With the reintroduction of in-person clubs this year, students and teachers alike are back to the clubs they love, and even starting new ones, with a refreshed sense of vigour and curiosity. Members of The Howlander have been taking in the scene of as many clubs as they can. Without further ado, here’s The Howlander’s first Club Report!

Visual Arts Club

By Eli Marcovici

On a typical Monday in mid October, there are four students in the Visual Arts club, run by Ms. Mladen. They are positioned around a large table, each with a laptop open showing an image to draw. Each week, everyone works on something new. These can feature any medium that is available, and follow any theme or style they like.

What do students enjoy about the club? “Something great about Art Club is the chance to make your creativity flow. You can draw whatever you would like, depending on your mood that day,” said grade 9 student Atticus Tiplady.

How do they come up with new ideas every week? “We usually take inspiration from a book, movie, or video game,” said Tiplady.

“As a student, I really enjoyed my visual arts class and club, so I wanted my students to experience the way I felt,” said Ms. Mladen. “A great thing about this club is that there are no pressures: I like to think that the students are in charge of me during this club. I listen to them, and I am just there to guide them.”

As the students got down to work, there was a sense of calm, as if there were no problems. This is a chance for the students to relax through art. It is a great club for students who just want a break, and to express themselves freely.

Guitar Club

By Oliver Armstrong

Guitar Club is one where all levels of guitar, whether base, acoustic or electric, come together with teachers Mr. Mooney and Mr. Rankin to have a lesson on guitar tricks and generally just jam out together.

While I also attend, I interviewed a much more experienced member of the club who says that he has been practicing guitar since he was 8 years old. He is always intrigued by learning more about guitar and helping out other club members, and he spent the last meeting enjoying Mr. Rankin explaining how to use distortion pedals on guitars to create unique sounds that can be seen in every style of music. He is very glad that things can get back to a pseudo-normal, and he is excited about what else these two guitar masters can teach him.

Comedy Club

By Simon Cox

Their club time was cut off by a recent Friday’s PD day, but that didn’t stop them! The Comedy Club took place online the previous Thursday, where they developed jokes and bounced sketch ideas off each other. While every club meeting is a blast, they’re looking forward, in particular, to Toronto Sketch Fest in the winter, which they’re preparing their best sketches for, and Hidden Gems, for which they’re piecing together stand-up routines to perform. Topics of conversation include the philosophy behind making a sandwich, what Jesus would be like if he were a rapper, in-depth critiques of the cinematic beauty of math homework, and unicycle football! The Black Box lobby is bursting with great ideas, supportive attitudes, and most importantly, laughter, every Friday after school.

Environment Club

By Colm McReynolds

Environment Club has quickly established itself as one of the best ways students can help in the never-ending fight to preserve and protect the environment. The club was originally started by Ms. Girvan and Ms. Totten and is currently headed by Ms. Bader and Ms. Totten. Since its founding, it has been one of the most influential and distinguished clubs, both in and outside of RSGC. 

The club joined Eco Schools Ontario (later Eco Schools Canada) in 2014. Since then, the club has been exemplary in helping tackle environmental challenges. Some of the many things they have done include tree planting, organizing Earth Day activities, promoting the addition of solar panels on the roof and a green energy charging station, and maintaining our school garden. All of these activities led to the Environment Club being rated platinum by the Eco Schools organization, the highest possible rating given. This was one of the club’s “proudest moments,” said Ms Bader. The club ties into many community service events. During the pandemic lockdowns, the club partnered with a local church to help take care of their garden as they couldn’t access ours. 

So what is next for Environment Club? Just recently they attended a seminar hosted by Take Me Outside, which included Dr. Jane Goodall. They also provided special boxes that allow for mask disposal in an environmentally friendly way. They are also working towards finding a way to have a more environmentally friendly Ketchum Hall. Since COVID, Ketchum has used styrofoam containers to serve food. This is good for COVID safety but not so good for the environment. They are working for a way to accomplish both goals. The fight to protect the environment never ends!

Web Design Club

By Simon Cox

The first ever Web Design Club meeting kicked off on Thursday the 7th, led by Eric Yao and Ms. Dukes. Having prepared all the necessary programs on their computers prior to meeting, the club got right to coding just minutes after it started. In a follow-along structure, Eric taught the club the basics of HTML, the language their websites would run on. Eric says that he plans “for everyone to make a tribute page, with info on someone they admire, and also take another website and make [their own] changes to it.” As a new club this year, it’s sure to gain more traction over time.

Over the next few weeks, progress grew; On the 21st, the club started their work on a website to track house points, which are currently only accessible on a Google spreadsheet via a link on the portal. Each member is working on a different page, like a landing page, a page to check your personal house points (over the year and overall), and a page to view the current house standings.

