This is the flower of a pitcher plant, a rare and extrordinary flower found only in certain places around New York. I post this to symbolize the rare and extrordinary students in this (former) 7th grade class. I truly had a blast with each and every one of you...even the difficult ones. I hope you all shine next year and beyond. You make me proud.

-Mr. DeVoe.

SECOND TO LAST DAY OF SCHOOL! Here are a couple last photos of you guys as 7th graders. Next year will be a brand new era of experiences and opportunities. I hope to hear stories about those students that didn't try that hard this year excelling in the future.

Tomorrow is the big day...the second 1/2 of this year's science final. Please try to bring a pencil with you. Good luck to everyone!

Today we checked the results of our final experiment of the year, the seed germination lab. We found that many common household chemicals are toxic to plants even at low concentrations. Here, KEVIN C. measures the radicle length of his lettuce seeds in a 10% concentration of road salt/sand from the winter.

Today we had an awesome crew for adopt- a-highway. We cleaned our one mile stretch of road in only about an hour. Today's participants were JASON H., ALEN Q., CHAD W., NICK S., MARY O., DANIELLE S., and HALLE S. Special thanks to Mary's mom and Nick's dad for helping out with the clean-up and BBQ after.

Friday was the annual middle school end-of-the-year awards picnic. It was a great day to highlight all of the achievements our students have accomplished this year. The big winners, and deservedly so, in the 7th grade were JENNA S., STEPHANIE B., and BRANDON P. Its been a pleasure teaching so many outstanding young people this year and by the looks of it, there are many more coming in next year.

Last Friday the middle school headed over to Yaman Park for the end-of-the-year picnic. Not many fish were caught but everyone had a good time. Here, STEVEN, gets ready to take a few casts. Photo Credit Mr. Weeks.

I want to share a student essay. Keep in mind that this was written by a 12 yr old....amazingly, not a high school junior or senior.

OUR PLANET'S DOWNFALL
By Alen Q.

What scares you? Snakes, or heights? Well, for me, it’s my future. My children’s, too. In the future, the Earth will be worse. The deteriorating ozone, pollution, all the factors to the gradual annihilation of our only home. But, I can’t dwell on these thoughts. Technology keeps improving and improving, so there is no knowing what will happen. Maybe we can discover planets that have an atmosphere that we can breathe, a climate we could find comfortable, or food to eat. But, dreadful thoughts come to my mind when I think about the future. Skin protection from the sun’s harmful UV rays, unbelievably filthy air, animal species extinct, with more to be wiped out. But on the other hand, millions more waiting to be discovered. Humans, the only creatures able to impact the Earth to the brink of it’s own demise, have strongly abused the fact it’s the only thing they’ve got. As paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said, “People have ruined parts of the planet before. But in the 1980's we realized we could harm the entire planet.” Another one of my favorite quotes is: “Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught, we will realize that we cannot eat money.” said so by a 19th Century Cree Native American. As more and more people come into this Earth, our planet has to work harder to support them all. The Earth’s population is currently 6.5 billion. The population, mostly in poorer countries, is growing rapidly. Nigeria, for example, the country two times the size of California, has one of the fastest growing population in the world. In 1990, people predicted Nigeria’s population would double in just 22 years, and in 140 years, it’ll equal the entire population of the world today. (But in 1990 the population was about 5 billion) Another topic that strongly concerns me is the deforestation of rain forests. About 50 acres of rain forest are destroyed every minute, and in one year, rainforests equal to the size of Virginia will be lost. On the other hand, people are doing lots of things to help the Earth. Such as: recycling more, planting trees, composting, cutting down on littering, etc. These helpful acts, in time, could really assist in the Earth’s repair. The Earth is very, very important to us, but some people just can’t grasp that thought.

Today we had a scavenger hunt in the nature area to help understand some vocab terms from the ecology unit....words like producer, consumer, decomposer, etc. DANA and BRYAN display their red-backed salamander (primary consumer), while DANIELLE looks on with her bouquet of Wild Phlox (producer). Below, EMILY shows off a very cool dragonfly that MARISSA found (one I had never seen before) on top of her clipboard.

This article was forwarded by a parent. The picture depicts one of the side effects of this drug, commonly called "meth mouth"

ATTENTION:
I have been alerted by one of our EMT's for our volunteer fire department that they have received emails from emergency responder organizations to be on the lookout for a new form of Crystalized Meth that is targeted at children and to be aware of this new form if called to an emergency involving a child that may have symptoms of drug induction or overdose.

They are calling this new form of meth "Strawberry Quick" and it looks like the "Pop Rocks" candy that sizzle in your mouth. In it's current form, it is dark pink in color and has a strawberry scent to it. Please advise your children and their friends and other students not to accept candy from strangers as this is obviously an attempt to seduce children into drug use. They also need to be cautious in accepting candy from even friends that may have received it from someone else, thinking it is just candy.

I don't want this email to scare anyone, but as a parent, coach, volunteer firefighter and friend, I thought it would be best to share this with you, so you can once again talk to your children about the effects of drugs and how easy it could be to take drugs without knowing it, until it is too late. I worry, just as each of you do about kids and drugs and all the problems our kids today are faced with.

So please talk with your children about this newest threat to get children addicted to drugs!

http://www.ky3.com/news/6626012.html
Click on this web site for a news article about this.

I thought you might find the following article from snopes.com interesting:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/drugs/candymeth.asp

Today we started the lab portion of the final exam. We are germinating seeds in different concentrations of chemicals. I'm looking forward to tge results when we check them in a week. These reports will be due Friday 15 June and will count for 1/2 of the final exam grade. Here, MEGAN, ARIEL, KAITLYNN, SIERA, and MARY pose for a picture during the lab.

REMINDER...

If you are planning on bringing in a sample chemical for the lab final it needs to be brought in on Monday. If you forget you'll get stuck with my samples (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). Was someone going to bring in one of those glow-in-the-dark necklaces? I hope so!