February 2018/March 2018

http://hhs.helenaschools.org/about/newsletter/

2017-2018 School Year

HELENA HIGH SCHOOL A Commitment to Excellence

SAVE THE DATE!

February/March Calendar

Feb. 1st-3rd HHS Thespian Festival Missoula Feb. 8th Winter Assembly-Winter Activities Feb. 8th-9th HHS Thespian Festival Show Feb. 9th-10th State HS Swimming Great Falls State HS Wrestling Billings Feb. 13th MS/HS combined Orchestra Concert 6:00 pm HMS Auditorium Feb. 15th-16th HHS Thespian Festival Play Spoon River Anthology Feb. 19th NO SCHOOL President’s Day Feb. 20th Night to Shine Variety Show Civic Center Feb. 22nd-23rd HHS Thespian Festival Play Spoon River Anthology Mar. 6th MCTM Math Test – noon to 3:30 pm Mar. 8th-10th State AA Basketball (Girls & Boys) Billings Mar. 13th HHS Pre-Festival Choir Concert 7:00 HMS Mar. 16th-17th HHS Science Circus Fri. 6-9 pm Sat. 11-3 Mar. 20th HHS Pre-Festival Band Concert 7:00 pm HHS Mar. 20th ACT Testing for Juniors and CRT testing for Sophomores *NO SCHOOL FOR FRESHMAN AND SENIORS* Mar. 26th-Apr. 2nd NO SCHOOL Spring Break

Prom 2018

The Helena High School Junior Prom

will be Saturday, April 28th

from 8-11 p.m. at the Radisson Hotel.

The theme of 2018 prom is Enchanted Forest.

Justin Rosenstein had tweaked his laptop's operating sys-tem to block Reddit, banned himself from Snapchat, which he compares to heroin, and imposed limits on his use of Facebook. But even that wasn't enough. In August, the 34-year-old tech executive took a more radical step to restrict his use of social media and other addictive technologies. Rosenstein purchased a new iPhone and instructed his as-sistant to set up a parental-control feature to prevent him from downloading apps. He was particularly aware of the allure of Facebook "likes," which he describes as "bright dings of pseudo-pleasure" that can be as hollow as they are seductive. And Rosenstein should know: He was the Facebook engineer who created the Like button in the first place. A decade after he stayed up all night coding a prototype of what was then called an "awesome" button, Rosenstein be-longs to a small but growing band of Silicon Valley heretics who complain about the rise of the so-called attention economy: an internet shaped around the demands of adver-tising. These refuseniks are rarely founders or chief executives, who have little incentive to deviate from the mantra that their companies are making the world a better place. In-stead, they tend to have worked a rung or two down the corporate ladder: designers, engineers, and product manag-ers who, like Rosenstein, several years ago put in place the building blocks of a digital world from which they are now trying to disentangle themselves. Rosenstein, who also helped create Gchat during a stint at Google and now leads a San Francisco–based company that improves office productivity, appears most concerned about the psychological effects on people who, research shows, touch, swipe, or tap their phone 2,617 times a day. There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing to so-called continuous partial attention, severely limiting people's ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ. One recent study showed that the mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity — even when the device is turned off. "Everyone is distract-ed," Rosenstein says. "All of the time." But those concerns are trivial compared with the devastat-ing impact upon the political system that some of Rosen-stein's peers believe can be attributed to the rise of social media and the attention-based market that drives it. Draw-ing a straight line between addiction to social media and political earthquakes like Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, they contend that digital forces have upended the political system and, left unchecked, could even render de-mocracy as we know it obsolete. Rosenstein's colleague, Leah Pearlman, then a product manager at Facebook, announced the Facebook "like" in a 2009 blog post. Now 35 and an illustrator, Pearlman, too, has grown disaffected with "likes" and other addictive feed-back loops. "One reason I think it is particularly important for us to talk about this now is that we may be the last gen-eration that can remember life before," Rosenstein says. One morning in April this year, designers, programmers,

