opportunities for parents to get what they need to help their students who are going through things.”

Student Body Outreach

Another focus of wellness improvements is reaching the entire student body. As an overarching influence on the community, wellness impacts the lives of all students and staff. In order to spread awareness and strengthen community support, the goal is to increase involvement.

From Dunlap’s observation, participation in ROCK and SOS is well distributed throughout grade levels. This is mainly a result of friend and sibling connections.

However, Carlomagno believes that representation within the programs can improve. “I would really like to help more of our historically underrepresented students get involved in our wellness programs, but it just hasn’t happened yet,” she said.

Carlomagno notes that the wellness team has focused on incorporating wellness into the lives of as many students as possible. For example, every student ID card has numbers for crisis hotlines and support services printed on the back in order to make these resources easily accessible for all.

Dunlap hopes to increase overall community acceptance of the wellness efforts. “My long-term goals are related to getting as many people as possible to recognize their investment in [wellness] in some way that is meaningful to them,” he said. “More iterations will give more people different ways of learning and expressing what they’re learning in this area.”

Other General Improvements

Moving forward, wellness remains a progressive journey. “I think we always have more work to do,” Dunlap said. “We are closer to a campus-wide conversation about these important issues. If we think about it as shared language, that is a very important early step to spreading information. Even the word ‘wellness’ means more now than it did before.”

Singh agrees that a shared language surrounding mental health increases the school’s capacity for discussing crucial issues within the community. “The more people that are aware of the language around mental health, they know what Sources of Strength is, they know what organizations we have on campus, the better it’s going to be,” Singh said. “It won’t be like ‘oh, what’s mental health?’ You’ll just be able to already dive deep into that conversation and add to it.”

While the role of wellness in student life is always changing, Dunlap stresses the importance of individual involvement. “I think we need everyone to care,” he said. “Ideally, this wouldn’t have to be taught discretely, because it should be a part of everything that we do. When wellness works, it’s not a stand-alone unit. It works in athletics. It works in academics. It works in spiritual life. It’s all of those things.”

With this in mind, wellness requires the collaboration of many. “The wellbeing of the Gunn community—students, staff, parents—is a concern of every single one of us,” Dunlap said.

Dixon emphasized the importance of having a team effort to improve wellness. “We need to be open to allowing those things to occur, whether it be in the classroom, whether that be here at the wellness center, whether that’s at home, in the community, wherever it is that we are coming together as a group, and as a school to really say, this is something that’s important to us,” she said.

If you are worried about yourself or a friend, to be directed to professional help, contact:

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 24/7 access to trained counselors
School counselor/psychologist
Your doctor
suicidepreventionlifeline.org and click “Get Help” for yourself or for a friend
If the threat is immediate, call 911

Leaving teachers share memories, advice for students: Cristina Florea

Liza Kolbasov, Editor-in-Chief — Fri, 17 May 2019 17:50:38 +0000

After 13 years as a math teacher and business, entrepreneurship and math (BEAM) program coordinator, Cristina Florea will be leaving Gunn for St. Francis, where she will be in charge of organizing their new business program and design thinking curriculum.

At St. Francis, Florea is excited to have the chance to shape the school’s new business program through an administrative role. “[I look forward to] being allowed to use my imagination and create what I think education should be like,” she said.

However, Florea will miss Gunn, where she’s worked for 13 years. “I love the students and the parents and how supportive they’ve been of what I do with both math and BEAM,” she said. “And then I am forever grateful to the math department at Gunn, because they’ve helped me grow as a teacher and have been really amazing role models forwhat a teacher should be like.”

Despite the fact that Florea will be leaving the math department, Gunn will continue to partner with the BEAM non-profit and teach the BEAM curriculum to students. “I just won’t be physically at Gunn doing BEAM,” Florea said. “But in addition to my role over at St. Francis, I will still be on the board and be one of the leaders in the BEAM program nonprofit.”

