Author: adviser

On Sunday, March 13, Poly students participated in Project ECHO, a business plan competition where students have to create a business and pitch it to a panel of investors. The acronym ECHO stands for “Economic Concepts Hands On.” The competition was held at LMU University and was a preliminary to the official ECHO competition to be held at UCLA on April 17.
The day started at 8 AM with check-in at Loyola. Then, the students listened to an introduction in the auditorium. Next, the students re-located to their assigned rooms to give their presentations. After that, they ate lunch and listened to the keynote speaker while the judges scored their presentations. At the end, the winners were announced and invited to compete at the next.
The competition was a special day since only students from Poly and Banning competed because of the numbers of students who participate. At Poly, freshmen students from PACE, CIC, and Pac Rim competed. Since it is a preliminary competition, two teams in each category (retail, tech, and food) from each academy were chosen to move on to the final ECHO day.
From PACE, the winners of the retail category were Simplicity and Tanked. The winners of the tech category were Kono Cards and WaterWise. The winners of the food category were Pressed and The Social Study.
“The experience was beneficial because from it, I have learned how to work with a group, what makes an idea inspiring, and the practical implementation it takes to turn a concept into reality,” said freshman Caris White from Kono Cards.
From CIC, the winners of the retail category were Get Real and Mall Care. The winners of the tech category were Get Schooled and Occupied. Sporty Foods, Eh? won in the food category.
“ECHO helped with our confidence. After our presentation we felt we did terribly, so when we won we were very surprised and it boosted our confidence in our presenting skills,” said a CIC member from Mall Care.
From Pac Rim, the winners of the retail category were Metamorphosis and Teen to Teen Tours. The winners of the tech category were Jordanian School for Women and ArtGen.
“Project ECHO taught me to work well with others and prepared me for the real world,” said junior Anthony Hokenson from Teen to Teen Tours.

On Saturday, March 12, students from the Japanese department participated in the fourth Annual Japan Bowl of California, which was hosted by the Japan America Society of Southern California. This event took place at Loyola Marymount University and was the first time that both level-four teams made it to the championships, ranking second and third place.
The Japan Bowl is an academic decathlon that tests students’ knowledge on Japanese language and culture, with topics ranging from common Japanese phrases and yojijukugo, a 4-character compound consisting entirely of kanji, to literature, history, and even economics.
This year, AP Japanese and 5-6 Honors teacher Watson-Sensei organized two level-three teams and two level-four teams from the 5-6 Honors and AP Japanese classes―level-three representing the 5-6 Honors difficulty and level-four representing the AP Japanese difficulty.
Seniors Azalia Avellan and Jonathan Rodriguez placed second in the level-four category, and seniors Fatima Nunez, Panhaneath Seng, and Jared Weinstein placed third in the level-four category. Junior Michaela Gonzales and seniors Tiffany Pham and Itza Soto participated in the level-three category alongside juniors Emilio Carreon, Isis Hayes, and Brianna Son. Though they were unable to place, their hard work leading up to this event should still be recognized.
“We started studying since January. I’d like to thank Sensei for working so hard to prepare us for this event. It was a really fun bonding experience for everyone and I am glad I took the opportunity to participate,” said Weinstein.

On Thursday, March 24, Long Beach Poly’s Student Commission went on a weekend visit to Lee Vining High School, which is six hours away from Poly.
Located in the Eastern Sierra Unified School District, Lee Vining has been appointed as Poly’s “sister school.” This means that the two schools are linked together. Due to the fact that Lee Vining has twenty six students and that Poly has around five thousand, the two schools are able to learn a lot about each other’s culture.
“We had many things in common and many differences. Learning from each other was a great experience,” said junior Toni Flores.
Ever since the early 2000’s, Poly has had a relationship with Lee Vining, one of the smallest schools in the southern section of CIF. In the fall of 2014, Lee Vining students came to Poly and watched a football game as well as carved pumpkins with the Student Commissioners.
However, this time around, Poly made the visit and enjoyed their time at Lee Vining. Arriving around 4 AM, the students had fun from start to finish. On Friday, the Commissioners joined the students in their classes and played different games. In fact, one of the games involving running threw off the Commissioners due to the extremely high elevation. Later that day, Poly made pho and had an activity night, which included dancing, music, and sports.
On Saturday, some people went skiing or snowboarding, while others simply played in the snow. After that, they went to a dance and had different games in the gym.
“I think for the students it was a good experience for Student Commission to step out of what we know in Long Beach and have a small town feel,” said Activities Director Ngoc Nguyen.
Although the two schools are unique in many different ways, they were still able to have a good time with one another.

