Let's Hear the Roar
LCHS Parent Newsletter - April 2023
L.I.O.N.S - Loyalty, Integrity, Ownership, Nobility, Service
It is hard to imagine that we are already into April! We are lucky to walk into and through our facilities at Lake Creek HS on a daily basis. Unfortunately, there are times when we don't take as good care of our facilities as we should. We are far enough into this school year that our students know our expectations for behavior in their classes, in the hallways, in the cafeteria and in our parking lots. We are not doing anything different, but we are going to remain consistent with our expectations for behavior through the end of this school year. Talk to your students about making good choices at school. Often, the good choice is the difficult choice to make. Thank you for your continued support of our administrative team, all of our staff and all of our students! We are lucky to have such great students, great parents and a great staff at Lake Creek HS!
The MISD Education Foundation is passionate about giving back to our school district through innovative & creative grants and funding programs and tools to give our students a competitive advantage. In January, the MISDEF was able to award over $64,000 back to our teachers through Educator Grants.
You are invited to join the MISD Education Foundation at their largest fundraiser of the year, the Spring Soiree, presented by Pogue Construction.
This year, the event will be held at The Luminaire on Friday, April 21, 2023 from 6pm-10:30pm and the theme is “Tropical Nights!” - Casual dress, hula skirts and Hawaiian shirts encouraged.
Registration is officially open! You can reserve your table or sponsorship here! As a parent, you may choose to sponsor your own campus' administration table and be seated with your school's leadership team. This sponsorship opportunity is limited to one per campus and there are several other ways to contribute and be involved.
To learn more about the MISD Education Foundation and to keep up with what they are doing for MISD please check out the following links!
If you have any questions about sponsorship and supporting the Education Foundation's efforts through the Spring Soiree, please contact Tiffany Ortiz at tiffany@montgomeryisdef.org.
Student Parking on Campus
Student Parking Lot Reminders
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Please make sure you are in your assigned parking spot. If you do not have an assigned spot, you are not allowed to park on campus. The front lot is for substitutes, parents and visitors only. Your car may be ticketed or a boot placed on it if you are not in a designated spot.
At dismissal, you must get to your car and leave campus. Please do not loiter in the parking lots!
Regular Day Bell Schedule
Activity Bell Schedule
Delayed Start Bell Schedule
YEARBOOK
The last day to purchase a 2023 yearbook is April 6th. Yearbooks can be purchased on My School Bucks or Balfour.com.
If you purchased a senior ad the photos and copy are due my March 7th. Please send the information to Susan Poppell @susan.poppell@misd.org
Counselor's Corner
College and Career Center
Please follow @lifebeyondMISD for updated information on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Athletics
Seniors - Class of 2023
Action Required - Federal Student Aid Application required for all graduating seniors!
The Texas Education Agency requires each 12th grade student to compete the FAFSA or opt-out form in order to be cleared to graduate.
If you/your student have completed the FAFSA, please forward the confirmation email to Mrs. Poret in the LCHS College and Career Center ASAP. Mary.Poret@misd.org
If you choose to opt-out of completing the FAFSA, please fill out the opt-out form and have your student turn it in to the College and Career Center (room A1103) or you may scan it and email to Mary.Poret@misd.org. Completing the opt-out form does not prevent you from completing the FAFSA application at a later date.
If you have any questions or if you are not sure if your student has fulfilled this requirement, please stop by the CCC to ask or reach out to Mrs. Poret for assistance.
Explanation of Financial Aid Application Graduation Requirement
Reminders from Administration
Our 2022-2023 Student Code of Conduct is available here.
Most common dress code violations:
- No hats, hoodies, caps, head coverings may be worn in the building.
- Skirts/shorts/holes in jeans must be closer to the knee than the hip.
- No cropped tops are allowed. Students' midriff should never be visible.
- Students may not wear clothing or have visible tattoos that displays vulgar, lewd, or obscene writing or images and may not wear emblems that advertise or depict tobacco, alcohol, drugs, or weapons.
Students are required to be in dress code even on campus dress-up days.
Halo Detectors and Metal Detecting wands: To help LCHS combat the vaping epidemic, MISD has installed vape detector devices in locations throughout our campus to help us ensure our campus remains tobacco and drug-free. Administration will be investigating the alerts and consequences will be assigned to students who are found to be in possession of any prohibited devices or substances. It is also possible that administration will use metal detecting wands to confirm whether or not a student is hiding a device on their person. Administrators have been trained and will follow on district policy on the use of the wands.
Nurse's Notes
When to Use Ice on an Injury, and When to Use Heat
Ice can control inflammation, but you don't always want to control inflammation.
Hot packs and cold packs are some of the most useful and convenient tools we have for dealing with pain in specific body parts. But when should you use each one?
