This article was published in the Lenoir News-Topic.

In a classroom-style building tucked into the corner of one of the old Shuford Mills buildings, all chipping paint on brick walls, 10 sixth-graders from Granite Falls Middle School wearing safety glasses put parts and pieces together, making robots.

The students spent their half-day on Friday making what they called eggbots — basically, robots capable of drawing on spherical surfaces the size of eggs — at Foothills Community Workshop. In this case, the spherical surface used was ping-pong ball.

Each eggbot can be connected to a computer and is driven by two motors — one that turns the ball (or egg) back and forth, and one that moves an attached pen across the ball’s surface. The machines can take any design made in a drawing program such as Adobe Illustrator — or Inkscape, an open-source version that the Foothills Community Workshop folks like to use — and recreate it on the surface of a spherical object. Continue reading →

This article was published in the Lenoir News-Topic.

A 10-year-old boy crafts bird feeders out of peanut butter, birdseed and bagels. A cancer survivor plans a yearly golf tournament. A teacher creates handmade coasters.

And it’s all done with one thing in mind: a cure for cancer.

In Caldwell County and elsewhere, most people experience one night of Relay for Life, the American Cancer Society’s primary fundraiser. But that night of walking and camping out around a track is the culmination of months of fundraising.

“We Relay all year,” volunteer Christina McLean said. “We’re thinking and trying to do something all year long.” Continue reading →

This article was published in the Lenoir News-Topic.

West Caldwell High’s Navy Junior ROTC drilled and marched on Wednesday in front of a Navy officer – and parents, friends, administrators and middle-school students. U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows couldn’t make it, but he sent two staffers in his place.

The occasion: The school’s annual military inspection, the 34th to take place at West.

The event is a patriotic one. All its pieces and parts – the strains of “Anchors Aweigh” and “The Star Spangled Banner,” the uniformed cadets filing in, the veterans standing to be recognized, the presentation of the flags, the hands over hearts – feel distinctly American.

But it’s also a chance for the cadets to showcase the skills they’ve been honing since August, said Command Master Chief Petty Officer Wayne Mihelich, an NJROTC instructor at West. Continue reading →

This article was published in the Lenoir News-Topic.

Feel like doing something Christmas-y this weekend?

You’re in luck. There’s enough going on in the county to keep you running for most of Friday and Saturday, including parades in four towns.

Here are some highlights of the goings-on: Continue reading →

This article was published in the Lenoir News-Topic.

At one Christmas party in Lenoir on Thursday, there was food and bowling and mingling, but the closest thing to Christmas, by far, was a small room in the corner, where Santa held court and stacks of presents weighed down the tables.

Each year, the Kiwanis Club of Lenoir holds a Christmas party at Bo’s Family Entertainment for 30 kids from the five elementary schools in Lenoir. School counselors at Lower Creek, Whitnel, Valmead, West Lenoir and Davenport A+ each choose three boys and three girls to attend.

Many nominate children because their families are struggling financially, Kiwanis member Charity Patterson said, but the counselors are welcome to choose any child who needs a Christmas. Continue reading →

This article was published in the Lenoir News-Topic.

More teachers left the Caldwell County Schools in the one-year period from March 2012 to March 2013 than in any year since 2008-09, but the district’s turnover is still lower than the state average, according to data released by the state Department of Public Instruction.

Ninety-five teachers, or 11.16 percent of the district’s total teaching staff, left in 2012-13. That’s up from 8.09 percent in 2011-12, 6.42 percent in 2010-11 and 8.77 percent in 2009-10. In 2008-09, 11.43 percent of the district’s teachers left.

The state average this year was 14.33 percent, higher than the 2011-12 rate of 12.13 percent. At the district level, turnover numbers ranged from 7.31 percent in the Surry County Schools to 35.09 percent in the Northampton County Schools. Continue reading →

This article was published in the Lenoir News-Topic.

It was a parade of parades in Caldwell County this weekend, as floats and candy-seeking kids converged on Lenoir, Sawmills, Granite Falls and Hudson — or all four — on Friday and Saturday.

The festivities were stairstepped through the weekend. Lenoir’s took place at night, with people and their chairs lining the sidewalks three or four rows deep. Sawmills, Granite and Hudson happened in the sun on Saturday, with all three — at 10 a.m., 12 p.m. and 2 p.m., respectively — managing to avoid the predicted rain.

The four parades did, of course, share some similarities. All four shared the pageant winners and homecoming queens in their sequined gowns, Santa rounding the corner, the hum of the classic cars’ engines, the sheriff and the register of deeds and the clerk of court, and the little “clack” of the Dum Dums and mini candy bars hitting the asphalt. Continue reading →

This article was published in the Lenoir News-Topic.

A parent of a homeschooled child voiced her opposition Monday night to the Common Core State Standards, curriculum standards implemented in North Carolina last year, and to Pearson’s PowerSchool, a program being used statewide to centralize student data.

The Common Core standards, which outline what students should know after completing each grade, have been adopted in 45 states and the District of Columbia, but have drawn opposition from various groups, including some conservatives who fear a federal takeover of education. But Nicole Revels, whose 5-year-old son is homeschooled, is the first to voice opposition to the standards during the Caldwell County Board of Education’s public comment period. Continue reading →

This article was published in the Lenoir News-Topic.

This week, Caldwell County kids got a dose of desire to pick up a pen (or, more likely, poise their fingers above a keyboard) and write.

Tuesday and today marked the annual Little Read, which brings nationally recognized authors – some of them based in North Carolina – to fourth-graders in the Caldwell County Schools, always after the students have read one of the author’s books.

A little schedule shuffling, made necessary by a morning power outage in Lenoir, brought Frances Dowell to her first meeting with Caldwell County students at Valmead Elementary on Tuesday. Dowell, who lives in Durham, is the author of the bestselling “Dovey Coe,” a novel set in the fictional Indian Creek, which is based on Boone. Continue reading →

This article was published in the Lenoir News-Topic.

There’s no Spanish in Caldwell County’s elementary school curriculum, but in classrooms at West Lenoir Elementary this week, vowels softened and consonants rolled.

Leslie Barger, a Spanish teacher at West Caldwell High School, and West Caldwell principal Jeff Link teamed up with West Lenoir principal Kristy Hollar to bring high school students to West Lenoir to teach a week of Spanish classes.

Students in Spanish I, II, III and IV at West Caldwell have been taking teachers’ spots for about an hour at West Lenoir each day since this week. The high schoolers used dances, BINGO games, YouTube videos and songs to teach hola and adiós and me llamo and all the other basic Spanish they could fit in an hour. Continue reading →