National History Day was on Sunday, March 13, hosted by the LA County Office of Education (LACOE). This event was held at Azusa Pacific University (APU) campus in Azusa, CA, from 8 AM to 4 PM.
There were about two dozen high schools, close to 20 middle schools and many more elementary school participants.
This event originally began in 1974 at Case Western Reserve University. The idea came from a history professor named David Van Tassel, who was very concerned about the decline of the humanities in America’s schools.
Van Tassel was particularly distressed by the rote memorization he saw in most history classrooms. He wanted to reinvigorate approaches teachers and students had with history curricula.
Patrick Gillogly, an AP US History teacher, was the only Poly teacher who attended, along with seven students: seniors Benjamin Neal and Daniel Sagrera and juniors Derek Matos, Eric Fuson, Emma Larson, Danielle Gallandt and Tatum McCann.
Students produced ten-minute documentaries from different time periods and places that centered around this year’s competition theme: Exploration, Contact, and Exchange.
Larson was given an honorable mention for her documentary on the history of coffee titled “Coffee Through the Ages” and Matos and Fuson won first place for their documentary on the United Fruit Company and the Panama Canal titled “American Enterprises: Profitability and Exploitation in Latin America.”
Matos and Fuson advanced to State Finals, which will be held on May 6-7 in Rocklin, CA. If they win at State, the duo will advance to Nationals in Maryland in June.
“The students who participate in this competition work very hard, balancing the demands of their classes with the challenges of producing a project that involves real historical research, teamwork, and skill in video editing, among many other things. I am immensely proud of their efforts. To see the enthusiastic students of all levels engaging with each other and the history is a pleasure to be a part of every year,” said Gillogly.

On Sunday, February 21, nine French students and one teacher arrived in Los Angeles and met their Poly host families. They were only here for two weeks and left on Saturday, March 5. In past years, the students left later during the second weekend they spent in America, but this year, their flight was scheduled on Saturday morning.
The students did not only visit Poly; there were other French students in other schools around the area. The kids came to classes and lived with students’ families to improve their English and learn what life is like as an American teen. They were accompanied by a teacher who stayed with Silvia Battigalli, the Poly French teacher, and checked in with them every day at school.
The program organized two trips with all of the visiting French students. On the first Thursday, they went on a day trip to San Diego, and on the second Thursday they went to Downtown LA for the morning and early afternoon. Since there were only two organized trips, the students relied on their host families to show them around Southern California and what the area has to offer.
Senior Erin Osman took her student Pauline LaBurthe to Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach, the Getty, and the Getty Villa. LaBurthe has visited Poly every year for the last three years. LaBurthe attended all of Osman’s classes with her, went to orchestra rehearsals, and played the flute with the Symphony. Her favorite thing from her three years here was the backlot tour of Universal Studios.
LaBurthe returned to Poly three times and there have been many things she loved about it: “The sun, the food, playing with the orchestra, and getting to see another way of life.”
Senior Sarah Passage took her student Hugo Dubreuil to Venice, Santa Monica, Hollywood, a twelve-hour shopping trip, indoor go-karts, a skate park, and surfing. Dubreuil’s favorite thing about America was In-n-Out, a West Coast favorite.
Hugo said the only thing he disliked about the trip was that there were “too many things to see and not the time to see [it all].”