Assistant Principal Mr. Ken Siekman, who has worked at George Mason for ten years, is retiring at the end of this school year. Before working at GMHS, he worked in Indiana for 34 years as a counselor and building principal.

When asked how he decided to pursue the education field, he answered, “I guess I was one of those kids that loved high school. I was active... I was fortunate that most classes sort of came easy for me at the time, so I always thought that I would be a teacher.”

The best part of his job had been “the people. I think the thing that always gets me is at graduation, seeing kids and realizing, ‘Oh yeah, I remember you from four years ago and boy, have you grown up,’” calling the experience “touching.”

Siekman added that, “the hardest part has been when you’re in a situation where a student and his or her family don’t see eye to eye on what they should be doing... It’s hard to help.”

Additionally, what Siekman will miss most about his job is “definitely the people. I enjoy speaking to people in the hall, I love my Homeroom, the people that I work with everyday. We laugh a lot, we joke a lot. We have a great time. We work hard, but I enjoy the camaraderie, and I will miss the adults and the students.”

In his retirement, Siekman’s short-term plan includes going to the beach. He would also like to catch up on traveling with his wife, spend more time with his grandchildren, and take the car train to Florida, which he credits as one of his “secret, silly ambitions.”

Furthermore, he’d like his successor to know that he will be “stepping into an awesome position, just a fantastic community with great, great students and staff,” and he advises him to “take time to sit back for a while and learn who’s who and learn how things work… before trying to change much.”

He hopes to be remembered for promoting Challenge Day and always being “fair and honest and supportive.”

According to the Falls Church Episcopal website, there will be a service at the Historic Church to honor Jessie Thackrey, on Sunday, June 16, 2013 starting at 10:00 a.m.  After the service, she will be further celebrated with a pot-luck dinner, which will take place on the church grounds.  This event is open to the Falls Church community.

The following week, Thackrey will celebrate her 100^th birthday at Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School.   The party, which will be on Saturday, June 23, will take place between 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.

The determination of Thackrey and her late husband, Franklin, has left us with a school district that has lasted for over 60 years.

Any day now, billions of six-legged flying critters called cicadas will swarm the east coast, outnumbering humans roughly 600 to 1.   Expect the loud buzzing noise they make from as far south as North Carolina all the way up to Connecticut for about four to six weeks.

“I’m not very excited about the cicadas,” said Andrew Skomra.

A brood is a type of cicada. There are different broods that come out at different times in their lifetime.

This is brood-2 of the cicadas which means this group of cicadas haven’t been out since 1996. Brood-2 cicadas crawl out the ground every 17 years and only when the ground temperature reaches 64 degrees, which it almost is.

“Those annoying little guys are going to be all over,” said Wesley Coupard.

“Ew gross! Cicadas are nasty!” said Brian Connelly.

The Stuff-a-Truck project group has ended their donations period and collected the money to be sent to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey in Atlantic City to help Hurricane Sandy aftermath.

The Stuff-a-Truck project began when Spanish teacher Suzanne Planas suggested to a group of students that they should organize something in response to Hurricane Sandy.

“There are many responses to these communities right after disasters when the damage is most visible, but we may forget the long-term effects left in these communities,” Ronald Lapitan, a member of the group, said.

A group of students got together after school one day and called the Community Food Bank of New Jersey in Atlantic City to ask what they could do.

After speaking with the staff of the Food Bank, the students learned that the drop in tourism significantly hurt the area.

Not only were homes and businesses destroyed, but surviving businesses were also not getting enough tourists. This hurt many people, especially those who made money off of commission or tips such as waitresses.

Demand at the food bank was high, even for those whose homes were still standing.

“Our project was to gather a monetary donation from the school and community to send to the Food Bank to buy some of these supplies,” Lapitan said. “Our efforts to do so included a coin drive at school, connecting with local businesses and leaving change collectors, and an art sale during a Mustang Block.”

“What I take away from this project is that we tend to treat the symptoms of problems rather than the underlying structures that create conditions.” Lapitan continued, “We think of solutions in short-term responses like sending money to a food bank, rather than thinking in processes of how communities can become more sustainable.”

According to the Community Food Bank, 1.2 million people in New Jersey are food insecure. A high population influences this, causing a competition for jobs, a lowering of wages, and a rise of housing prices.

In addition, 45% of these resulting 1.2 million people don't qualify for government aid.

“There is more to be examined in the way we respond to each other in times of disaster, and I think that we should start shifting to this new paradigm of thinking of action in processes aimed at fostering the long-term conditions for supporting people into well-being. This subject engages us in bigger questions than our short-term project could suggest answers to,” said Lapitan.

Check out the video filmed and edited by FCCTV and Mr. Byrd's tweets from this year's GMHS Prom.

@MasonMustangs tweets from Prom

Click here to view more>>>

There are only about four more weeks of school, three of which are filled with standardized testing. Virginia SOL’s take up two of those weeks, from May 20 to May 31. The regular bell schedule will go on as scheduled for all days except the first Friday, May 24, which has a schedule change: block three, then block one, block seven, and block five.