![After placing second in their respective LDEs at the Capital District contest in early November, freshman Jesus Jaramillo-Gallegos and freshman Wyatt Pickett will compete at the Area XII LDE contest in Georgetown on Nov. 23. Jaramillo-Gallegos is competing in Greenhand Spanish Creed Speaking, while Pickett’s LDE is Greenhand Creed Speaking. “Honestly, [I’m excited for] just traveling around, maybe meeting more people,” Jaramillo-Gallegos said. “And [I’m] nervous about probably just not being able to define my weak areas. I feel like I did decent for my first time ever doing this. I just think it’s fun.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Navy-and-Yellow-Simple-Group-Project-Presentation-1200x675.png)
![Holding up T-wolves, the tour group poses for a picture in the Chinese classroom. Sophomore Lydia Ou, junior Phu Trung and senior Yushan Pan gave a tour to Taiwanese diplomat Andrea Yang on Nov. 8. “I was so excited when I heard I would get to give the tour because it’s a big deal,” Ou said. “She’s from the US embassy for Taiwan, so she’s really important. I’m so privileged [to get this opportunity] and I’m so excited.” Photo by Skyler King](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Main-Taiwan.jpg)
![Sitting at a desk past the rows of books laid out for the Book Fair, senior Kimberley Walters assists people in purchasing books and finding titles. The Book Fair is taking place Dec. 16 through Dec. 20, and is an annual event during which students and faculty have the opportunity to go and purchase books and other trinkets in the library. Kimberley said she encourages all to go to the Book Fair, even if they think they don’t like to read. “If you make reading something that is fun for you and you find the things that you like to read, it will never be a chore,” Walters said. “So [the Book Fair is] a good opportunity to find something that will respark your want to read [like] when you were a child and you went to the book fair and you loved the ‘I survived’ books. Maybe you'll find your ‘I survived’ books of your high school experience, and it'll re-spark that kind of love for reading that may have died out.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Addie-L-47-1200x800.jpg)
![Smiling at the camera, sophomore Olivia Mahlmeister and seniors Samantha Jameson, Adhit Eswaramoorthi and Justin Khadavi celebrate completing first chamber in the Congress Meet. All four students advanced to the final chamber. “Out of the 20 kids in the final chamber, we had a seventh, ninth, 11th and 13th, and they took the top four to move on to state,” AP US History and Debate teacher Josh Marsh said. “[Even though] we didn't make state this year, all four of them moving on [and] placing is phenomenal.” Photo courtesy of Josh Marsh](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-Regional-Congress-Team.jpg)
![Standing in front of a small audience, senior Kimberley Walters shares a social criticism poem titled “Pity the Nation” by Lawrence Felinghetti. Every month, sponsored by the poetry club, the library hosts a poetry reading. “I never thought I would be interested in [poetry readings] because I’m not the biggest poetry fan,” Walters said. “I think poetry is a very succinct way to express feelings and get a story across. Whereas lots of books have a span of a whole story, but it’s put in a lot of words. The power of poetry is that you can be so succinct within, and there’s a lot of power within the words that are used.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KIM-1200x800.jpg)
![Smiling at the camera, Author Ehigbor Okosun, members of Page Turners, and other students reflect on the author's visit. “I thought the visit was great,” Senior Amia De Leon said. “It was interesting talking to her and [getting to know] her process and her thoughts and books in general. But I think the reason it went well [was that] people got to ask questions. I'm glad that she said so much in response to the questions and it wasn't just one and done. [The author’s responses] felt very articulate.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Sebastian-5-1200x800.jpg)
![Holding the Grand Nationals trophies, drum majors Helashi Wijayawardhana, Abigail Pettey and Eddy Kim pose for a photo. The BOA Grand Nationals competition took place in Indianapolis on Nov. 14-17. “My favorite thing was just looking back at the field, and I was like, ‘Oh, crap. I know all of their names, I know who all of them are’,” Wijayawardahana said. “It's just insane to me that I was able to make so many connections. [Being a drum major] taught me how to build relationships with people who I’m not really that similar to, and how to juggle a ton of things all together.”