Robotics Club

By Ben Hutchison

In their first meeting, the Robotics Club disassembled a robot so that they could learn the parts and become better educated about how they work and what they can do. They also learned about the competition for which they will build their robot. 

In the contest, they have to build the robot to compete in a specific game. This year’s competition is to have their robot pick up and move “little purple donut things.” 

Rohan Jamal, who joined because he enjoys building things, gave a bit of insight into the Robotics Club. He is new to the club this year. He said he has done a robotics camp before, but it was still new to him. 

They are planning on building separate parts of the robot to combine them together and make the robot that they will use at the competition. 

The robotics club is led by Ms. Dukes, who has been teaching programming for 12 years, so she’s connected to robotics through programming. 

As they all work as a team to prepare for the competition, they gain experience in robotics in a fun and interesting way and we wish them luck at the competition.

Debate Club

By Colm McReynolds

Congresses, parliaments, corporate boards, parents and children, siblings, spouses, friends, enemies. Thousands of decisions are made every day by many different bodies. Some are large, monumental decisions that could change the course of history, and some are small, inconsequential drops in the puddle of the universe. And within every decision, there is a debate, with two or more options being weighed against each other. 

The purpose of Debate Club is to give students the opportunity to learn how to argue for one side, present evidence, clarify arguments, clash with opponents, strategize with teammates, and successfully argue a point in a civil and respectful environment. While teachers (Dr. Evans and Ms. Hart) are present to act as advisors and to ensure an orderly proceeding, the club is run by 4 students: Wolf Virgo (Grade 11), Caelen Carroll (Grade 11), Eric Yang (Grade 10), and Colm McReynolds (Grade 11). An important part of Debate Club is the goal of providing an inclusive atmosphere. Participation is not mandatory, although it is encouraged. Debate is tough, and having confidence going into the debate is a key factor for success. 

Debate Club uses a parliamentary debate format. This helps ensure the debate remains civil (unlike a certain presidential debate in a certain country). The club tackles a variety of topics, from issues of LGBTQ+ pride or Indigenous issues to the school lunch menu’s frequent use of chicken.

Mentorship is an important part of the club. Everyone provides feedback, learning from veteran Debate Club members and the teachers. Inter-school tournaments have been a major part of the club’s past, and these will resume this year after a hiatus during COVID. 

Debate Club continues and expands conversations that have been taking place for generations. opportunity for students who have been listening to these conversations for decades to step in and add their voice, their opinions, their ideas to the conversation. President John F Kennedy once said “The new generation offers leaders.” Those leaders are preparing for the future every Thursday, after school, in room 103.

Gender Talk/Workshop

By Josh Tavares-Pitts and Oliver Armstrong

After school on October 18, 2021, Levyi-Alexander J. Love, a trans male speaker, spent time talking to us about the topic of gender and what it means. After the event had been announced during the assembly on the same day, many people were excited to attend. It started with the speaker sharing a little bit about himself, like how his favourite game of all time is Cyberpunk. He then opened the floor to the audience, answering any questions, whether it be gender related, or just about him, while challenging the audience to think about what masculinity really means. The speaker was present via virtual Zoom call, which made it all the more interesting to answer questions. Some questions involved sports. Other questions were related to the speaker’s personal experience of being part of the LGBTQ+ community. He shared that “not many people accepted” him, including his immediate family, however he believes he was one of the “lucky ones,” as he was supported by other people like his grandmother and friends. This goes to show that struggles within the LGBTQ+ community are still very prominent.

After the more serious talk, the speaker invited us to take out our phones and join in an activity. He explained that in his favourite game, Cyberpunk, the character constructor element was incredibly inclusive for its time, allowing many more settings than most games. He then posed the question, if we were to live in this Cyberpunk world, what would we look like, do for a living, and where would we live?

A wide range of answers were shared, the most interesting category being profession. The jobs spanned from fisher, to professional golfer, to hitman. The activity was meant to open the imagination and free us from the social confines of society, so we could discover our true selves.

The final activity was “circle sharing,” where the audience would talk about how they were feeling. It seemed as though everyone who attended thought it was a resounding success.

This talk was hosted by the Gender Studies Club, which meets on Mondays after school, which is run by Ms. Kaye and Ms.Hart. For other talks about similar issues, consider joining the Inter-school Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA).

Reading Buddies

By Oliver Armstrong

Reading Buddies is a club that I think everyone should participate in at some point. The club is all about taking a small amount of time out of our Wednesdays, just 30 minutes, and using it to read a book for those at a local public school. Our first meetings had a pretty small attendance, but we spent our time not only reading books, but watching fun educational videos with the children. Although Reading Buddies used to be a much more personal experience before COVID, we are making our best efforts to read to the kids, who are still cheering in excitement when we arrive.