Lately, there have been concerns on how junior high students can handle finishing a big project that is due the very next day while needing to attend a sports game or performance the day before. Well, how can students be able to finish all their schoolwork while also being available for any extracurricular activities they have outside of school? Let us take a closer look at the problems, solutions, and many more experiences that most students may face with balancing out activities outside of school with any school related assignments they may have. 

Many students experience stress about finishing a difficult school assignment which may cause them to miss sports or music practice on the same day. This conflict will only grow worse in high school with more homework, AP classes, and more stressful situations that teenagers may go through. According to a recent 2025 report, Imed Bouchrika, the Co-founder and Chief Data Scientist of Research.com states that 21% of teenagers regularly undergo stress when participating in extracurricular activities while 61% of students strive to achieve acceptable grades in junior high school. Stress levels have been shown to lower students’ school performance, self-esteem, and contribute to depression. These effects  may be seen when participating in extracurricular activities such as music classes, foreign language programs, and voluntary services. These activities seem like a lot more than one student alone can handle, but students can easily adapt to them over time depending on which age they start. Adapting can make it easier for students since they tend to have more time and knowledge on various subjects. However, one skill not dependent on experience which can be learned at any age is time management. 

Time management skill is the ability to handle one’s time effectively or productively, and can include work hours as an adult. Being able to manage and keep an organized work schedule can benefit people a lot, especially grown-ups, due to the substantial number of meetings and interviews they might have to attend. This skill can also be applied to students’ school schedules and other activities they may participate in outside of school. I, for example, play on a softball team and attend practice about two times a week. My parents help with managing any of my softball related updates so that I can focus on my schoolwork and grades in the meantime. I also attend a Chinese Language program outside of school during the weekends so that it is easier for me to focus on my schoolwork and softball practices during the weekdays. Since high school is approaching, many 8th grade students will have more opportunities to participate in activities held within the school gates before, during, and even after school hours. However, high school students might need more time to finish any homework assignments as a result. A report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) states that high school students have about an average of 6.8 hours of homework per week. Despite this crucial piece of information, extracurricular activities are still  beneficial for students who are interested in playing on a high school sports team, taking music classes, participating in any given language programs, or being involved in so many more activities available.

There are many questions on what matters most, extracurricular activities or schoolwork? Well, I recommend putting your school grades before any activities you may have outside of school first. Focusing on your grades will not only help navigate your way through high school, but it will help you focus on good study habits as well. You can participate in any activities outside of school if you continue to keep your grades up. Just enjoying the sport or activity, without having it seem like an everlasting chore compared to schoolwork since it is supposed to serve as an interest, can help take your mind off any school-related homework or tests. 

In conclusion, students can balance out extracurricular activities with their schoolwork given the time management skill they need. If any students seek help or assistance, they can go to a guidance counselor, parent or guardian, or teacher if needed. There are even more helpful programs at Canyon Hills Junior High School such as an AVID program during school hours which helps prepare students for college and a Homework Help Club before school to assist students in completing any homework or assigned projects. There are also some helpful tips below for students who need help getting started with managing their school schedules and being available for any extracurricular activities they hope to take part in. 

Tips: 

• Keep and write on sticky notes you may carry 

• Keep a neat, organized schedule with notable events labeled 

• Notify your parent to cancel something if falling behind on a project or assignment 

• Check schoolwork and updated practice times with parents or guardians 

• Email teachers if absent (Important performance, injured from a recent game, etc.) 

• Complete homework before a class or sports practice after school hours 

• Keep yourself active and healthy  

Are you Coyotes excited for the upcoming break? Well, so are many of our dedicated teacher! The staff writers at Coyote Quills have decided once again to ask a plethora of questions, not just about spring break, but also on the topic of CAASPP testing and block schedules, an often apprehensive part of the school year for students. But just to ease the load, teachers were also asked which corny joke they enjoy using most often in class. Now, without further ado, let's dive into the interviews!

Spring Break Plans

1. Mrs. Riley, Mrs. Lane, and Mrs. Kim will all be chaperoning for the 8th grade DC trip.

2. Mr. Riley plans to spend time with his kids and playing golf.

3. Mr. Seymour will be taking some college courses over break.

4. Mrs. Magdaleno is having her baby girl over break. Congratulations!

5. Mr. McCleskey hopes to go on vacation over break.

6. Mrs. Gierut may be going to Arizona for baseball spring training. She will also go shopping and may attend a concert.

7. Mr. Booth will be spending some quality time with family and may even go to Japan!

8. Mr. Martin is going to Laflin Ranch to play golf!

How do you feel about CAASPP testing?

1. Mrs. Hartley finds CAASPP testing important, but feels that students already take too many tests.

2. Ms. Puente finds the tests as a great opportunity for showcasing what students learned during the school year.

3. Mr. Riley has mixed feelings on it. On one hand it holds students accountable for their grades and learning, but it's still a lot of extra work 

4. Dr. Rowcliffe believes that testing should be faster, but overall it helps teachers measure how students progress, and Canyon Hills has been on the top of CAASPP testing for a while.

