by Archie Moses
(click images to enlarge)

It’s the start of November here at King George, brand new laptops have finally arrived, the animation and voiceacting club is gaining popularity, the student vote results are published, and there are some important dates to note down.

VANCOUVER’S NEW MAYOR WINS TWICE

Roughly a third of students cast their vote at KG’s mock municipal election this past month. Most votes came from social studies classes, where students had the opportunity to learn about political candidates and the parties in Vancouver. Many students who weren't taking socials voted at the advance pollings during lunch. These advanced polls were run by students in Ms. Preston’s socials class, who took time out of their lunch to volunteer. In the end, even students beyond these social studies classes helped count ballots after school.

**Social Studies Students Volunteering During Lunch Time** *(Archie Moses PHOTOS)*

Mayoral candidates got in total 195 votes during this election at KG, and the total number of votes cast (not ballots) was 1,914. Even with KG’s smaller number of students their voter turnout was much higher than some other schools. Vancouver Technical Secondary School has approximately 1,600 to 1,650 students and they had 191 votes cast for mayoral candidates, showing just how much KG cares about these elections.

Here are KG’s results:

Pete Fry, Green Party of Vancouver Society, 76 Votes (38.9 percent).
Rebecca Bligh, Vote Vancouver, 30 Votes (15.4 percent).
Ken Sim, ABC Vancouver, 28 Votes (14.4 percent).
Kareem Allam, Vancouver Liberal Electors Association, 27 Votes (13.8 percent).
Muhammad Ahmad, Bright Future Vancouver, 15 Votes (7.7 percent).
Colleen Hardwick, TEAM, 12 Votes (6.2 percent).
Scott Gilbert, Independent, 4 Votes (2.1 percent).
Amauri Caliman, Independent, 3 Votes (1.5 percent).

When electing Councillors, School Trustees, and Park Board Commissioners, KG students voted heavily for parties like Green, Cope, Vancouver Liberals, and One City. Interestingly, in most school’s student votes, Rebecca Bligh’s name came up quite a bit. With her name almost always in the top three names and on many occasions even surpassing the incumbent Ken Sim in votes. This landed her in third place in mayoral votes and fourth in total votes across all ballots.

For more in depth information about KG’s vote and the voting of other schools, consider checking out the Student Vote webpage, as all results for student votes are posted there after counting (see related links below).

The student vote reflected the actual vote the most in terms of the elected mayor, Pete Fry. While Pete Fry won both elections, he won with only 38.9% of the vote at KG, compared to 47.8 percent in the actual election.

During Fry’s victory speech, he mentioned something that interested me quite a bit: “I’ve been winning all these elementary school elections around the city,” he said, “and we showed up to Elsie Roy and the kids were so jazzed.”

This was extremely noticeable because most politicians don’t even mention the student vote at all. Especially since for many voters, the kids themselves are the reason they are trying to improve the city.

This is close to home for KG students, as many of their younger siblings go to Elsie Roy, as it is a feeder school, or they went there themselves. This acknowledgement means more to the students of all levels than the people in power know, because the kids feel that their votes and opinions matter, like someone hears them.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR!

Take out your pens folks! As November rolls around at KG, there are many early dismissals, days off, and school calendar events for this month.

On the 6th of November school ends at 1:45p.m., because it is an afternoon Collaborative Day. Meaning that during this time, teachers will meet up, discuss plans, and talk about what they can do to make the school a better place.
The 11th of November is Remembrance Day, so there will be no school. Students will also attend an assembly on another day and have two minutes of silence at 11:00 a.m.
Block rotation is taking place on the 16th of November. Students’ schedules will look slightly different. Their usual classes rotation (1,2,3,4) will instead be: 2,1,4,3, in that order.
The 20th has more than one event in store, as mid-term marks are being published on MyEd, and students will have the day off (Pro-D Day).
Student learning conferences will be hosted on the 26th. To accommodate this, school will end at 2:05pm. Parents can contact the school via the office and they will schedule conferences on your behalf.
School begins at 10:10am on November 27th, this is another Collab Day, but in the morning.

KG CLUB SPOTLIGHT
A New Animation Club Takes the Mic

Clubs are a key part of King George, especially since we don’t have as many students as other larger schools. If you have a closer look around KG, you’d find many students wishing to start their own club or having an idea for one, but not knowing what to do with it.

Because of this ongoing issue, I decided to talk with the founder of one of the newest promising clubs, Kirill Kuziukov, about his experiences making, planning, and designing his club, as to better understand the behind the scenes.

Here’s what he had to say:

Archie Moses: What first drew you to animation, and what’s something you want the readers to know about you?

Kirill Kuziukov: I am a TV person, but personally I have always found animated shows the most fascinating. Now, I finally took initiative and started this club

AM: What are some future projects you have planned, and that we can look forward to seeing?

KK: Right now the club is working on a relatively short film. Later on when we get more people, we’ll work on more challenging shows.

AM: What are important details about the club you’d want others to know?

KK: We welcome anyone with any skillset. From music, to animating, to voice acting. The only requirement is that you have proficiency in it.

AM: How did you start a club, and what advice would you have for students wanting to start their own?

KK: Honestly, I just handed in the club form and hoped for the best. In terms of advice I don’t really have any.

AM: What made you start this club in the first place?

**Animation and Voiceacting club’s first project ideas.**

KK: Personally, watching Alan Becker’s “Animator vs Animation,” and MORØ’s “Indie Cross” really inspired me to start this club.

AM: At the end of the year what would you like the club to have accomplished?

KK: I’d love to at least create a movie. Boom!

AM: Are you looking for new members and if so how can they get involved?

KK: If you wish to get involved, they can talk to Mr. Bredenkamp. Something I am considering though is that if this club becomes really successful, so successful that other schools will want to do something similar too, then I would like to try to make a multischool club.

MacBOOK NEOS AT KG

KG recently bought 30 Macbook Neos, an upgrade to one of the older laptop carts. For these newly released laptops, students use a sign up sheet to keep track of who is using them, and then login to the laptops like usual.

In past years, the laptops took a long time to load up, and these seem to be doing the trick, as they load up in under a minute almost every time. The Apple operating system also seems to be favourable among students, and aids them in getting work done faster.

“What’s your opinion about these new laptops?” I asked KG student Charlie Acknin, “The build quality is good but they still seem to run a bit slowly. I guess they are slightly faster to boot up, so we can get our work done on time.”

Overall, they seem like a hit among students and a way to be more productive this school year.

Thank you for reading, and have a great November KG!

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