LOWER LAKE, Calif. – Hello, everyone, my name is Kristin Melcher I am the new writer for the Carlé Chronicle.

Friday, Dec. 18, marked the half way point of the school year. Carlé uniquely has six grading periods and the 18th was the end of our third.

Carlé has announced its gold and silver level students for the third grade period. Two students achieved gold status which goes at a pace quicker than the traditional high school. Congratulations go out to Maria Pineda and Kristen Melcher.

In addition, we had a lot of silver level students: Nicole Arlitt, Jason Arson, Nick Begins, Destiny Blevins, Emick Brown, Ali Burgos, Martin Ceja Granados, Eli Clark, Erik Fielden, Cain Hammond, Zack Humphrey, Brianna Legg, Sam Martinez, Robert McGraw, Elliott McKay, Riley Nielsen, Kedwin Russell, Candice Safreno, Daniel Salazar, Bessie Taylor and Isis Terrell. Great job, guys – keep it up.

During the the time the new writer came on Carlé announced four students of the week: Jason Arson, Kristin Melcher, Maria Pineda and this week’s Robert Chandler.

Recently, in Angie Siegel’s science class students have been working on a project that will ultimately be part of their portfolios. It is called “Environmental Detectives” and it is a problem solving unit. 

Students do a series of labs, and then intensive research into what is killing the fish in the imaginary Gray Bay. At the end of the unit student write and in depth paper on what is most responsible for the fish die off. Something like the algae bloom we researched actually happened in Clear lake.

This unit has all the common core elements and Carlé has been doing it long before the common core was adopted.

Carlé would like to thank Totes for Teens for donating clothes and holiday items for students even after everything they had went up in flames in the Valley fire. Their commitment to youth is so impressive and they serve as great role models to our students and community.

We would also like to give a big thank you to Dr. Barry Munitz for donating $5,000 to our school-based enterprise.

Dr. Munitz has donated $1,000 every year since 2005. He was the chair of the state’s P-16 council and met and formed a friendship with our teacher Alan Siegel who was a member of that committee. 

Dr. Munitz has generously paid for all of our handmade graduations plaques since 2005. This year he has actually donated so much more so we can help our students by giving many more unique opportunities for students to sit down with students and design and make rewards throughout the year.

Due to his generosity we created “sustainability awards” where students who hold or better their levels each grading period receive unique hand made and usable items very often using their own artwork.

A tribute to our students is that often when they win these awards they spend the time designing and giving them as presents to other family members.

Words cannot express how much we appreciate Dr. Munitz’s generosity. We have something else in mind, details in a later article.

We have two new birthday card makers and we want to thank Sam Miller and Destiny Blevins for creating so many one of a kind cards so every student is thought of.

Kristen Melcher is a student at Carlé Continuation High School in Lower Lake, Calif.