By:  Siobhan Burke

The WHS Creative Cooking Cub, advised by cooking teacher Ms. Leuci, is an after school club where students cook three course meals once a month for a women and children’s shelter in Worcester called The Friendly House shelter.

An authority member from Rachel’s Table comes to pick up the food and deliver it to the shelter after it has been prepared. “This charity act is really nice of all of our students to be participating in, we’ve been doing it for about four years now,” says Ms. Leucci.

The club also does a Fun Food Day once a month! This month the cooking club is working with The Teen Advisory ard (TAB), advised by WHS Librarian Ms. Celluci.  TAB is a library club.The teen advisory board read the book Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath and on Wednesday January 30 the cooking club is going to teach the TAB how to make waffles. They are going to have different styles of waffles with instruction on how to make each one.  There will be a variety of toppings like sweet toppings which might consist of chocolate syrup or strawberries and cream, or savory toppings which might include things like chicken and gravy!

This fun food day activity is a really good way to combine the different clubs and let everyone enjoy themselves with their peers and delicious food.

As many of you have heard, E-Club has set-up new recycling centers in the cafeteria in an attempt to help our school become a waste free environment.  Many of the materials that students and faculty can recycle are the same, but these stations make everything more centralized.

Hard plastics, such as utensils and yogurt containers, can be recycled, as well as cans and glass.  The recycling centers also have appropriate bins for granola bar wrappers, candy wrappers, juice pouches, chip bags, and Ziploc bags.

The Ziploc bags used to not be recyclable, but can now be at the same place as shopping bags.  All of these containers full of recycled materials can be sent through TerraCycle, which gives the high school money back, after they use these materials to make other products, like backpacks and pencil pouches.

These two centers are just a glimpse into what E-Club is planning for the future of the school.  They are also set to continue with their garden project in the spring and are starting to look into composting to help the school become completely waste free.

An important event that will be coming up in early April is Ted Ex.  Any student can design a sculpture out of recycled materials of any size.  These projects will need to be submitted to either Mr. Hayes or Ms. RD by March 1.

It only takes a few seconds to recycle your lunch materials.  Not only does it help reduce our carbon footprint, but it is also a great way for our school to get some money back too!

UNICEF, a fairly new club atWestboroughHigh School, focuses on raising awareness around school community about UNICEF.  UNICEF is an international organization that helps children who suffer from factors such as malnutrition, unsafe water, and other conditions.  These are issues that kids in Westborough are not exposed to. 

President, Melissa Zhang, started this club about a year ago and says, “I feel really happy to have a lot of people that are really supportive of our club.  I think it’s really important to continue fundraising and letting people know about UNICEF.  Every since I learned about it I feel like I should get involved because other children don’t have the privilege like we do.

Upcoming events include a tap water project that will take place during the month of March.  This project consists of asking different restaurants for their support.  Restaurants encourage customers to pay $1 for water instead of receiving it with no cost. This money will be used to help out certain areas to have clean tap water.

Overseen by English teacher Ms. Roney, any student is welcome to join the UNICEF Club.  Meetings are held once every other week in Ms. Roney’s classroom.

UNICEF is an international organization that is committed to helping children around the world who suffer from malnutrition, unsafe drinking water, lack of immunizations, and more.WestboroughHigh School’s UNICEF club, advised by English teacher Mrs. Roney, is a club that is dedicated to carrying out UNICEF’s mission.

The club’s officers are President Melissa Zhang, Vice President Jess Nario, Treasurer Ashley Chiu, Secretary Kerry Chen, Event Planners Kate Burlile and Hannah Schur, and PR Maria Hession. Although there are elected positions, anyone is allowed to join. The club meets a few times every month on Tuesdays after school.

 UNICEF’s upcoming event is the Tap Water Project that takes place during World Water Week in March. This project involves recruiting restaurants to participate and ask their customers if they would like to pay $1 or more for their water that is normally free. The money raised will be put towards providing sanitation programs and equipment for areas that don’t have safe water for the community.

President Zhang says, “This year is going pretty well so far for our club and I’m really happy with all of the people that support us. It’s really important that we’re aware of other children like us living in areas that are much less privileged. That’s our main goal and hopefully it’ll be a successful year for us.”

The WHS Student Council consistently makes a huge contribution WHS.  They create and host school wide events to encourage unity, a sense of community, and morality among students.  To join Student Council students must be elected by your class or submit a walk on application.

Student Council meets every other Tuesday after school hours.  The advisor of Student Council is Mr. Rota.  The Student Council officers are seniors: Maggie Sharma, David Tubman, Jodie Shrier, and Guhan Kirshnan. 

