Raven Report

Sequoia High School

Volume vii, Issue 7

1201 Brewster Ave. Redwood City, CA 94062

Sweeping changes for SAT set for Spring 2016

to a scale of 1600 instead of
2400, and the essay portion
will be optional (but many
colleges are expected to require it).
Other changes include
the combination of the
reading and writing sections
into one, as well as removing
the quarter-point penalty
for guessing incorrectly.
The SAT vocabulary

By EMILY DUCKER
Staff Reporter
The College Board announced changes to the
SAT that will go into effect
in the spring of 2016, March
5. The changes will affect
this years freshmen and all
younger students.
The most notable changes
are that the test will go back

words will no longer be obscure; they will be words

that students use in their
academic lives and should
be more familiar with. Students will only be allowed to
use calculators on designated parts of the math portion
of the exam.
In the optional essay,
students will be required to
support their claims with

facts; students will not be allowed to fabricate statistics,

as is currently allowed.
In addition, the College
Board announced plans to
partner with Khan Academy to make free preparation
materials for the exam.
The College Board plans
to reveal further details
about the test as well as new
practice materials in April.

Photo by Carlos Garca

Students extract insect DNA; they plan to share their research on the bacteria, Wolbachia, with local scientists.

April 9, 2014

Principal
to be Assistant
Superintendent
next year
By LILY HARTZELL
Managing Editor
The District Board of Trustees approved Principal Bonnie Hansen to be
Assistant Superintendent of Educational
Services starting July 1; they announced
the change at their meeting March 26.
She will be in charge of curriculum and
instruction, especially preparing the district to transition to Common Core.
Hansen will collaborate with teacher
leaders and oversee English Learners (EL)
and Special Education in the district. She
sees her new role as focusing on teaching
students to think and learn, much as IB
and other curricula at Sequoia do.
I will not wear a walkie-talkie anymore. There will be less urgency and more
strategy, Hansen said.
The position was posted on sites nationwide with applications due April 25.
Hansen expects the district to choose
someone by mid-May, although she will
be acting as principal for the rest of the
year and speaking at graduation.
The worst part is that is that there
wont be any teenagers. The best part is
that its an opportunity to make a difference district-wide on curriculum and instruction, Hansen said.
Hansen served as Sequoias Instructional Vice Principal for five years before
becoming principal.
I will miss this place, Hansen said.
The student body is a wonderful example
of why everything is going to be just fine.
It is made of phenomenal human beings.

Cutting-edge biotech classes encourage budding scientists

By CARLOS GARCA
and CARMEN VESCIA
Staff Reporter and Feature Editor
Growing stem cells, extracting DNA,
cloning, all done in a multi-million dollar
lab. No, this isnt some high tech corporation. Its just daily life in Sequoias biotechnology classes.
Sequoia is home to Biotechnology 1-2
and 3-4, both taught by Ashley Dever
in a state-of-the-art lab in the LL wing.
Sequoia first began offering biotech five
years ago, and Dever has been teaching it
for the past three.

feature:

Biotechnology is defined as the use of

biological processes to create or modify
products for commercial use. This includes altering the DNA of fruits and vegetablesgenetically modified organisms
(GMOs)to make them pest resistant or
even altering the DNA in human cells to
treat and cure diseases.
My favorite part is that its so handson, and its so interactive. I also think
its so relevant to our lives, Dever said.
Were now seeing things about genetically modified foods and a lot of new prescription drugs and cancer therapies that
are arising from biotech.

opinion:

Meet Bacon: Kuligas pig

Page 3

Defining your race

Page 5

Biotech was first used over 6,000 years

ago to ferment cheese, and today, over
13.3 million farmers around the world
use biotechnology to increase crop yields
and crop quality. It has also been used to
create over 250 health care products, vaccines and medicines.
I think it would be awesome to go
into something thats really impacting the
world right now, sophomore Biotech 1-2
student Marissa MacAvoy said. There are
all these cancers and diseases that have no
cure, and a lot of problems result from
mutations in the DNA, and part of what
biotech is trying to do is alter that to fix

the disease. Instead of treating the symptoms, youre treating the actual problem.
The class spends the majority of its
time working and researching in the lab.
So far this year, Biotech 1-2 has extracted
DNA from yeast, bacteria and salmon
sperm, and they are even planning on
sharing the data they collect in an upcoming lab about a bacteria called Wolbachia
with local scientists.
The workforce in the biotechnology
industry is a big one. It has grown during
this 21st century, and is still growing. The
Bay Area is a hotbed of biotech and it is

See BIOTECH, page 2

By the Numbers

35

school days left

in the year

NEWS

April 9, 2014

New stock marketeers head to international championship

By CLAIRE BUGOS
Photo Editor

Members of the Sequoia

DECA Club (Distributive Education Clubs of America) have
qualified for the upcoming International Career Development
Conference in Atlanta this May.
The club was started in Jan.
2013 by juniors Wyatt Duncan
and Paul Kiraly to teach others the basics of investing in the
stock market and improve their
skills.
In a recent qualifying competition which took place over four
months, Duncan and Kiraly put
together a portfolio that placed
them fourth in California.
Because they placed in the
top five in the state, the team
moved straight to the interna-

tional competition.
In our free time, [we] invest
in stock, we read about stock,
we read about investments, real
estateeverything. Thats what
we like to do, Duncan said. We
spend our time reading and doing the stuff we love: making
money.
The competition requires
teams to use $100,000 in virtual money to invest in at least
three companies of their choice.
DECA creates a simulation of
real-time numbers on Wall Street
so that students feel the effects
of investing in the stock market
without actually doing so.
The simulation is a new experience for Kiraly and Duncan
who are used to long-term investment, so they had to adjust
their strategy to work for the

four month period.

