Features Al Parker What’s hot on the region’s stages

It may be wintry outside, but Northern Michigan theatre stages are warming up with several exciting performance choices in coming months, from professional presentations to community theatre to student performances...

Letters

Academic performance

One teacher in Troy recently went before the board of education to explain the 20 percent increase in scores across all of her students for the first half of the year. Her innovative ideas involve three areas: classroom structure, embedded writing in her curriculum and student nutrition.

As part of a three-year longitudinal study it turns out that she has been able to simulate same gender effect in a mixed student class room by original vertical and horizontal placement of students in the classroom...

Features Erin Crowell Under the Wikipedia entry for “drone,” you will find such words as “chemical,” “warfare,” “target” and “humanoid” – words that send a chill down one’s spine when considering their recent presence in the media. Drones, or unmanned aerial systems (UAS) as they are technically referred to, are being heavily manufactured and put to use by the U.S. government, and in countries throughout the world.

Letters Students defend work Last Friday, we, writers of The Leek, the satirical page of Traverse City Central’s the Black & Gold, published an infographic describing in four steps how to “grind,” a controversial dance that has been commonplace in TCAPS schools but was recently banned.

We cannot stress enough that this graphic is satirical and in no way encourages the practice of grinding...

Rough roads & TC Michigan residents appear to agree that Michigan roads are in poor shape and in need of immediate improvement. What no-one can agree on is where we find the dollars to complete the task. To begin with, we should stop building new roads until we can maintain the roads we currently have...

Source of the sequester In his 2/25 column, Steve Tuttle offers a reasonably fair-minded look at this sequester’s history. However, he asserts that Congress came up with “a law under which budget cuts and tax increases will take place automatically absent a budget deal.”