As she moves on to new adventures, Florea hopes that students will continue to advocate for changes they wish to see. “I think [students] just need to believe in themselves a little bit more, and not be afraid to speak up—not be afraid to advocate for themselves and really show the school and the community the amazing things they are capable of doing,” she said.

In the pursuit of wellness: Are we making a difference?

Liza Kolbasov, Grace Tramack and Jessica Wang — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 16:08:28 +0000

I. What have we done to prevent suicides and improve mental health?

II. Are these measures really working?

III. What can we do better moving forward?

This article is the second of a three-part series called In the Pursuit of Wellness, an investigative reporting initiative on Gunn’s efforts towards mental wellness. In this installment, The Oracle investigates the effectiveness of the wellness initiatives introduced in the previous installment.

Over the years, significant research and data analysis has been carried out in order to examine the effectiveness of various wellness initiatives. The Wellness Outreach Team collected data and assembled a report on the impact of wellness efforts in the district throughout the 2017-18 school year.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT STATISTICS PROJECTS

In December 2018, math teacher Daisy Renazco asked her statistics students to study an area of improvement for student life. Of the variety of topics chosen, some focused on student wellness. “From my perspective, the fact that students are interested in studying the topic of wellness is a success in itself,” Renazco said. For the project, those students conducted a number of surveys on the student body about the wellness services.

Following discussions about the results, many of Renazco’s statistics students concluded that the suicide prevention program Sources of Strength was a useful wellness initiative. The peer leader network trained by Sources of Strength effectively provided support. “What I thought was really awesome was that students recognized that the Sources of Strength program would be a good place to put work into,” Renazco said. “When students get overwhelmed, they turn to their friends.”

According to a random sample survey conducted by junior Tara Devaraj, 87.5 percent of students talk to their friends first about emotional trouble. As students tend to trust their peers more, even students not involved in the statistics project believe that student-led programs are more impactful. “Students have done a better job at dealing with their fellow students’ mental health than the administration actually has,” an anonymous student said.

Senior Meghna Singh has been involved in Sources of Strength, is co-president of the Reach Out, Care, Know (ROCK) club and was the Wellness Commissioner during her junior year. She has found ROCK to be an important bridge between wellness initiatives and students. “There’s definitely a really good core community filled with people who look out for one another who are supportive,” she said. “It’s really nice to have that community, and it also overlaps with the people in Sources of Strength because we all promote the same messages.”

Singh also said that she has received positive feedback for the petting zoo that ROCK organized before finals since 2015, as well as the rock painting event that the Wellness Center hosted. “The whole point of why we do what we do and try and reduce the stigma is so that we’re initiating these conversations,” Singh said. “I think a lot can happen when people are open about their experiences, whether it be good or bad, and then pass those conversations on to everybody.”

WELLNESS CENTER USAGE

According to the Wellness & Support Services Mid-Year Update presented for the March 27, 2018 Board of Education meeting, from August 2017 to January 2018, there were a total of 3,973 visits to the Wellness Center. Of those, 1,616 were for the Health Office, 832 were for a snack or water, 635 were for an appointment with a mental health counselor or a therapist, 547 were for a 15-minute breaks and 268 resulted from the need to talk to a counselor without an appointment. The remaining 75 visits were for assorted reasons, including working on or participating in a wellness project or group.

Despite the variety of visits, Renazco’s statistics students discovered through the project that the Wellness Center is still underutilized by the entire student body. “What they found was that the proportion, or percentage, of kids that are going to the Wellness Center is actually small, based off of their random sample, but that the small sample use it regularly,” Renazco said.

In a random sample survey conducted by Renazco’s statistics students, 56.25 percent of students had never visited the Wellness Center in the past month, while about 41.67 percent had visited one to five times and 2.08 percent had visited more than five times. Some of the reasons cited for not using the Wellness Center were not needing to or not thinking it was useful.