and tech entrepreneurs gathered at a conference center on the shore of the San Francisco Bay. They had each paid up to $1,700 to learn how to manipulate people into habitual use of their products, on a course by Nir Eyal. Eyal, 39, the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, has spent several years consulting for the tech industry, teaching techniques he developed by closely studying how the Silicon Valley giants operate. "The technologies we use have turned into compulsions, if not full-fledged addictions," Eyal writes. "It's the impulse to check a message notification. It's the pull to visit YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter for just a few minutes, only to find yourself still tapping and scrolling an hour later." None of this is an accident, he writes. It is all "just as their designers intended." Eyal wanted to address the concern that technological ma-nipulation was somehow harmful or immoral. He was dis-missive of those who compare tech addiction to drugs. "We're not freebasing Facebook and injecting Instagram here," he said. He flashed up a slide of a shelf filled with sugary baked goods. "Just as we shouldn't blame the baker for making such delicious treats, we can't blame tech mak-ers for making their products so good we want to use them," he said. Without irony, Eyal finished his talk with some personal tips for resisting the lure of technology. He told his audi-ence he uses a Chrome extension, called DF YouTube, "which scrubs out a lot of those external triggers" he writes about in his book, and he recommended an app called Pocket Points that "rewards you for staying off your phone when you need to focus." Finally, Eyal confided the lengths he goes to protect his own family. He has installed in his house an outlet timer that cuts off access to the internet at a set time every day. "The idea is to remember that we are not powerless," he said. "We are in control." But are we? If the people who built these technologies are taking such radical steps to wean themselves free, can the rest of us be expected to exercise our free will? Not according to Tristan Harris, a 33-year-old former Google employee turned vocal critic of the tech industry. "All of us are jacked into this system," he says. "All of our minds can be hijacked. Our choices are not as free as we think they are." Harris, who has been branded "the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience," insists that billions of people have little choice over whether they use these now-ubiquitous technologies, and are largely unaware of the invisible ways in which a small number of people in Silicon Valley are shaping their lives. A graduate of Stanford University, Harris studied under B.J. Fogg, a behavioral psychologist revered in tech circles for mastering the ways technological design can be used to persuade people. Harris is the student who went rogue, lift-ing the curtain on the vast powers accumulated by tech companies and the ways they are using that influence. "I don't know a more urgent problem than this," Harris says.

“How Silicon Valley Hooks Us”

By Paul Lewis The Week, November 19, 2017

continued on next page

"It's changing our democracy, and it's changing our ability to have the conversations and relationships that we want with each other." It all began in 2013, when he was working as a product manager at Google and circulated a thought-provoking memo, "A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users' Attention," to 10 close colleagues. It struck a chord, spread-ing to some 5,000 Google employees, including senior ex-ecutives who rewarded Harris with an impressive-sounding new job: He was to be Google's in-house design ethicist and product philosopher. Looking back, Harris sees that he was promoted into a mar-ginal role. Still, he adds, "I got to sit in a corner and think and read and understand." He explored how LinkedIn ex-ploits a need for social reciprocity to widen its network; how YouTube and Netflix auto-play videos and next epi-sodes, depriving users of a choice about whether or not they want to keep watching; how Snapchat created its addictive Snapstreaks feature, encouraging near-constant communi-cation between its mostly teenage users. The techniques these companies use are not always generic: They can be algorithmically tailored to each person. An in-ternal Facebook report leaked this year revealed that the company can identify when teens feel "insecure" and "worthless." Such granular information, Harris adds, is "a perfect model of what buttons you can push." Tech companies can exploit such vulnerabilities to keep people hooked; manipulating, for example, when people receive "likes" for their posts, ensuring they arrive when an individual is likely to feel vulnerable, or in need of approval, or maybe just bored. And the very same techniques can be sold to the highest bidder. "There's no ethics," he says. Harris believes that tech companies never deliberately set out to make their products addictive. They were responding to the incentives of an advertising economy, experimenting with techniques that might capture people's attention, even stumbling across highly effective design by accident. A friend at Facebook told Harris that designers initially de-cided the notification icon, which alerts people to new ac-tivity such as "friend requests," should be blue. "But no one used it," Harris says. "Then they switched it to red, and of course everyone used it." That red icon is now everywhere. When smartphone users glance at their phones, dozens or hundreds of times a day, they are confronted with small red dots beside their apps, pleading to be tapped. "Red is a trigger color," Harris says. "That's why it is used as an alarm signal." The most seductive design, Harris explains, exploits the same psychological susceptibility that makes gambling so compulsive: variable rewards. When we tap those apps with red icons, we don't know whether we'll discover an interest-ing email, an avalanche of "likes," or nothing at all. It's this that explains how the pull-to-refresh mechanism, whereby users swipe down, pause, and wait to see what content appears, rapidly became one of the most addictive and ubiquitous design features in modern technology. "Each time you're swiping down, it's like a slot machine," Harris says. "You don't know what's coming next." The designer who created the pull-to-refresh mechanism is Loren Brichter, 32, who says he never intended the design to be addictive. But he did not dispute the slot machine comparison. "I agree 100 percent," he says. "I have to two kids now, and I regret every minute that I'm not paying at-tention to them because my phone has sucked me in."

