Local Music Review

By Kathy Garner, M&M TIPster

In general, I find local music scenes enjoyable. Locals are often very attached to bands hailing from the area, and Athens, Ga., is no exception.

In particular, the Athens music scene has been described as being successful despite a sleepy atmosphere. One of the reasons the scene is so successful may very well be because it is “easy to get [your band] out there,” as said by 16-year-old Alex Blankenship, a participant in Camp Amped. Camp Amped is a camp for local teenage musicians to get their band together and participate in music making. (PICTURE: Alex Blankenship, 16 (left) and Isik Benson, 15 (right), participants in Camp Amped)


With encouragement to musicians such as this, it makes sense that many Athenian bands are successful. Here are three bands that are representative of the Athens area music scene, and in particular, it’s rock heritage:

ham1, “I Wave Back,” The Underground Stream EP: Consisting of Jim Willingham, Eric Harris, Jacob Morris, Jeff Fox, and Charlie Estes, ham1 is classified in the genre of indie-pop. Their song “I Wave Back” fits this description. The lead singer’s a tad monotone, but the rest of the band’s solid instrumentals make up for this fact. It also has decent lyrical content. While it is a catchy song, it won’t be stuck in your head for ages. Definitely worth giving a listen.

Now It’s Overhead, “Walls,” Day light Daybreak: Classified as a melodic-pop band, Now It’s Overhead claims Andy LeMaster, Clay Leverett, Orenda Frink, and Maria Taylor as members. However, melodic wouldn’t be my first choice to describe the bands song “Walls.” It’s closer to a pop-rock blend, with few vocal melodies. The song sounds synthesized together, and is strangely addictive, despite being of average quality. It isn’t really my thing, but if I knew someone I thought would like it, I would recommend it to them.

The Empties, “Don’t Be a Bad Child,” The Empties: A self described rock ‘n’ roll band, Matthew Knutson, Benjamin Wills, Chris Giddens, and Ben Keller make up The Empties. The song “Don’t Be a Bad Child” gives off a feeling of a band from the 60s or 70s, such as earlier Beatles. It’s one of the ones that I’d recommend to random people I barely know, so I choose to give it my thumbs up.

Kathy Garner, 15, is a sophomore at Ursuline Academy in Dallas, Texas.

High School in Korea

By Nicole Alanko, M&M TIPster

As the world rapidly changes, education becomes more important for our future. American eighth graders placed ninth in the world in 2007 for its math and science scores according to the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), a study done every four years comparing the average scores with countries around the world. The scores are averages from all of the students that took it in that country. The United States scored 500, which is the TIMSS average.

South Korea placed second in the TIMSS with a score of 597. The South Korean economy is growing rapidly. It’s among the world’s twenty largest economies. Despite the economic problems of the past few years, its economy is growing by 0.2%, while ours is declining by 2.4%, which means that the value of their goods and services is increasing much more than ours.

The vision of the Ministry of Education is outlined on their website, with their goal being “to build a first class advanced country,” and they see education as the way to get there.

“Education is a project that requires long lengths of time and efforts, just like planting and growing a tree,” says Byong Man Ahn, Minister of Education, on the Ministry’s official website.

“This is a sector that requires extensive dialogues, long-term visions, and thorough deliberation. It is most important to look far out to the future when planning and implementing education policies.”

The typical high school in South Korea is similar to those in the United States. Students participate in sports and art and other extracurricular programs, and take many rigorous classes. Sung He “Lauren” Jeon, a Korean teenager studying in America, talked about the school life in Korea. “We have all kinds of clubs and after school activities. However...Korea is intensively concentrated on the academic aspect,” she said in an email.

Students attend specialized high schools if they are interested in the arts or other areas, and curriculum is changed based on the focus of the school. Only 0.2% of high school aged students attend these special schools, according to the Ministry of Education.

“In those schools, they minimize the requirements of academic subjects and emphasize programs like vocal training, music, and physical training (or whatever is needed in order to major in those careers),” said Sung He, “The drawback is as soon as one enters those specialized high school or middle school, one will get really hard time to get back to normal high school (because of extremely different requirements of each high school).”

“I think the unique thing is Korean students learn much more stuff in short time period. So, they know more stuff,” says Sung He, and then adds, “In order to fulfill these requirements, they are very persistent and strong.”


For more information on South Korea:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ks.html
http://english.mest.go.kr/main.jsp?idx=0101010101
http://english.mest.go.kr/main.jsp?idx=0401010101
http://english.mest.go.kr/main.jsp?idx=0201010101


For more information about Athens-Clarke County schools, Georgia, and the United States: https://www.georgiastandards.org/standards/Pages/BrowseStandards/GPS_by_Grade_Level_K-8.aspx
http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/
http://www.clarke.k12.ga.us/
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
http://www.ed.gov/

Nicole Alanko, 16, is a junior at Riverheads High School in Staunton, Virginia.
Many thanks to Sung He Jeon for her input for this article

Girls Rock!

