In poverty-stricken Africa, kids are exposed to harsh conditions of starvation, illnesses, lack of family support and human trafficking. Because of New Tech@Coppell’s Hope for Africa Club, African kids have the opportunity to express themselves through their artwork.

A group determined students from the executive board of the club are laying out plans for a compelling art auction in order to collect donations for the Touch a Life Foundation.

“Touch a Life is a nonprofit organization that raises money for trafficked children in Africa,” senior Haley Mathews said. “They have facilities they build for when they rescue the children. There they can provide education, food, water and other resources they need.”

Three years ago, NTH@C and Touch a Life began working together through Pam Cope. After the death of Coppell student Taylor Storch and Cope’s son, Jantsen, Cope built Taylor’s House in Ghana, a refuge house for children.

“There was a core group of students who wanted to keep up that relationship [with Cope],” Hope for Africa sponsor Kolby Kerr said.

After time spent in Ghana, Kerr has a better understanding of what the auction money will provide.

“I did spend some time in Ghana,” Kerr said. “It was a trip for a non-profit organization called Village Exchange Ghana. I was actually with my wife who was doing economic alleviations there. While she did that I taught a group of women accounting skills and English.”

The students heading Hope For Africa have connections of their own. In fact, the group desired to import art from the very hands of their sponsored child.

“Comfort is a little girl we’re sponsoring,” senior Sloane Ansell said. “The only thing the kids do not know is their own age. Other than that we know she is really sweet and she loves to draw.”

The auction will be hosted at Barnes & Noble in Lewisville on Feb. 23 from 5 – 9 p.m., where the spectators and auction goers will be greeted with a live canvas spray painting by Texas Woman’s University art student, Alicia Berdan. Art is to be from the art programs at TWU, NTH@C, Coppell High School and North Lake College.

The group hopes to not only receive artwork from Comfort, but other children’s work for the auction, like native drums and jewelry. Touch a Life employee, Rachel Johnson, visited Ghana and has returned with many artworks for the auction.

Aside from the artwork, the board has put together musical entertainment. Musicians include CHS seniors Teddy Croft, Brindan Martin, Maddie Resler, Michael Fix, Rachel Swaldi and others who have yet to be confirmed.

Among all of the entertainment and auctioning, Mathews said that the group did not have a specific goal for the auction.

“It is not really a money goal for the auction specifically,” Mathews said. “It is more like a year long goal. But this is our big event, and we are just hoping a lot of people will come. We have it as an event on Facebook that a lot of people have confirmed for, so we feel confident about that.”

Kerr commended his students on their effort.

“I cannot emphasize enough that I don’t do much,” Kerr said. “They are the heart of this organization. I’ve never met a group of students like them.”

Photos of selected artwork to be auctioned can be viewed below. Photos courtesy of Haley Mathews.

[View with PicLens]

Tomorrow, the Public Services Academy (PSA) at Coppell High School will be hosting their second annual health and education expo open to the public.

In this expo, the freshman and sophomores of PSA will be presenting some of their work and service projects from this school year. Guest speakers include Tracey Yukich, Season 8 winner of the television show The Biggest Loser and Todd Whitthorne from the Cooper Aerobics Center. Speakers will be covering topics for the lecture series: “A New Year, A Better You”. Topics will include tips for healthier eating and college planning. Other activities include free adult health screening provided by Baylor Medical Center of Irving, a petting zoo, and a drawing for a preview of The Vow before it hits theaters. There will even be informational booths set up representing the other Academies at CHS, EMAC and STEM.

The expo is free and will be held from 9am-12pm in CHS, so come check it out!

Big Miracle, an inspirational story based off of true events, hits theaters today. Starring Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski, the story of three whales trapped under the Arctic ice is sure to be great movie for the whole family.

When Adam Carlson (Krasinski) reports for a local news station about the trapped whales, an immense amount of support comes to help save the whales including Carlson’s ex girlfriend (Barrymore). Soon the American military, oil companies and other locals are all helping to save the whales.

The film is rated PG for language and runs just over two hours.