In the wake of Donald Trump's stunning electoral victory, many were quick to question the role of so-called fake news on Facebook; Russian-created Twitter bots; or the data-centric targeting efforts that companies such as Cambridge Analytica used to sway voters. But James Williams, who built the metrics system for Google's global-search advertis-ing business and is now doing a Ph.D. at Oxford in persua-sive design, sees those factors as symptoms of a deeper problem. It was not just shady or bad actors who were exploiting the internet to change public opinion. The attention economy itself is set up to promote a phenomenon like Trump, who is masterful at grabbing and retaining the attention of sup-porters and critics alike, often by exploiting or creating out-rage. In a blog published a month before the U.S. election, Wil-liams sounded the alarm on an issue he argued was a "far more consequential question" than whether Trump reached the White House. The reality-TV star's campaign, he said, had heralded a watershed in which "the new, digitally su-percharged dynamics of the attention economy have finally crossed a threshold and become manifest in the political realm." Williams saw a similar dynamic unfold months earlier, dur-ing the Brexit campaign, when the attention economy ap-peared to him biased in favor of the emotional, identity-based case for the U.K. leaving the European Union. He stresses these dynamics are not unique to the political right: They also play a role in the popularity of left-wing politicians, such as Bernie Sanders, and the frequent inter-net outrage over issues that ignite fury among progressives. All of which, Williams says, is not only distorting the way we view politics but, over time, may be changing the way we think, making us less rational and more impulsive. "We've habituated ourselves to a perpetual cognitive style of out-rage," he says. Williams argues the recent fixation on the surveillance state fictionalized by George Orwell is likely misplaced. It was another English science fiction writer, Aldous Huxley, who provided the more prescient observation when he warned that Orwellian-style coercion was less of a threat to democ-racy than the subtle power of "man's almost infinite appe-tite for distractions." "The dynamics of the attention economy are structurally set up to undermine the human will," Williams says. "If politics is an expression of our human will, then the attention econ-omy is undermining the assumptions that democracy rests on." If Facebook, Google, and Twitter are chipping away at our ability to control our own minds, could there come a point, I ask, at which democracy no longer functions? "Will we be able to recognize it, if and when it happens?" Williams replies. "And if we can't, then how do we know it hasn't happened already?" Excerpted from an article that originally appeared in The Guardian. Reprinted with permission.

continued from previous page

Around 2012, something started going wrong in the lives of

teens.

In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of

U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless — classic symptoms

of depression —

surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide

attempts increased 23 percent. Even more troubling, the

number of 13-to-18-yearolds

who committed suicide jumped 31 percent.

In a new paper published in Clinical Psychological Science,

my colleagues and I found that the increases in depression,

suicide attempts and

suicide appeared among teens from every background:

more privileged and less privileged, across all races and

ethnicities, and in every region

of the country. All told, our analysis found that the genera-

tion of teens I call “iGen” — those born after 1995 — is

much more likely to

experience mental-health issues than their millennial pre-

decessors.

What happened so that so many more teens, in such a short

time, would feel depressed, attempt suicide and commit

suicide? After scouring

several large surveys for clues, I found that all of the possi-

bilities traced back to a major change in teens’ lives: the

sudden ascendance of the

smartphone.

All signs point to the screen

Because the years between 2010 and 2015 were a period of

steady economic growth and falling unemployment, it’s

unlikely that economic

malaise was a factor. Income inequality was (and still is) an

issue, but it didn’t suddenly appear in the early 2010s: This

gap between the rich

and poor had been widening for decades. We found that the

time teens spent on homework barely budged between

2010 and 2015, effectively

ruling out academic pressure as a cause.

