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Visit Planned with Author Matt de la Pena
The Belleville West English Department will host a Skype visit with author Matt de la Pena on Friday, May 11, as part of the second BW reading celebration. Freshman and sophomore students will participate in the live chat with the author.
Matt de la Pena is the author of four young adult novels: Ball Don’t Lie, Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, and I Will Save You. Students who have read one or more of de la Pena’s novels may have the opportunity to ask questions of the author during his visit.
The reading celebration on May 11 will be sponsored in conjunction with the BW Library.
English Department Prepares for Shakespeare Fest
The Belleville West English Department will hold its seventh annual Shakespeare Festival on Friday, April 20. Students will perform scenes from the classic Shakespeare plays Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, members of the Harambee group will create an updated version of Romeo and Juliet, freshmen students will present information on food and weaponry from the Elizabethan era, sophomore students will host a Shakespeare trivia competition, and senior students will read original sonnets. Students attending the festival will also participate in a variety of games, contests, and activities to celebrate the bard’s birthday.
BW Actor Named to All-State Drama Cast
Contest Drama Wins Sectional Championship
At the IHSA Sectional Drama Contest on Saturday, the Belleville West production of Proof won the sectional title. All four members of the cast—Zac Chamberlin, David Felts, Katherine Eckert, and Jorden Guldner—were named to the All-Sectional Cast. The cast and crew will represent Belleville West as one of twelve shows at the IHSA State Drama Contest in Springfield on March 23 and 24.
If you missed last week’s performance of Proof, catch a special encore performance this Wednesday, March 21, at 7:00 p.m. in the Belleville West Performing Arts Center. Tickets are just $3 for students and $5 for adults.
Congratulations, cast and crew!
Special BW Screening of THE HUNGER GAMES
Belleville West readers have the opportunity to enjoy a special screening of The Hunger Games when it opens on Friday, March 23. The Belleville West showing of the movie will take place at the Lincoln Theater (103 East Main Street) at 4:00 p.m. Advance tickets are available in the BW Bookstore, the BW Library, and room B325. The ticket cost is $4.50.
Any student attending the movie will be allowed to leave West at 3:15 that afternoon. To do so, the student will need to complete a permission slip (provided when the ticket is purchased) and return it to his/her assistant principal no later than Wednesday, March 21.
May the odds be ever in your favor!
Speech Students Qualify for National Tourney
At the National Forensic League district tournament on March 3, the Speech and Acting Team placed first out of eight schools in the speech division. Congratulations to the following team members who advanced to the national tournament, which will be held in Indianapolis in June: Eli Bernstein, Taylor Damann, Katherine Eckert, Cody Essien, and David Felts.
BW Little Theatre Stages Contest Drama
The Belleville West Little Theatre will present the annual contest drama on Thursday, March 15. This year’s offering is Proof, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning drama by David Auburn.
On the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday, Catherine (senior Katherine Eckert), a troubled young woman, has spent years caring for her brilliant but unstable father (senior David Felts), a famous mathematician. Now, following his death, she must deal with her own volatile emotions, the arrival of her estranged sister (senior Jorden Guldner), and the attentions of one of her father’s former students (senior Zac Chamberlin), who hopes to find valuable work in the 103 notebooks that her father left behind.
Over the long weekend that follows, a burgeoning romance and the discovery of a mysterious notebook draw Catherine into the most difficult problem of all: How much of her father’s madness—or genius—will she inherit?
The contest play offers a unique opportunity for drama students. The play must be performed within a 40 minute time period, and student technicians have 20 minutes to set and clear the stage for performance. Proof will compete against other area schools to win a berth in the IHSA state tournament. This year’s sectional competition will be held at Charleston High School on Friday and Saturday, March 16 and 17.
The production is directed by Ms. Laurie Bielong and Mr. John Lodle. Student directors are junior Lauren Jones, junior Taylor Keel, and sophomore Dean Fults. Student technical directors are seniors Cornelius Allen, Eli Bernstein, Woody Gardiner, Alex Knapp, Morgan Munro; juniors Emily Adams and Rebecca Rockwell; and sophomore Nick Klein.
The March 15 performance is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. in the Belleville West Performing Arts Center, located at 4063 Frank Scott Parkway West. Tickets are $3 for students and $5 for adults.
BW Publications Excel at SISPA Conference
The publication staffs of Bellevinois and Hy News represented West well at the annual Southern Illinois School Press Association’s Winter Conference on the SIU Carbondale campus.
Yearbook staff members Hannah Bernardini took third place in the Photography On-Site Contest, and Romel Jones and Amber Swogger received an honorable mention in Yearbook Theme Development.
The newspaper staff competed in both the Best Story Mail-in Contest and the On-Site Contest. In the Best Story Contest, Hy News staff members took 9 firsts, 7 seconds, 10 thirds, and 7 honorable mentions. Hy News also received the Blue Banner Award for overall excellence in a student newspaper.
In the On-Site Contest, Hy News staffers took 5 firsts, 1 second, 1 third, and 5 honorable mentions. Event Champions included: Gabriela Zamfir in Feature Writing; Kayanna Clark in Editorial Cartooning; Joey Hasenstab in Sports Writing; David Felts in Review Writing; and Eli Bernstein in Editorial Writing.
Congratulations to everyone who competed!
Freshmen, Sophomores Approach Reading Goal
At the end of the fourth triad, both the freshman and sophomore classes are already close to one million pages of pleasure reading!
The class of 2014 (the sophomore class) read 206,447 pages of pleasure reading during the fourth triad! That’s an average of 358 pages per student. The sophomores have now read a total of 922,187 pages since the start of the school year. That means that the sophomore class is only 78,000 pages from their goal. (Sophomores, can you top your total of 1.4 million pages from last year?)
The sophomore classes with the highest reading totals for the fourth triad are:
Mr. Reidelberger’s second hour class: 24,323 pages
Ms. Hoelscher’s second hour class: 16,554 pages
Mr. Johnson’s fourth hour class: 16,255 pages
Mr. Reidelberger’s fifth hour class: 13,374 pages
Ms. Bielong’s fifth hour class: 13,371 pages
The class of 2015 (the freshman class) read 217,019 pages of pleasure reading during the fourth triad! That’s an average of 414 pages per student. The freshmen have now read a total of 891,338 pages since the start of the school year. (That overall total is slightly lower than the sophomore total, but the freshmen read more pages—and more pages per person—during the fourth triad.)
These freshman classes read more in the fourth triad than they have in any other triad this year:
Mrs. Dachsteiner’s first hour class
Mrs. Hunter’s seventh hour class
Mrs. Matysik’s sixth hour class
The Belleville West teachers read 46,693 pages of pleasure reading during the fourth triad! That’s an average of 345 pages per teacher.
Keep reading, Belleville West!
BW Senior Earns State Speech Title
Senior Eli Bernstein won the state title in extemporaneous speaking at the IHSA speech competition on February 18. Senior Vondell Burns earned a fourth-place finish in oratorical declamation, and Eli Bernstein also scored a six-place finish in impromptu speaking.
Coaches Adam Jenkins and Russ Reidelberger advanced eleven events to the state tournament. Congratulations, BW Speech and Acting Team!