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The magic of the holiday season was in the air for Western Wayne’s FCCLA Club as they hosted their first drive-through Holiday Breakfast on Saturday, Dec. 12, with all proceeds benefitting the Wayne County Children’s Christmas Bureau.
FCCLA has held this event in the past hosted in the high school cafeteria. Due to COVID-19, they worked, just as hard as Santa’s best elves, and found a way to make this event possible for the community even during this challenging time.
Instead of serving food in the cafeteria, the FCCLA students brought food out to their customers waiting in their cars. Even Santa made a socially distanced appearance on a local fire truck. Instead of having stations for people to shop at, this year, the FCCLA students made sure to have all gifts for the little ones ready ahead of time for none other than Mrs. Claus to pass out to the eager kids in their family cars.
Some of the items distributed included: lollipops, coloring books, crayons, and McDonald’s coupons among other fun gifts.
Many of FCCLA’s club members worked to make this event possible. This year’s club officers include Caitlyn Burdick, president; Zoey Goldman, vice president; Kaitlyn McDermott, secretary; Tarena Strasburger, treasurer; Paige Bell and Kailey Tickner, public relations.

FCCLA members Kennedy Mistishin and Zoey Goldman worked as student chairpersons for this event to lead the students in making the breakfast a success.
Kennedy had worked to lead the event last year. This year Zoey stepped into a co-leadership position. Both girls found planning this event to be a very rewarding experience.
“My favorite part is the execution of putting together an event of this nature,” Kennedy explained. “I love when it all comes together at the end. This is very different than our event last year, but it is still very rewarding in different ways especially because we have the chance to do this for the community during this challenging time.”
The students have been busy working to plan this event for a few weeks by making decorations, getting gift bags together, and preparing other items and aspects of the event. It truly was a team effort by all students and staff involved.
The drive- through breakfast with Santa was not FCCLA’s only event this year. The group also, earlier this school year, assisted the Blue Star Mothers of Northeastern Pennsylvania in writing 100 cards to active patriots. Students got to hand-write personal letters to patriots stationed all over the world.
Zoey Goldman, vice president of FCCLA, said this activity was special to her.
“I have a number of family members who have served, so writing these letters felt especially meaningful to me,” Zoey explained.
Along with writing letters to patriots and hosting their breakfast, FCCLA has held a few meetings this year mostly online. Secretary of the club Kaitlyn McDermott explained how it has been challenging to get information out to members.
“I have used email and Google Classroom to distribute a lot of information to our members,” Kaitlyn explained. “I think it has been successful because we have 30 members in the club this year.”
As a group FCCLA has many purposes including to provide opportunities for personal development and preparation for adult life, to strengthen students for society, to encourage individual and group involvement in helping achieve global cooperation and harmony, to encourage democracy through cooperative action in the home and community, and to promote greater understanding between youth and adults and many more.
FCCLA is so grateful to the district for allowing the events they had this year so far to be possible. The group looks forward to finding creative ways to hold more events in the future for all to enjoy.