Graphic by Brian Hwu.

My copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden is a thick little book I am not prepared to read entirely, but what I find through reading bits and pieces are simple truths; truths that could further our understanding of our deepest desires and ourselves in a wildly materialistic world.

Walden, published in 1854, is Thoreau’s reflection of his discoveries as he spent a course of two years living in a cabin he built near Walden Pond in Massachusetts. The idea was to be immersed in nature, and unveil the truths of living life.

When I say deepest desires, I refer to our wanting for love and to be loved. For whatever reason being, whether religious or not, we have this desire implanted in our hearts and this desire for love endeavors to guide us, but our music binds us and deceives us, and social networking, certain TV shows, the 21^st century’s use of sexuality and social pressures increase our risk to settle and lower our expectations, further carrying us from what is genuine and true.

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand . . . keep your accounts on your thumbnail . . . Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one.”

I honestly do not believe that he reduced his daily meals to one, and perhaps shoved three meals worth in his mouth during one time frame. I read it as a metaphor. Instead of reading three news articles a day, being a CNN news junky, I read one. But this is not out of my obsequiousness for Thoreau. In fact, I am not sure I agree with some of his points, but it is for me, who is a little too empathetic and who’s day can be altered in some way if I read much about death tolls in Iraq.

By easing off of my regular indulgences, including Facebook, of which I cancelled the account at the start of the new year, I increased my self-discipline and found that I had more time away from studying the crazy world to studying myself and my own desires. Introspection, according to Thoreau, is as fundamental to personal success and happiness as you need bread to make a sandwich.

Which brings me to the topic I am most eager to talk about; family. I found that making my life simpler than it was brought me closer to my family. As teenagers, there is this constant pressure to always be out with friends, or being out in the crowd. If we are not as social as society demands of us, then we are outcasts. This is in no way true, and it is certainly acceptable to want different things. But I must admonish that family routes us into the world, and it is better to nourish it.

Of course your teachers will be glad that you have more time to focus on schoolwork. You may find that your mind has been cleansed of unneeded circumstances.

Schoolwork gets crazy, I know. But I once was one that tended to forget that schoolwork is not life, and I drowned in a lot of school pressure.

When my choir went to Italy last year, walking throughout cities like Rome and Venice was like a breath of fresh air to see that a lot of these people lived simply, but smiled because they were alive. You do not have to be a straight A IB student and a National Merit Scholar to be happy. It took me awhile to discover this among high school traffic.

The best thing to do around the end of your day or after school is shut off all of the noise.  I am not speaking for just the natural peace seekers, but for everyone and anyone who should look inward and take a break from the vivacity of the media or just needs a quiet place. Embrace nature while you’re at it. Of course, Thoreau was always in favor of that.

Take a stroll in our community garden, walk your dog in the park and remember to always stop and smell the roses. But we must always remember that generations before us lived differently. Many used to live in pure quiet places and many lives in bustling cities.  How we are living now is not the only way to live.

I encourage you to try to simplify your life. The less complicated things are, the more you will grow happy with the simple pleasures and they will have more meaning, other than some of our constant routines of business.

Ideal teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross, then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own. – Nikos Kazantzakis

Morgan Hobgood and Chris Reed visit their former teacher, DeLana Attaway 2 weeks after her return from the hospital. Photo by Jodie Woodward.

When Coppell Middle School North teacher DeLana Attaway, was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma brain cancer in December, the news came as a shock to students who had grown close to the teacher who dedicated her life not only to making learning more enjoyable, but to creating a special bond with her students.

“Everyone loves It’s a Wonderful Life, and when you realize your life has touched someone else’s, it is so humbling because you do not think of yourself as anything special—and I don’t think of myself as anyone special,” Attaway said.

Attaway did, however, become someone special for many of her students.

“I had [Mrs. Attaway] in seventh grade; in eighth grade some of my friends and I would go and visit her after school and to her,” sophomore Morgan Hobgood said. “We talked to her about everything we would talk to our best friends about. We definitely considered her to be one of our best friends. It was good to know you had someone you could be comfortable with and say anything to on campus.”

