An Octorara Exchange Student Shares Her Views of America and Americans

By Magdalena Stuehrmann

This year, Octorara Area High School had a very special guest. Eleonora Avramova was a foreign exchange student from Bulgaria who attended Octorara as an eleventh grader. 

She greatly enjoyed her time at Octorara and, though she is happy to be back home in Bulgaria this summer, she misses being a part of our community as well. 

Miss Avramova shone this year at Octorara, making acquaintances and friends quickly, and adding a touch of exotic optimism and personality to the junior class. Miss Avramova says that she enjoyed school the most out of all her experiences here. 

About Octorara, Miss Avramova said, “I think there is something really special about that place, that I am so happy I was part of.” 

She was a little surprised by the formalities of American manners at first, but quickly adjusted those around her to her more informal ways. She loved living with her host family and attending school, especially her Philosophy class, taught by Mr. Mundy and Mr. Udell at Octorara. She credits this class, the students, and the teachers especially, with making her “grow up and set [her] beliefs and opinions.” 

About the community and her fellow students, Miss Avramova stated that she had “never met nicer and better-hearted people in the whole world, and I have been to [many] places.” She was very enthusiastic about the way that her teachers and fellow students pushed her into the Octorara society, wanting her “to be involved and active,” which helped her experience even more during her time here. 

Though Miss Avramova was very reluctant to leave our community, she commented that, after seeing her family, the one thing that she really looked forward to about being at home was eating Bulgarian food again – Octorara cafeteria food certainly can’t compare! 

Miss Avramova was a wonderful addition to our community and we will miss her as much as she misses us. We all wish her the best of luck and hope that she can visit us again soon.

Bulgaria and America, an Observation of a Teenager

By Eleonora Avramova

When I first came here, everybody was asking: "So what do Bulgarians think about America?" and obviously our little country knows as little about U.S.A. as U.S.A. knows about us. 

Bulgarians kept saying - "Americans? - Dumb and fat." But really, how many American people do a person from Bulgaria know? The truth is, there are people in this big country that are stupid, the overweight ones could also be seen, but an American stands for much more than just the popular stereotype. 

Americans are intelligent, funny and extremely polite. They don't know much about Bulgaria, but the little they do know is usually positive. In fact, Americans do not know much about most countries, but they don't care. 

Don't get me wrong, that is not a bad thing. These people actually came closer to overpowering their stereotypical thinking than any other nation. They do not care about what the origin of someone is, they care about that someone - about his opinions and interests. 

Americans don't care about where someone came from, they care about where that someone is going.

To some extent Bulgarians probably cannot understand that. I, myself, cannot understand the concept of forgetting the past and think about only the future. But that is how we are taught - how great Bulgaria was and what people DID before. How about the present? Who does anything for us now? Who should be proud of? Our politicians? Doubt that. 

Actually, pardon me, the question "who does anything for us now?" is invalid. The real problem lies on this question: "What did you do for Bulgaria?" Nothing. Our great past doesn't mean anything since we are staining it, allowing our country to be the way it is.

I am not saying Americans are perfect. Nobody is. Some of them are way too religious, some of them way too ignorant, but they know what they are doing and why they are doing it. 

They always try to improve themselves as humans, while we are proud of our flaws. Americans know what they want and find a way to achieve it. The American Dream doesn't stand for living the perfect life, it stands for putting effort into living the perfect life.

There isn't anything impossible here in the USA.  We Bulgarians, on the other side know that nothing is possible for us. We are so used to live in this tragedy, be victims of government that we accepted it as a given fact. There is a reason why open-mindedness does not exist as a word in Bulgarian.

An American once said: "I have a dream." He dreamt of equality and sooner or later after his effort his dream came true. Now a Bulgarian is saying: "I have a dream." I am going to put effort in, see what happens...

Teenage Accidents, Not Their Fault?

Last week, when four Coatesville teenagers were killed in a tragic automobile accident, I asked recent Octorara grad Maggie Stuehrmanm to research why so many deadly auto accidents seem to involve 16 and 17 years old kids and what, if anything, parents and the community could do to protect teenage drivers.

After a lot of research and rewrites, her thoughtful answer is below.

Money quote from Maggie's article:

There are few solutions short of raising the driving age to 25 that would alleviate this problem. However, proper restrictions on teenage driving including graduated licenses, curfews and junior license restrictions can help keep teenagers safer. Even with these precautions, the best we can do is hope and wish for luck to keep them safe.

Teenage Driving – Why sometimes, as they claim, it wasn’t entirely their faults.

By Magdalena Stuehrmann

For teenagers in the United States, the leading cause of death is car accidents. For every mile driven, teenagers are four times as likely to be in a car accident than an adult driver. Teens speed, don’t wear seat belts, and often drive while distracted. As a result of poor decision-making and inexperience, teenage driving often ends in tragedy. But why does this happen? Why is it that even academically smart teens make decisions like children while driving?

One of the main reasons that this behavior seems to occur is that the teenage brain is not fully developed. The frontal lobes of the brain, particularly the pre-frontal cortex, are not fully and properly “wired up” to the rest of the brain until a person is in her mid-twenties. 

It’s a little like having a vacuum only loosely plugged into a wall socket – there are times when the plug pulls out just enough that the vacuum stops working occasionally.   

