Student Resource Officer John Zlatic sits with a fellow soldier in the mountains of Afghanistan. Zlatic was a linguist in the Special Forces during the 1990s. (Courtesy of John Zlatic)

Why did you decide to join the military?

I was actually in grad school, and I was driving to class when Desert Storm started. I felt like that would be better service to my country. But when I joined, by the time I went in, that war had already ended.

What exactly did being a linguist entail?

I speak Persian Farsi. Basically, any translating, interviewing, any reading of documents, and listening to communications is what I did for the team.

What kind of training did you have to go through?

Basic training, then I went to a year of language school, then I went to Advanced Individualized Training, which is where we did interrogations, interviewing, translating, stuff like that.  Then I went to airborne school where I learned how to jump out of airplanes, and then I went to Special Forces training.

What was it like jumping out of an airplane?

It was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done.

Where did you serve?

All over in the states, but also Bahrain and the Middle East theatre.

Did you carry a weapon?

Several.

Was there any combat?

Sometimes, but minor stuff.

What was your best day while serving?

That’s a good question. Probably the first time I jumped out of a plane.

The worst day?

Watching an execution.

Who was doing the executing?

It was a tribal execution in Afghanistan in which we couldn’t intervene.

Were there a lot of days like that?

Well, for them, it’s normal.  There are severe consequences for behavior, and that’s just part of their culture.  To intervene in that would have been a bad situation.

What else did you witness?

Just seeing the poverty, people living in total destitution and also being under a government in which their best interests aren’t being identified. That was hard, watching people suffer needlessly.

When they called you back from inactive service after 9/11, what was your reaction?

I was willing to go, but it’s a lot harder once you start having a mortgage and a job and children. It’s a lot harder to make those kinds of commitments than when you’re young and single.

What would you say to CHS students considering the military?

It’s a great opportunity. I think if you value your freedom, and you believe in that freedom, and you want to help other people reach that freedom, then it’s an opportunity that you can’t find anywhere else.

Why did you decide to go into police work?

For me, it was natural. I was sitting on one of those mountaintops one time, and I was like, “I’m in Afghanistan, but I could be helping people at home,” which is what I decided to do.

(Courtesy of John Zlatic)

There isn’t a whole lot of violent crime in Clayton, so what kinds of cases did you handle?

People always say that, but we joined up with the major case squad, so I’ve actually worked on quite a few homicides.

How did your experience as a detective compare to your experience in the military?

It’s great, but it’s the same kind of situation. It’s just upsetting, more so here. I worked on a case where these three young kids were shot in the face in their bed [points to the children’s pictures tacked to the wall], and you just don’t understand it. We almost have more terrible things happen in our own backyard than happen over there. You just can’t fathom why some people do some of the things they do.

How many cases did you handle?

Tons. There were times when I had 30 cases open on my desk at one time, so hundreds. Over eight years, probably into a thousand and something.

Is it anything like the TV shows?

You know what, it can be.  But the paperwork is just tremendous. For every hour of excitement, there’s probably eight to 10 hours of paperwork.

Why did you become a Student Resource Officer?

I worked a lot with kids, and I was pretty comfortable working with juvenile law, and I got really tired of working on cases in which the children were either dead or past the point of me actually helping.  So I decided I wanted to be a positive influence on kids’ lives while I could still help them.

Where do you see yourself in the future?

I’m getting my master’s in education, so I’m actually thinking about at some point teaching. It’s just the economy has kind of changed that right now. But hopefully teaching history. I’m going to be Mr. Harned’s replacement [laughs].

(Dee Luo)

Do you speak teenager?