Singh frequents the Wellness Center for her meetings, as well as just to grab tea and snacks. Since it opened in 2016, she has been pleasantly surprised by the number of students who use it. “This school year, especially, I’ve heard more people talking about wanting to go see the counselors in the Wellness Center or at least talk to them and know that that’s an option,” she said.

According to Singh and the Wellness Coordinators, the number of people using the Wellness Center has steadily increased each year since its opening. Wellness Coordinator Genavae Dixon hopes to eventually reach the entire student body. “I think we could always have more students here,” Dixon said. “I think that we want all 2,000 students to at some point walk in the Wellness Center and feel safe doing so.”

SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LITERACY AND FUNCTIONALITY

Under different forms and names, social-emotional learning (SEL) programs at Gunn have evolved and changed in response to student feedback. Currently, Social Emotional Literacy and Functionality (SELF) is a district- mandated program aimed not only towards improving wellness but also helping students develop soft skills and connections with adult mentors.

Some students have argued against the value and impact of SELF. “It’s boring, and I personally just haven’t gotten anything out of it, especially last year and the first semester of this year,” the same anonymous student said. They have not attended SELF this semester, citing its ineffectiveness as the reason for doing so.

SEL Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA) Courtney Carlomagno believes that SELF will become more accepted by the student population in the future. “It’s a big change, and every change takes adjustment,” she said. “I also think right now it’s hard that only two grade levels are in it, and it’s not all four years yet. Freshmen and sophomores see juniors and seniors having free time or choice time in Flex, and that’s been difficult.”

Many of the complaints against SELF are also related to time commitment and stress levels. Carlomagno wishes to emphasize how the goal of SELF is to help students develop social skills while concurrently promoting their wellness. This additional curriculum makes it different from academic classes. “Social-emotional learning is about the development of soft skills: learning how to communicate, learning how to problem solve, learning how to work in groups,” Carlomagno said. “It’s kind of like the hidden curriculum so, yes, there is a wellness piece, but I think it’s important to note that SEL is really more skill-based, and it’s about learning how to interact with the world around you.”

Like Sources of Strength, SELF also aims to connect students to adult help. SELF mentors are currently set to stay with the same cohort group for all four years, establishing a secure mentor-student relationship. So far, SELF survey results have shown this to be effective. “What [TOSA Tara Firenzi] and I like the most is that the data shows that students are identifying as being more or as connected to their SELF mentor as their regular teachers,” Carlomagno said. “That’s really the biggest deal to us, because they see [their SELF mentors] once a week versus their other teachers, which they see three times a week.”

Overall, the hope is that SELF will continue to positively influence student wellness at Gunn.

OVERALL IMPACT

From national training programs to district-mandated classes, wellness initiatives have had varying impacts on the student body. While some may be more effective than others, Carlomagno believes that any positive influence is progress. “I think we have a lot of cool, different wellness offerings,” she said. “Even for the ones with 200 kids versus the ones with 30 kids—however many kids we’re touching—we’re making a difference for at least a handful of those kids.”

Despite the impact Singh has witnessed from working on wellness for four years, she still finds students who don’t believe in the benefit of the initiatives. “I’ve heard a lot of comments like, ‘Oh, this isn’t going to do anything,’ or ‘You’re wasting money,’” she said. “I think that this just comes from lack of awareness. People don’t realize that everyone has mental health; it’s just on a spectrum.”

Singh also believes that it is important to remember that wellness initiatives aim to help both students and the community. “It’s unfortunate when there is pushback, because we’re really trying to spread positivity and awareness,” she said. “It’s coming from the best place possible: just caring about our fellow peers and caring about the teachers and community as a whole.”

