Category: News

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].”

On Saturday, February 27, the state qualifiers for speech events were held at California State University, Long Beach. Freshman Coco Sanabria and senior Destin Bigsby both participated in the qualifier, but they did not make it to the state competition.
“Neither Coco nor I qualified for state, unfortunately,” said Bigsby. “But Coco is only a freshman and she seems to be on track for a state qualification in the future.”
Both Sanabria and Bigsby participated in the impromptu event, which requires speakers to create a four-to-seven minute speech on the spot in two minutes and then present it in front of the judges. In addition to these challenges, speakers in this year’s impromptu category had to compete against 60+ other competitors. In order to qualify for the state competition, speakers must place in the top five in their event.
Bigsby also participated in the original prose and poetry event. In this event, meant to engage a speaker’s creative side, speakers write a piece of prose or poetry in advance of the competition and present it to the judges. This piece must be at least five or six minutes long and memorized.
On Saturday, March 4, the state qualifiers for debate events were held at Schurr High School. This event is a simulation of the US legislative process in the Senate and the House. Students must prepare for debate on numerous topics and are assessed on their research, argumentation, and delivery skills. Freshman William Terlinden participated and senior Crispin Jay Salapare competed, but unfortunately did not place.
Novice Championships will be held in May.

Pennies for Patients

Every single year for 15 years, Poly’s Student Commission has held a big spring project called Pennies for Patients. In this project, boxes are given to all classrooms for donations with all the funds going toward the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. Posters with kids diagnosed with cancer are also displayed in order for the students to put a face to the disease. Although the classroom with the most funds gets a pizza party, the big picture is that the funds are going toward people who have been affected by leukemia. For different students and faculty of Long Beach Poly, it means a lot more to them because they personally know people who have been diagnosed with cancer. With a goal of raising $3,500 dollars, the school is sure to make a big contribution towards the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.
“Personally, I feel that this is a great way to help others who are [suffering from] leukemia,” said sophomore Katherine Khiev.
As the head of the Pennies for Patients project, Khiev has very high hopes for the funds that will be donated this year.

St. Baldricks

Freshman Max Magilnick has made a commitment to raise awareness and funds for childhood cancer, shaving his head every year on March 12 to raise money for an organization called St. Baldrick’s Foundation. All around the world, every single day, this organization shaves people’s hair in an attempt to raise money and awareness to shave childhood cancer off the face of the Earth.
“When I was in 5th grade, my sister got cancer, and I didn’t know what to do. So I tried to find anything that I could and I found St. Baldrick’s,” said Magilnick.
Ever since the age of 10, Magilnick has been passionately finding a way to help his sister and doing whatever he can to eliminate childhood cancer. With the support of family, friends, and even more people from Poly, the impact could even be far greater than that.

From Friday, March 4 to Sunday, March 6, several Poly students participated in the Model United Nations (MUN) conference held annually at UC Berkeley.
MUN places students in real-life simulations of the United Nations; participants can choose from several committees based on UN agencies and discuss issues in line with each agency’s focus. Students are given the roles of ambassadors for specific countries and must gather research, write position papers on their countries’ policies, and create resolutions in their committees.
“My partner Emma Larson and I were in a committee based on migrant workers’ rights and the implications of sex tourism, so not only were we able to learn about the world and real-life issues, [but] we were [also] able to do so in a way that helped us work together with others for a common goal,” said junior club president Stefana LoTempio.
Hosting almost two thousand students annually, Berkeley MUN is one of the largest conferences on the West Coast and in the nation. 17 Poly students made their way to the Bay Area early Friday morning to catch the opening ceremony and first committee session later that night. This group, along with the almost 1800 students overall, had been preparing for the conference since the beginning of the year.
“We found out our committees in February, and we wrote our position papers and did research this month,” said senior Daniel Sagrera.
Participants divided their time up between committee sessions on their two topics and unscheduled periods for leisure and exploration. One of the benefits of being at
an away conference is having the opportunity to explore a new area and meet people from all over the world. Students were not only from the United States, but also from El Salvador, Canada, and Singapore.
“The away conferences allow us to meet other kids. A lot of the away conferences are much better run and the kids are more prepared and the debate runs much better,” said junior Emma Larson.
Larson and LoTempio earned research awards for their position papers. Though not everyone won awards at the conference, all those involved had an enjoyable and fruitful experience.
For those interested, MUN is held every Thursday in Room 415 (Gillogly). The next conference will be at UC Irvine in May.

Monday, February 29 to Friday, March 4 was Wellness Week here at Poly High School. It was a week of healthy decisions and activities for the students and teachers.
There was a list of activities and workshops to do throughout the week in order to get students exercising and eating healthier. The workshops were Monday through Thursday after school from 3:00 to 5:00 P.M. in the teacher’s lounge.
Monday was a workshop about positive relationships with yourself and others. Yoga was on Tuesday, then Healthy Eating on Wednesday, and natural remedies for stress and anxiety on Thursday.
“I was always surrounded by people who had health problems and I’ve always felt bad, at school there was a lot of great opportunities to make a change in my community and I’m glad I’m here to help,” said senior Karla Figueroa.
During lunch, there were rallies with healthy exercises and contests. Monday through Thursday, students and teachers did workouts on stage, while other days, they held dance lip sync battles and an obstacle course challenge.
Friday was Health Fair Friday at lunch where booths and tables were set out. A DJ came out and activities were set up all around the quad and on stage.
“I thought it was cool because my friend was involved in the activity on stage and I liked how the school set everything up,” said junior Marawin Chheang.
There were multiple booths that were all based on healthy living such as a healthy teen environment, having a healthy body, and many more that you could go to for tips about how to maintain a healthy life.
Poly also had many local health organizations from Long Beach come and set up booths that caught lots of attention from students.