The adult world – i.e. the real world – is centered around communication. Strong communication is the foundation for career and interpersonal success, and the digital generation is struggling to keep up.
“I think technology is changing our ability to communicate effectively with one another, because so much of our ability to communicate with others hinges on non-verbal communication,” said Dr. Timothy Bono, a lecturer in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. “And all of that is lost in an email.”
The vocal intonations, facial expressions and gestures that add to the semantic meaning of words in a conversation are imperceptible online or in a text. Most have had the experience of a sarcastic or joking message being interpreted the wrong way, sometimes with unfortunate consequences. Clearly, email or texting is not a substitute for personal interaction.
The result is that young people – and even some adults – though very adept at texting and chatting, have difficulty with physical conversation.
“People are not as good at face-to-face communication with one another because they haven’t practiced as much, because they’ve relied on the quick, easy abbreviations – ‘LOL,’ ‘cya tonite’ – without having to worry about how it’s spelled or anything,” Bono said. “And I think that’s sort of the unfortunate thing: that people aren’t practicing eye contact and the social cues that come with actual physical interaction.”
A weak handshake, poor eye contact, uncomfortable body language and the like can all be serious taboos in the adult world, especially in professional situations such as a job interview. In this way, lack of communication skills can be costly.
One might argue that social media, though not face-to-face, are just as effective a method of communication as personal conversation. But it is not so simple. Though efficient, social networking has its downsides.
Two years ago, Bono did a study of incoming freshmen at Wash. U. that examined their transition into the university in relation to their use of social media sites, and the results were counter intuitive.
“In particular, [students] reported lower self-esteem, they felt less optimistic about the week ahead, they got less sleep during the weeks when they spent more time on social networking sites, they were more homesick, less motivated to do well in school and, most ironically of all, they reported feeling less connected to others,” Bono said.
Though the study demonstrated a correlation and not a direct cause and effect, it is still powerful. Bono said that sites like Facebook and Twitter allow for “social comparison” – you can see what others are doing and, in many cases, become jealous or develop a sense of inadequacy.
In short, technology is ushering in a new age of communication among the youth, one that favors the brevity and superficiality of online messaging and texting over the complexity of face-to-face interaction. But the adult world is not necessarily following suit, and the digital generation’s inability to communicate effectively may prove problematic.

Popcorn brain

Here’s another problem with the kids these days: they can’t pay attention. And how could they? Is it really possible to accomplish anything while texting, watching TV, doing homework, checking Facebook, messaging someone and having a conversation at the same time? The answer, according to Stanford University psychologist Dr. Clifford Nass, is no.
“It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking,” he told PBS’s Frontline. “They get distracted constantly. Their memory is very disorganized. Recent work we’ve done suggests they’re worse at analytic reasoning. We worry that it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly.”
The appeal of multitasking is not new – it stems from the primitive human desire to respond to new threats and opportunities. The dopamine spike in response to the excitement of receiving a text or a Facebook notification can be addicting. Researchers say that the lure of technological stimulation can be compared to the attraction to food and sex, which are unhealthy in excess.
Bono said that attention can be thought of as something finite – the more you divide your attention, the less attention each activity will receive.
“We know that [multitasking] inhibits the ability to focus on the task at hand,” Bono said. “People think that they can handle many different tasks all at the same time, but by doing that you’re necessarily compromising your ability to focus on what’s most important.”
Numerous studies have demonstrated the inefficacy of multitasking. One investigation showed college students a news program with and without blurbs crawling at the bottom of the screen. The results showed that the students remembered significantly less from the news broadcast when their attention was diverted to the news crawls.
“Under multitasking conditions, cognitive processing [is] less mindful and more automatic,” wrote UCLA professor of psychology Dr. Patricia Greenfield in Science Magazine.
CHS teachers are already seeing the effects. English teacher Emily Grady said she’s seen a decline in students’ ability to sustain reading, and history teacher Sam Harned agreed that students have changed in that they struggle more with in-depth, thorough analysis.
“More and more students, I think, have a hard time with material that involves sustained attention, because so much in their culture works against that,” Harned said.
High school, with its 46-minute classes that tend to be varied and interactive, accommodates this short attention span. But Harned, who teaches once a week at Wash. U., predicted a “culture shock” for students when they go to college and classes consist only of a professor talking for an hour and fifteen minutes.
Although attention may be suffering, technology has augmented visual skills such as iconic representation, spatial reasoning, and spatial visualization. But this comes at a cost.
“No real-time medium – including film, television, radio – permits time to reflect,” Greenfield said. “The one communication technology that does provide time to reflect is the written word.”
Reflection, she noted, is associated with inductive critical thinking, while television is associated with impulsivity. One study showed that recreational reading levels in college students were a statistically significant predictor of critical thinking skills.
“Although the visual capabilities of television, video games, and the Internet may develop impressive visual intelligence, the cost seems to be deep processing: mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection,” Greenfield said.
Indeed, electronic media have also impacted our ability to imagine. While studies show that more information can be retained when a story is portrayed audiovisually, the creative response is stronger when the story is presented in print.