If you are worried about yourself or a friend, to be directed to professional help, contact:

The National Suicide Prevention Life- line: 1-800-273-8255, 24/7 access to trained counselors
School counselor/psychologist
Your doctor
suicidepreventionlifeline.org and click “Get Help” for yourself or for a friend
If the threat is immediate, call 911

United Computations club hosts day-long hackathon

Liza Kolbasov, Editor-in-Chief — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 18:39:15 +0000

On Feb. 23, Gunn hosted its fifth annual hackathon, GunnHacks, organized by the United Computations club. Over 160 students from Gunn and surrounding schools got together in the N-building from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., to work on programming projects and attend various workshops and trainings.

Attendees had the opportunity to design innovative projects in teams with fellow students. Projects ranged from coding mobile applications to programming robots. “For 12 hours, you’re going to sit down with your team, have some food, eat some snacks, talk and make some- thing cool,” GunnHacks organizer John Guibas said.

Workshops from mentors, including Stanford students and experts from various companies, were also available to provide hackers with the necessary skills to carry out their ideas, allowing students with limited knowledge of computer science to get involved and experienced programmers to grow their skill set. “Especially for novice coders—people who went in there blind without any knowledge like myself—you can go to one of those workshops and they’ll teach you, really simply and efficiently,” former attendee and current organizer Quinn Arbolante said. “At the end of it, you’ll have a product that you can work on for the rest of the hackathon.”

United Computations club had been working through- out the year to organize the event, which is almost entirely student-run. The process involved booking the venue, fine-tuning logistics, contacting sponsors and mentors and promoting the event. “I think the biggest challenge we faced was obtaining sponsors for our event,” GunnHacks director Austin Ho said. “At the beginning, we didn’t have any responses coming back from any of our sponsorship requests, but, however, our persistence paid off when we did receive offers from various businesses.”

GunnHacks offered opportunities for programmers of all levels to extend their skills. “I think one misconception about hackathons is that people think [they] are just for experienced programmers. That’s not the case for our hackathon,” Ho said. “We’ve definitely put in a lot of effort to make sure that our workshops are for both beginners and experienced programmers.”

The hackathon is also a chance for students to expand their knowledge of computer science outside of the classroom. “This is an opportunity to go and learn something about writing programs that are useful [and] not in a classroom environment where you don’t have to worry about a grade or anything like that,” United Computations advisor Joshua Paley said.

Overall, one of the main goals of the event was to allow students to appreciate the power of computer science in action, as well as channel their creativity into building an impactful product. The event is a chance for students to experiment and see what they can come up with in a limited amount of time. “What you realize is that code is really powerful. You can scrape together these minimal viable products in less than 12 hours and maybe some- times less than six, and some of those applications can be really powerful,” Guibas said. “The most important part of your project is your idea. It really teaches how much power you have in the human spirit.” The first place project, created by junior Audrey Xie, was Earl-AR, an augmented reality program.

In the pursuit of wellness: What’s been done so far?

Liza Kolbasov, Grace Tramack and Jessica Wang — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 18:37:56 +0000

I. What have we done to prevent suicides and improve mental health?

II. Are these measures really working?

III. What can we do better moving forward?

This article is the first of a three-part series called In the Pursuit of Wellness, an investigative reporting initiative on Gunn’s efforts towards mental wellness. In this installment, The Oracle focuses on what wellness initiatives have been implemented on campus.

Early Mental Health Initiatives

Of the mental health initiatives at Gunn, the oldest is the club Reach Out, Care, Know (ROCK). In 2009, classmates and friends of the first student lost to suicide created ROCK to improve peer-to-peer relations.

English teacher Paul Dunlap was asked to be the club’s advisor early in the process. “One of the best decisions I’ve made in my life is simply saying yes [to that],” he said.

Together, Dunlap and the students found an expert to teach them about peer wellness. Due to the publicity surrounding the suicides, they had many options. “We went to our principal and said, ‘Have you heard of resources in the community?’” Dunlap said. “And she said, ‘How much time do you have?’ She opened her email box and had innumerable emails of self-proclaimed experts offering help.”

After searching through the potential experts, the ROCK founders chose a then psychologist at Gunn to train the group of students. The first year’s efforts consisted of a successful eight-week study on how to offer support to their peers.

