Students, teachers, parents and community members put in their input on the center during several of the design meetings. Heads of student counsel, seniors Dalton Dallas and Ryan Lambert, attended the meetings along with multiple department heads.

According to Principal Gary Shafferman, by having the ninth grade center on the same campus as the main campus, the freshmen will be able adjust to the high school environment.

“What the freshman campus offers is a little bit of a transition period for freshmen,” Shafferman said. “It allows them to have a little bit more specialized attention.”

Though the freshman center was originally planned to be built off campus, the district decided that a center built on campus would save transportation time and money. Even though all advanced classes will be offered at the center, certain classes will only be offered on the main campus.

Students will need to move between the two campuses during passing periods, so the new campus will connect to the three-year campus through a hallway near the Marauder gym. The softball and tennis players will travel to the fields on Dixon Lane for their practices.

Sophomore Makensie Holland heard about the new freshman center from the athletic trainers and has some concerns about the new center.

“All of the construction is going to make the traffic and parking really bad, and it is going to make it hard for the people in tennis,” Holland said.

The entrance of the center is planned to feature columns like those found in the front of the three-year campus. In the middle of the center, a 40-foot wide hallway will stretch from the entrance to the end of the school.

Inside this hallway will possibly be “learning hubs” and charging stations where students can plug in their electronics and surf the web. Another feature includes a courtyard, which will be an outdoor area found within the school. Students will be able to eat and study there surrounded by grass and trees.

“They’re really going to have to work at keeping the upperclassmen out because it’s going to be so attractive,” art teacher Kathy Toews said.

According to Toews, the freshman center will follow a trend of openness and natural light. Classrooms will contain large windows, and some will contain movable walls that allow the rooms to open up to each other, creating an even larger room. Natural light will illuminate classrooms through the wall-length windows that will line both sides of several L-shaped rooms.

Another feature includes a cafeteria that will possibly contain an indoor stage as well as an outdoor stage. Middle school performances may be brought to this stage in the future.

“It’s not cast in stone yet,” Toews said. “Things will move as they decide exactly what’s going to be in the ninth grade center.”

The new center will solve the problem of “floating” classrooms, giving teachers who must share their classrooms their own rooms. The issue of overcrowding will also be resolved.

“I think it is going to make the campus less crowded but I feel like the seniors should get [the new campus] because I think the seniors have priority over the freshman,” Holland said.

Once the freshman center is completed, the three-year campus may undergo renovations. If the campus gets the approval from the school board, a bond election would have to be passed, followed by a whole new round of building plans.

In addition, the renovated school would also receive a new look. According to Toews, if the same group of architects works on this project, and their vision of Marcus is carried through, the circular design of the school would be replaced with wide halls that would allow for a regular traffic pattern.

“The trend is building campuses that look like junior colleges or colleges with wide open spaces,” Toews said. “The plan is that Marcus will be renovated after that, so they’re going to bring some of those things into Marcus.”

If the original campus is renovated, it may contain many of the same features as the new center.

“I would assume that we are probably going to benefit from this nice school being built [here], and eventually they will make our school a little bit nicer,” Shafferman said. “Not that it’s not a nice school, it’s just 30 years old.”

Though it may look like Johnson is performing tricks for the kids, he is actually practicing parkour, which is, according to Johnson, converting one’s own style of movement into a series of obstacles. Parkour involves anything from backflips to jumping between the roofs of buildings.

“Basically, if you like adrenaline, just go jump on stuff,” Johnson said. “That’s all it is. It’s a complete freedom sport. It’s whatever you want to do. Whatever you can do to your best potential, you do it.”

Johnson has been doing parkour off and on for about three years, but he said he has just recently become very good at it. He practices at least four times a week at places like Kid’s Kastle, the University of Texas in Arlington and the Shops at Legacy in Plano. He said he wants to start practicing in Fort Worth as well.

“It’s honestly like an everyday thing,” Johnson said. “Whenever I’m walking around, I see something, and I just go do it.”

Johnson first became interested in parkour after his brother introduced him to Youtube videos of the sport. Having taken a trampoline and tumbling class when he was younger, Johnson had already been doing flips since he was six-years-old. He said when he first started attempting parkour, he was a little scared.

“You just got to get your mind over matter,” Johnson said. “If you hesitate, you’re going to mess up, and I’ve hesitated plenty of times and have gotten hurt. Anytime you’ve got something big in front of you, it’s always going to be scary. It’s a matter of being able to say, ‘Okay I can do this. My body can do this.’”

Right now, Johnson is trying to get sponsored by the parkour company Take Flight. His ultimate goal is to become sponsored by Urban Freeflow, a professional parkour company. Take Flight is a clothing company endorsed by David Belle, who helped revolutionize parkour across the world.

