Club sponsor Heathyr Shaw:

What is the purpose of the club?

I was approached by a few freshmen last year who wanted to start the club and the main purpose they wanted from it was was to just have outlet for people to critique their creative writing and to have opportunities to try different types of creative writing and to have someone to facilitate it. So, it won’t really be me facilitating most of it, it will be them. They want to also connect with the community so they want to do creative writings and then have someone, like me, help them find an outlet to let them read to kids or work on self-publishing and stuff like that.

Why did you decide to become a sponsor for the club?

[Sophomores Grace Johnson and Leilani Taylor] approached me, it wasn’t my idea, but they approached me and were really passionate about it and they pretty much knew exactly what they wanted to do. I personally love creative writing, I don’t think they knew that about me, but I thought it would be really cool. I wanted to get involved in something extracurricular, because I wasn’t prior to this, so it was just a great opportunity.

What events/activities will you don throughout the year?

We’ll meet every other week, and we’ll do a different kind of creative writing [each time], like maybe a workshop or working on a different genre. They’re wanting to do some things where they write children’s books and go read at Children’s Mercy or Ernie Miller’s Nature Park, so I’m hoping we can arrange one or both of those. We’re also hoping to collaborate with the LitMag and submit some things to that.

What are you excited about for the club?

I’m just excited to work with kids that particularly love creative writing. I teach English classes, but I haven’t had the opportunity to teach creative writing yet. It’s definitely an interest of mine though, so I’m really excited to have a bunch of kids in one room who all share that interest and to be able to connect with them through that.

What challenges might you face?

Well, we decided to meet during seminar because that’s what works best for some of the club leaders, so I think a challenge might be just running out of time because I think these kinds of meetings could last a couple of hours if you wanted them to. Hopefully, it just doesn’t conflict with other things. I think we’re meeting at a time that doesn’t conflict with a lot of other things, so that’s good. Another challenge might be that they’ll most likely have to do some work outside of being at the club to be able to bring it back to have it critiqued and such, so hopefully finding that time outside of school isn’t an issue for people.  

Sophomore club member Grace Johnson:

Why did you want to start the club?

I really like writing, and my mom is a teacher at Sumner Academy, so she tells me about all the cool different writing clubs that they have there. I noticed that we didn’t have [any], so I thought it would be a good opportunity to help get more students at our school to get into writing creatively. It’s also a good way to express emotion.

What do you think the club will add to Mill Valley?

If anyone is going through something, they can write it down or [turn it into] a story or something like that. We also plan to do little activities throughout the year.

What do you hope to accomplish through the club?

I hope to accomplish getting more students to interact with each other and if a student wants to write professionally, they could get criticism from their fellow peers who are at the same level as them.

What are you excited about for the club?

Everything. For me, personally, I’m excited to get feedback on my writing that’s not just from my friends or family. They’ll be more truthful, I guess, like people you’re related to or close friends they tend to soften it or make it more brutal. So, [if critiques were] coming from someone you don’t know it would be a good mixture.

What challenges might you face?

We may have a problem with [receiving] money. We might do an activity where we write little children’s story books, it’s kind of in the works, but we’d give them to Children’s Mercy or Ernie Miller but we’d need paper and ink to be able to make them.

Q&A with Lacrosse club sponsor Alex Houlton:

What is the purpose of the club?

The purpose of the club is to help the players on the lacrosse team meet at school and to recognize lacrosse as a school activity. It’s also for those who maybe don’t want to play, but now have an avenue to support the team and the growth of the sport.

Why did you want to be the sponsor of the club?

I’ve played lacrosse for seven years, in high school and college. I’ve also coached most of the guys who are playing right now. I’m just trying to help them out and help the growth of the sport anyway I can.

What events and activities will you be doing throughout the year?

During the off season, just the chance to meet and organize things. In the spring we’ll be looking to really promote the sport and find ways for people to get involved in something they might not be aware of beforehand.

What are you excited about for the club?

I’m just excited to see people get involved and see the growth of the sport. It’s a really fun game that unless you’ve seen it or played it before you might not know about it. Also to help those guys I’ve seen work really hard and help them to become better players.

