Academy Programs Show Off During Final Friday Funday

Rebekah Tackoor

Cars line up in the busway waiting to be voted on.

Going out with a bang, one of the biggest, but also one of the last Friday Fun Day events of the year allowed for the Sports Medicine, Art, Culinary, and Automotive programs to show everything they learned to the Buc Nation.

After being well received in previous Friday Fun Days, the art program was welcomed back to showcase different art styles and mediums. Ranging from 3-Dimensional sculptures to painting and drawing, everyone had their own talents to show off. For junior Yoseline Perez, she hoped to show a more behind-the-scenes look into the process of creating art. “I am advocating for people to understand that art is not something that can be done in one day,” said Yoseline, “It takes time, patience, and perseverance.” Senior Zoraya Scott also used the day as a teaching opportunity, but she hoped to convey a different lesson. “For new people coming into the program, I want to teach them to spread out their horizons,” said Zoraya. With all of the different mediums in art, she believes that experimenting with different things could help with preventing artist block. “Just like writers with writers block, artists experience artists block, and continuing to try different mediums can help prevent potentially month-long slumps,” said Zoraya.

Having brain stormed ideas with their team, sports medicine came up with fun and interactive activities for the students to partake in. It took them three days to think of how they wanted their set up to look and how they wanted the students to learn the different parts to sports medicine. The activities that were presented to the students were ankle wrapping, mystery boxes, and face painting. The mystery box station was run by Aracely Avalos, Vanesa Rivas and other members of the sports medicine team allowing students to use their sense of touch to figure out what body parts were in the different boxes. “It’s pretty fun, you get to see everyone’s reactions trying to come up with the different body parts and their curiosity to hear more about them,” said Aracely. Cindy Agosto and Oscar Acevedo were in charge of the ankle wrapping station, this station taught students how to properly wrap a patients ankle who is in need of limit rotations of the ankle. “I love that I get to learn information that pertains to real life events and that could happen to anyone. Also, getting to teach others how to perform this methods feels good,” said Oscar. The last activity, face painting, was done by all the sports medicine team members giving the students decorative designs. All of this could not have been assembled with out Daniella Calcano, the sports medicine educator of several years. “It feels nice to be able to help out Dr. Calcano because she is always there and we are always learning new things from her,” said Vanesa Rivas.

The culinary magnet program took on the opportunity to sell the various foods and desserts outside the fourth building. During each lunch they sold things such as chicken sandwiches, croissant sandwiches, cinnamon buns, nachos, cupcakes, cookies and more. “I try to come and help Ms. Barrett with serving and selling whenever I can,” said sophomore Maria Leon. “Doing stuff like that is fun for me,” said Maria. In the block period before lunch, Culinary teacher Lois Barrett has her class assist in preparing and cooking the food being sold. Using up the entire class period, her students take the time to use their serve safe skills learned in class and apply it to what they have practiced in the kitchen. Participating in Funday Friday helps promotes the program heavily and allows them to earn funds to use for the future. “I’m hoping that we can use the funding to restart our program and bring more items in, the more we sell the more items we can buy and get higher quality products,” said Barrett. Recently, the Culinary program have been doing their own food from scratch and selling it. “We go through a lot of trial and errors, we are trying to figure out what is good and what isn’t,” said Barrett

Outside of the gates in the bus line, the Automotive Academy hosted their first car show! Students paid $10 to submit and display their car to get a chance at being voted for. The event was set up as a fundraiser, but automotive teacher Renee Hernandez also hoped to show one of his passions. “My main goals of the show were to not only raise awareness about the auto industry, but also to spread the love for cars,” said Hernandez. The winner, Isaac Nunez, received a trophy after gaining the most votes. “I didn’t care what happened, I just knew I was the only one with a classic car from the 1900s,” said Isaac.