August, here at Marist High School, is all about the big gear-up for the beginning of fall term on September 7th. One of the challenging aspects is preparing all of Marist's new course offerings for the coming year. Theater, math and foreign language departments are all adding courses this year, providing students with more opportunities for growth. But the most-talked about new addition to the Marist campus this fall is the Robotics program, spearheaded by Marist Network Administrator, Chris Fudge. Meet Chris and learn all about the robotics program by clicking on the video below.

Marist staff have talked about adding a robotics program for several years, carefully doing research into costs and curriculum, working to make sure the program had a plan for success. But this year, all the pieces fell together to get the program up and running to begin fall term.

The program is the perfect blend of utilizing technology and creative problem solving, while adding in the core education skills of math, science, and writing. As the course begins, student teams are given the materials to make a robot, and a goal that their robot needs to accomplish such as following a line, or picking up an object within a defined area. The students must then come up with a plan to build their robot to meet the challenge, and program it to achieve the goal. Students will learn how the individual parts work, but it is up to them to figure out how to put it all together. Writing skills are also key in the course as students must keep an engineers journal and document all lines of code while programming the robot.

Within the next year, the program hopes to expand to include a competition team. Just like in the classes, competition teams are given a challenge ahead of time where they must build a robot that can accomplish specific goals, then compete with other schools to see who best finished the task.

Marist has budgeted the initial start-up cost of the program but expansion of the courses are dependent on buying additional equipment. If you would like to sponsor or donate to the program, please contact Tom Simon of the Marist Development Office.

To learn more about the specific robots being used in this course, click here to visit the manufacturers site.

The Marist front office received some great news this week! The Oregon Schools Activities Association (OSAA) announced that we won the OSAA Oregonian Cup award, in our first year in the 5A division.

The Oregonian Cup, begun in 1999, was created as a way to recognize high school overall excellence in academics, activities and athletics. The award honors a school’s students, teachers, coaches and the entire school community. Schools earn points based on their participation and finish in OSAA State Championships and for Top 10 finishes in the OSAA Academic All-State Program. A sportsmanship component, whereby schools are awarded points each season for having no ejections, is included in the point totals as well.  Marist finished this year’s competition with 5,119 points, with Crescent Valley finishing second with 4,993 points and West Albany High School, Sherwood, Summit and Corvallis High School’s rounding out the top 6. 

“I couldn’t be more excited for our school to win this award,” said Jay Conroy, Marist High School Principal. “This is huge for our students, staff and parents. While athletic success is often measured by wins and losses, at Marist we are saying its more about achieving success in all aspects of academic and activity development.  We’re excited that our school chose to take on the challenge of playing in the 5A division (schools from 850 to 1450 students) and we truly appreciate the opportunity to play schools in the Eugene-Springfield area.  Those schools have been very welcoming and the competition and sportsmanship have been great.”

For information on the award, past winners, how points are totaled and specifics about how the competition is run, please visit http://www.osaa.org/awards/oregoniancup/. The OSAA will formally present the award to the  Marist student body at a ceremony in September.

Upon hearing this weeks news that Marist had won the award, Jay Conroy wanted to share his thanks for the hard work that went into earning this award. Click below to see his comments and learn about this award and what it means for Marist.

Among the many people and things that make Marist the great place that we love is the opportunity for our young musicians to develop their skills in the elective class, Rock Band.  Marist is unique in the state of Oregon in offering a music class geared toward the rock/pop musician. Standard music curriculum provides for classes in concert and jazz bands, but does not provide a learning laboratory for kids who want to pursue music outside of those genres.  Enter: Marist Rock! 

This class is an exploratory ensemble which practices and performs classic rock music, breathing new life into it by the millennium generation.  Not only is it a kick for the parents to hear “their” music served up by the young players and singers, it opens the eyes and ears of the students to the great history of rock and roll.

Rock music has now been a loved art form for over half a century. Longevity certainly breeds validation.  In the late 1950s and early 1960s, jazz music was still looked upon as an “illegitimate” style in music education.  Pioneering band and choir directors at that time, many of whom were working jazz musicians, pushed to bring that very noble art form into the accepted music curriculum.  The rest is history.  Today, almost every high school across the country features a jazz big band, and usually combos as well.  What we are doing at Marist follows this same thinking.  As art forms come of age, they need to be addressed by our programs.

This class meets four days a week, researching and preparing tunes to be performed in their quarterly concerts.  Six years ago, the class started with five kids and me doing blues-based rock music (Stones, Chuck Berry, etc.).  It has grown to around 24 students that sometimes form two to three bands performing music that has stood the test of time. 

The year starts with the bands playing an entire classic album.  Past years have featured Dark Side of The Moon and Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin II, and other timeless recordings. This past fall, we performed the Beatles' Abbey Road. Our winter concert highlights mini-tributes to rock’s greatest artists.  This winter we will focus on sets by Queen, Billy Joel, Styx, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Stevie Wonder.

Past tributes have included the music of The Who, Van Halen, Tom Petty, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, and a long list of others.  At our final concert, students perform a playlist of songs picked by our seniors.  I have always been impressed by the quality and sophistication of the music the kids propose - so, as long as the lyrics are clean and the spirit of the music is positive, we go for it! At the end of each semester, we go to a professional recording studio to make a cd.  This gives the musicians the experience of the recording process and serves as their final exam for the class.

Each year, the class gets to name themselves.  Over the years, parents and students have enjoyed performances by groups as diverse as Avatar, Reuben and the Jets, and Blue Fish.  This year’s group calls themselves Malicious Mango and features two keyboards, three guitarists, four bass players, two drummers and five vocalists.  The musicians are rotated in and out, song by song, and end up being involved in at least four tunes at each show.  The vocal students get the opportunity to do lead and background/harmony parts.  The end result of this is a wonderful and unique experience for our Marist musicians and a great pressure release from the academic load they all carry!

There is still one more chance to catch the rock band this school year, at the "The Last Waltz - The Best of Marist Arts" show on Saturday, June 4th and 7:30 p.m.– LONG LIVE ROCK!