What are some of the challenges the club will face?

It’s always tough balancing between it being a sport and a club. Also, finding ways for people to be involved without stepping on their toes.

Q&A with Lacrosse club president Preston Cole

What is the purpose of the Lacrosse club?

The Lacrosse club is for our lacrosse team to be more apart of our school and also for multiple people to join, not only lacrosse players, so that we can build our fan base and student section.

Why did you decide to become the president of the Lacrosse Club?

I’m one of the team captains for lacrosse, so I decided it was my opportunity to also become the president of the lacrosse club at the school.

What do you think the club will add to Mill Valley?

It will add a new sport. A new thing for students to watch over the week, something to be excited about.

What do you hope to accomplish through the club?

Get the word out about lacrosse, grow our student section and hopefully get lacrosse closer to becoming a school sport.

What challenges do you think the club faces?

Most likely interaction. Since lacrosse isn’t a school sport our practices can intertwine with other events.

Club sponsor Julie Roberts

What is the purpose of the club?

The purpose of the Marine Biology club is to get together students that have a similar passion about the marine environment or the environment in general. They can do activities or listen to guest speakers. So, the girl who started the club wanted to so that people with similar interest. I can probably give you a better answer after the club has been running for a couple of months.

Why did you decide to become a sponsor for the club?

It made sense since I’m a marine biology and environmental science teacher, but not only because it made sense. I love to see kids when they’re passionate about a topic, especially a topic that I am also passionate about and enjoy. So, for me, when [Sophomore Keme Platt] came to me with this idea it was awesome to see a student that was passionate enough about it that they were willing to fall through and get all of the necessary paperwork done and have all these great ideas in her head. I love that I have the opportunity to kind of fuel that or help her expand on the passion of it. So for me it’s kind of rewarding.

What events/activities will you do throughout the year?

[Keme] has a list of some potential events. I told the club when we had our informational meeting that one of the cool things about being a member at the start of the club is that they can help drive and shape the club. The club itself not only focuses on the marine environment, but also on environmental science, so things like doing stream clean-ups around the neighborhood will help protect the environment. When you have a marine biology club in Kansas there’s not a whole lot — it’d be nice if there was an ocean nearby that we could go to, but there’s not. There are still things we can do here in Kansas to help support the marine environment even though it’s not nearby. It kind of is combining, for me, two of my worlds, marine biology and environmental science. That’s kind of exciting for me.

What are you excited about for the club?

For students to be able to get involved and really drive this club and make it what they want it to be.

What challenges might you face?

Since its a new club and I’ve never run it before, I’m not sure what our challenges will be. I don’t know if I can give an answer, if you come back and ask me in a couple of months I might be able to have a good answer for that. Right now, I don’t know for sure what the answer to that will be.

Sophomore club president Keme Platt

Why did you want to join the club?

I joined it because I want to be an aquatic animal vet. I know it kind of sounds silly because we’re in the middle of Kansas and it’s just kind of weird for someone to like that stuff. I created it so that other people could join because there was obviously an interest in the class and I knew that freshmen couldn’t take that class, so I created the club so that they could take it and it was an option to get started that way.

What do you think the club will add to Mill Valley?

I think it’ll add a lot of experience and people who like the ocean and aquatic animals will get that experience through it since you know it would be kind of hard to go out to the ocean during the school year.

What do you hope to accomplish through the club?

I hope to accomplish club growth and that lots of people will be interested in it. I hope that it brings more character to Mill Valley and I just hope people enjoy it.

What are you excited about for the club?

What I’m most excited about is going on some of the tours and having the guest speakers during our meetings.

What challenges might you face?

I mean there’s lots of challenges. We might not be able to get the right amount to go and do our trips that we want to. We might not do enough fundraisers.

Q&A with English NHS sponsor Page Miller:

What is the purpose of the club?

The purpose is to give students recognition for their success in the area of English.

Why did you decide to become a sponsor or the club?