The wires in this metaphor are the axons of the neurons, or brain nerve cells. The axons are the long, thin “wires” along which nerve impulses travel, passing information from one area of the brain to another. Each axon is coated with a myelin sheath, a kind of organic insulation that allows impulses to travel swiftly and smoothly between neurons, increasing the speed of communication between the neurons. 

So what does this have to do with teenage brains? In a human brain, the frontal lobes control judgment and decision-making. In a teenage brain, which is not yet fully developed, the myelin sheaths that coat the axons that connect the neurons of the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain are not completely formed. 

This means that the essential insulation that allows neural impulses to travel quickly between the brain and the frontal lobes is incomplete; therefore, the decisions in a teenage brain are not made as quickly or as carefully, efficiently, and often as logically as in an adult brain. This manifests itself as the often poor and impulsive decisions teenagers make while driving. 

There are three other important aspects of poor decisions that teens make while driving. The first is the general teenage aura of rebellion. Teenagers generally want to feel as though they are rebelling against their parents and sometimes against the general rules of law. Teenagers are often teased when they choose to follow rules, being called “goody two shoes” by their friends. 

This combination of rebellion and a desire to show off in front of friends (who are often in the car with them, adding to the distractions), lead to dangerous actions while driving, which often result in accidents.

Additionally, the sense of freedom and being part of the adult world both come when teenagers are allowed to drive on their own, a distinctly adult action to which they had, up until that point, been only spectators to. The freedom to go to places at will without direct adult supervision gives teens a feeling of independence that can result in poor driving decisions. 

When coupled with the general feeling of invincibility (the “it won’t happen to me” syndrome) that teenagers seem to have, this independence helps cause reckless decisions to be made while teens are on the road.

The last aspect of this, the one that is genuinely not the fault of teenage drivers, is their sheer inexperience compared to adult drivers. Young drivers may encounter black ice for the first time, for example, while driving alone and not recognize the danger that it poses. 

This is compounded when something happens, like the car skidding, that the teen has never experienced before and thus often does not know how to get out of safely. More experienced drivers would recognize the dangers of black ice and, if they did choose to continue to drive in such dangerous conditions, would know how to, and therefore be better able to, navigate such situations safely. 

School administrators, teachers, the rescue workers and the undertakers who have to deal all too frequently with the tragic results of poor teenage decision making while driving have noticed the same thing – teenagers just won’t stop doing the stupid things that can end up getting them killed. 

And, as long as the human brain development stays as it is, they won’t. Even the most responsible, careful teen can fall victim to inexperience and tragedy can occur, and those that are less conscientious can end up in the same situations. 

There are few solutions short of raising the driving age to 25 that would alleviate this problem. However, proper restrictions on teenage driving including graduated licenses, curfews and junior license restrictions can help keep teenagers safer. Even with these precautions, the best we can do is hope and wish for luck to keep them safe.

Summer HS Construction - Will It Be Done On Time?

The ripped up floor and partially finished ceiling in front of the auditorium

By Magdalena Stuehrmann

Construction at Octorara Area High School has been going on for quite some time, causing disruption to teachers, students and administrators as offices, classes and classrooms migrated around the high school.

The end, however, is in sight.

An inside view of the new main high school office.

After months of work, the high school main office was finished during last summer, and the office staff has been able to use their new office last school year, much to their delight. Though there are the usual bugs that come with moving to a new area, the space is larger, more conveniently placed, and much more modern.

A view of the new gymnasium floor and walls.

The work on the gymnasium, though it is not quite finished, has also greatly improved the old space. The floors and doors have been beautifully redone, air conditioning has been installed and the walls and ceiling have been refurbished and repainted.

Another area of near finished improvement is the new performing arts wing, The wing contains chorus and band rooms, several classrooms and an audio visual lab, all brand new and updated. There seems to still be a little work and moving to be done this summer in the wing, but the teachers and students enjoyed their new facilities this past school year.

The interior of the auditorium – the ceiling has been redone, though the seats are conspicuously absent.

The same sorts of improvements are planned for the auditorium. At the moment, it, like the gym locker rooms, looks to be a complete mess. The locker rooms and auditorium are probably going to be the last areas of the high school to be completed. 

The redone auditorium will have air conditioning (a well-appreciated plus for any student who has gone through the freshman orientation in summer weather), and will continue the farming tradition of the old design. 

The back wall is designed to represent a barn, the new ceiling will be painted blue like the sky, the arch over the stage represents the sun, and the new seats will be green to represent fields. 

There will be fewer seats in the new auditorium in order to accommodate ADA regulations for more space for handicapped persons, but will certainly suffice for student assemblies.

Construction and moving continue down the performing arts wing.

The high school will also be getting new flooring. As students for the past year have noticed, the floor in front of the new office has been torn up. This will, however, be fixed, hopefully by the end of the summer. The art and library wing and the bottom floor near the breeze-way between the high school and middle school are receiving their new floors right now. 

The pods have been removed and high school teachers are now back in regular classrooms.

One last major change that will be made for students next year is the removal of the pods. These served as temporary classrooms for some high school teachers during the construction, but, as the construction draws to a close, teachers are back to regular classrooms for the upcoming year.

Though the construction has caused a lot of disruption for students and teachers, with annoying noises, blocked off hallways, and changing classrooms, it has also modernized the old building dramatically, making it a much nicer campus for future generations of students.

Construction continues between the guidance office and the gym.

The repainted gym walls, and newly redone doors and floor.

View of the redone gymnasium floor and new air conditioning.