“Getting sponsored by Take Flight gets your name out there,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he doesn’t really compete but does participate in parkour jams, which is a group of people showing off their parkour skills without competition. He frequently practices with freshman Ryan Reeves, who Johnson said is going to be good. Reeves said Johnson first got him started in parkour.

“It’s kind of fun to learn,” Reeves said. “But just having a second person is better because they see other stuff that you don’t see like different jumps.”

Johnson has suffered from multiple injuries as a result of parkour. One of these injuries, he will suffer from for the rest of his life. He tore a ligament in his ankle while trying to flip over a wet park bench, and according to his chiropractor, it will never heal.

“I just kept on going at it every day, and it’s kind of just always messed up now,” Johnson said. “It’s healed up enough to where it doesn’t hurt that bad, but I can still feel it.”

Johnson said he wants to continue parkour until his body no longer allows him. He said he hopes to use his parkour skills to become a stunt man in movies. He said despite being scared before diving into flips or making a big jump, he finds parkour extremely satisfying.

“I’m in it, and I always will be,” Johnson said. “I love it.”

“There’s going to be a costume contest,” teacher Kelly McDonald Dworacezyk said “And there will be prizes for the people with the best costumes.” The rules of the walk are that participants must have at least one member of their team walking at the same time.

“What we’d like is to go out and talk to all of the different coaches and sponsors,” McDonald Dworacezyk said “And we want them to almost make it a competition to see who can get the most donations and come up with the most creative costumes.”

The Science National Honor Society is relying upon the student body and the community to make the walkathon a success. They hope that the student body will become excited about the event and invite their friends to participate.

When Hargrove first began working in the copy center, she said she noticed that nothing was being recycled. Using the company Bubb Fundraising, Hargrove began recycling used ink cartridges, and when she realized that the company took even more items, she began curbside recycling events.

“I always used to say we take everything but the kitchen sink,” Hargrove said. “This last time they took a three-hole kitchen sink. So when it blows your slogan by having them actually take a three-hole kitchen sink, you know they take pretty much anything.”

At curbside recycling, students and staff members volunteer to collect items dropped off by people around the community. They take items from used electronics to used clothing. The recyclable items are then compiled in the back of collection trucks provided by Bubb Fundraising and taken to the recycler, where a check for the items is written for the school.

“I take the check and give it to Mr. Shafferman to use wherever he sees the biggest need in the school that we weren’t funded for,” Hargrove said.

Curbside Recycling events occur three Saturdays every school year from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. On average, curbside raises from $6,000 to $10,000 per year for the school. In the past, the money has been donated to the art department for a new kiln and towards new technology for the school.  On site at the event, students are given an opportunity to purchase any recycled items. Some items are even donated to the school, like aquariums for aquatics classrooms.

Senior Emily Dombrowski said she volunteers at curbside recycling events to log hours for honor societies. She said she likes seeing all the different electronics people drop-off.

“They always give you something to do,” Dombrowski said. “You’re not just standing around the whole time. There’s always stuff to just sort or put in the truck or clean up. They keep you busy.”

For four years, there has been a steady influx of Chin refugees into Lewisville, fleeing their East Asian home country of Burma due to ethnic persecution. LISD has established several programs to help the Chin students assimilate into the American school system, said LISD Recent Immigrant Coordinator Cherylholly Baron.

“It really is a culture shock for them,” Baron said. “Many of our students have had traumatic experiences that they’re dealing with. It’s more than just language.”

In their home country of Burma, the Christian Chin, an ethnic minority, were brutalized by the country’s harsh military rule and famine. Many were killed, beaten or forced into labor because of their religion and ethnicity.

The district has been building their programs for the Chin refugees over the past few years. Now, they offer training for teachers, summer school designed specifically for the Chin students, tutoring at many schools and yearly sensitivity seminars to teach school personnel about the background and culture of the Chin refugees.

“We have to be able to understand our students in order to help them on their road to success,” Baron said. “If they have never been in school, don’t you think the teachers would need to know that? Shame on us for holding them responsible for that without implicitly teaching them.”

Schooling in Burma was not mandatory. Many children didn’t attend and have no comprehension of an organized school system. If they did attend, Burmese schooling was pre-scientific, so science classes are new to the students. The Chin have a long history of oral story telling, so the idea of reading is difficult for them to grasp, said social worker Becky Nelson.

“The biggest problem is you are working with a culture that does not view reading as a primary source of information,” Nelson said. “They don’t have books and it’s not enough to just give them books. They are not accustomed to meaning coming out of books.”

