December 2023 Issue
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Table of Contents
- Current Mural Plans Mysteriously Replaced By Massive Image of Flounder
- Teachers to Introduce Subway Surfer Gameplay on Display During Class to Help boost attention rates
- Nord VPN
- AI Joke
- Report Card Day
- 'Wheel of Careers' Mackenzie Game Show Launched to Help Undecided Gr.12s
- Five Minute Alarms to be Added to Hall Passes
- Students Overjoyed at New Late Start Schedule
- Grades 13 Returns to Compensate for Years of COVID-Generated Student Slacking
Current Mural Plans Mysteriously Replaced By Massive Image of Flounder
William Lyon Mackenzie CI - All the reference sheets to be used for the mural in the foyer were mysteriously replaced by massive images of a flounder about a month and a half ago. Nobody had noticed the swap until just earlier this week, when several green paint cans were found collecting up with a peculiar amount of empty fluorescent turquoise paint cans.
A few hours after the incident, security camera footage of several Flounder staff members photocopying images of the fish had surfaced, but was disregarded and deemed merely a coincidence. Mackenzie’s head Security Camera Footage Analysis Specialist, Isar Klosed, would later explain, “We can’t go around judging people because they enjoy photocopying fish in their free time — that’s completely unreasonable.”
Staff and students alike were outraged after seeing the reference sheets and mural for themselves. “This is just unacceptable. The perpetrator of this heinous act should be punished to the fullest extent,” said an angry student. “The flounder on that paper doesn’t look realistic. The quality of the image is terrible, the proportions of the fins are wrong, the colour of the scales is completely off, and gills aren’t even supposed to look like that!”
In an effort to help out the painters of the mural, many students have submitted higher-quality images of flounders to be drawn.
Teachers to Introduce Subway Surfer Gameplay on Display During Class to Help boost attention rates
“Teachers (they, 35-50) have also been uploading their lessons to reddit to make them more engaging.”
TORONTO, ON- Toronto schools are facing an unprecedented challenge: a jaw-dropping 0.0025% increase in distracted students. This unexpected surge has thrown the Flounder District School Board (FDSB) into a frenzy. Desperate for solutions, several trials were conducted, such as therapy flounders, a live orchestra, a live Orca, a live opera, Dwayne Johnson, taking away their rights, and blaming it on the economy. Unfortunately, the stock market’s ups and downs were not the reason why Timmy couldn’t focus in advanced calculus. The fish drowned before they could memorize their lesson plans and serenading algebra did not yield the desired results. All Dwanyne did was inspire Timmy to shave his head and wrestle his textbook. Get it together Timmy. In the end, one test majorly outperformed the rest and was the clear winner of the bunch.
The FDSB now presents to you the new provincial mandate: Subway Surfer gameplay. With one half of the screen displaying school work and the other half displaying the high-quality, childhood classic mobile game of teens vandalizing and outrunning a chubby cop, we’ve witnessed engagement levels skyrocket to unprecedented levels. Now, teens are outrunning both cops and the consequences of not paying attention in class. And guess what? Research indicates that if we force reddit-user Timmy to rewrite lesson plans, our engagement rates double! r/AITA (short form of “Am I the Airplane’’) seems to be the most effective of the bunch, followed closely by r/NuclearRevenge and r/MaliciousCompliance. Below we have included lesson plans from a Grade 11 English class.
r/AITA - “Am I the Airplane” Short Stories Edition 👻 u/hah_me_lit Title: A Ghostly Dilemma “Am I the Airplane for, you know, making my uncle(M,34) join his ancestors? I mean, my dad (M,86) got slayed by him and then came back as a ghost, and he told me to do it 😞.
r/MaliciousCompliance - When Love Meets the Afterlife 💃 u/rowmeoh (featuring droolee@) Title: Love Beyond the Grave “So, my family said we couldn’t be together in this life, but we’re all about breaking boundaries. We (M,23 and F,20) connected to god’s wifi and decided to explore the afterlife together. Who says love can’t transcend the mortal coil?”
r/NuclearRevenge - When Pigs Rebel 🐖 u/nuhUhPolean Title: Pork Rebellion: A Swine Tale “My fellow omnivorous domesticated hoofed mammals, sporting sparse bristly hair and snouts for rootin’, were suffering. They were underfed and overworked, so I did what any self-respecting pig would do. I started a rebellion. Well, now they’re overworked and underfed- in style! Swine justice has been served!”
As you can see, the FDSB is brewing a bright future of contributions to society, and Timmy’s grades have never been higher.
'Wheel of Careers' Mackenzie Game Show Launched to Help Undecided Gr.12s
TORONTO, ON — As the end of the year steadily approaches, one student group at Mackenzie has brought upon a creative way for grade 12s uncertain of what career path to follow to make their choice.
Introducing… the ‘Wheel of Careers’ game show at Mackenzie! The student group proposed and has for two weeks now been running this weekly school-based game show in the caf at lunch, with its goals of both assisting grade 12s in planning their future, as well as providing the student body with some fresh entertainment.
The show features a new 12th grade participant each week, and consists of a series of audience-engaging and dramatic events. This includes a lottery ball machine containing ‘career cluster balls’, beach ball-throwing among the crowd to see who gets to pick the participant’s to-be sub-field of focus, and of course the fateful spin of the famous Wheel of Careers. Through all of this, the game show guarantees each participant their randomly-selected destiny.
The student group organizing the event hopes the game show will prove more helpful than the ‘generic’ career quizzes often given to students, as well as make the decision-making process more entertaining for everyone.
“We hope this takes the pressure off of such an important decision - by doing it at random!” says the group leader, Icant Chuze.