I was part of Sigma Tau Delta, an English honors Sorority house, in college, so I wanted to help give those students that have worked hard in English that recognition and bring that to them.

What events/activities will you don throughout the year?

We’re doing a poetry slam in April, because April is National Poetry month. Poem in Your Pocket Day promotions, which I’m not quite sure what that is going to entail yet, but we’ll get there. Writing on the stalls is going to be an all-year event, so students will start seeing things in the bathroom stalls that they can write on. We’ll write appropriate things on the handouts or flyers and then collect and look over them. All members need to attend a play or performance, submit written material to the newspapers and publications, and then our officers will think of other things for us to do.

What are you excited about for the club?

I’m really excited to see students wearing their cords at graduation; it makes such a difference. Some students are involved in athletics or in NHS, which is great, but not all students succeed in all areas. I want to see my English students proud and wearing their cords at graduation.

What challenges might you face?

I think organizing the induction ceremony is going to be new for me. I’ve never organized one before. I’ve been in them, but we’ll see. That’s what I’m worried about. I want to make sure that that all of the kids and parents are there and that they’re getting a printout of their induction certificate.

Junior Graham Wilhauk:

Why did you want to join the club?

I am an English enthusiast. I’ve been in love with literature for a long time now and I even have a YouTube channel over it. I felt like in order to really show my true passion for literature at the school, because I already do it on my YouTube channel, I should join the English Honor Society.

What do you think the club will add to Mill Valley?

I think it will make it a lot more literary appreciation of the art of reading and writing. I feel like it is just a great way to explore the world of literature, writing and nonfiction. It’s really just based around being excellent in English, and it seems to me that the top dogs will be able to help people understand how amazing English really is.

What do you hope to accomplish through the club?

I have ambitious goals for the club. I am trying to become president of the society and I don’t even think that everybody realizes this. I am wanting to devote as much time as possible to it and I’m also just wanting to make as much of an impact to the school as possible. I feel like, in my final two years, this would be the perfect way of doing so.

What are you excited about for the club?

Just to see how it goes. This is my first time doing it, since it is the club’s first year, and I really hope that I can be able to make this club successful. I really hope that everything goes well and that we do a lot more things than what we even have planned, and that’s a lot. So I’m hoping that helps everything out.

Club Sponsor Gayle Kebodeaux:

What is the purpose of the club?

It is to give students who have an interest in aviation an outlet. They’re going to build gliders, and planes, and going to fly them, and just be together with other students who have similar interests.

Why did you decide to become a sponsor for the club?

It has to do with my field, which is engineering, so it really is something fun and kids who are involved in it are mostly kids in my class and great kids.

What events/activities will you do throughout the year?

The build is probably going to be an ongoing thing. They’re starting with a basic plan and they have to cut it out and literally put the glider together, and then they’ll learn to do that. So the activities will just be build, fly, build, fly, but it will get more intense or to be more experienced in that with the goal being each student who is involved flies what they want to. Whether it’s a quadcopter or just a glider. It’s pretty much just an ongoing activity.

What are you excited about for this club?

I’m excited because it’s so different that the people with these interests have never had an outlet at school to do it. I’m also excited for the kids who are developing it to bring in the underclassmen, and let them learn to develop this sort of thing, and also the relationships that the students have with other people with the same interests that they didn’t know beforehand.

What challenges might you face?

Probably the biggest one will be the expense for the materials, and the kits.

Junior Representative Cody Robertson

Why did you join the club?

I wanted to join the club, because in my opinion there aren’t very many engineering clubs at the school and it’s something I’m interested in. I think it will be a good bonding experience for other kids that are into that.

What do you think this club will add to Mill Valley?

Well, flying for one thing, but I don’t know. Maybe just a greater idea of engineering, and bonds made between people who want to go into engineering.

What do you hope to accomplish through the club?

I want to learn how to make planes.

What are you excited about for the club?

Going outside and flying planes probably.

What challenges might you face?

I think it’s going to be very hard to work together at first, because everyone is disorganized, and of course going and getting the supplies is going to be interesting. I feel like there’s going to be a lot of mess ups, but you know it comes with the territory.