#aby villasis

[mwplanet]

Wayback Ward

What were Mary Ward teachers like in their high school years?

By Aby Villasis

Mr. Titus in the math department

Photo by Sarah Emery

Here’s a little insight into some of our Mary Ward teachers' high school lives!

MR. LOCONTE

Mr. Loconte is one of Mary Ward’s very own! He was in TA 02 and a self-proclaimed nerd. In Grade 10, he had a math teacher that he did not agree with and avoided her at all costs, regardless of him needing help with his work. As a result, he did not begin unit one of math until halfway through the school year in January. He expressed how poor his work ethic was during that year. He also recalled a time where he memorized and presented five French assignments on the very last day of school — which his teacher was unamused with.

When he was a student, Mary Ward had yet to introduce conditional zeros and the one unit per week rule. There seems to be more structure now than before.

“Mary Ward was a little bit of a wild west when I was here [as a student],” Mr. Loconte says jokingly.

In Grade 11, he had a short romantic interest of his own. A year later, he was met with an amusing series of romantic rejections. He had his own share of people he rejected as well.

Mr. Loconte was a part of Mary Ward’s jazz band with his friends and played the saxophone. Additionally, he was also on the volleyball, softball, curling, and soccer teams.

ADVICE: “You really need to try hard despite it seemingly being uncool. And, it’s okay to be rejected. It does not define who you are.”

DR. ENGALLA  

Dr. Engalla went to two different high schools, Parkdale CI and Father Michael Goetz. She liked all her teachers equally and they were all very kind to her, but she especially had a strong connection with her music teacher. Her music teacher constantly had a positive attitude which made classes more enjoyable. She felt that he always believed in her and encouraged her to always be the best version of herself.

She was extremely involved athletically throughout high school. She played badminton, volleyball, basketball, and softball. Out of all of them, her favourite was badminton.

Prior to teaching, she wanted to become a dentist. However, things didn’t work out, and she decided to go into pharmacy instead. She stuck with that for a couple of years until switching to chiropractic, where she practiced for two years before she decided to become a science teacher at Mary Ward.

ADVICE: “Don’t be too hard on yourself and expect to figure everything out in your grade 12 year. You will encounter obstacles along the way which will detour your trajectory in life, but trust that whichever path you are meant to follow is the right road for you."

MRS. PEZZETTA

Mrs. Pezzetta went to a very tight-knit high school with a rough population of about 400 students. Due to the small population, everyone had developed a close friendship amongst each other. At the time, Grade 13 still existed and she had a positive attitude about it as she felt that it was a great chance to explore, grow, and mature before heading to post-secondary.

She had no issues with any of her teachers, but she felt that her Phys Ed teacher helped her out the most. They were her coach and, overall, someone she could talk to when she needed it. They gave her a lot of moral support and were very encouraging and engaging.

Mrs. Pezzetta was romantically interested in the same guy for three years in high school. He was a year younger than her and they were close friends at the time.

She was heavily involved in the school community. She was on the music council, every female sports team, the yearbook team, student council, and various other clubs. Additionally, Mrs. Pezzetta also won many awards for both academics and athletics.

“I don’t know how I did it in high school. You [current students] definitely have different pressures that I never had,” Mrs. Pezzetta says.

ADVICE: “The best thing you can do is make a connection with teachers - it can carry you far.”

Hopefully, you’re able to take in their advice and experiences as guidance for your own high school journey. Don’t be afraid to seek help from any of your teachers for anything — there’s a high chance they went through it as well!

[mwplanet]

Welcome Back, Mary Ward Planet!

With a new team of fantastic journalists and artists, we are excited to bring to you our new initiatives

By Karissa Cruz and Ysmael Mendoza

Throughout the month of October, Teacher Supervisor Mrs. Powell and Editor-in-chief Karissa Cruz interviewed many candidates for the Planet’s executive positions. Together, they chose a diverse group of students across all grades for the 2022-2023 Mary Ward Planet Executive Team. Some are previous Planet members and others are brand-new additions to the team. Rounding off the Editors-in-chief is Ysmael Mendoza who joins Karissa as Co-Editor-in-Chiefs. To start off with our section editors, our World Issues editor is Shauri Taylor. The Planet’s Life section editor is Erika Nanquil Munoz.  Next is our WACT section editor; Emmanuele Reyes.  Justin Mikhail Espidido follows as our Sports section editor for this year. Our last section editor is  Angela Lin, for Community. This year’s Planet’s Redactrice is Drea Abungin. Our Planet Relations is Franchesca Dairo and our Planet Webmaster is Joshua Crisologo. The Creative Spaces section editor for this year is Katrina Ross Rodriguez, while this year’s Art Editor is Bianca Daganato. Finally, our Junior Editors for this year are Fynley Clarete, Aby Villasis, and Daphne Da Costa. We are all extremely excited to be the Planet executives for this year and are looking forward to showing you what we have in store!

Our main goal for this year is to rebrand. We want to make our blog and our Instagram account look more modern and more appealing to fellow students and teenagers. As you can see, our blog is outdated and needs some renovation. As a result,  a major part of our rebranding plan is to renovate the blog by updating our executive team, finding a better way to showcase our previous issues and changing up our aesthetic. Our Art Editor is going to create a new header and logo, while our Planet Webmaster is in charge of renovating the blog. We really want to grow our blog and the first step is renovating. Additionally, we are putting more focus on our Instagram account as well. The same logo for the blog will be used as our new profile picture for our Instagram account; @mw.planet. Along with our Planet Relations, we want to create aesthetically pleasing Instagram posts to draw people in and promote our work! We will also be using our Instagram account to promote many fun and engaging projects, so stick around for those! Overall, with this rebrand, we want to bring you a new Mary Ward Planet and expand our team’s amazing work to an even more amazing audience!

Now that we’re finally back to a completely in-person year, we decided to give the paper a chance to truly shine. Some exciting things that we have planned include a section in our Creative Spaces for writers and editors to share their own personal short stories/essays, in addition to a Reddit-themed section in Creative Spaces. Our newest feature called “Am I in the Wrong” is inspired by the new segment by Words from Ward, and story submissions will be open to all Mary Ward students. Students are encouraged to anonymously submit stories where they felt that they were in the wrong. We will be accepting submissions until November 21st, so submit your stories as soon as possible! In addition to our physical issue initiatives, another one of our goals is to introduce streeter interviews with different Mary Ward students on our Instagram, as well as create tri-annual news recaps on the happenings throughout our school community. 

Overall, our plan for this school year is to bring new initiatives to our award-winning newspaper, recognized by the Toronto Star, to help give back to the students. All students are welcome to contribute by writing an article or submitting creative pieces to our creative space submission box! For any questions, comments, concerns or suggestions, please feel free to message us on our Instagram account, @mw.planet. We’re so excited for you to see what we have in store for our upcoming issue this December. See you soon!