Chris Herren's visit to York High School

Chris Herren, former NBA player for both the Denver Nuggets and the Boston Celtics, will be visiting York High School next week in the evening on Tuesday 11/29 at 7:00 PM and Wednesday morning for an all-school assembly first period. Chris will share his personal story of overcoming addiction and redefining his life as a sober man. He has presented at a number of area high schools and comes to Elmhurst with the utmost respect. Please consider joining us for the evening presentation that will be held in the Campbell gym next Tuesday evening. As an administration and staff, we realize this is a heavy topic and will have student service support in place after the assembly on Wednesday for any student that might need additional support. We wish you all the very best and look forward to seeing you there!

Purple out this Friday 11/18

Many student leaders have come forth to process, plan, and breathe life into the "Kindness Matters Campaign." That alone makes me so proud to be a Duke! They have decided to declare this Friday a "Purple Out" day- blending the party lines: red and blue makes purple. We are a resilient school and community that wants to ensure we boast respect, tolerance, unity, and kindness. Please participate this Friday by wearing purple! I do ask that we tweet as much of our campaign (whether it be pictures, posters, slogans, quotes) by using the hashtag #kindnessmatters and tag York's Twitter account @YorkHighSchool

Message to students and staff

Hello Students and Staff-

Please excuse this brief announcement.   Our Nation and Community has had a historic shift in our political landscape over the past few days.  And the beauty of this nation is that we live in a democracy where we value the idea of people having different opinions and the freedoms to share those opinions.  However, these events do not change our beliefs of how we treat individuals in our building and our community.  We will continue York’s belief that everyone is a valued member of the York community.  We will continue to expect our students and staff to treat each other with the respect that each member of our society deserves.  Our country has a rich history of coming together after elections and promoting a peaceful transfer of power.    

After today, we will no longer permit actual flags of any kind to be worn as capes or clothing in our building.  This has become a distraction to the learning environment. 

Tomorrow morning we will be holding our all school veteran’s assembly.  This assembly is to honor the veterans that have served our country so that we have the freedom to vote and live in a democracy.  We expect our students and staff to treat this assembly with the respect and dignity these veterans deserve. This will also give us the opportunity to celebrate our country in unity.   We are committed to serving the needs of all our students and it is our priority that every student feels safe and welcomed in our building.  We are counting on all of you to continue these values. 

Thank you.

York Administration

Kindness Matters

Dear Parents and Community Members, I shared this message with the staff this morning and want to share the same with you. Last fall, York's staff visited each classroom to deliver respect talks. The purpose, as I have learned, was to explicitly address the critical power of words and actions and to emphasize respect and kindness. I am extending that effort to what I call the Kindness Matters Campaign. I'm encouraging students, staff, and the community to treat each other with respect, to understand that we can have differing opinions but still be kind to one another. One way to operationalize this is to encourage others to "commit" random acts of kindness in the halls, in classrooms, in athletics, activities, in the community, and within families. Some examples include: helping a student who dropped his / her books, holding a door open, saying hello and how are you to strangers, paying for someone's coffee behind you in a drive through, simply smiling at others, and paying someone a compliment. There is so much power in kindness, so much more so than in hate. Please help me spread the word and let's use this as a way to act as role models to our students in a time where societal discord is at a peak. If you post about this on social media, please use the hashtag #kindessmatters

Junior Parent Night

I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of the parents who were able to attend last night's presentation for parents of junior students.  It can be an overwhelming time as your students begin to assert their freedom and begin to think about life beyond York.  We hope that you found the information about college applications, senior courses at York, and standardized tests to be valuable, and we hope that it took some of the fear / apprehension away.  I am linking the Standardized Testing and Course Selection Powerpoint that Ms. Saylor and I used in our presentation either for your reference or in case you were unable to attend.  Thank you again, and we can't wait to see all of the amazing things our kids accomplish as they take their next steps into the world.  Go Dukes.

--Mr. Doherty

Congrats to the Speech Team

Congratulations to the York speech team on their 2nd place finish at the Homewood-Flossmoor Speech Tournament last Saturday.  They competed against 21 other schools!

Individual award winners include:

6th Place
Beckett Anderhaus-Custer & Emily Walker in Dramatic Duet Acting
Elizabeth Dopp in Dramatic Interpretation
Anyssa Smith in Poetry
Maya Wlodarczyk in Oratorical Declamation

5th Place
Custer Anderhaus & Emily Walker in Dramatic Duet Acting
Julia Stone in Dramatic Interpretation

4th Place
Bridget Lindgren in Oratorical Declamation
Jake Rehling in Original Comedy

3rd Place
Jake Rehling in Humorous Interpretation
Sydney Lind in Informative Speaking

2nd Place
Mike Bindemann & Erin Lee in Humorous Duet Acting
Erin Butler in Special Occasion Speaking
Zach Bernstein in Special Occasion Speaking
David Cooke in Humorous Interpretation

Tournament Champions
Mike Bindemann in Extemporaneous Speaking
Emily Dow in Radio Speaking

Congratulations to the Coaching Staff & The York Speech Team