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Excited seniors on Western Wayne’s Homecoming Court got the opportunity to walk out under the Friday night lights to crown a King and Queen in this time-honored tradition on Friday, Nov.6, at a game against Wallenpaupack High School.
All the seniors who participated felt thrilled to have this chance in a year of such uncertainty. Members of the court included: Matthew Henneforth, Colin Mead, Sydney Hutchinson, Madison McGlone, Zane Janiszewski, Matt Leslie, Julien Walck, Jada Siino, Leno Piccolino, and Cassidy Asinski.
“It was a lot of fun,” Western Wayne Homecoming Court member Jada Siino said. “I was thankful that everyone voted for me to be on the court.”
Jada has been highly involved during her time at Western Wayne and felt grateful to have this opportunity to make her senior year special.
She had participated in the following activities during her time at Western Wayne: volleyball for three years; National Honor Society for three years; yearbook for two years; Student Council for two years; CATS Club for one year.
Of all her activities Jada has enjoyed her time on the volleyball team the most.
“This is the activity that I have been a part of the longest in high school,” Jada explained. “I have made a lot of great relationships on the team.”
Jada plans to attend a four-year university for early childhood education.
“I think I have learned about how not to procrastinate from my time in high school,” Jada explained. “I have learned about the importance of planning.”
Jada will be able to put this skill to good use in the future in her career path to be a teacher of young children. Jada explained that she first realized she wanted to pursue this avenue through her volunteer work with Pocono Community Church.
Jada’s classmate and fellow homecoming court member Cassidy Asinski agrees with Jada that the time management she learned in Western Wayne will stick with her long after graduation.
“I think I learned so much about time management from doing as many clubs and honors and advanced placement classes as possible,” Cassidy, who plans to attend a four-year university, explained.
Cassidy has participated in the following activities during her time at Western Wayne: soccer for four years; track and field for three years; basketball for two years; FBLA for four years; Spanish Club for two years; Girls Lead Club for two years; FCCLA for one year; and tennis for one year.
“It was a surprise to be nominated for the court,” Cassidy said. “Some of my favorite high school memories involve Friday Night Lights and playing sports with my friends, so this experience was very meaningful to me.”
The remaining members of the Homecoming Court are also extremely involved at school. Matthew Henneforth participated in the following activities during his time at Western Wayne: volleyball for four years; basketball for four years; NHS for three years; FBLA for two years; and Junior Leadership of Northern Poconos. Matthew says he has had many great memories at Western Wayne and plans to attend a four-year university.
Another court member Sydney Hutchinson participated in the following activities during her time at Western Wayne: cross country for two years (team captain); indoor track for four years; outdoor track for four years; NHS for two years; FBLA for three years; and yearbook for two years. She plans to attend a four-year university for tech education and to continue her running career which she is passionate about.
Next, member Madison McGlone took part in the following activities during her time at Western Wayne: varsity track and field, varsity tennis, FBLA, Student Council, prom committee; Science Olympiad; Envirothon; Student Ambassador Program; and she organized her own club called “The Green Group.” Madison plans to attend a four-year university for entrepreneurship/ marketing.
Another member of the court is Zane Janiszewski. Zane has been involved in the following activities during his time at Western Wayne: NHS for three years; FBLA for three years; FCL for three years; football for four years; baseball for four years; basketball for three years; and wrestling for one year. He plans to attend a four-year university majoring in education and minoring in business.
“My favorite memory was beating Valley View this year [in football], becoming the schools all-time leading tackler, and being the first team to win the Division Championship,” Zane said.
Fellow court member Matt Leslie is also highly involved in sports at Western Wayne. Matt has participated in the following activities during his four years of high school: wrestling for four years; soccer for three years; FBLA for three years; and he served as the 2019-2020 Junior Class President. Matt aspires to attend a university where he can continue his wrestling career.
“I will always remember my years spent with the wrestling teams and my friends at Western Wayne,” Matt said. “They are memories that I will have forever.”
Another member of the homecoming court that will have many long-lasting memories from sports is Julien Walck. Julian has taken part in the following activities during his time at Western Wayne: football for four years (senior captain of football team); and baseball for four years. He plans to attend Wilkes University to further his football career and major in early childhood and special education. He especially will cherish all the fun memories he made on Western Wayne’s football team.
The final two members of the homecoming court had the distinct honor of winning the titles of Homecoming King and Queen through the votes of their classmates.
Senior Lena Piccolino felt completely surprised to be chosen for Homecoming Queen.
“I definitely did not expect it,” Lena said. “Some of my favorite memories at Western Wayne, other than being on Homecoming Court, are my final soccer season this year. I thought everyone did a great job. I am also excited to be accepted to Wingate University in North Carolina to study pre-pharmacy. I recently received a scholarship. I always wanted to do work behind the scenes in the medical field, and I think that studying pharmacy will be a great fit for me.”
Lena has been involved in the following activities during her time at Western Wayne: soccer for four years; track and field for four years; indoor track and field for three years; NHS for three years; SADD for two years; and FBLA for two years.
“I think I learned the most about time management through my experiences at Western Wayne,” Lena explained.
Lena will always cherish all her memories at Western Wayne both inside and outside of the classroom. She said that her favorite part of Homecoming did not have anything to do with her winning the title of Queen.
“I was definitely the happiest to hear that Colin Mead won Homecoming King,” Lena explained. “He was my partner that I walked on the field with. I thought that he deserved to win. He really is always so nice to absolutely everyone at school.”
Colin was excited and surprised to win Homecoming King.
“It was crazy, and I didn’t expect it,” Colin said. “I was excited that I got so many votes. I like to make it appoint to be friendly to as many people as I can at school.”
Colin has greatly enjoyed all his shop classes at Western Wayne. He would like to pursue either being a mason or welder after graduation. Colin has worked on both skills at Western Wayne and with his dad. He also likes to spend time fixing cars.
“The best part about Homecoming was walking out on the field and hearing all of my buddies cheering for me,” Colin said.
The entire Western Wayne Homecoming Court is thankful to have had the opportunity to experience this milestone event and look forward to the rest of their senior year.

