Mars mission all in a day’s schoolwork
Danica Andreas, left, attends Rangitoto College on Auckland’s North Shore. As part of the School Report series, Adam Dudding and visual journalist Bevan Read joined her for a day.
‘‘Search up Mars,’’ said Danica Andreas. ‘‘We need to know more about Mars and how it works.’’ Her friend, Rafe Bonniface, poked a few keys on her laptop, and they peered at the screen.
‘‘Can people live without an atmosphere?’’ said Danica.
‘‘What even is an atmosphere?’’ said Rafe (short for Raphaella, rhymes with taffy). More tapping. ‘‘You’ve got so many tabs open I can’t see what they are any more,’’ said Danica.
Cici Wang, who was sitting on the other side of Rafe and her laptop, leaned in closer, and the three 13-year-olds carried on muttering and Googling and speculating freely about the conditions on Mars and the best way to construct solarpanel arrays on a distant, hostile planet with a 687-day year.
It was period one on a Wednesday morning at Rangitoto College, New Zealand’s biggest school, with a roll of 3138: 56 per cent Pakeha, 26 per cent Asian, 6 per cent Maori, 2 per cent Pasifika, 10 per cent ‘‘other’’.
The three girls – as well as the rest of Mr Kendall’s Year 9 science class – were researching the best way to generate power for a Martian colony, and in a few weeks they’d have to present their findings. They could do it as a Powerpoint or Prezi if they liked, or in a speech, or make a diorama and talk about. It seemed entirely plausible that interpretive dance would be acceptable as long as the research was solid.
Most of Danica’s old friends from her intermediate went to a different high school, so she’s had to make new ones at Rangi. The closest of those are Cici and Rafe.They’re all in the same tutor class, so they’re together for all the core subjects like science and maths and English, but split up for French or music.
Rafe was ‘‘very outgoing’’, said Danica. ‘‘She’s not very shy. She likes to say whatever’s on her mind. She’s also very smart and likes to think a lot, though sometimes she blurts out random things.’’
Cici on the other hand, said Danica, ‘‘is much more quiet. She
likes to analyse things. But once you become closer to her she’ll crack out of her shell and become like a sister to you.’’
At tutor class at 9.25am the day’s notices were projected onto the whiteboard: details about how to give blood, an ad for a business studies market day, a notice entitled ‘‘attention all tap dancers’’.
The tutor teacher, Mr Searle, who’s also their social science teacher, asked everyone to open their devices; there were iPads and Macbooks and PCs in various colours. Each pupil had to send him an email outlining one highlight from the year so far and one goal for the rest of the year.
Danica’s highlight was the 591⁄2 out of 60 she got in a recent French test, and her goal was to get a good part in the junior Shakespeare production. She was hoping she might get to play Hamlet or even Horatio, but preferably not the ghost, seeing the ghost had no lines.
Health was next but they were doing sex ed, so the reporters left the class alone so they could blush with a bit of privacy.
After that, though, back to their tutor room for social science, where the topic was climate change and Mr Searle danced about with a grin, scribbling with his whiteboard marker over the maps and slides thrown up by the data projector, and coaxing answers and enthusiasm from his pupils. The kids read passages out loud and argued about the likely future of the Hauraki Gulf in the event of an 80-metre sea-level rise, and took copious notes on their devices.
They were thoughtful and eager to please, and shouted out the letters when Mr Searle pretended not to know how to spell ‘‘glacial’’, and smiled when he bemoaned the fact that New Zealand is a country with ‘‘too many cows and too many farts’’.
It was a cold and windy out, so at the 11am interval everyone stayed inside, peeling clingfilm and tinfoil off snacks, un-clacking Tupperware, unscrewing elegantly sculptural drink bottles.
Danica hadn’t had much breakfast so she was snacking on dry Nutrigrain from a ziplock bag. She and Rafe and Cici merged into a larger group of half a dozen girls who sat and ate and talked.
In 20 or so minutes they discussed the following: favourite
‘Oh no,’ wailed Danica. She hadn’t finished her French homework the night before. She was doomed.
teachers; all the addresses where they had ever lived; interesting birthdates of people they knew including the brother of Danica’s friend who was born just before midnight on December 31 1999, ‘‘which is like the start of a new century’’; twins born at just the right time so they straddled the midnight between two different years; a documentary about teenagers’ use of smartphones; and the screentime rules at their own home. Rafe revealed that because she grew up in the country she used to get excited when she saw traffic lights.
Elouise had a new Instagram filter on her iPhone, one of those ones that superimpose bunny ears and noses onto your face, so they all started taking selfies and giggling as they passed the results around. ‘‘Will this one work on me though?’’ asked Danica. ‘‘I have a completely different skin tone from you.’’
The bell rang. Danica and her friends stepped outside and into the swarm of green and red-uniformed students heading to the next class: dark and pale, tall and short, brighteyed and glazed.
Danica trotted up some steps, across a quadrangle and through some corridors and found herself in French, sitting next to a girl called Jamie. Today, said Mrs Seaman, who switched between French and English from one word to the next, there would ‘‘un petit test ’’–14 quick vocab questions.
‘‘Oh no,’’ wailed Danica, but too softly for Mrs Seaman to hear. She hadn’t finished her French homework the night before. She was doomed.
Jamie wasn’t optimistic as they swapped papers for marking. For the picture of the hammer, she whispered to Danica, she’d just written ‘‘le hammer’’, and she was pretty sure that wasn’t right.
Danica skived off PE – she’d left her kit at home. Lunchtime was a bit of a washout too – she’d been so excited about junior Shakespeare roles, but the teacher running it was sick, so they didn’t find out, and just did a read-through of Act 5 instead – 10 girls declaiming brightly about Yorick’s skull and Ophelia’s right to a Christian burial, with only occasional stumbles over ‘‘on’t’’ and ‘‘o’er’’ and ‘‘thine’’.
After lunch was music – two dozen pupils privately plinking and plunking into their headphones on electronic pianos arrayed around the classroom perimeter.
Danica practiced a two-hands version of the song Say Something, with its left-hand chords steadily changing under the insistent righthand drone. On the other side of the room a boy with the sheet music for Old Macdonald played something that clearly wasn’t Old Macdonald, attacking his keyboard like he was delivering the decisive blows in a boxing match.
Last period was English (essay-writing on the subject of set text Alice in Wonderland) and then it was over – the 83rd school day of Danica’s first year of high school, the 1603rd day of her likely 2500-odd days as a school pupil, assuming that she stays on, as she intends, to Year 13, in preparation for studying to be a lawyer, maybe.
It had been, she said, ‘‘a pretty normal day’’, and as usual, after the final bell she walked across a school field in the direction of her mother’s work, and as usual her mother met her half-way and they walked back together, talking about Danica’s day.