By Kathy Garner, M&M TIPster

Athens has an amazing music scene. With bands such as REM and the B52s hailing from this area, doesn’t it make sense that it is also home to a camp for musicians?

The Girls Rock camp is a non-profit organization, dedicated to empowering girls ages 9-15 through learning how to play guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, or sing. Currently, it is only a summer program. However, they are looking to extend it to an after-school, weekend, and winter vacation program, as well as a separate camp for older campers (the main program lists having these or a variation on their website, but the local program does not).

Originally started in Portland, Oregon, the Girls Rock camp alliance’s main goal is to empower young women regardless of race, neighborhood, ethnicity, or socio-economic background. While girls are encouraged to bring their own instruments, they keep a cost-free rental program for their instruments, as many are beginners. They also keep drum kits and amplifiers on site, though these are not for rent. The camp also has a string of core values, including respect, positive approaches to fighting sexism, and diversity.

Kathy Garner, 15, is a sophomore at Ursuline Academy in Dallas, Texas.

yogaSprouts

By: Suleiky Guerrero
M&M TIPster

“Everyone can benefit from it; you just have to be willing to work,” said Rachel Greb, the owner and founder of yogaSprouts, about what kinds of people could benefit from yoga.

Rachel works with children, teens and tweens that often have emotional and behavioral disorders and autism.

She completed her undergraduate studies at Tulane University in New Orleans, La, in film theory. She moved to Athens a year after graduating to work on a master’s in special education. In the beginning she was told that she couldn’t do her research on kids with special needs because of the lack of “evidence” that yoga actually helps. After a while she was able to complete her Master’s Research in yoga and other relaxation techniques for kids with special needs.

Having seen that as a teacher that she was always “overloaded” with paperwork, she found that she had almost no time to spend with her students and because of this there wasn’t any time to incorporate the yoga. After being denied several times about doing yoga in classrooms she moved on to doing yoga at a family camp. Later she decided trying to do the yoga in Athens by starting her own business. After coming up with the name yogaSprouts for the program and had success on the first day.

Some positions she does with the younger children are animal positions in which they imitate a certain position that an animal makes. Some examples are frog, giraffe, mule and cat.

She stated that teens like to be challenged. They go from doing easy positions to more difficult positions and after mastering them they prefer to move on. An example she gave was of one of the harder positions called Vasisthasana, which translates to mean Side Plank with a Twist. It is also known as Side Plank Pose, Side Plank and as Side Plank Sage. They also tend to like back bends, inversions, and arm balances.

When asked what she liked most about what she does for these kids she said, “ it’s amazing to see the look in someone’s eyes when they get into a pose that they didn’t think they can do or when they change their attitude from an ‘I can’t’ to an ‘I can try’ and what happens when they do that.”

Rachel does after school programming at schools, yoga parties at houses and events, private and public classes, and classes at community centers and summer camps. The yoga session times typically range from thirty to forty-five minutes for two-year olds and for elderly mostly only thirty minutes. The amount of time yoga is done in regular practices range from one hour to an hour and a half.

Overall, yoga is a very helpful way for all kids with disabilities to be helped and rehabilitated so that they can move on in life.

Suleiky Guerrero is a 9th grader at Westwood Marine and Oceanic Academy (MOA) in Port St. Lucie, FL.

Day in the Life of a High School Running Back

By Damarcio McCoy, M&M TIPster

When the 2008-20009 school year came around, 55.2% of high school students played a sport for their school. Football was the most popular with 1,112,303 students playing nationwide.

Of those football players some of them play the position of running back, which is the person who is lined up beside or behind the quarterback depending on what type of offense you run.

Being a high school running back definitely has its ups and downs. At my school I am the 2nd string running back behind my friend, but since we run the option spread we both see lots of playing time. During a regular day for us, we wake up around 6 o’clock and head to the gym to work out for about 30 minutes. We either lift weights or do conditioning drills.

Once we are done working out we head home to take a shower and get ready for school. When most of us get back to school we go into the cafeteria and eat breakfast before classes start. Once the bell rings we head to our lockers and to our classes. Our regular classes are over at 1:32 PM. The classes are made in a block schedule so we only have four blocks which are an hour and a half long. When these class are over the football players head to the field house and get ready for practice.