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Mrs. Marianne Morgan, English teacher at the Western Wayne High School for many years with a 38-year career in education recently retired.  She fondly remembers many great times during her lengthy career at Western Wayne.

          Morgan attended college at East Stroudsburg University. For most of her career she taught high school English.  However, Morgan’s first position was as a kindergarten and 8^th grade teacher. She worked at Western Wayne for 33 years having taught sophomore, juniors, and seniors. She even taught the district’s current assistant superintendent Cynthia LaRosa.

          Along with greatly influencing Western Wayne students in the classroom, Morgan also worked with a variety of clubs and extra-curricular activities in her career.  This includes her work with the Communications/ Drama Club along with positions where she served as NHS adviser, class adviser, newspaper adviser, literary magazine adviser, and Girls Lead Club adviser.

          Morgan has many memorable moments and memories from her career.

          She recalls a hard drive, that held a nearly complete layout for a 24- page newspaper, being taken out of the journalism class computer in 2004 when she missed time for the funeral of her mother.  This was, of course, devasting to Morgan but she recalls her students stepping up and showing great Western Wayne pride and dedication during this difficult time.

          “My editor Kendra Sledzinski then organized the staff to retype and layout every page by following the one hard copy she had of the edition,” Morgan explained.  “These students were amazing!  Later that spring, Kendra was named Editor of the Year, and the paper won first place at the annual Wilkes University Journalism Conference besting dozens of newspapers across the region.”

          Years after her graduation Kendra still remembers the impact Morgan had on her as a high school student.

“It says a lot about a teacher when you can recall their influence on you nearly 20 years later!” Kendra said.  “I still have the customized Planet Wildcat blanket she had made for me as a graduation gift, too.”

Kendra discussed her experiences with Morgan at Western Wayne.
“Mrs. Morgan was a teacher who made me believe in myself. Curiosity, an interest in politics, and a love of writing led me to pursue journalism where I first worked closely with Mrs. Morgan as the editor of Planet Wildcat. We faced some challenges then, including having to rebuild an entire newspaper quickly,” Kendra explained.

“Not everyone can successfully lead young students through challenge or adversity, but Mrs. Morgan did. She was selfless enough to ensure our hard work was recognized and that we got the support we needed to keep Planet Wildcat going. This helped build an eager work ethic and confidence. There is no doubt working with her on Planet Wildcat helped prepare me to study and successfully find employment within journalism later,” Kendra continued.  “ And though I don’t work in journalism these days, I still use the curiosity, candor, and communication skills she taught me so long ago in connecting with people around the world with my work in the specialty coffee industry.”

          Morgan is extremely proud of all of the work she did with students like Kendra over the years in the newspaper at Western Wayne.

          “One of the biggest accomplishments in my educational career was taking the school newspaper to a high level of achievement where we regularly won first place awards in total newspaper and also individual staff entries of virtually every high school journalism competition on international, national, and state levels,” Morgan said.  “I had the opportunity to advise incredibly talented and ambitious students who have succeeded in varied arenas in life since graduation, many of whom keep in close contact with me.”

          Mrs. Morgan has a long history with the newspaper at Western Wayne.  She did not start the club but advised it for 22 years.  Under her direction, the newspaper was moved from a paper of a few papers just typed in a page copied in the school copier to one laid out electronically with a publishing program and printed professionally. 

          “I found a mentor, a retired journalism teacher who had won the Dow Jones Journalism Adviser Award which is a pretty weighty distinction,” Morgan explained.   “I would send our printed paper to him, and he would red-pen critique it and return that with pages of notes.  He helped us to concentrate on one or two improvements at a time.  This not only moved us to an award-winning publication, it also taught the kids excellent journalistic skills.  When they went off to join staffs or study writing at their colleges, they often told me that they were tops in their abilities.”

          Along with her accomplishments in the classroom and with the newspaper she loved, Morgan also started a club at Western Wayne from the ground up called Girls Lead.  Morgan got the idea from her daughter who was studying Gender in Economics at Barnard College.  Her daughter was studying gender inequalities prior to the Me, Too Movement.  Morgan and her daughter felt like they had some solid ideas to empower young women at Western Wayne, so Morgan approached her principal to ask permission to start the club.

          At first, the group experienced pushback from about 100 male students at the school.  However, Morgan’s club president was well-prepared with an informative presentation, and then they followed up with inclusive educational activities for the student body and staff which quelled much of the pushback.  It should be noted that both males and females were allowed to be members of Girls Lead. 