Hobgood received a call over winter break from Attaway’s husband, Dick Attaway. He explained to her his wife’s condition, which had progressively shown more symptoms of the disease.

What first began as simple headaches slowly developed into the loss of her right peripheral vision. Her condition worsened when memory loss began to take place routinely. The Attaways were then sure there was something wrong and decided to get it checked out when cancerous brain tumors were discovered.

A week after Hobgood was informed about Attaway, the monthly newsletter was sent to parents addressing of her situation and condition.

“When my mom read [the newsletter] she broke down and started crying,” sophomore Chris Reed said. “That’s how much she affected even the parents; Mrs. Attaway was a huge inspiration to my mom.”

Reed and Hobgood started a Facebook group to discuss writing letters to Mrs. Attaway to send good wishes and show their appreciation.

“She has been here for us, and I wanted to be there for her,” Reed said. “I thought these letters were a perfect reminder of how much we care about her, how much we love her. I mean, everybody loves to have a hand-written letter.”

The response was enormous, and within an hour Attaway was recognized both by current and former students, even strangers who had formed an opinion on the teacher by ear.

“I got a flood of emails that said, ‘oh, I was a student of Mrs. Attway’s, please let me be in this group,” Reed said. “I did not think it would get this big this fast. I think I was contacted by 40 people in an hour.”

Reed has collected several letters since Jan. 18 but is expecting more from students who are trying to find the perfect words that reflect their feelings.

“I was hoping they could write about memories with Mrs. Attaway; they can say their favorite thing about Mrs. Attaway, they can talk about a funny moment in her class, or funny lessons,” Reed said. “I already got a letter from someone who didn’t even have her.”

Attaway is known for opening up her classroom after school and helping her students with any issues they had, even if they were no longer her students at all.

“My sister came back from school and said Mrs. Attaway had a brain tumor and she could not do anything for a while, so I went to visit her to see how she was doing,” junior Kayla Boyer said. “It was really fun because we got to talk about things we hadn’t talked in a while.”

Helping her students comes naturally to Attaway.

“I look at the people around me and I think—I have been surrounded by so many awesome people as far as growing up, as far as having a ministry with those girls, as far as just being with them and watching them grow up,” Attaway said.

“Letters to Mrs. Attaway” quickly found its way to CMSN. Seventh and eighth grade history teacher Jessica Kindberg is accepting letters from students at the middle school. In honor of Attaway, both CMSN and CMS East is teaming up to host a charity basketball game at Coppell High School on Feb. 20 at 6:30 p.m. Proceeds from entrance fees and concession sales will go directly to the Attaways. T-shirts will be sold for the event as well.

Blue wristbands are also being sold for $5 to help benefit Attaway. The wristbands were an idea of Attaway’s colleague, CMSN drama teacher Brittany Reese.

“The original order [of bracelets] was 200, all of which was sold within a week,” CMSN office secretary Sara Sims said. “All the proceeds will be going toward paying for her medical expenses. The band has her name on it with one of her favorite bible verses, Philippians 54:67.”

A silent auction in honor of Attaway is also being discussed.

Because of the bridges Attaway helped her students build, they will continue to show their appreciation for a teacher who is one of their best friends.

“She has always impacted her students in a positive way because she is really happy and bubbly to have new kids come in every year,” Boyer said. “She makes her kids feel almost like family.”

Attaway is keeping a positive attitude and believes that with her faith and those around her she will be able to fight through it.

“I am just so blown away by the generosity of everybody in Coppell and by the way they are appreciative. I am very thankful,” Attaway said.

Last night on Twitter, I had the misfortune of reading that Texas Rangers’ outfielder Josh Hamilton had an alcohol relapse. Reports say that Monday night (Jan. 30), Hamilton was spotted at a local bar drinking.

The well known ball player’s last relapse with alcohol occured in 2009 when he was drunk in public and had some very incriminating photos surface. No pictures have been revealed and few details are known about the incident last week.

