WHS in the News

September 4, 2008

Wheaton’s biomedical students keep their sights set on college and careers
This year’s class gets more than $1.5M in scholarship offers, grants

by Jason Tomassini | Staff Writer

The Biomedical Academy at Wheaton High School might still be in the development stages as its second full year comes to a close, but the students in its first graduating class didn’t let that deter them from pursuing a future in medicine.

This year’s class of 32, which used the academy to prepare for careers in medicine ranging from surgeon to psychologist to biomedical engineer, will follow those interests in college next year, amassing more than $1.5 million in offered scholarships and grants combined.

Story continues at Gazette.Net

September 3, 2008

Gazette.Net

Taking on music technology without missing a beat
New academy program gets students involved in an evolving industry

by Amber Parcher | Staff Writer

It was only the students' second day in the lab at Wheaton High School, but already junior Rodas Yonas had recorded himself playing on the piano keyboard and was critiquing the playback in an editing program.

"This is pretty nice," he said as he took off the headphones attached to the fancy, 20-inch screen iMac computer and a large piano keyboard in front of him.

Yonas and his classmates are the first students at Wheaton High School to take this music technology class, housed in a brand new music lab that is stocked with Macs, keyboards and complex music-editing software.

The class is a part of the school's Institute to Global and Cultural Studies academy. It catches onto the global trend of making music electronically, said Michael Hunt, the school's academy director.

Story continues at Gazette.Net

Charles E. Shoemaker/The Gazette

September 2, 2008

Gazette.Net

Wheaton: It's a new day for new-look Knights

by Dan Greenberg | Staff Writer

Wheaton football coach Tommy Neal makes no bones about it: a year ago, the Knights were not a good football team. That may be an understatement, considering their 0-10 record, and the 3.9 points per game they averaged.

That's all history.

Preseason practices have shown a dramatically improved roster, pretty much at every position. And Neal, a straight shooter who doesn't mince words, is genuinely excited.

Story continues at Gazette.Net

Charles E. Shoemaker/ The Gazette

August 27, 2008

Gazette.Net

Custodians: Behind-the-scene machines
Getting buildings ready is no easy feat for thousands of unsung heroes

— Jason Tomassini | By Gazette Staff

It takes 1,335 building service employees to keep Montgomery County's nearly 200 schools fit and trim. The work is tedious, dirty, smelly, and can be the first line of defense in cases of lice outbreaks and MRSA.

And it's a year-round operation. So as work wrapped up to ready schools for the first day of classes on Tuesday — and the nearly 138,000 germ-ridden, mess-making students — we take a brief look into the lives of school janitors.

Last year alone, custodial services went through 17,500 gallons of floor wax, cleaned 139,000 desks, refinished 140 gym floors, tended 3,000 acres of grass and maintained the 6,500 classrooms.

Six days to spruce

By the time this school year officially began, Bill Hicks, building services manager at Wheaton High School, was practically in mid-year form.

For the first time in his 19 years at Wheaton, there was daytime summer school, with more than 1,300 students occupying nearly every classroom until the program ended Aug. 8.

That gave Hicks, who has worked for MCPS for 46 years, just six days to spruce up the school before teachers arrived Aug. 19.

So he and his staff of 16 worked overtime Aug. 9 and 10 to clean the classrooms, wax the floors and fix one group of students' mess so another could tear it all down in a couple weeks.

Hicks, who often walks to the Dalewood Drive campus from his nearby home, arrives each day at 4:50 a.m. to seize control of the building he knows so well.

Despite the early start to the back-to-school season, he knows the bulk of the work will come after the students arrive, mainly because a teenager's behavior is one of the few things Hicks can't predict after all these years.

"You used to be able to tell kids to stop messing around," Hicks said. "Now, they'll turn around and tell you what to do."

Story continues at Gazette.Net