          Morgan recalls some highlights of the Girls Lead Club’s successes.

          “The club conducted a highly successful fundraiser and yearly drive for women in shelters,” Morgan explained.  “One year we bought packages of underwear which the shelter manager told me they would give to rape victims in the hospital.”

          Along with leading clubs and programs at Western Wayne, Morgan was also highly involved for about twenty years in planning field trips for the students in her English classes.

          Morgan and the late James Rebar who taught alongside her in the  department for many years worked together on this  endeavor that gave so many students a chance to experience Broadway shows in New York City that would not have otherwise had the opportunity to go.

          “We each had our favorite plays.  Jim’s was Titanic with incredible scenery including a sinking ship,” Moran explained.  “My favorite was Once on this Island because of its life-affirming message and upbeat calypso music.  The real joy for us was gifting the experience to our students.  We reached many students who were not in clubs that sponsored trips like this and who did not travel to NYC with family.  One student was in awe at seeing the ESPN Center in person which really made our day.  The extensive planning work required was worthwhile because of the impact seeing Broadway live had on these students.”

          A recent 2020 Western Wayne graduate who shares Morgan’s love for Broadway Sydney Peet recalls the special experiences she had with Morgan throughout her high school career.

          “The best way I can describe Marianne Morgan is enigmatic. She is always presenting surprising new facets of herself. Students were consistently shocked each time she brought up a new story from her past – stories of Vice Presidents, campaign buttons, the FBI, and nationwide recognition. She was perhaps the best teacher I have had the privilege of learning from. She encouraged not just academic growth but also consistently pushed her students to be the best person they could be. I spent many hours in her classroom, reviewing drafts of the literary magazine, preparing care packages to be donated to local women’s shelters, and eating the most marvelous banana pudding. The banana pudding must have been crafted by angels themselves; it was seriously THAT good,” Peet said recalling the many thoughtful things Morgan would do for her students.

          Of course, Morgan also has many of her own special memories from her time teaching in the classroom at Western Wayne.

          “My favorite moments have been when teaching creative writing, particularly college application essays.  Through teaching these and helping my own children apply to college, I grew passionate about the college application process, reading a dozen or so books about the steps to successful applications from choosing coursework to helping students develop strong community service linked to their interests to writing a creative essay as a means of introduction to the college admissions staff,” Morgan explained. “Ultimately, I even began a college counseling service and through this have helped numerous students from many different school districts match with a suitable colleges and graduate schools and also secure scholarships.”

          Former student Caroline Davis fondly remembers learning about writing from Morgan.

          “When learning initial grammatical rules, Mrs. Morgan told us we weren’t ‘allowed’ to use unique punctuation and language that we were reading in American novels because we had to master the basics first,” Davis explained her disappointment about this initial lesson.  “I was a little upset at the time of her saying that (why couldn’t I put a semicolon wherever I wanted?), but I soon found out that learning those basic rules set me ahead of my peers in both college and beyond.”

          Davis explained how Morgan’s lessons have impacted her throughout her evolving career path.

          “Currently, I work remotely for a children’s clothing start-up,” Davis said.  “I am in charge of their social media and approving email copy that goes out to our subscribers. My boss later told me she chose me over another applicant for this position because of my incredible attention to detail and ability to find grammatical mistakes that others missed.  I owe this completely to Mrs. Morgan.”

          Davis wishes Morgan the best in her retirement and wants her to know the significant impact her class had on her life.

“I hope in retirement, that Mrs. Morgan is able to do everything which makes her happy.  I enjoy watching her incredible children succeed on Facebook,” Davis said.  “She is truly a diamond in the rough that was high school.  She pushed every student to be their best selves and gave each and every one of use the tools to succeed.”

          2019 Western Wayne Alumni Sydney Peet remembers some advice that Morgan gave her class, and she is sure that Morgan is following it now in her retirement.

          “Most importantly, I remember Mrs. Morgan telling my sophomore American Literature class about a student she had taught years prior. ‘He spent all his time working to save up for a new car and then once he bought it, he had no time to drive it,’ she told us. This story wasn’t just about some workaholic kid, but about the importance of enjoying life. Hard work may get you material desires, but it will never guarantee the true enjoyment that the tiniest, most-fleeting moments in life can bring. Her class was full of those moments. Lessons interrupted with honest laughter, life advice, memorable anecdotes, and clever witticisms, as well as never ending motivation and support, filled her small, blue classroom. The absolute integrity and excitement she brought to the teaching profession will be sorely missed.”   The entire Western Wayne School District wishes Morgan the best in her retirement.