TheD E T R O I T C O U N T R Y D A Y S C H O O L

DCDS welcomes three new faculty to Upper School family 22305 West Thir teen M i le Bever ly H i l l s , MI 48025 Issue Number 7 September 2013 Volume LXXX

Day Times

Wave goodbye to the days of waking up past two in the after-noon; to lounging around your kitchen while watching Netflix for hours at a time; and most importantly, to doing absolutely nothing productive (except for choreographing major song and dance num-bers to “We Can’t Stop” by our girl, Miley Cyrus. Hey, we’ve all been there, right?). Summer has gone by in the blink of an eye, and although sulking the next few months away may be the most appealing option, studies have shown that it may in fact not be the most effective (shocking). No mat-ter what grade you are entering, the transition from summer vacation to school is never easy, but the first step to having a successful

school year is starting the day off with a posi-tive attitude. For example, when you roll over in bed to chuck your alarm clock out the win-dow, do it with a smile. Furthermore, if your teacher hands you a worksheet that seems impossible to comprehend, at least thank him or her for creating it before politely throwing it into the trash (kidding). The best way to make sure your morning is filled with laughter instead of tears is to create a playlist that will pump you up for your car ride to school. If you begin to panic because you find yourself unable to think of which songs to choose, have no fear. Below is a playlist filled with back to school classics. After listening to these songs, you will temporarily forget about the fact that you are waking up at 6:30 A.M. on a Friday. Enjoy!

by Abigail JackmanOnline Editor

Tune in: music for the A.M.

Traditionally, DCDS has been known as “laptop school.” However, starting this year, that definition might be too narrow. The new Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative will give students the freedom to use a wider variety of machines, including tablets and smartphones. The BYOD pro-gram will also give members of the DCDS community easier access to the software they need for classes. The DCDS technology com-mittee sought to develop a system that would be efficient, cost effec-tive, flexible, and easily accessible to students and faculty. They agreed upon the idea of a virtual desktop, which allows any device that can access the Internet (including tablets and smartphones) to have the full func-tionality of a PC. "I think that it is great that we're no longer restricted to laptops," senior Akash Rachmale said. "Ever since freshman year, I've wanted to bring my iPad to school, and now I can." Students can either bring their com-patible device to the Helpdesk for configura-tion or install the virtual desktop application themselves using instructions avail-able on the school website. When students and faculty log into the system, they are given full access to a variety of programs, in-cluding the full Microsoft Office suite. Therefore, if a student purchases a new laptop or tablet, he or she doesn’t need to install any programs directly onto it. Additionally, any device with ac-cess to the virtual desktop will now be able

to print directly from the school printers. Previously, students with Macintosh laptops or computers not configured by the Helpdesk were unable to connect to the printers. However, most students aren’t yet ready to give up their laptops. “Typing on a tablet or phone is in-credibly inconvenient compared to just using a laptop, and everything else we would want to do, such as checking grades and using the Internet, can already be done without this new virtual desktop,” senior Brian Xu said. Even so, there are many who will

take advantage of BYOD to enhance both their academic and extracurricular experiences at DCDS. “I will be us-ing an iPad next year for multiple reasons.”

junior Mohib Siddiqui said. “It’s lighter to carry than a bulky laptop,

which ultimately lightens the daily load to school; it

runs almost as great as a laptop; and it’s much more portable.” For families wondering which devices will be most compatible with the virtual system, the Helpdesk has suggested a few options: the HP ProBook, HP Elite-Book Foilo, HP Envy Pro, HP Pavilion

Chromebook, and HP Elite. Students can purchase care packages with their laptops or tablets to insure damages. It will surely take some time for the DCDS com-munity to adjust to the Bring Your Own Device initiative and virtual desktop, but the school’s

administration and technol-ogy committee hope the

improvements will provide a more wholesome educational

experience for students and faculty alike.

BraveSara Barelleis Zombie

The Cranberries

Wrecking BallMiley Cyrus

Figure 8Ellie Goulding

You Make My Dreams Come true

Hall & Oates

ApplauseLady Gaga

“I feel privileged to work at such an exceptional independent school with a rich tradition of excellence in all areas of student life,” Mr. Cappelletti said.

Mr. Cappelletti, bringing 11 years of educational experience to DCDS, will be teaching freshman level Litera-ture, Speech, and Composition and the junior level class, The American Dream in 20th Century Literature. He will also be serving as head coach of the Men’s Varsity lacrosse team for the upcoming spring season. He attended Denison Univer-sity in Granville Ohio, where he played lacrosse, earned a Bachelor’s of Arts degree. After graduating from Denison, he earned his secondary English and Education degree at North Carolina State University. Cappelletti went on to serve as an assistant coach for several schools in North Carolina and help lead the East Chapel Hill High School lacrosse team to a state title. He then became an assistant coach and teacher at LaSalle Academy in Rhode Island for a year before being named head coach at Rocky Hill School, where he taught for the past two years. Cappelletti is certainly at the right school, and DCDS is very happy to have him.