However, according to the Pew Research Center,

smartphone ownership crossed the 50 percent threshold in

late 2012 — right when teen

depression and suicide began to increase. By 2015, 73 per-

cent of teens had access to a smartphone.

Not only did smartphone use and depression increase in

tandem, but time spent online also was linked to mental-

health issues across two

different data sets. We found that teens who spent five or

more hours a day online were 71 percent more likely than

those who spent only one

hour a day to have at least one suicide risk factor

(depression, thinking about suicide, making a suicide plan

or attempting suicide). Overall,

suicide risk factors rose significantly after two or more

hours a day of time online.

Of course, it’s possible that instead of time online causing

depression, depression causes more time online. But three

other studies show that

is unlikely (at least when viewed through social media use).

Two studies followed people over time, with both

studies finding that spending more time on social media led

to unhappiness, while

unhappiness did not lead to more social media use. A third

study randomly assigned participants to give up Facebook

for a week vs.

continuing their usual use. Those who avoided Facebook

reported feeling less depressed at the end of the week.

The argument that depression might cause people to spend

more time online also doesn’t explain why depression in-

creased so suddenly after

2012. Under that scenario, more teens became depressed

for an unknown reason and then started buying

smartphones, which doesn’t seem

too logical.

What’s lost when we’re plugged in

Even if online time doesn’t directly harm mental health, it

could still adversely affect it in indirect ways, especially if

time online crowds out

time for other activities.

For example, while conducting research for my book on

iGen, I found that teens now spend much less time interact-

ing with their friends in

person. Interacting

Teenage depression

and suicide are way up — and so is smartphone use By Jean Twenge November 19, 2017

continued on next page

with people face to face is one of the deepest well-

springs of human happiness; without it, our moods

start to suffer and

depression often follows. Feeling socially isolated is also

one of the major risk factors for suicide. We found that

teens who spent more time

than average online and less time than average with

friends in person were the most likely to be depressed.

Since 2012, that’s what has

occurred en masse: Teens have spent less time on activ-

ities known to benefit mental health (in-person social

interaction) and more time on

activities that may harm it (time online).

Teens are also sleeping less, and teens who spend more

time on their phones are more likely than others to not

be getting enough sleep. Not

sleeping enough is a major risk factor for depression, so

if smartphones are causing less sleep, that alone could

explain why depression and

suicide increased so suddenly.

Depression and suicide have many causes: Genetic pre-

disposition, family environments, bullying and trauma

can all play a role. Some teens

would experience mental-health problems no matter

what era they lived in.

But some vulnerable teens who would otherwise not

have had mental-health issues may have slipped into

depression because of too much

screen time, not enough face-to-face social interaction,

inadequate sleep or a combination of all three.

It might be argued that it’s too soon to recommend less

screen time, given that the research isn’t completely

definitive. However, the downside

to limiting screen time — say, to two hours a day or less

— is minimal. In contrast, the downside to doing noth-

ing — given the possible

consequences of depression and suicide — seems, to

me, quite high.

It’s not too early to think about limiting screen time;

let’s hope it’s not too late.

Twenge is a professor of psychology at San Diego State

University. This article was originally published on

theconversation.com.

continued from previous page Stories of Scotland—HHS Travel Club’s 2019 Spring

Break Destination Last year’s trip to the UK and Ireland was a great success, and we are looking forward to this year’s trip to Berlin, Prague, the Alps, and Paris, but the time to sign up for the next trip is upon us. We have settled on E.F. Tours’ “Stories of Scotland” trip, which will take us to Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as to Inverness to meet Nessie! Students who will be freshmen next year are welcome, and recent gradu-ates under the age of 20 can also travel with us for the student price. Students who register early can lock in a lower price than those who sign up in the Fall, so please contact Ms. Clark or Mr. Hussey as soon as possible if you are interested. We will be scheduling a parent meeting for late January to dis-cuss the itinerary, costs, and of course all the bene-fits of student travel.

News from the Nurse... Wake Up to Breakfast! What your mother always tells you is true, just ask her! You can’t start the day without a healthy breakfast. Breakfast is exactly what it sounds like - breaking the 8 to 10 hour fast during the night. Starting your student’s day with some high nu-trient foods will increase their concentration, memory and problem-solving abili-ties. It also gives them energy to make it through the morning. Kids that have a good breakfast before school have better grades, better behavior and have fewer stomachaches and headaches in the morning.

