By Samantha Bonifas
Students and staff at Silver Lake High School participated in mini-courses to celebrate a successful first semester on December 13. Mini-courses are one-and-a-half-hour-long sessions that aim to teach students how to collaborate with others, learn new skills, and find their personal interests and strengths. Some of the mini-courses available for students to pick included visits to a local vet and a feedlot, welding, shark dissection, cake decorating, Christmas baking, charcuterie board making, card games, Esports, pickel ball, hydro dipping, hot cocoa bombs, nail art, beef jerky making, and many more. Senior Amanda Ehrman said she is grateful for the opportunities that mini-courses provide: “I’m very thankful that our school does mini-courses because it is a day we all look forward to. We get to do new things and talk to people we usually don’t talk to.” Ehrman was able to participate in the cop visit mini-course, which she said was her favorite. “It was very cool to be able to hear all of those things first hand. I am a huge criminal mind fan so hearing details from the cop was very interesting.”
On Tuesday, December 14, students and staff were able to give back by visiting Hearts and Hands Against Hunger in Hastings, a tradition that the school has participated in for multiple years. This year, the school was split into two groups, one visiting in the morning and one in the afternoon. In total, the groups packed 56,592 meals to send to other countries. While students weren’t at Hearts and Hands Against Hunger, they participated in the first annual Silver Lake Quiz Bowl competition. Students were split into teams and competed against one another in competitive rounds of academic and Christmas questions. The morning winning team consisted of team members Miss Farley, senior Jenna Bonifas, junior Arely Fontes, 8th grader Riley Klemptner, and seventh graders Xander Journey and Preston Pracht. The afternoon winning team members included juniors Samantha Bonifas and Brooke Slangal, sophomores Lana Swanson and Taylor Hanson, freshman Paxton Sorensen, and 8th grader Jaxon tenBensel.