Teach me how to Google

Not only is technology affecting the way that we think – it’s changing the way we learn. In some ways, it has made education more efficient and more meaningful, but it has also provided shortcuts and easy answers that only hamper true learning.
According to CHS Educational Technologist David Hoffman, technologies like the Smart Board have made classrooms more interactive and, studies show, more effective.
Greenfield suggested that there may be a “mismatch” between the oral and print media used to teach and test students and the visual nature of students’ knowledge. She also said that the developing mind “still needs a balanced media diet,” one that incorporate visual learning and reading to cultivate various cognitive skills.
Knowledge iteslf is becoming more and more accessible, and the importance of memorization versus process learning is changing.
“Technology makes learning so much more efficient,” Hoffman said. “You don’t have to spend so much time memorizing, you really spend time on learning, and how to learn and problem solving.”
For example, Math Department Chair Stacy Felps described the graphing calculator as a fundamental change, but not in the sense that it allows students to forgo understanding the math. In fact, she said it actually allows for greater comprehension by making computation and experimentation so easy.
“Instead of thinking less, appropriate use of the calculator really should be letting us think more deeply about situations beyond computation,” Felps said.
In a sense, finding information has become more important than actually learning it. And the ability to find an answer to most questions immediately – rather than going to a library and looking something up – has changed the conception of knowledge. To know facts has become almost insignificant, since anyone with an iPhone can know the same facts in five seconds.
“The amount of time that is saved is really phenomenal,” said Spanish teacher Teresa Schafer.
But, at the same time, she expressed concern that the learning that goes on while searching for an answer may be lost in the age of Google.
Technology’s shortcuts also provide endless opportunity to avoid learning like the plague. Google Translate can make foreign language homework mindless, graphing calculators and computer algebra systems can make math a series of buttons to press instead of a conceptual understanding, and Spark Notes can make English essays a matter of careful rephrasing rather than thoughtful analysis.

The Bright Side

Technology, in itself, is no demon. Like anything, the key is moderation and balance. While a Chinese study showed that people with Internet addictions lose some of their brain’s gray matter – the thinking part – the key is that they grossly overused the Internet. Sure, there are significant changes that technology has effected, like the way we communicate and our ability to sustain attention, but there is also so much opportunity.
This is a truly revolutionary age. The world is more open than it ever has been, information is everywhere, and communication is constant. We are learning more in high school than our parents ever could have dreamed of, and it is largely due to technology. And although Google is not the answer to everything, it is certainly the answer to a whole lot of things.
Speed is the nature of technology. It allows us to operate faster and more efficiently, and it develops and changes rapidly. In such an environment, it is impossible to know what the world will look like in five, 10, or 20 years. It’s even hard to know what the next day will bring.
We stand at a crossroads, and, as Grady said, “any time you’re at a crossroads there’s always this regret for what you’re losing, but maybe something better is coming.”

Workers move the globe statue to Centennial Plaza

Construction workers used a heavy-duty crane to move the iconic Globe statue to the new Centennial Plaza pedestal on Saturday. The solid granite Globe itself weighs 22,000 pounds, the base weighs 8,000-10,000 pounds, and the back of the statue weighs 30,000 pounds. The backing, made of a single piece of granite, was the largest piece of stone ever removed from the Minnesota quarry where it came from. The statue will be lighted and, designers hope, will draw more attention to the school’s front entrance.

Workers slowly move the Globe to its new location in Centennial Plaza, across from the front entrance to the school.