The type of breakfast is important. Remember the food groups - Grains, fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy? Pick one food from three different groups and you have breakfast. It doesn’t need to be fancy or time consuming. It doesn’t even need to be the traditional cereal, milk, and orange juice. How about last night’s spaghetti and meatballs and an orange? Maybe a peanut butter and jelly toast sandwich with a banana. Be careful to not overdo the sugar in the morning. The intake of sugar without protein (cheese, milk, meat, peanut butter) will cause your child to get a surge of energy but it won’t last and they will be dragging by mid-morning.

Student can get a breakfast at the HHS cafeteria for $1.35 or you can complete a Free or Reduced Meal form found at http://helenaschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/17_18-Free-Reduced-Instructions-and-App.pdf Something new that Sodexo is offering at HHS is the Grab ‘n Go breakfast. Sodexo staff sets up a counter near the front entrance with breakfast items that students can quickly pick up on their way to class. These may include: an energy bar, granola bar, parfait, hot sandwich; fruit or fruit juice; a cheese stick; and milk. If a student’s teacher approves, they can eat dur-ing first period or we have a Nutrition Break at the end of second period.

To see more about Sodexo’s food service for the Helena School District check out https://helenaschools.org/departments/food-services/

It’s Math Contest Time!! Does your kid like math? Is he/she good at math? Does your kid make everything a competition? We have the challenge for them!!!! On February 7 and March 6 we will be holding two math com-petitions. Februrary 7 – The American Mathematics Competion (AMC) will be held at Helena High School 1st and 2nd period (during the school day). This is a national competition sponsored by Mathemat-ical Association of America. Students compete at one of two levels based on the level of math in which they are currently enrolled. This is a high level problem solving competition. The cost to the student will be $3. Students who finish at the highest level will go on to compete to become a member of the national team. Students only need to contact their current mathematics teacher to sign up by February 6. March 6 – The Montana Council of Teachers of Mathematics (MCTM) Competition will be held at Carroll College during the school day. This is a state competition sponsored by MCTM to pro-mote the engagement by young people in mathematics. Students, grades 7-12, compete in grade level tests. Scholarships are available for the top finishers in the 12th grade. Juniors can opt-in to have their scores sent to the Montana Colleges that request names for possible scholarships. All participants receive a certificate noting their level of achievement. The cost to students will be $3. Transportation to the completion will be provided. Students only need to contact their current mathematics teacher to sign up by February 23.

HELENA HIGH SCHOOL

SCIENCE CIRCUS 2018

The Helena High School 34th annual Science Circus will be held on March 16th 6-9pm and March 17th \11am -3pm in the Helena High School gymnasium. Admission is $3.00 per per-son and is used to benefit Helena High School science stu-dents.

This is a community event that is concerned with the science education of children of all ages. The entertaining activities range from marshmallow DNA to soda explosions as each branch of science creates its own amazing spectacle. The ex-perience is valued by both the community members that at-tend and the young adults that teach them the science. This is a great opportunity for our Helena Community to see the edu-cational activities taking place in our public schools. We look forward to displaying the wonders of science to everyone dur-ing this one of a kind event. We hope to see you there!

*Please ask your science student about participating in this year’s Circus.*

Is your student prepared for their future? At Helena High we have a number of Business classes to help students get College and Career ready. There are developed pathways with Helena College to help them through the process. We also have classes that offer college credit through Helena college and University of Iowa. Please have your student stop by and talk with Mr. Askin, Mrs. Dinsdale or Mrs. Humphrey for more information.

Scheduling for next semester starts soon, so don’t delay!

And remember:

"Business and Computer Classes can bring great fortune."

