EMS PRESS NEWS “The Bi-Weekly Newspaper of Edmunds Middle School” Issue 3, Vol. 1 emspressnews.weebly.com

Get to know Mr. Monahan

District Music Festival: EMS Students to Perform

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By:

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By: Alexandre Silberman

This February many seventh and eighth grade Edmunds students in band, chorus, and strings will merge with other area schools as part of the Vermont Dis-trict III Music Festival. Edmunds will be one of 17 other schools partici-pating this year. The dis-trict covers much of Champlain Valley. There are two annual festivals one for high school and one for middle school. This year Essex High School will be hosting the festival on February 2, at 2:00 pm. Tickets can be purchased through the festivals website: www.vtdistrict3music.org for $7.00 adult and $5.00 student. Quantity is lim-ited. Students work with their music teachers on the advanced music lead-ing up to the concert.

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Many of the teachers around Edmunds have interest-ing things about themselves to share. The EMS PRESS will feature a series of teacher profiles throughout this year. Mr. Monahan is a math teacher on the Navigator Team. Something most peo-ple don’t know about him is that he loves cooking, and trying new foods. He grew up in Madison, Connecticut, a small town on Long Island Sound with just over 18,000 people (Burlington area has 47,000). As a kid his favorite subjects were Language Arts and P.E. He really enjoyed Language Arts because he had a great teacher who made poetry fun. Mr. Monahan was not always a teacher. He had many different careers in his life previously. He used to teach skiing, which he is still passionate about today! Last year he told us about how he went to Killington on the first snowfall of the season in and got up at five o’clock in the morning. He has also coached, and worked with Special Olym-pics. He wanted to become a teacher because not only did he want...a change in careers- he also enjoyed seeing kids grow and excel with challenges given to them. Mr. Monahan likes being a teacher because every year and every day is different. He also enjoys being amazed by student work. He finds it fun to watch “kids go from scared 7th graders, to strong 8th grade leaders.”

Photo Credit: Alexadre Silberman

By: Alexandre Silberman

Downtown Cafes: Discovering the Best Hot Chocolate

It’s a chilly No-vember evening, the perfect weather to just sit back and drink hot chocolate and that’s exactly what the mem-bers of the EMS Press did. The nine of us set out to find the best hot chocolate from three different shops down-town. Which was the worst, which was the best, and how varied were our opinions? That’s what we went to find out.

By: Claire MacQueen and Sage Sularz

The Birds That Don’t Fly

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District Music Festival

(continued from front) Participants auditioned in late Octo-ber with Mr. Lambert, Ms. Nolan, or Mr. Hakim playing pre-selected music to test skill and ability. The teachers determined who to se-lect. This year 16 Edmunds students will be in the district chorus, 7 in the district band, and 3 in the district string orchestra. Overall that is 26 students who will be representing Edmunds this year. Ed-munds district members will miss a day of school Friday, February 1st for rehearsals at the host school, leaving after homeroom. The next day will follow with rehearsals from 8:30 to the 2:00 pm con-cert. Both days account for a lot of musical practice! The festival is a great experience for students to get to perform advanced music with students from other nearby schools. If you have the opportu-nity, stop by and enjoy high quality music.

By: Morgan Liska

When you walk into Mr. Kelly's room, it looks like a normal science class, a smartboard, black tables in numerous rows, the peri-odic table on the wall, but if you look a little closer you will find that there are three stuffed birds high up on a shelf in the back of the room. Two of the birds are in a position like they are about to soar off the shelf and out the window, and the other bird is sitting gracefully. In an interview Mr. Kelley said that the birds were here before he was, and probably came with Mr. Barenburg, the science teacher before Mr. Kel-ley. Mr. Kelley has had the three birds in his possession for about seven years. The breeds of the birds are an osprey, red tail hawk and what he thinks is a sharp spray hawk. Mr. Kelley said that all of the birds are found here in our wonder-ful home state of Vermont. The name osprey and the EMS mascot sea hawks both mean the same thing. The ospreys are fish hawks, and they dive into the water and you will find those up in the Cham-plain Islands. If you drive around the Islands you will see telephone poles and you might see these gi-gantic nests and at the top of the telephone poles and those will be osprey nests, and they love it there