At the start of the second year of ROCK, the national youth suicide prevention program Sources of Strength contacted Dunlap about a possible partnership. This program focuses on developing protective influences for young adults, including healthy activities, mentors and positive friends.

Following what Dunlap would later call his second-best “yes,” Sources of Strength held its first well-attended training for students and adults. “We got a great group the first time around,” Dunlap said. “There were almost 70 students packed in the library doing this training, having lunch together, laughing, making these big posters and getting really excited.”

Roughly nine years later, both wellness groups are still active. Dunlap remains an adult advisor and leader, enjoying his work towards building a stronger community. “In the face of trauma, it’s easier to freak out and complain and criticize than to take positive steps,” he said. “What I love about these two programs is that the emphasis is on what we can do to heal and protect.”

Center for Disease Control and Prevention

On Friday, May 3, 2017, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released their Epi-Aid report on youth suicide in Santa Clara County. The report gave an overview of mental health initiatives within the county, data across multiple demographics and recommendations for improvements.

Following the second suicide contagion in 2015, community members involved in Project Safety Net, in conjunction with the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD), observed the CDC conducting research for a similar situation in Fairfax, Virginia. After that report came out, community parents requested that the CDC conduct an investigation of mental health in PAUSD.

Health Officer and Director of Santa Clara County Public Health Department Dr. Sara Cody formally asked the state for help filing a request for an investigation from the CDC, despite being unsure if the CDC was going to answer all of the community’s questions. “They already have a set of evidence-based recommendations for both documented protective and risk factors for suicide and suicidal behaviors before they go crunch the data,” she said. “It wasn’t particularly tailored to the uniqueness of the community.”

According to Dunlap, it was initially unsettling to know that the CDC was investigating the school. “Most of us only think of the CDC for physical diseases, outbreaks of diseases,” he said. “It felt like uncomfortable scrutiny, even though I and many others understood the big picture of why it was necessary.”

Though the study was neither long-term nor in-depth about the school’s current programs, the CDC report states that although the suicide rate in Palo Alto is the highest in Santa Clara county, it is still below the national average and that 65 percent of all mental health programs reviewed were provided by PAUSD. According to Dunlap, the study validated the significance of the programs students and staff had been working on. “I was able to take some of that information [from the CDC report] to my leadership teams, peer leaders in Sources of Strength and the ROCK leadership team and say, ‘If you had any reason to wonder if the work you’re doing matters, look at this,’” he said.

In terms of what can be improved on, the report stressed the importance of assuring that youth have access to quality mental health services and to shift some of the focus to preventive measures.

Campus Measures

Gunn’s Wellness Center was first opened in the 2016- 2017 school year, offering access to individual and group therapy, mental health support, as well as a space to relax and take a break with tea and snacks. The Wellness Center will be expanding, consolidating with counseling and moving into the new building next school year. “I think just having a Wellness Center in and of itself is a huge initiative and a huge step forward in providing support for students,” Wellness Coordinator Genavae Dixon said.

Although it was not directly implemented because of the reports, the social-emotional learning (SEL) program titled Social Emotional Literacy and Functionality (SELF) also aims to improve student wellness through student- to-mentor connections. “The hope is that it’s the surest way we can guarantee that every child is connected to a trusted adult on campus,” SEL Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA) Courtney Carlomagno said. “If you’re not someone who’s involved in things, there’s a chance that you won’t have that adult connection. SELF’s mentorship and relationship piece guarantees that everyone gets connected, no matter interests or involvement.”

After the CDC report was released, Dunlap says people generally started taking programs such as ROCK, SELF and Sources of Strength more seriously. Additionally, he says that people have been more open to discussing mental health as a whole.

According to Dixon, the school community has made steps to decrease stigma surrounding seeking support in wellness over the past years. “There is a shift in [visiting the Wellness Center] becoming more normalized. It’s okay: we all need help, we all get stressed, we all get overwhelmed,” Dixon said. “This is a place that I can come and I can be and just kind of relax.”

