Forte nominated for Grammy
The annual Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award Nominations for the 2015 calendar year were recently announced. The awards are essentially the Grammys for a cappella music. This year Centerville High School’s a capella group, Forte, received five CARA nominations. For the first time, Forte was nominated for Best Pop/Rock Album. A high school album has never before been nominated for Best Pop/Rock Album. Forte’s other nominations include Best High School Album, Best High School Soloist (Hailey Zimmerman), Best Scholastic Original Song (Sophia Rosado) and Best High School Song (Before the Flood).
CHS cheerleaders win national championship
The Centerville High School competition cheerleading team recently won a national championship in Orlando, Fla. For the ninth year, they competed at the UCA High School National Championship in the large varsity non-building division. Of those nine years, the CHS team has won seven first-place trophies. Senior captains Savannah Edsall and Megan Wiechers were the first senior class in the team’s history win a title all four years of their cheerleading career. “It’s an honor to be recognized for all the hard work and dedication the team puts forth,” said Rick Bottles, the team’s coach. The team will compete for a Division 1 state title on March 6.
Character Week at PVN
Primary Village North students recently showed off their good character during the school’s annual Character Week. Throughout this special week, students learned about respect, responsibility, and good citizenship. They even took that new learning home and did something helpful for their families so they could earn some Kindness Kash. PVN students and teachers raised over $600 in Kindness Kash and that money was used to purchase supplies for Kindness Kits. The students worked together to assemble the kits. Representatives from Homefull, St. Vincent de Paul, and Blue Star Mothers were presented with over 200 Kindness Kits for the homeless and our troops.
Peach Project at PVS
The Peace Project at Primary Village South (PVS) is now in its fifth year at PVS. It is based on the belief that young children have a natural understanding of how to be peaceful toward others. The Peace Project integrates peace themes and lessons in various ways throughout the year. In the first half of the 2015-16 school year, students have already participated in several peace-focused activities. Students were challenged to create individual “peace promises” to hang in their classrooms, created and watched classroom Peace Promise videos, and attended neighborhood peace “rallies” with sing-a-longs.
Students also started earning gold stickers for peaceful accomplishments. PVS also hosted a Family Night where Peace Promise videos were shown and families were asked to decorate an ornament that included a message of peace on the accompanying tag for display in the school.
“We work all year on creating and sustaining a peaceful environment throughout the building, on the playground and even on our buses.,” said PVS Principal Amy Allen. “We’ve noticed over the past five years that children respond to the message of being a peace-maker or peace-breaker easily. We also know that all children have the desire to be peace-makers and so when we have a teachable moment to work with a child that may have made a bad choice, they can easily relate to making a more peaceful choice next time.”
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