of 29 percent, earning them apInstead of seeking out com- proximately $20,000.
panies that they predicted
It was basically intuition
would strive in the long-run, the with a little bit of background
team looked for a company that research, but not much, Dunwould make a boom of sorts in can said. The thing about thethe amount
stock market
of time reThe club is basically a place where is that it is all
quired.
everyone can come together and learn about judg T h e about stocks. Its a good starting place. ing
other
money
I
p
e
o
p
l e s
junior Paul Kiraly
would inemotions
vest on my
not facts. At
own is very different from the the end of the day, whats driving
money I would invest in the sim- the changes in the stock market
ulation, Kiraly said.
is demand.
Duncan and Kiraly inKiraly and Duncan will give a
vested $70,000 in Netflix, presentation to a panel of judges
Chipotle Mexican Grill and in the form of a 10 page paper
a 3-D printing company. and 15 minute oral presentation,
After having their money on which they have been drafting
the simulated market for four and practicing in front of the
months, the team had a return other club members.

BIOTECH, from page 1

Photo by Carmen Vescia

known as Biotech Bay, with companies like

Bio-Rad, Genentech and Johnson-Johnson,
among others, making their homes here.
It is a little controversial that you might
be altering nature, but there are so many
good things that can come out of this, senior
Biotech 3-4 student Kate Boudreau said. In
the right hands, biotechnology could be used
to have a great impact on the world.
Biotech offers a unique experience that the
other science classes cant.
Biotech is more independent. In Physics
and Chemistry, you get a straight up lecture,
and in Biotech, you get a hands-on experi-

Student choreographers
dance to their own beat
By XAVI BOLUA
Staff Reporter
The 45th annual Dance Show will
showcase 26 student-choreographed
performances culminating from nine
months of hard work and dedication
in Carrington Hall April 25 and 26.
The 46 advanced dancers arrive for
zero period every day, preparing for
months before the two-day show.
From August to March were always in the dance studio. The next
three weeks [up to the show] are spent
onstage, said senior Joy Robinson,
who has been in Advanced Dance
since her freshman year .
Volunteer student choreographers
started last year, picking genres ranging from lyrical to contemporary and
everything in between.
Whats hard is to think about what
people can do and how people will
look onstage, junior choreographer
Madeleine van der Rijn said. Even if
it looks good on yourself, you have to
make sure that it looks good on other
people too.
They create their dances over the
summer so they can be ready to teach
their peers when the school year be-

gins.
Its very difficult to pick up the
moves in hip-hop when Im used to
jazz or tap, Robinson said. But when
youre learning a dance thats not your
style, you just have to work even harder.
Each student is appointed to three
different dances, one every four weeks.
Some students opt to take on another
dance, but practice outside of class.
I would say 95 percent of the work
is done by the students, said Taylor
White, Advanced Dance teacher of 13
years.
This is my first year choreographing a dance ever, Robinson said. Its
interesting to see [someone learning]
someone elses choreography versus
trying to teach people your own. It
puts into perspective what every other
choreographer has gone through before.
After the Dance Show is over at
the end of April, the dancers begin
practicing for Dance Day before working towards choreographing new and
unique performances for next year.
If [its] the only thing you do in
April, go to the Dance Show, Robinson said.

As of now, there are about 13

members in the club who work
to fundraise and learn about investments. The club meets on
Wednesdays at lunch in room
108.
Math teacher Steven Wong
serves as the club adviser along
with parent adviser Virginia Kiraly.
The reason we started the
DECA Investment Club is not
to go to these competitionsits
to learn, because for us, learning
is more valuable than anything
else, Duncan said.
In the future, the DECA
Club will grow and expand to
cover more topics.
There are lots of things to
do and lots of things to manage,
Wong said. The more the merrier.

ence, senior Biotech 3-4 student Alan Mendieta said.

Biotech 3-4 is in its first year and is currently trying to clone African Violets.
Last summer, Boudreau spent six weeks
interning with Genencor in Palo Alto researching the biotechnology behind making
ice cream fluffier. This year, six other Sequoia
students are hoping to apply for internships
through the same program organized by San
Mateo High School.
I would encourage everyone to sign up for
biotechnology, Boudreau said. You never
know if youre going to like it or not, but you
might as well try it because we have a great
lab, a great teacher and a great program.

Baseball alums blog for ESPN

Sequoia graduates Connor Grossman

and Drew Tweedys baseball blog, www.
westcoastbias.org, has recently become
affiliated with ESPN as the official blog
of the San Francisco Giants.
Grossman and Tweedy both graduated in 2013, played varsity baseball, and
are majoring in Broadcast Journalism at
Syracuse University and the University of
Southern California, respectively.
Weve been best friends since freshman year and always talk about baseball,
so we thought, Hey, we should probably
do something about that, Tweedy said.
The pair had been toying with the idea
for a while, but Grossman finally took
the initiative during fall of 2014.
It was pretty good, but only our
moms were reading it, Tweedy said.
As their posts became more frequent

and as they improved layout, they looked

to expand their readership through affiliation with major sports networks.
Grossman and Tweedy have been offered internships for KNBR this summer
and are hoping to have a partnership between their blog and KNBR.com. Affiliation with KNBR will allow Grossman
and Tweedy to expand their readership
locally, appealing to the Giants fanbase.
In the off-season, they posted three to
four stories a week with draft analyses,
season predictions and Spring Training
recaps. Now that the season has started,
West Coast Bias is posting daily.
As of now, were just trying to expand
our readership, Tweedy said. Its unreal
how fast things are going. Were just riding things out and seeing where they go.
CAROLINE LEMPERT

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