Helena High JMG is a class for juniors and sen-iors that teaches business skills through project learn-ing, primarily using community service as our vehicle for learning employability skills, while making a differ-ence in our community. This past semester, Helena High raised over 800 pounds of food for Food Share and HHS’ Thanks-giving Baskets for less fortunate Bengals. We also used our collected food to help Opportunity Bank in the Can Sculpture Event. We raised almost $200 in our Think Pink campaign providing funds to a teacher and family member suffering from cancer. Our really big event was raffling a car for Toys for Tots. JMG raised nearly $500 for Toys for Tots. Bengal Cassie Smith and her mom, Courtney were the winners of the 2009 Ford Escort. Additionally, we collected 51 coats, 26 hats, 11 scarves, as well as gloves, snow pants, socks and boots during our One Warm Coat Drive. Currently, JMG is selling Valentines to raise money for our many projects like decorating trees for Festival of Trees which is a fundraiser for Intermoun-tain and making blankets and toys for the children at Shodair. We also put on Halloween at Helena High This annual event provided a fun, safe and warm trick or treating experience for over 300 people, this year. Additionally, we are creating care packages for sol-diers overseas and homeless bags for those who are homeless in the Helena area. We also have our State Leadership Conference, held in Billings, coming in April. So, buying a Valentine to be delivered to your Valentine helps pay for our activities. Contact Sa-mantha Humphrey – shumphrey@helenaschools.org to order. If Valentine’s is not your thing, we will be selling Elliott’s Cookie Dough in March. We invite you to consider participating in our annual Job and Career Fair, to be held April 18th, 2018 from 8:30 – 2:30. This event brings information about various careers to our students, as well as providing contact with a variety of colleges. Last year, we added a jobs portion to connect area busi-nesses with young Bengals looking for summer em-ployment. If your business would like to be a part of our Job and Career Fair, or for more information con-tact JMG teacher, Samantha Humphrey at 324-2246

or by email – shumphrey@helenaschools.org.

Business Professionals of America held

its Regional Leadership Conference at the

Jake Jabs College of Business on the Mon-

tana State University, before Christmas. Kel-

sey Soltis, Emily Haerter, Kenny Keller, Jordyn

McCarley, Hannah Davis, McKayla Mangold,

Leslie Moe and Allie Wade all qualified for

the State Leadership Conference, to be held

in Billings in March.

The National Center for Women and

Information Technology, or NCWIT, a coali-

tion that works to increase diversity in IT and

computing, selected Bryndon Wilkerson, Eliz-

abeth Rigby and Mariah Thompson in the

Montana NCWIT Aspirations in Computing

contest. The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in

Computing honors young women at the high

-school level for their computing-related

achievements and interests. Awardees are

selected for their computing and IT aptitude,

leadership ability, academic history, and

plans for post-secondary education. Com-

puter Science teacher, Buffy Smith, hosted

Governor Steve Bullock, in her Helena High

classroom, as he signed an executive order,

breaking with the FCC mandate on Net Neu-

trality. Bryndon Wilkerson was also in attend-

ance and spoke on the necessity of Net

Neutrality from a student’s perspective.

Kacey Askin, Business Teacher and ad-

visor for Mock Trial Team is preparing to head

to Pocatello, ID on February 10th for the Re-

gional High School Mock Trial Competition.

He is hoping to qualify again for the State

High School Mock Trial Championship to be

held in Boise, March 21st – 23rd. Mock Trail

competes in Idaho, as Helena High has the

only high school Mock Trail in Montana. Hel-

ena High Mock Trial has a Gofundme fund-

raiser, if you are interested in supporting this

program.