The refugee students are held to the same Texas curriculum standards as English speaking students, the TEKS. This puts a lot of stress on the older students, said Nelson who works at the Basswood apartment complex in Lewisville. This is a relocation site where many Chin families live.

“It is a lot to expect a brain to learn enough English in three or four years to be able to pass TAKS tests,” Nelson said. “The older kids get discouraged very easily.”

According to Baron, formally learning a language can take from five to seven years.

“If you’re 17 starting high school and you have no English and spotty educational background, how successful are you going to be in graduating in a timely manner?” Baron said.

Therefore, Nelson said, when many Chin students reach the age of 16, they drop out of high school to get a job to support the family.

“The Chin culture says the oldest must quit and support the rest of the family, and that has not changed,” Nelson said. “The problem with that is the jobs you can get with just a high school education are still going to be minimum wage jobs which is what their parents are working.”

At home, their parents work long hours, night shifts at the Tyson Chicken plant or stocking at Walmart. Nelson said she acts as a liason between the school system and the parents, and must teach the families how to fill out school paperwork, the protocols of mandatory vacciantions and school attendance.

“The kids learn to fill out their own paperwork and they don’t understand what they’re doing half the time,” Nelson said. “We train the parents and work with parents so that they don’t feel the burden.”

Lewisville Education Foundation (LEF) is creating scholarships for the Chin refugees. Some Chin students are choosing to go to college, and then coming back to the community to help, Baron said. LISD has their first Chin student teacher in math this year.

“These are not people who are taking everything America can give and not giving back,” Baron said.

Lewisville Chin senior Emma Thluai, who has been in America almost four years, joined LHS Student Council and helped integrate incoming Chin refugees. She said that the school does a good job with aiding refugees.

“They have ESL and they always have tutoring after school,” Thluai said. “Last week, we had English TAKS test for juniors, and they went there every day.”

Thluai said she plans on attending NCTC next year, and wants to become an engineer or a nurse.

Baron said that the district has started networking with other school districts and social work agencies to share information and apply it on a campus level.

“I think we have come an incredibly long way from where we were, not knowing anything, without having any heads up that we were having this influx,” Baron said.

It was the summer before Pletcher’s junior year when the owner of a party planning company, Cindie Perry, came to local Highland Village theater Studio B looking for party entertainers.  A group of interested kids, including Pletcher, went off with Perry for training and classes on how to morph themselves into various characters, magicians, balloon artists and face painters. 

“It started off with a lot of us,” Pletcher said. “But it eventually weeded out to me and a few others.”

Senior Miranda Hamilton, a friend of Pletcher, also got a job as a party entertainer.

“I love performing and I love children, and it’s just a way to put it all together that is creative and fun,” Hamilton said.

After spending a little over a month mastering the art of card tricks and memorizing the many intricate knots for a variety of balloon animals, Pletcher was ready to begin.

When first starting out as a junior party entertainer, Pletcher performed at as many as four parties a week.  These are usually children’s house parties in the DFW area, but there have been a few exceptions, including performing as a clown for outside linebacker Demarcus Ware of the Dallas Cowboys.

It was October 2011 at Ware’s 2-year-old son’s birthday party at the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch. Pletcher was dressed in his signature clown outfit: red Converse with bright orange knee socks, a tie dye shirt, and rainbow suspenders. He tied the whole look together with long baggy red shorts, which start at the hip and go all the way down to the middle of his calf. According to Pletcher, they are “the most gangster shorts you will ever find.”  

There were monkey shows, professional jugglers, magic shows, face painters and clowns that filled the area of the Pumpkin Patch. Pletcher made balloon animals for the little kids while handing out apple juice and cotton candy with the birthday boy’s face plastered on the wrapper.

Though he is usually dressed as “Spike the Clown” when entertaining at parties, Pletcher has transformed himself into various other characters like superheroes, pirates and even Harry Potter.

“At parties, I usually do a 30 minute magic show, and then some singing and dancing, like the Hokey-Pokey or the Cha Cha Slide,” Pletcher said.  ”Then I will make balloon animals for the rest of the time.”

Hamilton has taken notice of Pletcher’s enthusiasm for children and entertaining.

“Zach is hilarious,” Hamilton said. “He is great with kids. If you give him a character, he goes full out on it. He really makes the kids believe that when he is playing a character, he is that character.”

Pletcher was recently promoted from a junior entertainer to a professional party entertainer, which will require more responsibility and more hours.

Through all of the chaos, Pletcher still finds time to participate in theater in school and in the community. As of now, he is preparing for the school’s UIL One-Act Play for advanced theater.