“I am excited to be a Yellow Jacket, and I look forward to becoming the best teacher and coach I can be,” Mr. Bray said.

Mr. Mark Bray, who has nine years of teach-ing experience and 13 years of coaching experience, will be teaching freshman Ancient and non-Western World History and senior U.S. Government. He will also succeed beloved coach Kurt Keener as head of the Men’s Varsity basketball team. Mr. Bray graduated from Hope College with a degree in political science and a double major in history. He initially planned to attend law school but then realized his passion lay in teaching and coaching. So Mr. Bray decided to attend Wayne State University, where he earned his Master’s in kinesiology. He has taught at various schools in Macomb County and has coached at Bluffton Univer-sity in Ohio. Hopefully, Mr. Bray can lead his students to success in the classroom and his players to victory on the court for many years at DCDS.

“I'm nervous because I have never been outside of Virginia this long before and do not know much about private schools. But I'm super excited about teaching in a school like Country Day because I have heard amazing things about the place,” Mr. Yang said.

Mr. Andrew Yang recently graduated from the University of Virginia, where he studied math and education. After graduating, he worked at a tutoring institution called Georgetown Learning Center. There, as Associate Director, he prepared lesson plans for math topics ranging from arithmetic to higher level calculus. After working at the institution for a year and taking classes on weekends to receive teaching certification, he was hired to teach math and coach Women's tennis at Monticello High School in Virginia. Mr. Yang has lived in Virginia for most of his life and only moved to Michi-gan about two months ago. He will be teaching Algebra II, Pre-Calculus, and Statistics. Mr. Yang, teaching out of math department chair Mr. John Williams' former classroom, has big shoes to fill. But if his credentials accurately indicate his merit, he is sure to become a respected teacher at DCDS.

by Saher SiddiquiLayout Editor

by Lakshmi GuduguntlaContent Editor

Courtesy of Apple Inc

DCDS introduces new Bring Your Own Device Initiative

MR. MARK BRAY

Courtesy of Ali Hakim

MR. ANDREW YANGMR. MICHAEL CAPPELLETTI

Courtesy of Christa Felton

BACK TO SCHOOL ISSUE2 The Day Times

Upper School administration adjusts student dress code

DCDS Varsity football kicks off season with high expectations

Fall has just begun, and that can only mean one thing – it’s football season. The DCDS Varsity football team is working hard and expecting great things this year. After being just one win away from the State Championship title last year, the team is ready to come back stronger than ever. Senior captains Derrick Coleman, Danny Pohl, Tyler Weigers, and Richard Wilson are excited about leading the team to a victory at Ford Field. “I’m super excited for this season,” Wiegers said. “We have a lot of talent and we’re all looking forward to a great season with some very good opponents throughout.”The team has been training and working hard all summer, and some of the most ambitious players have been in the weight room since last winter. During the month of August, they all traveled up to northern Michigan for the infa-mous Camp Happy. Camp is the kick-off to the season: it’s four days of intense practice, and according to the captains, this year’s trip was highly productive. The first day of prac-tice with pads is the day immediately follow-ing Camp Happy.

With three seniors already commit-ted to Division I colleges, there is significant upperclassmen talent and leader-ship. Quarterback Wiegers has committed to Rutgers University in New Jersey. “I’m very happy with my college decision to play at Rutgers,” Wiegers said. “There’s huge opportunity and great coaching there.” Running back Richard Wilson will continue his football career at Boston College. “I’m definitely looking forward to being an Eagle next year,” Wilson said. “I’m blessed to have an opportunity like this, and I can’t wait for what the future has in store.” Wide receiver Maurice Ways has committed to play at the University of Michigan. “Playing at U of M will be an amazing experience,” Ways said. “I’m definitely excited for Big Ten competi-tion, and I’m up for the challenge.”

The players say the recruiting process is stressful, but all three are very excited about their decisions and the athletic opportunities that await them after their time at DCDS.