 Arielle Sigel, Student Council’s Event Chair says, “I love being on council because I feel like all of the work I do is for a reason.  It benefits the community or either the town or the school, in some way.  It is really rewarding to spend a lot of time doing something that you know will positively affect other people.  Another reason Student Council is amazing is because of the bonds you form with people you are working with.  You get to become friend with people in other grades and friend groups, and it ends up feeling like a family.”

The Student Council is hosting two upcoming events, a Minute to Win It event and a Senior Center Ball.  The Senior Center ball will be held on December 7^th and Minute to Win It event will be held soon so look for details.

The National Honor Society is holding a blood drive on December 7 during school hours.   The blood drive is open to all students.

NHS advisor Mrs. Apuzzo-Langton says, NHS’s mission is to promote excellence in scholarship and continuation of service to the community with an emphasis on strong leadership and character.

The qualifications to apply to NHS are:  a 3.8 weighted GPA, positive character traits, excellent leadership qualities, and service.  A student may be eligible as early as sophomore year and through senior year.

Other activities NHS members are involved with include tutoring, an ongoing food drive and various community service projects.

“The more you’re involved and the more passion you have for philanthropy, leads to a more enriching culture for the club,” comments Mrs. Apuzzo-Langton.

NHS meets the first Friday of every month.  For more information, please contact President Anna Johnson, Vice President Kelsie Gould, Secretary Ally Thibault, or Treasurer Guhan Krishnan. 

The Environmental Club, or E-club for short, is more than just a group of students who gather every Wednesday after school to create a greater awareness of environmental issues.  They recycle, help to maintain the trails around the town, volunteer at a local organic farm, and also have documentary days every couple of weeks.

Led by officers Erin Reynolds (President, Sr.), Anita Para (Vice President, Sr.), Tess Stone (Secretary, Sr.), and Iris Lin (Treasurer, Sr.), this club has a laundry list of goals and fun things planned to make it the best year they have ever seen.

One of their basic goals is to increase membership, especially among underclassmen.  However, they are more interested in trying to bring a garden to Westborough High School.  At this point, the project has not been approved, but if it is, the garden will be planted outside of Mr. Huse’s room.  Reynolds hopes to have six raised beds, with the focus being on spring and fall plants.  It is a lot of work, but the group is ready for the challenge.

A popular program the E-Club is looking to continue is TerraCycling.  TerraCycle is a company that up-cycles chip bags, juice boxes, and granola bar wrappers, and uses them to make other products, like backpacks and pencil pouches.  Be aware that students can no longer place plastic bags in with the juice boxes and wrappers, because the Ziploc Company did not renew its contract with TerraCycling.  Instead of using these plastic baggies, try bringing Tupperware to school, which is something that is easily cleaned and reused.

In the past, the club has done documentary days, something the officers plan to continue this year, and has gone on a field trip to a recycling plant in Framingham.  The kids that went missed school and watched a mattress go through the recycling process.  This year, Reynolds wants to change things up, and would like to go on a whale watch.

Besides missing school and going on a whale watch, there are so many more reasons to join E-Club.  Members get many community service hours by working on a local farm, they make new friends, take on many leadership roles, and most importantly, make a difference in their community.

Environmental Club meets every Wednesday at 2:05 in Mr. Huse’s room, B203.  Meetings last about an hour long.  In order to be considered a member and to put it on a resume, it is a requirement to attend two meetings every month.  Otherwise, if someone is simply looking for a great way to rack up some service hours, they are more than welcome to come!

On Monday, March 5, 2012, the trio competed at Worcester Polytechnic Institute against forty other teams. There were a total of twenty-six schools representing three New England states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine.

The competition consisted of nine problems related to the computer science field, the goal was to correctly answer as many as possible in the time given.

The highest scoring teams, in chronological order, were Westborough High School, Mass Academy, and Algonquin Regional High School. Each team was assigned one computer to complete the problems and Westborough High School’s team was one of the only two teams to complete all nine problems.
The computer science team will be representing WHS again on Tuesday, March 13th, in a competition at Providence College.

Best Buddies is a club that is built on the solid grounds of friendship, making it ta very meaningful club at Westborough High School. Best Buddies is a non profit organization dedicated to creating a one to one friendship with kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The club meets every other Wednesday where upcoming events are discussed and also there is a chance to talk to the peer buddies to see how their friendships are going.

Recently, the club traveled to Tougas Farms where the group went apple picking. Participants enjoyed reaching for apples and eating apple cider doughnuts. Last weekend the club had a booth a homecoming where the plan was to sell delicious cupcakes and hopefully attract people to the amazing club, but the rain put a damper on the event. An upcoming plan is to travel to Pump it Up soon!

What is really important about the club is creating that one to one friendship that is stated in the Best Buddies international mission statement. Whether or not you receive the incredible opportunity to be a matched pair doesn’t matter, everyone gets to hang out and enjoy each others company during the group events and everyone loves having fun together!