“I’m a theater kid,” Zach said. “Performance is a lifestyle.”

When he is not working at parties or preparing for shows, Pletcher works on Friday nights as a clown making balloon animals at CiCi’s Pizza from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

“It’s fun and I enjoy what I do,” Pletcher said. “I think I’ve become a better entertainer.  You have to deal with twenty screaming kids sometimes and keep their attention.  You do what you’ve got to do.”

Pletcher says his passion for performing in front of large audiences, including children, has taken him very far.

“You’ve got to be outside your bubble,” Pletcher said.  ”You have to be able to be different characters, and you can’t be afraid to wear tights.”

Over the past year, Ward has had back surgery, thyroid surgery and has been diagnosed with shingles in her right eye, a condition that she had not even heard of until her diagnosis.

Ward said that she is in constant pain due to her shingles. She compares the agony to little snakes crawling around in her forehead.

“They crawl down the right side of my nose and then they just shoot straight into the middle of my eye,” Ward said. “Then they go into the very back of my eyeball and just stay, crawling around in there. It’s enough to drive you crazy.”

Ward’s medical ailments started in September when it was discovered that Ward had degenerative disc disease, meaning that all of the vertebrae discs in her back were drying up and crumbling away. She was scheduled for back surgery in late December.

Before this surgery, Ward had to have blood work done due her high thyroid levels. The endocrinologist discovered a tumor on her thyroid.

Although the tumor was not cancerous, she had surgery to remove it in late October.

Barely two months later, a caudal catheter was put on either side of her spine to fill up each of the vertebrae along her back.

Ward was back in the classroom on Jan. 2. She hadn’t been back to school in three months and said she was greatly relieved to be able to return to her students.

“I had 90 perfect students in the fall, and that doesn’t happen very often,” Ward said. “I didn’t have one single student that was a problem student, and I was so blessed to have that. We had really enjoyed the class and I had grown to love each and every one of them.”

However, during second period the next day, she got a massive headache. The pain was so intense that Ward had to go home. It had barely been 24 hours since she had been back to work.

Ward’s eyesight went in and out as she drove. Once home, her shocked husband immediately took her to the pain management doctor. It was there that Ward was diagnosed with what the doctor called “a raging case of shingles” in her right eye.

“I was in so much pain, I literally prayed to die,” Ward said. “I literally prayed that the Lord would take me. I have never in my life known pain like that.”

Her case is unusual, as shingles generally affects the skin. Because of this, Ward went from doctor to doctor until a contagious disease doctor made the official diagnosis. By this point, her condition was into a stage where it was very difficult to diagnose.

“My first words were, ‘When can I go back to school?’” Ward said. “And [the doctor] looked at me with this look that was just so scary to me and he said, ‘You may not go back to school.’ And it just scared me to death. My heart just dropped right onto the floor.”

There is little that Ward can do to combat her illness. She spends all of her time at home and only leaves the house for doctors’ appointments.

“These are my directions,” Ward explained. “Stay as still as possible, stay as calm as possible, and don’t miss any dosages of the medicine. That’s all I can do.”

Ward must keep her right eye patched almost all the time. She can only uncover it for an hour a day and when she sleeps. During that hour, she generally spends her time watching the news or checking her email. Sometimes she will read but has taken a liking to audio books.

Ward has since reluctantly retired from her job teaching. She hadn’t planned to do so for at least another two years.

“My whole routine of life is gone as I knew it,” Ward said. “Teaching is not something that I do, it’s what I am. It’s my whole life.”

There is one thing in particular that Ward will miss the most about her career at Marcus.

“Students. Period. Big, huge exclamation point,” Ward said without hesitation. “I am a teacher who loves her students.”

Her classes have been taken over by two long-term subs since January.

“Bless their hearts, I didn’t get to meet my spring students,” Ward said wistfully. “I had been dreading telling my fall students goodbye. But that was all taken away from me, because I wasn‘t able to be there with them in the end.”

Senior Cassandra Lucio was a part of Ward’s fall class at the time of Ward’s thyroid surgery. This was Lucio’s second time being in one of Ward’s classes.

“I really liked having her as a teacher,” Lucio said. “I learned a lot from her. I had her for BCIS, so I learned about the Internet and computer programs, and I also learned a lot from her Money Matters class, too.”

In an attempt to help her finish out the year, many teachers have given up some of their local days, which are days that teachers have for family emergencies and personal reasons. Because she had to use her own local days for her thyroid surgery, Ward didn’t have any left. She describes her fellow teachers’ sacrifices as “the greatest gift a teacher can give.”