Despite the cool, rainy weather, the stands at Gay Field were filled with elementary school students on Friday. The children were cheering on the Hounds as part of Elementary School Night at the football game. The event, the first of its kind, was organized by a newly founded group called the Greyhound Pride Parent Organization.

“The weather was not our friend tonight,” said Paul Lewis, the group’s leader. Still, he estimated between 60 and 70 kids and parents attended the event, which included a tailgate before the game.

Lewis said the organization was created to generate a greater sense of community between the district’s schools.

“The whole purpose of the organization is really to unite the schools by attending events like this that bring the community together for something really positive,” Lewis said.

Even though conditions on Friday were not ideal, the kids and parents who came for the game seemed to be having a good time.

“I think it’s a great idea to bring all the schools together for Clayton pride,” said one elementary school parent.

Lewis also said that the Greyhound Pride Organization hopes to generate what he called “aspirational awareness” so that grade school kids can see what high school students are doing and become more enthusiastic about high school activities.

Upcoming Greyhound Pride events include playing a role in the homecoming parade and inviting elementary school kids to a soccer game sometime in October. The group will continue similar programs throughout the sports seasons, including basketball, girls’ soccer and baseball.

See video for highlights of the football game: 

They were both mission trips so a lot of times we worked with kids, with orphans, and helped feed them and teach them. We also were distributing clothes, and just providing people with things they didn’t have. We also did some construction, for example we built a church a stage.

Jake Lee smiles with a young boy at an orphanage in Haiti. Over the summer, Lee went on mission trips to Puerto Rico and Haiti. (Courtesy of Jake Lee)

How are the people of Haiti, and the country as a whole, doing after the earthquake?
Often when people think of Haiti they think that the people are really poor and sad. But actually the people of Haiti have a lot of pride in their country.

And I had a conversation with a man from Haiti, and he said, “We don’t want Americans to be thinking, ‘Oh they’re so poor and they have nothing’ because we still have a lot of pride in our country, and although parts of the city are still in rubble we are happy with our lives.”

What were some of the things you did with the kids?
We flew into Port au Prince and then drove for six hours on really bumpy roads in a bus, and then got to our work site where we would stay for a week. And we were there for religious reasons so we would teach vacation Bible school, but the people there also wanted us to teach the kids English, so we would teach English for an hour everyday as well, and all the kids were really excited to learn English.

What was one of your favorite memories from the trip?
The kids at the orphanage near Port au Prince have fun, but they can’t really go out much or do a lot. So one of the days we all went to the beach together.

We drove for three hours, and in the car they were all throwing up from motion sickness because they don’t go on car trips like this. But when we got to the beach they were so happy because they’ve never been to the beach before, because most of them were like ten or under. And we played with them for the whole day there. And they were just so happy and grateful for the opportunity they were given, when for us it was normal to go to the beach. And we were able to take them with our funds, because they wouldn’t be able to go on just their funds.

Why is it so important to you to travel and take part in these service projects?
First of all, I don’t want people thinking that I just do this for my résumé or do it to look like a good person. I actually do it because I really love just helping people out and traveling.

I want to be a doctor in different countries and, I want to be like the doctor that I shadowed in Ethiopia. He traveled the world and just tried to help out as many people as he could. So I guess this is also helping me build experience so it’s easier to travel to third world countries as a doctor. It’s what I really want to do, and I feel like it’s just my calling.

Recently published data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education reveal that Clayton School District has failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the fourth straight year.

(Margaret Spengler/MCT)

AYP is a rising benchmark set by the state as part of No Child Left Behind, with targets for student proficiency reaching 100 percent in 2014 – a seemingly impossible goal. That means that any district without perfect Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) scores will have “failed” to meet standards.

This year, Clayton is joined by all other St. Louis County schools and 84 percent of Missouri schools in its failure to meet AYP.

Though the district’s aggregate scores in communication arts and math exceeded the state targets, certain subgroups failed to reach the proficiency goals. Students who qualify for free and reduced lunch and students with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) did not meet AYP in both subjects, and Limited English Proficiency students and African-American students did not meet AYP in communication arts.