The team suffered a loss in its first game last week against Zeeland West High School, but the captains are maintaining their high expectations. “We plan to make it back to the state championship; nothing less,” Coleman said.

by Madeline Weiner Managing Editor

September: a month marked by change for DCDS students. Summer is shift-ing toward autumn, and long weekends up north are becoming sleepless nights spent on procrastinated essays. However, the most vis-ible adjustments the DCDS student body will have to make this fall regard decisions made by the Upper School administration about dress code. The good: DCDS monogrammed shirts and pants are no longer required. Students can finally buy shirts and slacks from somewhere other than the Hive. This change will make Upper School students look sharper than ever before. Frankly, the clothing from Land’s End (the school’s new uniform supplier) doesn’t mea-sure up in either quality or design to similarly-priced options available at department stores and boutiques. Moreover, faculty and administra-tion weren’t able to enforce the requirement of monogrammed uniforms when it existed. Many students regularly wore non-DCDS slacks to school last year, but repercussions for this violation were rare. Now the bad: blazers are still required five days a week for boys. Students issued a proposal to the Upper School admin-istration last year to remove the requirement, and many students were treating the potential revision like a forgone conclusion. Therefore,

Mr. Bearden’s July email announcing more of the same was a letdown. Blazers are undoubtedly a strong tradition at DCDS, so it's unrealistic to think that they would be removed from the daily dress code. However, one major issue with the navy blue jackets still persists: students wear them as little as possible. The only times when blazers are actually required are in the hall-ways and in the lunch line. It seems excessive to spend more than a hundred dollars on a piece of clothing that one can only wear at school and hardly ever even puts on there. The best solution would be to adopt a blazer without the school crest, which could therefore be worn any-where. Then, students would probably have less about which to complain. And finally, the plainly unneces-sary: DCDS has a new official tie. The new tie features thicker gold stripes and a wider body than its predecessor. Some people will prefer the tradi-tional tie while many others will welcome the new installation to the DCDS uniform. In either case, however, there was nothing wrong with the old tie that would warrant replace-ment. The change seems needless at best. But whether the decisions made by the Upper School administration in regards to dress code are good or bad, students will have to live with them for at least the next year.

An Op-Ed by Ali HakimEditor-in-Chief

The Day Times reviews the best and worst films of the summer

The latest installment of the Star Trek series, directed by J.J. Abrams, is a sequel to the 2009 revival of the classic science fiction films. In the movie, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and the rest of the crew from the U.S.S. Enterprise are sent to capture terrorist John Harrison, a former Starfleet member. The movie was a stunning

commercial success, grossing more than $458 million worldwide. What makes Into Darkness stand out from the older Star Trek films is the intri-cate and dramatic comedy between the characters. Abrams keeps the drama in perfect balance with intense action. If you missed this flick in the theaters, be sure to check it out on DVD.

The zombie thriller World War Z is an apocalyptic film directed by Marc Foster with a cast led by Brad Pitt. Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a former United Nation investigator who is assigned to travel around the world to find a cure for a horrific zombie pandemic. In addition to Pitt’s predictably solid performance, the movie offers a refreshing change

from the traditional horror flick with its fast-moving plot and cohesive, large-scale production. Also, for the first time, the zombie movie delves into something deeper than a raw sense of fear; it explores how humans interact with duty, self-sacrifice, and the unexplainable. As many critics have said, it’s a real movie before it’s a zombie movie.

White House Down, directed by Roland Emmerich, attracted an audi-ence eager to see the federal government survive its greatest threat – a direct attack on the president's home. The movie welcomes Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx to play the starring roles, but their good looks aren't enough to keep the film from plummeting. The movie fails mainly because it lacks a specific target audience and doesn't

devote enough money to production. To be fair, the movie's weak opening weekend was in part due to the release of Olympus Has Fallen less than a week earlier. The two movies share similar plots, but obviously Olympus simply did a better job telling the story. The Media Research Center also critiques that the picture doesn’t bring itself to acknowl-edge America’s real enemies. Instead it creates a “fictional monster."

Will Smith’s latest post-apocalyptic film, After Earth, was highly anticipated by casual fans and movie buffs alike before its early sum-mer release. But pulling in only $70 million at the domestic box office, the film had trouble turning a profit with its $130 million budget. Director M. Night Shyamalan puts excessive effort

into production design and overbear-ing music but seemingly little work into the actual dialogue and plot devel-opment. Indeed, the film is visually striking, but the cliché father-son con-versations are repetitive and broken, with obvious awkward silences. USA Today deemed the letdown of a movie a “lethargic slog.”

by Peggy YuOpinion Editor

"Don't think about coming in the commons room if you're an underclassman"

-Aaron Roberson

"287 days until graduation"-Malcolm Jones

"Try to introduceyourself to your classmates -- it will

make things less

awkward"

-Nadine Tayeb

"Try as many new things as possible: it will make your high school experience worthwhile"-Danny Pohl

"Support all DCDS

teams! You never know

you might be Fan of the

Week" #GOBLUE

-Lauren Neibauer

"Work hard play hard"-Keeyan Sanjasaz

"Fastbreaks is closed

on Fridays after lunch"

- Akash Rachmale

Tips from upperclassman

on surviving high school

Courtesy of Moviefone.com

Courtesy of Akamai.net Courtesy of Darrell Davison

TYLER WIEGERS AVOIDS defenders to make a big play.

Courtesy of Colourbox.com