In particular, staff members have become more supportive of wellness efforts. “I think we have a lot more support from our teachers and our staff that runs really on board with wellness and what it looks like,” Dixon said. “I think I’ve been able to do a lot more activities that I’ve gotten a lot more feedback [about] from teachers, staff and students about how wellness works and how it can work for them.”

Identifying Goals

There is still work to be done around decreasing stigma for students seeking help, both from other students and from parents. The Wellness Center has been working on spreading information to parents to ensure that they are adequately prepared to aid and support their students. “We’re looking to really step up and improve the way that we reach out and educate parents about mental health,” Wellness Outreach Worker Lauren Rocha said. “And that will be kind of a long term goal, looking into next school year as well, providing more opportunities for parents to get the things they need to help their students who are going through things.”

The Wellness Center also seeks to make students more comfortable seeking its services. “I think that we want to be able to all for all 2000 students to at some point walk in the Wellness Center and feel safe doing so,” Dixon said. “I think a lot of work that we have to do is still around the stigma and breaking down those barriers so that students don’t feel like they are being stigmatized by walking in here.”

While wellness is a difficult subject, it must be addressed. “There may always be a stigma about talking about these things in different communities,” Dunlap said. “But in my observation, more people are talking about it more comfortably than I’ve seen, and I think that’s always good. Problems never get better if you don’t talk about them.”

If you are worried about yourself or a friend, to be directed to professional help, contact:

The National Suicide Prevention Life- line: 1-800-273-8255, 24/7 access to trained counselors
School counselor/psychologist
Your doctor
suicidepreventionlifeline.org and click “Get Help” for yourself or for a friend
If the threat is immediate, call 911

Choir presents the staff-student musical

Liza Kolbasov, Editor-in-Chief — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 18:14:27 +0000

Every year, staff members join together with all the choirs to put on a musical complete with funny lyrics, elaborate costumes and well-choreographed dance numbers. Over the past few weeks, the choir has been working to prepare this year’s show, “I Want to Hold Your Babushka,” which will be performed on Feb. 5, 6 and 7. Profits from tickets sold will be used to provide scholarships for the choir tour in Italy later this year.

The script for this show, written 19 years ago by Nancy Hersage, describes a comical story of the Soviet government’s attempt to intervene in American politics by kidnapping the Beatles. “It’s [set in the] early 60s, and they see that the Beatles were about to become the biggest sensation in entertainment,” choir director Bill Liberatore said. “And so what they do is they kidnap the Beatles, and they try to replace them with imposter Beatles who will go to America and be spies for the Russians.”

The choir puts in a lot of work in the weeks leading up to the production to put together a show in a short timespan. “We only have about three to four weeks to do it because we start when we get back [from winter break] and the show is in early February,” junior Katie Brown said. “In class, we really drill the numbers, we learn the music and we do a lot of choreography for it.” In the last week before the show, the staff and choir counterparts join to rehearse the show in full.

As part of the preparation process, the choir attended a weekend-long retreat at a Young Men’s Christian Association camp on the weekend of Jan. 26. “We [were] just up there in the redwoods, learning the dances and singing the show, so that part’s really fun,” Liberatore said. “That’s as fun as doing the show. We [had] a blast.”

Putting on the show involves a lot of scheduling and coordination. In addition to finding a time that is convenient for all choir students and staff participating in the show, planning for the show also involves auditions for smaller parts, costuming, publicity and coordination with the theater crew and with the middle school choirs, who were also invited to participate in the show. “The whole thing is about schedule. That is really the only difficulty. It’s really trying to build a schedule so that somehow or another in a day, everybody who has a solo, a line or a dance to learn gets rehearsed before Feb. 5,” Liberatore said. “It’s like a twelve-headed snake.”

