Volume 1, Issue 5 (June 2011) - The Heschel School

Winding Down? Another
Urban Myth
By Daniel Ernst
It is a commonly held perception that
school ends for the eighth grade after
Spring Break—but not one that is necessarily
true. This year, the eighth grade
has received a surprising amount of
post-Israel schoolwork.
One student has said that the
amount of work in May has been “so
much, more than before Israel. I thought
we were going to come back from Israel
and would be done with school.” This is
certainly not the case.
With class officially ending for the
eighth grade on June 6, teachers are
forced to pack in the rest of the year’s assignments
in just three weeks following
Israel. One question is whether or not
teachers “have something to prove.” It
is important to many teachers to make
sure the students know that school certainly
does not end after Passover.
But for many students it is hard to
balance the heavy workload with the
lasting fatigue and jetlag. Having arrived
from Israel on a Monday, followed
by school early Tuesday morning, at
10AM, naturally students were tired Tuesday
night. And “unnaturally,” at least to
us, there was homework to do, during
which a number of students fell asleep.
There is a constant debate about
the right amount of work to give students
immediately after Israel. Of course,
teachers have the right to give work, but
how much is too much? ◆
Journalist of the Month:
Tom Verducci
By Daniel Ernst
For those of you who normally could
care less about international journalism,
here is our first Heschel Herald Sports
journalist of the month: Tom Verducci.
Verducci came to the Sports Illustrated
magazine in 1993, following ten
years as a sports journalist for Newsday.
At Sports Illustrated, he is a senior writer
who specializes in professional baseball.
According to Tom Verducci, his
most compelling story was the story
Going Green, One Tissue at a
Time
By Alexa Ringer
If you look around the school, you
may notice something. Not that Jacob
has a new office, or that whiteboard
markers are continuously disappearing
mysteriously. You might observe that
there are green tissue boxes placed in
almost every classroom throughout the
building. Starting at the beginning of
the year, Bev Shnaps began to purchase
these tissue boxes from an office supplier
called Weeks Lerman. These tissue boxes
are “tree-free,” as it says on the small
Sayonara
fo’ the
Summah!
he wrote in 1995
titled “The Dead
End Kids.” This
article was about
the struggles of
Darryl Strawberry
and Dwight
Gooden, two
of the New York Mets stars at the time.
He wrote this article soon after joining
Sports Illustrated, when he was assigned
to cover the Mets.
For all of these reasons and more,
Tom Verducci is this year’s last Heschel
Herald journalist of the month! ◆
green label on each box. “Emerald brand
facial tissue is made from bagasse and is
100% biodegradable,” it says on the back
of the tissue box. It also clarifies why
the material bagasse is used. Sugar cane
is a readily renewable resource, grown
extensively in a number of developing
countries. After the sugar cane is juiced,
the use of the fiber waste provides a value-added
product from what is generally
considered a waste product. When
sugar fiber can be turned into products
normally made from wood pulp, an additional
benefit is the elimination of the
pollution created from wood pulp.
However, the box, containing the
tissues is made from paper. ◆
Heschel Softball Wins
Championship
By Coby Goldberg
On Monday, June 6, the Heschel Softball
team won the championship of its league,
AIPSL, beating Winston Prep six to five.
It was a close and highly competitive
game all the way through. Heschel took
the lead in the top of the seventh inning
(the final inning in the AIPSL league) after
Sasha Chanko tripled, Daniel Ernst
drove him in and Sam Lippman drove
Ernst in, making the score six to four.
Lippman pitched the full game and in
the bottom of the seventh allowed the
bases to be loaded. He allowed one run
to score and with two outs and the bases
loaded, induced a ground out to third
base. Said Lippman, “It was exhilarating
and frightening…like nothing I ever felt.
But I knew I could trust my teammates
to make the play in the field.” This win
was especially big after Heschel’s one
loss of the season coming at the hands
of Winston prep only a few days before.
One outfielder, Rachel Wenger, said, “It
feels amazing to have come so far after
our first big loss to Winston Prep (a 10
to 0 defeat). It was a lot of fun and a very
exciting game.” Congratulations to the
whole Softball team! ◆
GOLD, cont’d from page 1
that one kid in the Middle School would
have needed a fourth mat, and they were
in awe.”
Congratulations to Jonathan on taking
home the gold! ◆
The Joseph Slifka Middle School June 2011 ◆ 3