The Railsplitter
News of the Students, by the Students, for the Students
Volume XCVII. Number 1 Abraham Lincoln High School
Block Scheduling Comes
to Lincoln High School
By Carlos Jose Machuca Rivera
Railsplitter Editor
September is the beginning of the end for most
students’ summers. For September is the start of a brand
new school year along with brand new changes. The
biggest change this year at Lincoln is the transition from
the traditional 6 classes a day to block scheduling.
Block scheduling is a type of academic scheduling
in which students have less classes per day but meet
for a longer period of time. For example last year each
class lasted 54-56 min but now each class is around 84
minutes. The benefit of this is students won’t have to
meet for all of their classes’ everyday.
Junior Ken Chhan stated, “Block scheduling is
actually pretty okay. It feels nice not having to attend a
boring class everyday.”
Block scheduling is a reform strategy to help
students who are academically behind. Teachers now
teach 6 periods a day including the new advisory/
homeroom period.
Many of the teachers I interviewed said that
block scheduling was horrible, that they missed not
seeing their students everyday, and that when they did
see them, it felt rushed. The rest of the teachers simply
replied with “no comment.”
Block scheduling affected everyone on campus.
Teachers had to completely change the way they teach,
and students had to keep up with all the new changes
going on.
Despite all of these changes imposed by block
scheduling many students are more optimistic. I asked
a couple of students what they thought of the block
scheduling so far.
Junior Julie Xiao said, “I like it; it makes the
day feel shorter.”
Senior Ignacio Pedraza said, “It’s actually
awesome but can be confusing at times.”
Block scheduling attempts to raise test scores by
allowing larger blocks of time, for a more flexible and
productive classroom environment, along with more
opportunities for using varied and interactive teaching
methods.
A problem with block scheduling is simply
that there is too much class time. The average student
can only concentrate for 50 minutes, any more than
that and students begin to loose focus and are more
easily distracted. The only real way to determine the
effectiveness of block scheduling is by seeing the results
come May in the forms of CST and AP exams.
Los Angeles, California October 2010
Tigers Donate Blood
Everyone who donated blood received this free T-shirt.
By Sandy Wang
Railsplitter Staff Writer
On Friday, September 24, 2010, Lincoln High School’s
students donated pint after pint of blood to a worthy cause.
This blood drive took place in Lincoln’s cafeteria. This was
Lincoln’s first blood drive of the year and was packed full
of nurses and phlebotomist ready to assist students through
the blood donating process. Lincoln’s very own leadership
group was also there to help.
The purpose of these blood drives is to collect blood
to help treat cancer patients, newborn babies, children with
leukemia, and so on.
The requirements to donate blood are that you have to be at
least 16 years old and have parent consent, weigh at least 110
lbs., never have had any type of disease or health problems,
hadn’t received or donated blood recently, and a photo ID for
each donation. The whole process itself is very safe. Some
side effects may include lightheadedness, fatigue, and lack
of energy. Some may even faint due to lack of food or too
much blood loss. To ensure your safety all the USC nurses
perform a light check up. They take a small amount of your
blood, measure your heart pulse, check your blood pressure,
and ask some basic FAQ regarding your overall health. After
giving blood, the nurses make sure you are healthy enough
to go back to class or they’ll let you rest in the cafeteria until
you feel better.
Senior Xiao Kuang said “I donated because I
wanted to save lives, and the t-shirt is a plus!” As a follow
up question I asked her if she would donate blood again. “I
would totally donate again,” said Xiao. Many might wonder
what whole process feels like. I asked Senior Christopher
Diec what it was like lying on the cot? He said, “The feeling
for me wasn’t that bad. I wasn’t scared because I had a certain
friend there that made me laugh. I was relaxed and cool.”
I interviewed other students why they chose not to donate
blood. Many of these students had the same response Junior
Kelly Tang had, “I’m scared of needles!”
All in all Lincoln’s first blood drive of the year was
successful, and as always the T-shirts helped to persuade
many students to donate to a great cause.
 Seniors Infected with Seniorities! New School Year
By Johnson Gong
Railsplitter Editor New Sports Season
Senioritis: an ebbing of motivation and effort by By Jason Shang
school seniors as evidenced by tardiness, absences, Railsplitter Sports Editor
and lower grades
Back down to Earth and back to school,
“senioritis.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2010 Lincoln students are back focusing on learning
http://www.merriam-webster.com (18 September 2010)
new subjects for new opportunities in life. But
Senioritis is often known as the most serious on the sweating faces of Lincoln student-athletes
disease seniors can contract. This disease most often you also see the look of determination as they
occurs after seniors apply to colleges and finish battle to end this season with a winning record.
what they need to do to look good to the colleges. Even before the start of summer, many
During the time span from college acceptance to students had already begun showing their dedication
graduation day, seniors tend to doze off into la-la land and passion to their sport as practice shaped these
because they know they have been accepted to a college. students many months in advance. And throughout
Little do seniors know, if their progress report grades go the summer, practice had kept these student-athletes
down the drain, so does their acceptance to the college. from wandering away from the expectations the sport
Seniors are often told by other constantly asks of them. So, now that sports season has
misinformed seniors that most colleges, except begun and some are right around the corner, students
various private colleges, don’t look at a senior’s are not only focused on schoowork but are also focused
classes or grades. Depending on what grades they on working hard during practice to win their games.
get their senior year, they could be accepted by all The new school year divides sport seasons into
of their college choices, but their acceptances could three categories: fall, winter, and spring. The fall sports
also equally be revoked as soon as a poor G.P.A. consists of cross country, girls volleyball, and boys
report gets placed on the acceptance official’s lap. football; the winter sports consists of boys and girls
As an end note, if you have senioritis, don’t basketball and boys and girls soccer; and spring consists
feel bad! Ask your teachers whether or not they had of boys volleyball, baseball, softball, and track and field.
senioritis when they were in high school. If you still Practicing since the summer began and already
feel bad, know that many famous figures could have beginning the season, student-athletes in the
possibly been affected by senioritis: Barack Obama, fall sports have had their sedulousness (an SAT
Albert Einstein, and Sir Isaac Newton to name a few. vocabulary word) pay off, winning most of their
games so far. The varsity football team has gone
without a loss, and the girls varsity volleyball team
The Downside to Eating has been strong winning a majority of their games.
As the fall sports teams continue
Too Much Lunch their season, winter sports teams continue to
practice in hopes of having a successful season.
By Michael To, Railsplitter Editor
As we get deeper into the school year, we see changes everywhere you go. But one notable
change this year is that everyone gets free lunch. Now it may seem all is nice and fine, but not
everything is as dandy and sweet as it seems. Even though the student body has been split in
half thanks to the advisory period, there seems to be the same number of people getting lunches
as last year. Somehow I seem to be waiting the same amount of time to get my lunch! Granted
there are the ditchers, who choose to skip advisory, but when somebody gets their lunch two
or even sometimes three times before I do, I definitely know something’s wrong. Just seeing
the same people slide their way back in the line over and over just makes me want to get the
nasty dried up rice and chicken. Sometimes I would like to just get the milk and forget about
lunch, but I can’t even do that since I need to get three items or else I’d get charged!
Eating lunch twice may not be a problem once in awhile, but doing that everyday is asking
for trouble, especially for the seniors and juniors who aren’t taking PE. Eating two burritos
with mountains of taco sauce and a side of nachos to wash it down will lead to a shortage of
toilet paper in the near future. In the end students are still going to get more lunch than they
should and pants sizes are going to keep growing like Justin Beiber fans and students are going
to need to start stitching two pairs of wranglers together. Fair warning has been given to all!