By Conor Baron
Mashpee Middle High School is right now in the midst of a major transition as the hybrid schedule used so far this year will come to a close and most students will return to school full-time. This change is particularly big for this year's seniors, who are now in their final months of high school.

Grade 12 students made the schedule change starting on April 5, while other grades will return gradually during the weeks immediately before and after April vacation. About a quarter of the class of 2021 will remain fully remote, according to information shared by Superintendent DeBoer in one of her weekly updates at the end of March.

For the students who started back in school, it has been a mix of emotions but they have  a positive outlook. For the seniors, their first day back had very similar observations.

Senior Steven Theodorides said, “It was strange seeing most of the people in my grade back but it makes me happy to be all reunited as a grade again.”

Interview by Ava DeSimone
The Falconer: What has been your favorite thing about working at Mashpee High School?
Ms. Kelly: My favorite thing about working at Mashpee High School would be you guys, the kids. You’re the best part of my day. I always love to talk to you guys and hear your stories and just hear your insights on the books we’re reading and what we’re discussing in class. So by far my favorite part is working with you guys.

The Falconer: Has there ever been a time when you got home from work one day, and thought “I wish I hadn’t become a teacher?” If so, what was the occasion?
Ms. Kelly: No, I think you have bad days in every job, but no, there’s never been a specific day where I’ve gotten home and thought that I didn’t want to be a teacher. I think some days are more stressful than others, but pretty much every day, even on a hard day, the good outweighs the bad.

Interview by Sadie Biehl
Mrs. Wang is the Mandarin teacher here at MMHS and this is her third year teaching in Mashpee. The Falconer wanted to sit down with her to explore how teaching has changed since the pandemic. We also learn more about who she is outside of school.

The Falconer: Can you tell me about where you grew up in China?
Ms. Wang: I grew up in Beijing, China. I was born in Beijing and was there until I turned 24.

The Falconer: What inspired you to move to the United States?
Ms. Wang: Nothing, it was because my husband wanted to come to the United States to finish his PHD. The United States has the best university, also research and the best professor. So this is why my husband wanted to continue his education and find this famous professor to get his PHD. So this is why I followed him and came over, by that time I had no plan and I just followed him.

The Falconer: ​Do you still have family in China?
Ms. Wang: ​Yes, my old family, my parents, relatives, my husband's family. They are all in China.

Interview by Maile Biehl
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The Falconer: What have your feelings been like throughout the Covid-19 pandemic?
Mrs. O’Connor: Like everybody, when it first started, it was very overwhelming and from the perspective of a nurse and having experience with public health and communicable disease, it was scary for me because I was thinking about what it may imply and impose on the community. I think it went from overwhelming to a little scary, for everybody. There was a lot of uncertainty. I think whenever we feel uncertain about a situation, we feel a little anxious about what it will mean for all of us.  

The Falconer: How have you been coping with the changes this pandemic has caused?
Mrs. O’Connor: When I think of coping, I think of coping strategies, so for me personally, it's been really important to keep connected with my friends by phone and the internet and staying as connected as I can to my family. My children live far away and I haven't seen one of my daughters in over a year or my grandchildren so I've been trying to keep as connected as I can through those means. I also cope by getting outside, getting some fresh air and exercise. I love to hike and I love to bike. In the summer it was nice because you could do that a little easier than you can now, but even now, I think it's important to get out and spend some time in nature. That's been my coping strategy throughout my adult life, to get out into nature. Those are the things I've done to be more physically healthy and to feel more settled emotionally.

Interview by Alyson Lihzis
These unprecedented times have affected almost every aspect of a student's life, but one of the most significant areas for seniors is the college admissions process. Many of the traditional steps, including standardized testing, are being reformed in order to aid students without access due to the pandemic.

These changes pose notable affects of which students must be aware, so Ms. Kett, director of guidance and college and career readiness, is here to provide answers to frequently asked questions regarding the alterations of college applications.

The Falconer: What measures do you think universities around the country are taking in order to ease the application process for the Class of 2021?
Ms. Kett: So, probably the biggest and most obvious is that pretty much all schools are going test optional, meaning that they're not requiring the SAT or ACT for criteria for admission. Students can still send them, if they took the exams. However, it is not part of the eligibility criteria to actually apply.
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So what's happening is you're seeing it working both ways, some students who wouldn't normally apply to a specific school because they don't meet the SAT criteria are applying now, because they meet the GPA criteria. For example, a school like Boston University got an exceptional amount of applicants, because that SAT criteria has been waived at this point, so more students felt that they were eligible to apply.

By Francesca Toews
Mashpee Middle High School held its much anticipated Science and Engineering Fair awards ceremony over zoom, on friday. With Mr. Hoppensteadt and Mrs. Soares making the fair a reality amidst these discomforting times, Mrs. Soares acting as the Science Fair Advisor and Mr. Hoppensteadt Coordinator, the students and teachers involved have had to face many new challenges this year. 

This year, out of twenty-six entries, two groups took first place with one being “Light Propagation: Particle Wave Duality” by Nathan and Sean Ware, and the other “How Does the Appearance of Food Affect People's Perception of It?” by Samantha Kersey, Colin Spencer, and Owen Balfour. 