Photo courtesy of CPHS Band SmugMug](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AJC.GrandNatsFinals-169-1200x801.jpg)
![Standing in front of the field at a freshman football game, cheerleader freshman Jacob Gaudreau along with teammate freshman Bella Gibson pose for a photo during halftime of game. “[Cheer has] definitely given me a much more outgoing personality,” Gaudreau said. “I used to be very introverted, so it's definitely made me more extroverted towards people.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ingrid-204-1200x800.jpg)
![Holding a wooden pizza toy, senior Taylor Peterson plays with small children in Bucaramanga, Colombia. During the summer, Peterson traveled to Colombia to help build an elementary school that only had two classrooms but five or six grades with one teacher. “We add[ed] two more classrooms,” Peterson said. “It’s kind of hard when you have two or three grades in one classroom and you only have one teacher. It’s very hard to actually get some beneficial learning. [The extra classrooms will give the students] a better quality of education because they’ll actually have a place specific for their learning.” Photo by Taylor Peterson](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Taylor-P.png)
![Sucking in a breath of air, freshman Lily Pope competes in the 200 yard individual medley. On Oct. 25, the swim team competed in the AISD Swim Invitational. Overall, the girls team took second place and the boys team came in eleventh. “My favorite stroke is butterfly because I do the best in that stroke,” Pope said. “I feel like [butterfly] can test how [your ability] to convince yourself to keep going. The hardest part of swimming is convincing yourself to stay strong and keep pushing during a hard race [when] everything is tired.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/POPE-1200x804.jpg)
![Swinging with his arm extended, senior Nolan Park hits the ball smoothly over the net and to the opponent’s side. Park is one of four varsity tennis captains and helped the team win district championships. “Winning district champs was a pretty awesome feeling,” Park said. “We had lost to Liberty Hill a couple of weeks before, but when we played them [again], we came out and really took care of business. We took them out and it was just a really awesome night.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Kassidy-419.jpg)
Destination Imagination (DI) is a program where students all over the world create teams to compete as creative problem solvers.
For a competition, DI team members choose a team challenge and then work on it for a couple of months in preparation for their competition. At a competition each team will perform an 8-minute skit they have been working on in the months prior to the competition, this is the largest portion of the scoring. The second part of the scoring is the instant challenge. This is much like the team challenge but in a smaller time frame. The instant challenge can be task-based, building with materials, or performance-based, improv. Both of these scores are put together to determine the winner of each competition. This year the DI team competed at the State level with 18 other teams.
“We prepare by choosing a team challenge, coming up with solutions and lengthy meetings at times,” sophomore Sindhu Chidambaram said. “The solving part is always the hardest part of destination imagination, once we figure out what we want to do, it is pretty fun. We can then start building, writing, and practicing.”
The challenge the team did this year was the Service Learning challenge. This required the team to make a service project, they also had to make their play based around a character going on a quest.
“We chose to help a local dance school called Art Beat,” Chidambaram said. “Art Beat offers free dance classes for those on the autism spectrum. We raised awareness for the dance school and provided the adaptive class with sensory kits.”
The sensory kits the DI team made were each a different color. That way the kids are able to use those colors to help express how they are feeling. Their play was based off of Dungeons and Dragons, the DI team used dice to navigate the play as their main character traveled around the world. In the team’s play, Art Beat becomes Heart Beat, the House of a fairy-dragon-princess. In the play, the fairy-dragon princess and a potion master help an autistic child try to control and understand her emotions.
“With the guidance of the Druid/Narrator, they must defeat the trolls Self and Doubt in the danger zone,” Chidambaram said. “Our fantasy map shows the location of the characters on their path to find a magic potion to help the autistic child using lights, switches, motors, and circuits. At the end of the play the child realizes she doesn’t need the help of the fairy-dragon-princess, or the potion master’s potion, she realizes she can do it herself.”
This year the DI team took 1st at regionals and 2nd at state.
“My favorite part about attending State was waiting for awards after our Instant Challenge,” sophomore Anjali Ravi said. “We got one of our team members to put makeup on us, and we had so much fun wearing it and laughing with each other.”
The DI team is very proud of how their competition went, according to sophomore Aryana Jahadi.
“[The state competition was] amazing,” Jahadi said. We did great in IC and our main challenge went really well. There was one little bump but the appraisers laughed at our puns and seemed very interested in our service project.”
Jahadi has been a part of the team since 7th grade. There have been a few member changes but most of the team is a part of the original team since the time when Jahadi joined. She couldn’t choose a better team to be with, she says.
“It was really cool to see the team put aside any disagreements or tensions we might have had at the time and just click together,” Jahadi said. “Our solutions for both competitions were really good and I’m super proud of how the team did. We changed a lot after regionals and our play is super creative and very unique now. It’s nice to look back and see the progress we’ve made.”