Ice is commonly used for minor injuries, like ankle sprains and pulled muscles, but you may have heard that it’s no longer recommended as much as it used to be. Many of us learned that injuries should be addressed with the acronym RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. But in recent years, you may have heard more about its opposite, METH: Movement, Elevation, Traction, Heat.
In truth, there are good times for ice and good times for heat. Let’s look at what each one does, and go over a few rules of thumb to help you decide which one to use.
Why you have swelling and inflammation after an injury
When you get a sudden injury, like an ankle sprain, your body turns on a process called inflammation. Inflammation causes the injured area to become red, swollen, hot, and extra painful. This isn’t fun to experience, but it’s how the healing process begins.
The swelling brings extra immune cells to the area to get the repair work started. Swelling can also make the body part stiff, which may be somewhat beneficial for protecting the area. And the pain can result in you naturally giving the injured area some rest.
But that doesn’t mean that inflammation is always good. If the swelling is extreme, it can cause more damage. And while pain can stop us from using the injured body part, we’re usually happier if we can take the edge off the pain and simply not use the body part anyway.
What happens in your body when you apply ice
Ice reduces a lot of these aspects of inflammation. It numbs pain, and honestly—the main reason we use ice for injuries is as a cheap, quick, easy form of pain management. It keeps your body from being able to swell the tissues as much as it otherwise would, and it can reduce the formation of bruises and hematomas (blood clots in the tissue).
In those first few hours to days after an injury, ice can be helpful to control that potential overreaction. Your ankle can heal just fine with a little bit of swelling; it doesn’t necessarily need as much swelling as your overzealous immune system might want to give you.
There are downsides to ice, of course. Once the injury is in the past and swelling has gone down, you don’t want to get in the way of your body’s healing processes. Ice can also increase pain for some injuries, especially muscle soreness, cramps, or knots. It tends to make stiffness and muscle cramps worse.
You also need to be careful with the ice. Cooling the area is good; giving yourself frostbite is not. A good rule of thumb on when to take a break from the ice pack is, “when you’re numb, you’re done.” If the skin is numb, take the ice pack off for 20 minutes or so. Never let yourself fall asleep with an ice pack on.
What happens in your body when you apply heat
Heat’s effects are, unsurprisingly, the opposite of ice. Heat dilates blood vessels and increases blood flow, so if you were to apply heat to that ankle sprain, you could increase swelling and possibly make the injury feel more painful.
But after that initial inflammation (or for an injury that came on gradually and didn’t pass through that stage), heat can be a good thing. The increased blood flow can promote healing. This is where the METH acronym comes in: movement and heat are especially helpful for moving blood and nutrients to where they need to go, and for keeping the injured body part from getting too stiff or painful as it heals.
Heat can also reduce soreness and stiffness in muscle injuries. If your back muscles are sore after a heavy deadlift workout, heat will feel great on your back. If you woke up with a crick in your neck and now your neck muscles feel stiff, heat will likely provide some relief.
How to know which to use
One rule of thumb is that ice is for the first 24 (or 48, or 72) hours after an injury, and heat is your better bet afterward. This isn’t a bad rule, but there’s nuance to it.
First of all, how long is that initial period where you should ice it? That will depend on the injury. For some, it’s just a few hours long. For others, especially more serious injuries, it may indeed last several days. A good way to tell is to ask yourself if the injured area is red, hot, and unusually swollen and painful. If so, it’s ice time. If not, you can probably move on to heat.
Another important consideration is what type of pain or injury you’re dealing with. The injuries that respond well to ice are usually acute tissue damage: something got torn, broken, or pulled. The ones that respond to heat are more likely to be chronic or nagging pains, or ones that involve spasms or cramps. A few examples:
- Recently pulled or torn muscle: ice, because it’s an acute injury.
- Recently sprained ankle or other joint: ice, same idea.
- Severe, recent bruising: ice, to reduce swelling and reduce the chances of ending up with a big hematoma (clot).
- Sore muscles after exercise: heat, to relax and soothe them.
- Muscle spasms or cramps: heat, same idea.
- Trigger points or knots in muscle: heat. We don’t really know what knots are, but most people find they feel worse with ice and better with heat.
- Back pain: often responds better to heat, because it’s usually muscle related.
- Anything sensitive, hot, red, or swollen: ice, to take the edge off that inflammation.
As a very general rule, you can go with your gut. When my back muscles are sore after a workout, I want nothing more than to sink into a hot bath. You couldn’t pay me to ice them.
All of this advice is for minor aches and pains, by the way. Sometimes, injuries can be more complicated than what these simple rules account for. And if something is seriously wrong, or if you suspect it is, make sure to see a professional and follow their instructions. You don’t want to sit around icing that sprained ankle if it might actually be broken.
Frequently visited webpages
Lake Creek High School
Website: https://lakecreekhs.misd.org/
Location: 20639 FM 2854 Rd, Montgomery, TX 77316, USA
Phone: 936-276-4000
Facebook: facebook.com/LakeCreekHS
Twitter: @LakeCreekHS