A corny joke or phrase often used in class

1. Mrs. Walker often uses the phrase “Silly goose!”

2. When students make poor decisions, Mrs. Rowcliffe often exclaims “You're killin me smalls!” 

Block Schedule Yay or Nay:

1. Mrs. Harley loves block schedules since students have more time to get work done and it is less hectic.

2. Mr. Joline likes blocks schedule, since there’s fewer classes per day and more is completed per class.

3. Ms. Puente advises, “Make the best of it” since block schedules do not often occur for students.

4. Mrs. Walker finds the block schedule good for the track and field units in PE since it gives students additional time to learn and practice immediately.

“Ah!” I screamed with such fright. There were bright maroon, black, and white colors swirling around me. Wait, let me tell you what happened before I, your beloved English teacher, Mrs. Gierut, discovered a world so paranormal and so jaw dropping you would have never thought it could exist. I was sitting in my cold classroom on my black roller chair grading papers to put onto Aeries. Boy did my 4th period fail their English tests! 

Suddenly, I heard a loud bang so startling I busted out of my chair. I heard loud footsteps and a low growl outside my classroom door. Suddenly, a small, paper covered monster slammed open my classroom door. 

I quickly yelled, “Help!” But the whole school was filled with nothing but silence and a sense of emptiness that no one could hear me. Then the paper covered monster started to gobble up my materials. It appeared to be a little boy if only he was covered in a homework nightmare! First, he gobbled up my blackboard, then three of my expensive markers, as well as my black ink pen, I was using to calculate the student scores on Aeries. As he munched up my red half bitten apple, I shouted in an irritated manner, “How dare you! You must leave my classroom at once! Out the door.” I sharply pointed to my classroom door, but the monster refused and shook his head as he ate more of my beloved used school supplies. 

The school supplies he ate were all my wooden pencils, seven college-ruled notebooks, and my big metal desk. After he ate up my desk, I started to yell, “SIR! OR… WHATEVER ABOMINATION YOU ARE! YOU SIMPLY CANNOT STAY, I'LL… REPORT YOU TO THE PRINCIPAL UNLESS YOU GO AWAY!” But no, the homework monster stood on my perfectly cleaned floor as he ate my remaining school papers and swallowed my last set of ink pens. But what made me lose complete control was how he ate the English homework I had recently printed out for the next two weeks!!! Once he did that move, I was so angry that I thought my head was going to explode. My face was like a bright red tomato as I shouted at the top of my lungs, “OUT!” 

Suddenly, the strange creature grabbed me with his cold papery hands and swallowed me whole!!! I found myself falling deep down into a dark abyss as my long yellow sundress floated in all sorts of directions. I landed on my back so hard that I felt my spine crack. “Ow!” I painfully exclaimed. In this dark abyss, I suddenly heard someone say, “Mrs. Gierut, is that you?” It was another teacher from Canyon Hills. “Who is asking?” Mrs. Gierut gasped, “Mrs. Riley, is that you?” I hesitantly asked the shadowy figure. “Yes! And Mrs. Lane is here as well,” Mrs. Riley said as she and Mrs. Lane ran out from the dark shadows. Mrs. Lane sighed with relief, “We thought we were the only ones left! We all got separated the day we decided to find our own escape routes out. It has just been Mrs. Riley and I for one whole week.” Mrs. Gierut gasps,” Then how did you survive down here? You surely could not have eaten that disgusting…” Mrs. Gierut looks at the gooey saliva dripping down from the upper belly. “Oh! Do not worry about that! Turns out the monster also eats human food as well!” Mrs. Riley jokingly exclaimed as she coincidentally picked up a familiar half bitten apple. “Wait! That is my apple!” Mrs. Gierut exclaimed with shock, taking the fruit away from Mrs. Riley’s hands. “But…what happened to the rest of my supplies? My pens, my notebooks, my…desk!” Mrs. Gierut runs over to her metal desk which has now been torn in half. Then, Mrs. Gierut heard a low rumble coming from beneath her feet. 

The mysterious rumble continued to grow louder, and louder, and louder, and…stopped. “What just happened?” Mrs. Gierut nervously asked. Mrs. Lane slowly looked behind her with trembling hands, “Ladies…?” Suddenly, a giant flood of papers, school supplies, and books rushed in. Mrs. Lane pointed to the massive wave as she shouted, “Homework flood!” Both teachers then quickly turned around and ran away. Mrs. Riley shouted, “What did that little creature eat?!” The monster was consuming a large trash can filled to the top with late assignments, rejected papers, and many more sheets of school papers. Mrs. Gierut exclaimed with fright, “This is a nightmare! I cannot believe I am saying this, but now I understand why my students do not like my given assignments! Let’s just hope we do not-” Before Mrs. Gierut could finish her sentence, the flood finally caught up with her and the two teachers. Engulfed in the huge wave of schoolwork, they continued to squirm and scream. Mrs. Riley yelled, “Where is it taking us?! I do not want to die like this!”