Bob Sturm, host of “The Ticket” radio show, tweeted: “Josh Hamilton press conference will alter things at 1, but of course, that is pretty important.”

Hopefully the press conference will provide some clarity to the situation and be the last time we will hear any news like this.

After a long summer of temperatures of over 100 degrees for 71 days in a row, the drought conditions in Coppell and the rest of North Texas are officially over.

Over the summer, it rarely rained. Combined with the scorching heat, this created one of the worst droughts in Texas history. The water level of lakes all over North Texas plummeted to record lows, Lake Lavon reached a point where you could see the bottom of the lake in some places. Even that the water of level of Lake Lavon has raised to just over five feet below full pool. This is still relatively low, but it is rising.

Lake Lewisville and Lake Grapevine are still a little below full pool but only by one to three feet.

However, the recent rainfall has helped a lot. Last week we received about four inches of rain in one day – which set a local record for the most rain in 24 hours in the month of January. We have had a lot of help to end these drought conditions in Coppell and the rest of North Texas from the drenching rain we have received in the past month.

The rest of the state, down towards San Antonio and Austin even out west towards Abilene for example, is still drought stricken and could use more rain.

For more information on the rest of the state’s drought condition click here.

Staff Writer

Students hear them at the pep rallies, in the stands and on the field, but once fall is over, they cease to hear from them until the next year rolls around.

However, these percussionists do not just rest after the fall; they are in the band hall almost every day after school preparing for their upcoming concert, Purely Rhythmic.

Coppell High School percussionists are working for more than six hours per week to prepare for this annual concert, working to make it even better than before.

These students have been playing percussion for more than four years and have developed advanced musical skills. Almost every day before and after school, the percussionists work to enhance their skills in order to make this show their best yet.

“I like to feel as if the percussion is the heartbeat of the band,” sophomore Mikki Hoffman said. “I like to feel the rhythms and beat rather than the melody.”

Some of the pieces to be featured at this concert include ‘Head Tock,’ a piece in which the percussionists will only be playing on the heads of the drums with no shell, making it one of the percussion section’s favorite.

The ensemble concert will be split up into two nights. The first night will feature all of Coppell middle school percussionists, and the second will feature the CHS percussionists, who will be performing more advanced pieces.“People can expect to see a lot of hard marimba pieces, which is very technical, and some fun pieces that will keep the audience entertained,” sophomore Ali Martinez said. “I will also be performing a solo called ‘El Tour de Ritmo.’”

For some, this percussion ensemble concert will sadly be their last, making this concert the most memorable one of them all.

“I am going to miss playing with really talented people who always try their best.” Drum captain senior Jamie Reed said. “I will always remember this group when I am playing drums at San Diego State next year.”

Many of the instruments that will be featured include marimba, multi-percussion instruments, drum-set, bells, and many more. With the correct synchronization and technicality of each piece, this particular concert will be challenging, yet fun for all of the musicians.

“[At the concert] there will be serious music, light hearted music and silly music,” percussion instructor Alan Miller said. “[The concert] will have a little bit of everything. Compared to the previous years, there will be more pieces, harder music than we have done before, and more variety.”

Coppell percussionists are working diligently to make this concert their best yet. With unique pieces and talented musicians, the Purely Rhythmic concert is sure to be amazing. The concert is March 3 at 7 p.m.

As students in high school, some of us, myself included, do not care much about politics until they start affecting us personally.  One of these moments is when you turn 18 and the time to have your political opinion noticed  finally arrives.  While the Presidential Election is not for a while, you can still vote for the next best thing: the mayor of Coppell.

This Saturday, Coppell is opening Municipal Officer Candidate filing until Monday Mar. 5.  Although you are probably not able to run for office just yet, you can be a part of the voting process that begins on May 12.  Of course, to vote you must be a U.S. citizen, 18 years or older and be registered to vote 30 days prior to the election.

You can register to vote online at the State website and find out more about the elections themselves at the Coppell website. Register online as soon as you can and get involved in the political aspects of Coppell.