“I’m so eternally grateful,” Ward said. “I totally stand in awe of their generosity. Our faculty at Marcus is a family. They have wrapped their arms around me and taken shockingly great care of me.”

Many teachers, such as business teacher Janice Shuffield, keep up regular communication with Ward.

“We’ve gotten to know each other at a whole different level,” Shuffield said. “Our friendship has gotten really close. It’s a weird way for that to happen.”

Shuffield is one of several teachers who are habitually visiting Ward. She makes the effort to see Ward every weekend and regularly texts and emails with her. Ward said that she is eternally grateful for such care.

“I don’t think I could make it through without them,” Ward said. “It’s their strength and their friendship and the love for the Marcus family and my faith in the Lord that will see me through.”

She compares her retirement to a game of baseball, her favorite sport.

“In baseball, you have three strikes, and you’re out,” Ward said. “And when I was laying there day after day, week after week, it made me realize that the Lord had flown to my back three times this year, and I think He was trying to tell me something. That it was time to quit. That it was time for me to be home.”

Ward plans to return to Marcus as a substitute teacher once she is able. In addition to traveling to see her family, she also hopes to become more involved with her church, possibly teaching children’s Sunday school.

“She will be really, really missed,” Shuffield said. “She had a way about her teaching and her way of presentation. It was such a sweetness and a unique way. She put a lot of herself in our department and as a leader.”

Fort Worth Water Gardens – Located in the center of Fort Worth, this architecturally appealing park has three different pools:  quiet, active and aerating. These gardens are the perfect place for some great spring break photos with friends and a quiet place for a date night.

Aquarium and Legoland in Grapevine Mills mall – If you are looking to do something mindlessly fun over spring break, why not go to an aquarium close by? If you’re stuck babysitting over spring break, Grapevine’s somewhat new, contemporary aquarium and Legoland are a wonderful marine getaway.

Angelika Theatre in Plano – Venture outside of AMC and take on some independent and foreign films at the Angelika Theatre like The Artist. Take some friends and explore the shops surrounding the theatre as well, such as Urban Outfitters and restaurants. Plus, tickets are cheaper than those at the AMC.

Amon Carter Museum – If you’re stuck with the family during spring break, check out the free family fun week at the art museum in Fort Worth starting on March 13. Each day brings a new featured artist, artworks and activities.

Spring Break ‘til Midnight at the Nasher – On the night of March 16 until March 17, located at 2001 Flora St., spend a free night with family or friends in Dallas. Enjoy live music, a screening of the movie Hugo and free refreshments.

Would you be shocked to hear that the boys are turned into soldiers to kill civilians? Or would you be appalled at hearing that the girls are often turned into sex slaves? How would you react if I told you that this man would put a gun to these children’s heads in a heartbeat and tell them that they must kill their own mom and dad to live, what would you do? If I told you that this story is true, and has been true for nearly 30 years, what would you do about it?

The truth is, there is a man in this world who has been militarizing and prostituting young kids for nearly 30 years; his name Joseph Kony. Joseph Kony is a leader of a children’s guerilla war group in Uganda. This man claimed to have formed his group, the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) to promote his ideals of a government based on his own warped version of Christian rule.

What he has chosen to do instead is capture children, aged 13 – 18 and force them to serve for the LRA.  The group itself has no cause, mission, sanction, and no benefit to the African people. What Kony does instead, is use the LRA to spread destruction and chaos in as many as four African nations. This tyrannical movement results in the destruction of countless cities, the rape, robbery and murder of thousands of civilian lives, and the atrocious crime of abducting children and forcing them to kill.

Joseph Kony is an atrocious man who must be brought to justice. The problem is, up until recently, most people didn’t know he exists. I’m writing this to ask you to help change that. Invisible Children, an activist group, has launched a program called “Kony 2012” to help bring enough American attention to this man so that we as a nation get involved. If the public takes a big enough notice of Kony, then the government will take notice as well, and send their support to Uganda, to find Joseph Kony and bring him to justice.

What I’m asking you to do is simple: go to http://kony2012.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/, watch the video, it’s free, compelling, and will inspire you to get behind this movement. Then, click the link labeled “Get The Kit”. Get the posters, make this man infamous, and join me and countless others on April 20^th, where we will “Cover The Night” in Flower Mound to make Kony as infamous a name ad Castro or Hitler.

I realize that there has recently been some controversy over where the donations of this program go. The point of this movement is simply to bring Kony to the public eye. It doesn’t matter what group you act through. Join me, join thousands of others nation wide to end this man’s reign of terror in Uganda, and make this world a better place for all of us.

*Sophomore Michael Delgado is a guest columnist for The Marquee Online. If you would like to write a guest column for the online paper, drop by S107.