 Seeing her friends yell and move around desperately, she tried her best to stay calm and find a way out of this giant paper flood. Out of nowhere a giant integrated math textbook knocked Mrs. Gierut out. Hearing only muffled screams, she started to slowly sink away into the giant flood. Mrs. Gierut finally regained consciousness but then found herself in a big, dark cave, located somewhere in the creature’s belly. Mrs. Gierut shaped her hands like a cone around her mouth as she shouted, “Hello?! Mrs. Lane?! Mrs. Riley! Anyone?!” Only silence and darkness answered her desperate calls. Scared and alone, she knew she was going to be in the creature’s belly for a very long time. 

The October 4th Rally is the first school rally of the year revolving around a well-known celebrated holiday, Halloween. The rally is organized and made up of creative, stunning performances by the Coyote Leadership students. This school year’s rally is a way to show off our Canyon Hills Coyote Spirit and participate in games to win Pack Points between 7th and 8th grade students.  

As the 7th and 8th graders walked inside the auditorium with their Coyote Period classmates, there were already crowds of students in Choir, Band, and many more sitting at the back of the auditorium as a song from the 2019 Descendents 3 movie “Good to be Bad” played in the background. Once all the students had taken their seats, the rally began. The audience became silent as the rally commenced. 

The story opened up with 4 Canyon Hills Junior High campers who were sucked inside a fairytale book. As they tried to navigate their way back home as a team, they came across the most well-known fairytale book characters such as Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and many more. Using what knowledge they had about these famous storybook characters; they tried to seek help from them and even tried to prevent any horrid things that were meant to happen to them. Little do they know…the fairy tales turned out to be fractured ones.  

During parts of the rally, these were musical and dance performances which were carried out by the students from choir, who were dressed in their Halloween costumes ranging from Disney Princesses to wicked witches as they danced and sang on stage.  

“I really liked the cute costumes the kids from choir wore,” Zoie Fransisco (8th) said. “I found them pretty cool and enjoyable.” 

The school’s mascots Echo and Howler then performed their little dances on stage, vibing to the 2024 Descendents: The Rise of Red song “Red”. The students from Orchestra then played their violins, cello, flutes, and many more musical instruments. As they performed their acts, the 8th grade students were given the opportunity to look at their Trimester 3 GPA scores on the two big screens which were placed on the right and left sides above the center stage.  

“I enjoyed the rally,” Abigail Castillo (8th) said. “There was a lot of storytelling, but I wished they focused more on the performances instead.” 

The rally had an interesting story which followed the lives of 4 Canyon Hills students as they came across a memorable, diverse cast of fictional characters in a fractured fairytale book. The audience was first left in confusion and then full of commotion. From the Fairytale theme to the nostalgic music playing through the speakers in the background to the students dressed up in their Halloween costumes, it was enough to prepare everyone for the terrifying, spooktacular day of Halloween coming on the 31st of October.

School has started again! With the new seventh grade coyotes attending The World’s Greatest Junior High, many students at school seem to get the school lunch. As we have all noticed, the lines during lunch are insanely long. If you are just a few seconds late, the better choices of food will all be gone. Since there are so many students just waiting to get cafeteria food, this raises the question, “Do the students actually enjoy eating the food that the school lunches serve?”. 

In order to find out, a group of eighth grade research students decided to interview other students during lunch. They interviewed a total of 20 students, ten of them being eighth graders and the other ten of them being seventh graders. After being asked the questions, eight out of ten eighth graders answered NO instead of YES. This is not really surprising because there are often very negative complaints about how bad the food that the cafeteria serves from the eighth grade students. Other comments and opinions from the interviewees were that, “The food they serve is too less, too ordinary, and overall nasty”, “The food that they serve is really mediocre and does not have much flavor”, and “The cafeteria doesn’t put any effort into making the food and they just stuff it into plastic wraps”.

Going back to the ten seventh graders who were interviewed, nine out of ten responded with YES instead of NO. When asked why, the students responded that the school cafeteria food served at Canyon Hills was much better than the food their elementary school served. They commented that there are more choices of food in the junior high cafeteria. Additional opinions from the interviewees include, “The food is alright, as long as it is still edible”, “It is overall pretty nice and it’s free”, “The food that they serve is pretty healthy and there is a wide variety of things to choose from so you do not get bored of the menus”.

As a conclusion, the lunches served at the Canyon Hills cafeteria are liked and disliked by many students. Some are neutral with what they serve, yet others are just more picky eaters. Either way, bringing food from home is also another option for the students who do not think the cafeteria food is very appetizing. Last but not least, do not forget to enjoy your lunches!