While many extracurricular activities are athletic or arts-based, there have been many academic clubs sprouting up in the past few years. Including such activities as the AP Student Advisement Board, Chemistry Olympiad and the Left Bank Book Club, there are copious opportunities for students to complement and supplement their regular school day. lhsimage.com went out to discover why all of the academic clubs came about.

Left Bank Book Club
Left Bank Book Club, started by language arts teacher Jeff Landow, gives students a chance to test their skills at analyzing literature through characters, symbols, motifs and other major lit devices. They do a book per quarter—two novels and two plays each year—and then meet to talk about them. Currently, they are reading The Wild Duck, by Henrik Ibsen.

Landow started the club because of the vast number of students asking him for book recommendations.

“If kids are asking for things to read, clearly they have the time and the will to read these books, so we might as well get together and talk about them collectively because I found myself talking to individual students about books. So that’s what sparked that in my mind,” Landow said.

The book club also serves as preparation for the AP exam.

“My goal in this is for people who like literature to meet and talk about literature and these specific books, but I am also going to pull Question 3s from the AP exam and talk about how you can use these books to answer those questions,” he said.

Those wanting to join Landow’s club should stop by Room 144 to pick up a copy of The Wild Duck and a flyer with all the club information.

Chemistry Club
Starting this year, Chemistry Club, sponsored by Science Department Chair Jeff Marx, was started.

The goal of the club is to advance through various stages of the U.S. Chemistry Olympiad competition, hopefully qualifying for the U.S. team, in order to compete in an international competition in Moscow next year.

“There are local tests, and then they go onto a regional test, and then go onto the national level.  In the spring of this year, the top 100 high school chemistry students will be identified, and they will go to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to the Air Force Academy for six weeks, where they just do chemistry,” Marx said.

At the end of the six week chemistry boot camp, the top eight students will become the U.S. team, and will compete against other countries in the international chemistry competition.

Model UN

Model UN has been around for four years, finding it’s origins when a former John Burroughs student wanted to start a Model UN at Lafayette, as he had previously been involved at John Burroughs.  The sponsor is AP Government teacher, Lori Zang.

Model UN is an organization that allows students to research a country in order to be able to knowledgably talk about their country and the issues facing the world at their UN conferences throughout the year.

Zang said, “There are usually a couple hundred students from various St. Louis high schools that attend our local conferences.  We call it SLAMUN–the St. Louis Area Model UN.  Since we have been participating, Lafayette has brought anywhere between 10-25 students.”

Explaining more in-depth about the conferences, Zang said, “For the local conferences, there are two committees that meet:  The Political and Security Council (POLSEC) and the Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC).  Members of the Secretariat (SLAMUN leadership) are responsible for the topics that are discussed at each conference.”

About the workload involved, Zang commented that it was a pretty low-key club, involving meeting two or three times to assign countries and work on resolution writing.

Model UN is closely tied with the Social Studies Department courses, such as Government, World History and U.S. History, and offers students a way to supplement the material covered in those courses.

Mock Trial:

Mock Trial has been available to Lafayette students sporadically throughout the last 20 years.  It’s last resurrection was due to Jean-Luc Panchot, Class of 2012, who asked Zang to sponsor the activity, which she did.

Zang said the purpose of Mock Trial is “to give high school students first-hand experience preparing and trying a case in an actual courtroom.”

Local attorneys draft a case for the students to try, alternating from year to year from civil to criminal cases.  Last year was a civil case involving a religious dispute.

“Last year, our team consisted of 4 attorneys and 6 witnesses, as well as a few students who kept track of the time and rules during our trials.  Adam Johnson was an attorney last year along with 3 seniors.  He is stepping into Jean-Luc’s role as the head of Mock Trial at LHS.  Really, all of the students that were involved last year–Adam, Nikki Ownby, Nikki Frazer, Michael Wefelmeyer and Jerrik Leung will be responsible for teaching the new participants the ropes,” Zang said.

Mock Trial is a huge time commitment what with drafting the cases and making the plan of action.

As far as last year’s performance, Zang said, “We are very proud to say that last year, Lafayette won every trial in the regular season and in regionals.  In fact, we emerged as the top seed in the St. Louis area before advancing to state in Kansas City.  We won our first trial against Hickman High School (sorry Mr. Deken), but lost in our trial against Parkway West.”