When we get to the field house and get settled in we all go to the film room and watch film on our last practice and on our next opponent. Once we are done watching film we get our equipment on and head to the practice field. The running backs stretch and go through our drills. One of the drills we do is the ball security drill, where one of us has the ball and our teammate gets behind us and tries to strip the ball from us another drill we do is but rolls where we roll to one direction and get back up quick while we keep the ball tucked tight. When everybody is done with their drills we go into our option period where the running backs, fullbacks, and quarterbacks practice our option plays for about thirty minutes.

After we are done with that we get into the inside period where on the offensive side its only the offensive line, running backs, and quarterbacks and on the defense it’s just the defensive line and the linebackers and we run a few plays against the defense . We have to run all of our plays to inside and as a running back this is where you take most of the hits going up the middle right into the linebackers. After we do this we go into 7on7 which is where the quarterback, running backs, and receivers run passing plays for about 30 minutes against the linebackers and the secondary. After we have a water break we do team, which is our scrimmage time until the end of practice.
On Friday nights is where it gets fun. After we get to the field house we watch film on the team we are about to play and when we are done watching film we go back to the school cafeteria and eat hoagie sandwiches. While we are eating one of the coaches reads us a bible verse and gives us an inspirational speech and after that the head coach talks to us for a little while about the upcoming game. Once we leave the cafeteria we head back to the field house to sleep till about 5:45pm. Then everyone starts to put their equipment on and get taped up by the trainers around 6:15p.m. We all go out on the field and run drills and go through some of our plays. After we get done with drills we go back into the field house to get a pregame speech from the coach, once we are done we head back on the field to run through the spirit line made of the band, cheerleaders, and some of the fans. After all this we have the coin toss and get ready for the kickoff.

And that’s a day in the life of me, Damarcio McCoy a running back for Muscle Shoals High School.

Athens Teens React to World Cup

By ROSE FOX

M&M TIPster alum

Athens, GA — The World Cup in South Africa caught the attention of Athens teens.

A sport previously ignored in American culture, soccer has grown increasingly popular in recent years. For 14-year-old rising Clark Central freshman Henry Scott, this doesn’t come as a surprise. “Soccer, in my opinion, is the best sport,” Scott said; “for me, it made sense that it would eventually catch on.”

Eric and Caleb Saavedra, also students at Clark Central High School , agree with the rising popularity of the sport in the US but still believe that soccer is more popular in other countries. “More people started talking about it,” Eric said, “but it’s more popular in Mexico . They’re always talking about it.”

Even those who don’t follow the World Cup are noticing a shift in popularity. “I think it’s really popular,” Allison Barrow, 16, said. “It’s like the countries battling it out and seeing which one is better –like bragging rights.” The Clark Central student admitted that she wasn’t one of the soccer fans following the tourney. “I’ve been hearing things about it. I don’t really watch it. I just hear what my friends say about it.”

Unlike Barrow, Scott, himself a soccer player for Athens United, is a dedicated viewer of the Cup. “I’ve watched pretty much every single game so far,” he said. “I’m actually from Uruguay , South America so I’ve been following them a lot. They didn’t make it to the last World Cup, and they’ve been doing really good in this World Cup so that’s been really exciting.”

Loyalties to teams are divided, however. The Saavedras are staunchly supporting Mexico . “They’re going to play on Sunday, and if we lose, we’re out, and if we win, we’ll keep going,” Eric said. Danielle Barrow, 16, takes a third party stance. “I was kind of rooting for the French,” she mentioned. “I don’t know; I like French people.”

Though the growing popularity of soccer is evident in the hundreds of people crowding into downtown Athens shops like Your Pie to watch the games, many wonder if this trend will last. Barrow is confident that not only will the sport remain popular but also that the attention will grow. “I think it’s definitely going to get more popular as time goes on because there are probably going to be more teams coming out there so they can show themselves and put their names out there.”

Scott agrees with this stance. “Oh, definitely,” he responded. "I mean, I just moved here three years ago, and from what I’ve heard, in 2002 the US had a really good World Cup run, but it wasn’t nearly as big as it is now. And now the television networks are making it more available to everyone. But, it has a lot of competition in the US,” he added.

Despite what the future may hold for the popularity of soccer, for Eric Saavedra, the sport remains addictive during this year’s World Cup. “We’ve been watching it every morning. Like, three to six hours. We’ve watched all the games” “We don’t even get up to go to the bathroom,” his brother Caleb said.

The FIFA World Cup is a international soccer competition between members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association. The cup has been held every four years since its start in 1930, except for 1942 and 1946, when the tourney was canceled because of World War II.

*Photo of Opening Ceremonies of 2010 World Cup in South Africa by http://www.shine2010.co.za/.

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