Interview by Jonah Erdman
The Falconer interviewed Phil Poinelli, the project architect behind the design of Mashpee Middle High School and an architect involved in the design of around 100 other schools. 
Mr. Poinelli's answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The Falconer: Could you talk about your background as an architect and who you are?
PP: My name is Phil Poinelli, I am an architect and I am also an educational planner. The architect came first and I have been practicing architecture since I graduated from Wentworth in 1971 and I have been designing schools since then. Probably six months out of college I got my first job with Pierce and Pierce which became Pierce, Pierce, and Kramer. I eventually went on to become a partner there in the 80s and I have been designing schools ever since. In June it will be 50 years that I have been doing this. I love it. I'd say that in the 50 years, probably 80% of the work that I have designed has been schools, primarily public schools. In 1991 my one remaining partner and I merged our firm, Pierce, Pierce, and Kramer, with SMMA, at the time it was Symmes Maini & McKee Associates, now we are branded as SMMA. We brought our school practice and experience to SMMA, who had never done a school before, and created a K12 practice group here. Now about half of the firm is currently doing public schools and that is a firm of over 200 people. It has been a very successful practice doing public schools.

I say that I never get tired of them because they are all different. Every single one is unique to the community within which it belongs and serves and what's interesting is that it has one of so many different types of spaces in the building. Think of a restaurant, it has a restaurant in terms of the cafeteria, it has sports facilities, a health suite, shops of all sorts, classrooms. About 15 years ago I really focused my efforts on educational planning which is the development of ideas and interviewing clients and really understanding communities and helping to determine what is best for that community and then it gets turned over to designers and other architects in the firm for execution. What this has allowed me to do is to do what I'm most interested in and I'm able to do what I want and only what I want which is nice *laugh*. But it also allows me to influence virtually all of the school projects in the office and at any given time we have 7 to 10 projects going on. So I have the ability to imprint on each of those in some way and as part of becoming an educational planner I have got deeply involved in the understanding of how education takes place and have done a lot of reading and research around how to take what scientists have learned about the brain and how the brain works and how you and I and everyone around us all learn differently and how that can take physical form.

By Abigail McGrory 
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Due to COVID-19, many people’s lives have been turned upside down, or at least changed in some way, shape or form. But how are the high school students whose education has been affected by the virus managing all of this change? To find out just that, I sat down with hybrid learner Evelyn Provencher, a junior, and with 100% full remote learner Jenna Thompson, also a junior, to find out what they have to say about how the school year is going for them, and how their experiences differ due to their opposing situations: half remote and half in school, versus just full remote. 

Interview Subject 1: Evelyn Provencher, Hybrid Learner 
The Falconer: Good afternoon Evy, how are you doing today?
Evelyn: Hello Abigail, I am great, thank you!

Falconer: I’m just going to ask you a few questions about hybrid vs. remote learning. Alright, so my first question is: how are your grades this year?
Evelyn: I feel like my grades this year are pretty good, they are kind of similar, some of them are worse than last year, but overall, I would say that they are pretty much the same.

Falconer: So you feel that your grades have relatively stayed the same as opposed to when school was normal?
Evelyn: I would say, on average, yeah.

Interview by Francesca Toews

The Falconer was able to interview a younger, fully remote Mashpee student in order to understand the struggles of being a second grader amidst a pandemic. Before becoming a fully remote student, this seven year old loved wearing flashy clothing to school and having playdates with her friends, although recently she has had to resort to Zoom calls instead. But despite missing her friends, she has found other ways of amusing herself such as playing with her brother’s cat, Squawky, and has grown closer to her family more than ever. 

Q: How has remote school been?
A: It’s been nice and not nice, because in school you can do stuff you don’t do in real school, like you can wear your pajamas to school and slippers. You don’t have to wear shoes. It’s been nice remote schooling, but it’s still not nice because I miss my friends at school. 

Q: What has been your favorite thing about remote school?
A: The breaks between classes

Q: What has been your least favorite thing about remote school?
A: My least favorite thing is when Squawky [the household cat] goes on my lap when I’m trying to do work.

By Maile Biehl
As the 2020-2021 school year rolls around, schools are facing many difficult adjustments. Mashpee Middle High School (MMHS) rewrote the schedule for students to follow in order to best follow COVID-19 guidelines. It has been an adjustment for students and staff alike as a big change has been made.

Notably, one of the biggest changes has been a shift from 50 minute classes to 85 minute classes. In order for MMHS to fit 85-minute classes into its schedule, they shifted to two days known as A and B days compared to the seven-day rotation in previous years. Each day this year consists of four class periods all spanning 85 minutes in order to lower the amount of classrooms and interactions students and staff have. Each A day has periods 1-4 and each B day has period 5-8.

Another major change that has taken place this school year was the introduction of a directed study period for every student that takes place during period 8. In previous years, only certain students would get a directed study period, and this only happened if the student was not enrolled in a class that period. This most frequently happened to students in grades 11 and 12.

The Falconer spoke to a few staff and students to get their opinions and feelings on the new class schedule.