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The first shop we went to was a warm, quiet, brightly lit coffee and pastry shop- Mira-belle’s. There were only a few other tables oc-cupied beside ours.We sat down and told the staff who we were. We ordered a small tradi-tional hot cocoa for $2.50 (plus tax) The helpful waitresses (Alison- also part time owner) brings out a tray with our small paper cups filled with hot chocolate and marshmallows made right on the premises- talk about good service! We each rated the taste of the hot chocolate --- from 1 (terrible) to 10 (amazing), we gave it an overall 8.5 out of 10- pretty good, but nothing perfect. (Mirabelle’s also offers peppermint cocoa for the same price, all of it is served year-round)

Next, we head two doors down to Muddy Waters and from the the results we got, muddy water is the best way to describe the cocoa. The building was a cozy little cafe that gave us the feeling of being inside a tree, with wood walls, floors, tables, and rafters. The place was full of people, so it took us awhile to get our hot chocolate, (the barista was very apologetic about the service, though,and offered us other flavors) but finally we got a small mug for $2.75. The reactions to the cocoa were more varied than any other place we tried- with ratings ranging from zero to six. The overall rating, though, was a four- though the atmosphere was great, the hot chocolate tasted odd, with an almost cheesy aftertaste, not the best taste for a hot chocolate. (Muddy Waters also offers raspberry cocoa, white cocoa, and spicy cocoa for a little more)

Lastly, we took a short walk down Church Street to Lake Champlain Choco-lates.The place was decorated for Christmas already, and small- but so open it didn’t seem like it. There were brightly lit glass cases that displayed rows upon rows of chocolate and sweets, and the smell from those made the entire place seem warm and welcoming. The staff was helpful and the hot chocolate can be described in one word- amazing! This traditional cup of hot cocoa for $3.17 was rated 10/10 by almost everyone, the couple exceptions being 9.5s. The staff told us more about the cocoa, about dutched chocolate -- a process that takes the bitterness out. They also explained the temperature cocoa was cooked at.(Lake Champlain Chocolates also sells astek,chai,dark,peppermint cocoa)

Hot Chocolate Continued from home

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Hide and Seek By: Ella Staats

How well do you think you know this school? Let’s test your skills! Do you know where any of the objects below are located around the school? (answers at bottom of page)

Apple painting: located along with many other foods above the office in the lobby. Blue valves: Located on the pipe in the basement across from the elevator. Sierra Club Sticker: Located on the mysterious door between Ms. Gallagher’s and Mr. Truchon’s room on the third floor. Sketched snowman and tree: Drawn on the After school Activities board on the third floor. 155: Located above the fire extinguisher on the third floor near Ms. Gallagher’s room.

Animal

Celebrities

A Comic By: Ella Staats

The red tail hawks are all over Vermont and they have a habitat of partially wooded and par-tially fields, because either they are nesting in the woods, or they go hunting for mice,and rabbits and then they swoop down and eat their kill. Mr. Kelley does not know how old they are but he thinks they are very old because Mr. Barenberg was at Edmunds for a long time. He says that the sad thing about these birds is that eventually these birds will just fall apart because little creatures like mites like to eat the feathers and the glue, right now Mr. Kelley does not clean them like mu-seums would have to.

Birds (continued)

Coming Soon: A basketball season preview

with information on all the

teams, exclusive interviews,

pictures and more!

Contributers: Avery Follett

Alexandre Silberman

Solomon Zeitlyn

Carl Crawford

Yosef Borsykowsky

Cara Davis

Izzy Vansuch

Morgan Liska

Ava Svensson

Breann Totten

Briannah Patch

Maddi Evans

Ella Staats

Claire MacQueen

Advisor:

Deena Murphy

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School Wide Break: 12/22-1/1

Activity Day: Dec. 21 Concerts: Chorus 12/12, Band/Strings 12/19

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