D 158 Students Continue to Shine!

Bongo has been meaning to get to this for a while now, but other issues kept popping up.

Bongo would like to give a very hearty four paws up to all of the District 158 students who have received kudos through the newspaper and through press releases lately. It always makes Bongo’s tail wag when he sees good things happening in the schools.

So here we go:

How ‘bout that 8th grade Boys Basketball Team at Heineman? Did you humans hear that they finished their season with an impressive 17-1 record? They went on to the Fox Valley Junior High Athletic Conference’s tournament and defeated several teams to win the tourney championship! Coaches Brad Gallaugher and Mark Stahl deserve a high five also, for leading these young men to their tournament championship!

Way to go!

Anyone who attended last week’s Board of Education meeting or who watched on line was treated to an impressive display of scientific and engineering knowledge from Marlowe and Heineman Middle School students who recently traveled to Milwaukee to participate in the National Fluid Power Association’s Fluid Power Challenge. For those pups who don’t speak fluid dynamics (like Bongo), these bright students were given a challenge of using items in a box to build a machine that could pick up, move, and place objects.

Did Bongo mention that the only teams at the event that represented Illinois were from Marlowe and Heineman? Wow! Impressive!

Recently, a group of high school journalism students traveled to St. Louis for the National Journalism Conference and not surprisingly, three of the writers for the student newspaper “The Voice” won awards at the conference in the areas of news writing, feature writing and newspaper layout. High School newspaper sponsor Mr. Dennis Brown, who is an expert on First Amendment rights for the press and also on censorship issues, was a speaker and judge at the competition and conference. Great job!

Lastly, Huntley High School recently announced the names of the students who this year were named “Illinois State Scholars for 2009.” A whopping 55 students earned this distinguished award. The award is given to students who rank in the top 10% of their class and who performed at very high levels on the ACT and other standardized tests.

And there’s more! Character Counts recipients at Leggee, Conley Coyote Howl Awards, Awesome Achievement Awards, DARE graduations, fundraising achievements through Jump Rope for Heart, and the list is almost endless!

Each of the above stories is a testament of the greatness that is being achieved by students in District 158 schools, and Bongo notes these students shine largely because of the high quality of the staff who is teaching them in their classrooms!