Bighorn news: Building a yearbook takes a team

Have you ever thought of trying to make a yearbook or what it takes to put one together? Well, it isn’t easy. There are a lot of different things that go into making just one 72-page book and that’s why the yearbook team exists.

The team doesn’t just sit in a room and throw together a yearbook, we do quite a bit more than that including developing a theme, photography, editing, graphic design, managing funds, marketing and distributing the publication.

Yearbooks are created to capture experiences throughout the year, show how our school does things and highlight all the people that are part of the Oasis Academy family.

This year’s theme was “Free to Be.” It was chosen to show how we can be different from the rest of the world and each other but at the same time, we see how many similarities we have with every individual around us.

To fit the theme, each class was able to select their own word to finish the phrase “Free to Be…” that highlights their sentiment and experience for this year.

“We hope these 72 pages capture the school fully,” said yearbook team member Leo Arcoraci.

Middle School yearbook is advised by Mrs. Juliana Acomb.

— Austin Booker and Leo Arcoraci

Boys basketball playing during off-season

The Oasis boys middle and high school basketball teams have continued to play even with the season over.

Three Oasis teams, two middle school teams and one high school team participated in the tournament this last weekend (May 20-21) at the Reno Convention Center. A total of 28 boys played for the Bighorns, competing against teams from central California and Northern Nevada. They competed very well.

“Since this is the conclusion of the middle school spring workouts and tournaments, I was extremely happy with this year's turnout. I appreciate the dedication from the players and parents for making it successful,” said coach Donald Schank.

This was the high school boys' first tournament. They will continue practicing and playing with a team skill camp in Nampa, Idaho, on June 6-8 then will play in additional tournaments during the summer.

The create your own country project

The high school government class students were divided into groups and then assigned a “new” country based on geographical locations of the current states in the United States. The project-based assignment included creating a constitution, drafting peace treaties, crafting trade agreements, and dealing with curveballs that impacted their countries.

Students had to research military bases and personnel, natural resources, GDP, and population for their new countries based on the information from the states they were assigned.

Teacher Eric Grimes created the curveballs that the countries had to face. Curveballs ranged from creating emergency plans to thwart the poisoning of a city water system to stopping an invasion from Canada.

The students quickly learned how difficult it can be to work together and the impact every decision they made could have.

“We learned that it is really easy to create chaos. It wouldn’t take much before something little might happen that would send us into disorder,” said student Leah Bake.

“It was hard to keep up when we had to make quick decisions,” added fellow student Michele Grossi.

Payshance Cunningham found that treaty writing was challenging.

“We had to work hard so that our treaties weren’t useless. If they had loopholes, other countries would find them quickly and take advantage,” she said.

"We spend the year learning about different forms of government, talking about current events and economic matters, but students rarely have a chance to see these things in action. This project, though on a small scale, shows them how difficult it is to create and run a government, negotiate treaties, and trade agreements and just get along. It's fun to watch and interesting to see how quickly we can descend into our own 'Lord of the Flies' moment,” said teacher Eric Grimes.