As a result, the last few weeks before the show can be busy for the choir. “It’s very stressful for the last two weeks because we really don’t put it together until the last week,” Brown
said. “The teachers come in during that time, and they have to learn all this stuff.”

Despite the stress, however, the choir-staff musical is an enjoyable experience for all. It allows choir students to experiment with music outside of what they typically sing for choir, interact with staff members in an informal atmosphere and bond with each other over the show. “[It’s] a silly show that’s meant to be funny more than rigorous,” senior Juan-Paulo Idanan said.

For performers, musical nights are a memorable experience. “It’s just fun to see all different kinds of people, students and colleagues, [participate in this],” biology teacher Maria Powell said. “Some of them are in their element and some are so far out- side their comfort zone, but everybody’s having a good time. It’s kind of electric.”

The choir-staff musical is unique because it allows students and staff to interact outside of the classroom and work together to put on a production. “Seeing them perform is just silly because you don’t see teachers just act out [in a funny way] in front of class usually, and it’s just fun to have them around,” Idanan said.

For staff members, the show also provides the opportunity to interact with colleagues from other departments and get involved in a different aspect of school culture. “That’s always the most fun part—to do something together with people from math and people from English and support staff,” Powell said. “There’s no other opportunity in our work lives where we just get to be together, and that’s what brings me back.”

Many staff members, such as Powell, participate in the choir-staff musical year after year and view the show as a significant cam- pus tradition. “I just want to ex- press my gratitude to Mr. Liberatore for doing it over and over and over again,” Powell said. “If we didn’t have him, this wouldn’t happen, and I think it’s a uniquely Gunn thing, and it’s really special.”

Money raised from ticket sales for scholarships aims to allow all choir students to attend the choir’s tour to Italy this year. “There’s a big goal around the money we can raise to make Gunn a more equitable place for all students,” Liberatore said. “That’s a pretty exciting part too, when you can put on a show and then make it possible for a whole lot of kids who couldn’t go on a big choir performance tour to be able to come.”

Audience members can look forward to a night of fun and light-hearted entertainment that the choir and staff have worked hard to prepare for them. “It’s just a fun, wacky time to watch your teachers and your friends perform crazy numbers,” Brown said.

Personal wellness elevates daily life: mini self-care tips

Liza Kolbasov, Editor-in-Chief — Fri, 07 Dec 2018 20:46:11 +0000

Dress up in your fanciest outfit, even if you have nowhere to go. Put on something special, do your hair and makeup and make yourself feel fancy. Being dressed up will make you feel more put-together than lounging around in pajamas, and it might even motivate you to get more work done.
If you’re feeling over- whelmed, try stepping away from your work for a bit and tidying up your room or workspace. Toss out stray papers, take those dirty mugs out of your room and hang up the laundry that’s been lying around for a week. It will make you feel productive while letting you take a break from studying. Plus, you’ll have a more organized environment to come back to, which will help you feel less stressed.
Listen to some of your favorite music. Some cheerful tunes can be an instant pick-me-up and a great distraction from stressful work. Plus, dancing along to some music can serve as good exercise when you don’t have time to get to the gym.
Take a short walk outside. Fresh air and a change of pace can be refreshing and help clear your head before getting back to studying. Walking can also be good exercise and help you get blood pumping in your body. Pop in your earbuds and walk around the block for a quick study break, and you’ll come back feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work.
Treat yourself to something you’ve been wanting for a while. Whether it’s taking a trip to the movies, baking some delicious cookies or buying yourself a new notebook, giving yourself a reward for all of your hard work can help make you feel hap- pier and less stressed out. You deserve to take a break and enjoy yourself, even during the most stressful times of the year.
Bring nature into your study space by keeping a plant on your desk. Even if you don’t have the opportunity to go outside, keeping a plant in your room can make you feel more relaxed. Plants will bring oxygen and water into the air, purify it, and generally de-stress you by tying you back to nature. Also, try opening your window to let some light and fresh air into your space.