Some students have indeed found ‘Wheel of Careers’ to be a positive addition to Mackenzie. While some are there just for the entertainment, others have attributed their finding of their career path in life to the game show.
One enthusiastic participant attests to this. “Before ‘Wheel of Careers’, I had no idea what direction I’d be heading in career-wise - the only thing I really knew for certain about myself was that I hate all insects and creepy crawlies! Thanks to the show, I’ve now learned from the Wheel that my destined career is an entomologist - a professional insect researcher!”
Not everyone’s as ecstatic about the concept of the show though - or even just the logistics of it.
“Such a vital decision should in no way be put to random chance,” protests one guidance counsellor, “I for one strongly disapprove.”
“Honestly, I don’t care what the show’s about, but why do they have to hog the caf once a week? That bugs me the most,” complains a student.
In any case, ‘Wheel of Careers’ has certainly already enjoyed some success, entertaining roughly 200 kids each week in the caf, and of course assigning a career path to a previously undecided student as well. The full-production 45-minute show has even garnered local media attention. What’s more, Sac is happy to report that student spirit is at an all-time high, with students dressing up for each week’s show theme in record numbers - and it’s certainly a sight to see so many students dressed as the likes of professional scuba divers or world-famous circus performers.
Clearly, whether you like it or not, Mackenzie’s newest game show is here to stay for a while. And who knows, maybe it’ll help decide your future career too!
Five Minute Alarms to be Added to Hall Passes
William Lyon Mackenzie CI - A brillant Toronto school has mandated a new Hall Pass that schools all across the board are soon to mimic. In hopeful dreams of increasing class attendance and decreasing the dirty delinquents in the halls, screeching alarms have been implanted into hall passes. The alarms are planned to go off every 5 minutes, stopping only when the delinquent has returned to class.
“We hope that this will weed out all the hall-wanderers and class skippers, which will definitely make our job much easier,” said the CEO of the Association of Local Alerting Response Managers (ALARM), the mastermind behind the operation.
Students, however, have much to say about it, profound and profane. “Sometimes I need more than 5 minutes to wander around aimlessly!” stated an enraged student. Another student was distressed and potentially depressed about exactly what sound the alarm would play. “I don’t see why the school can’t make the alarm sound good. We should all be able to play our favourite songs, not that garbage purge alarm.” The evoked students floundering about the halls of William Lyon Mackenzie are wailing, but the sounds are simply overpowered by the hall passes that threaten such alarming insanity.
ALARM has since been a paragon of hope for the rest of the TDSB for increasing class attendance, and by default, test scores and humanity as a whole. However, improvements in those areas are yet to be seen. Students have since become practical experts in the growing field of alarm destruction, the proof littering the hallways in scraps and gears and the many, many tears.
Students Overjoyed at New Late Start Schedule
William Lyon Mackenzie CI - The late start schedule has changed to start school at 9:55 a.m. as opposed to 10:00 a.m. Students could not be more thrilled.
Late start days have long been an occasion to look forward to for Mackenzie students. The tradition of sleeping in for a whole hour twice a month is a core part of their monthly routines. Of course, exact times such as 10:00 a.m. are too easy to remember, resulting in students who are overly calm and on time to school.
To combat this serenity and tranquility in students, the executive decision to change the schedule was made. The time of 9:55 a.m. does a fantastic job at confusing students, keeping them on their toes and alert for school.
“I have never felt so awake and ready to study!” commented Triherd Sockup.
A study found that 98% of students continued to enter the building at the same time they did before - between 9:57 a.m. and 9:59 a.m., proving the new schedule to be extremely effective.
“There are two ways in which this new schedule helps students,” explained Dr I’het Keeds, “First the students realize that they are late, causing a rush of adrenaline early in the morning, quickly waking them up. Second, they run to class, getting in their daily exercise.”
The next step will be to implement an AI system where the late start schedule is randomly generated and distributed no earlier than two minutes before school starts.
Grades 13 Returns to Compensate for Years of COVID-Generated Student Slacking
TORONTO, ON - The COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to an era of online learning, resulting in many students catching up on their sleep, and finding new and fun ways to procrastinate. Not only were online meetings for class optional attendance, the teachers found that their classes had never been quieter, and welcomed the lack of typical off-topic student chatter during their lessons. Unfortunately, despite the benefits this relaxing and work-free environment provided for students, teachers found that after returning to permanently in-person classes, students appear as if they are experiencing school for the first time again.
It is deeply saddening to learn that in the few years of online schooling, so many students missed out on the most memorable times of their lives. High school is when teenagers experience the real joy of failure, which is an unforgettable feeling that can only be truly experienced through exams. Not only did students that went through the pandemic fail to get the full enjoyment of four entire and complete years of slow-building agony, from waking up early and going to school through all four seasons, they also did not have the chance to experience school clubs fully in-person, like the Flounder, and its beautiful and amazing “monthly” installments.
When teachers thought about how much school the current generation of students had missed out on, they knew they had to do something. Ms. L has stated “I shed tears for the amount of in-person tests students missed out on, having every test virtual is surely tiring. Imagine how much work Google had to do.” In addition, Mr. W declared that “during the pandemic, all my students just blended into a biohazardous faceless mob. It would be nice to finally learn their names and faces.” It is thanks to the combined efforts of people like Ms. L, Mr. W, and many other teachers, that a new solution has been made.
The newly reimplemented Grade 13 will be a great chance for students to make up for lost time. It provides an opportunity for friends to spend more time together, and gives them a great opportunity to bond through continuing to complain about school for another year. This also means more time to procrastinate on thinking about the future, and more importantly, another year of exams to study and look forward to! Look forward to Grade 13, because as the number suggests, it will be a fun and lucky year.