JMG

Jobs for Montana Graduates—News

Business Department News

Science Club Prepares for Multiple Competitions

The Helena High School Science Olympiad Team is extremely excited about taking first place at the Montana State Science Olympiad Competition held at MSU in November. It is the 10th state champi-onship for HHS and we are more excited than ever to have earned this honor. Now, the team is energized and enthusiastically preparing for the next opportunity: The National Science Olympiad Tournament to be held on the campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado May 17-20, 2017. The tournament challenges outstanding groups of bright and creative young thinkers from every state to compete in twenty-three science, math and engineering events. We will be bringing 15 team members (Devin Seyler, Heath Caldwell, Ryan Clinch, Katlyn Jablonski, Nathan Kynett, Owen Petersen, Carson Putnam, Elizabeth Rigby, Emma Sihler, Rudy Whitney, Jude Roberts, Konnor Donaldson, Avery Skibicki, Jasmine Wilkerson and Mariah Thomp-son) and 2 alternates (Madde Black and Dallin Short). This year’s competition events are: Anatomy and Physiology Astronomy Chemistry Lab Experimental Design Disease Detectives Dynamic Planet Forensics Fermi Questions Ecology Remote Sensing Hovercraft Game On Herpetology Rocks and Minerals Materials Science Write It Do It Microbe Mission Optics Mousetrap Vehicle Towers Thermodynamics Helicopters Mission Possible We are currently working to raise funds for travel to nationals and are accepting donations of time, money and materials. Please contact coaches Christine Thennis or Claire Pichette for more infor-mation (cthennis@helenaschools.org or cpichette@helenaschools.org). The Science Bowl team is currently preparing for the Big Sky Regional competition in March. We will be defending our 2017 state title! Students will compete in teams of five in a double-elimination Jeopardy!-style quiz bowl. They will be challenged to answer questions about Chemistry, Physics, Life Science, Earth and Space Science, Math and Energy Resources that increase in difficulty with each round. This competition is sponsored by the Western Area Power Administration and the U.S. Department of Energy, and winning teams from each of the 50 regions will compete in the National Science Bowl in Washington D. C. in May. Come see the team challenge the science teachers to a “Bowl-Off” on February 27th at lunch in the Little Theater! The Envirothon team is studying for our state competition in Lewistown in April. We are also de-fending our state title from 2017! Envirothon is a two-day natural resources competition where stu-dents compete in teams of five against teams from all around the state. On day one, students take tests created by state and federal agency officials on wildlife identification and management, forest-ry, range science, aquatics, and soils. In the afternoon, students are presented with a current issue problem and must work as a team to prepare a 10-minute presentation that solves the prob-lem. On day two, the teams present their solutions to a panel of experts and are judged on its merits. This year’s current issue topic is rangeland monitoring and management. Nationals will be held in Pocatello, Idaho in July. In addition, Science Club had fun in December shopping for

items for two holiday baskets which were donated to Bengal fami-

lies in need. We will also be helping judge the Montana City

School’s annual science fair on February 2nd and competing in the

USA Biology Olympiad on February 12th. Mark your calendars for

Science Circus March 16-17 in the HHS gym!

Applications for Montana oys and irls State are now being accepted. For 7 years this program has taken the best of Montana s youth and strengthened their leadership foundations. It has taught them important lessons in leadership, citi- enship, sportsmanship and helped to forge them into truly effective future leaders of Montana and the nation. This e perience is also a wonderful addition to your col-lege/scholarship applications and resumes. Applications for both programs are avail-able online at . Students will need to print off their completed application and bring to the school for a signature from rincipal Thennis. irls State will be held June —June 16 at Carroll Co llege in Helena. Applications should be turned in to Mrs. Staldine in the counseling office.

Interviews will be held at HHS for all irls State applicants shortly after the deadline. http //mtlegion.org/forms/girls -state.html

oys State will be held June 3 – at Carroll College. oys State applications are priori-ti ed by order turned in. oys State participants will miss HHS finals week. oys State

delegates will be e cused from school for finals week provided that all finals are com-pleted ahead of time. oys State scholarships available from our American egion ost. http //mtlegion.org/department/boys-state/boys-state-registration.html

Important Dates:

February 05: Sophomore Parent Night

March 20: District ACT (juniors only)

April 11: PSAT 10 (sophomores only)

Exchange Club Students of the Month

January:

Leanna Markovics

Emma Sihler

Bridget Downey

February:

Hanna Dartman

Meriwether Schroeer-Smith

Anna Carparelli

Soroptimist Students of the Month

January: Addie Slanger

February: Nora Higgins

March: Audrey Barber

Rotary Students of the Month

January: Haley Wright

February: Adam Hagengruber

March: Konnor Donaldson

“Helping you help your child find success.”

- Counselors and administrators will work with students in February to begin the registration process for ne t year. We encourage students to talk with their parents and plan carefully to take advantage of their time at Helena High and choose classes that will help them prepare for their future. Students should also consult their current transcript to make sure they are meeting all graduation requirements. lease call your student s counselor with any questions. Things to consider

• raduation requirements

• College admission standards

• CAA/ AIA sports eligibility requirements • Career plans of study

• Juniors/Seniors must enroll in 6 credit-bearing classes

Additional options for uniors and seniors • Dual credit classes at HHS- marked in registration guide

• Taking classes at M Helena or Carroll College

• Internships More information on these topics is included in

the front of the registration guide.

Feb Juniors Feb 12 Sophomores Feb 2 Freshmen Feb Juniors Feb 16 Sophomores Feb 23 Freshmen