Rural schools with homogenous, typically Caucasian populations tend to have an easier time making AYP, as they have few or possibly zero subgroups. Failing to meet AYP in one subgroup – a population of 30 or more students – causes the entire district to not make AYP.

“The fewer subgroups you have, the higher the chance you have to make AYP,” said Heidi Shepard, Director of Assessment for Clayton School District.

Needless to say, the existence of a significant achievement gap in Clayton schools between African-American students and Caucasian and Asian students was affirmed by the MAP scores (see charts below).

According to the text of No Child Left Behind, “corrective action” can be taken when a school district fails to meet AYP for four consecutive years. That can involve any number of terrifying penalties, such as large scale replacement of staff and curriculum overhaul. Yet Shepard said that the state has not contacted Clayton about any such penalties and that it probably never will.

“I can’t believe they would spend a lot of time focusing on districts like Clayton, compared to others that are having much greater concerns,” Shepard said.

She said that a possible ramification is that Clayton may not be at the top of the list to receive state grants, but Clayton gets so little of its funding from the state compared to other schools that this consequence seems minor.

And while CHS Principal Louise Losos said that the MAP scores should not be dismissed, she added that it is important to consider other metrics as well. Graduation rates, ACT scores, AP scores, college attendance rates and the like present a more holistic picture of Clayton. As does Newsweek’s ranking of Clayton as the best public school in Missouri and one of the 100 best in the nation. Though not scientific fact, it certainly doesn’t hurt.

Shepard said that she will continue to study the data and see what can be gleaned from it. End of Course exam results can help expose holes in curriculum, for example, and the results’ emphasis on subgroup performance can help shed light on populations within the student body that are struggling.

As proficiency targets climb toward 100 percent, it is unlikely that Clayton will ever meet AYP again. No Child Left Behind’s imperfections will continue to play out as more and more schools are deemed underperforming. With all of its unrealistic expectations, it seems inevitable that the current system of assessment will be revised at the national level –  it is only a question of when.

In a perfect world, that’s not the way decisions [should be made],” -Louise Losos, CHS Principal

Wardrobe classes are not being offered at CHS for the second year in a row, and it is quite possible that the class will be permanently discontinued – despite what appeared to be heightened student interest in fashion in recent years. Wardrobe classes were put on hold last year due to construction and the retirement of the Family and Consumer Science (FACS) teacher. The new wing has a state of the art wardrobe studio, but this year it will be empty, probably used only for meetings and storage.

With wardrobe cancelled this year, the state of the art room in the new wing will be empty. (Paul Lisker)

It was the general consensus among Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers that wardrobe would indeed return this year – students even signed up for the class last winter. But months later it was decided that wardrobe would be cut for yet another year.

CHS Principal Louise Losos said that the decision was made in a “quick fashion” and mostly at the district level. Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, Dottie Barbeau, said that the decision was a collective one, made at a staffing allocation meeting that included district leaders: then-Superintendent Mary Herrmann, now-Superintendent Sharmon Wilkinson, Barbeau and Losos. According to then-CTE Department Chair Nancy Freeman, there was no input from the curriculum committee, which usually makes curriculum decisions.

The decision to cut wardrobe came as a surprise to business teacher Marci Boland, who is now CTE Department Chair.

“It wasn’t one that we were thinking was going to be on the chopping block,” Boland said.

After all, more than enough students signed up for the class to make it viable.

Freeman said that in the beginning of last school year she urged the administration to advertise the opening for a FACS teacher that included wardrobe, but she was told that staffing decisions first had to be made. If anything, Freeman said, the decision to keep or discontinue wardrobe should have been made when the new building was being planned so as to avoid wasting taxpayer money on a room that won’t be used.

Losos acknowledged the lack of transparency in the decision.

“In a perfect world, that’s not the way decisions [should be made],” Losos said. “The process did not go as smoothly as it should have.”

The CTE curriculum is under review this year, and the curriculum committee will be studying many aspects of CTE classes. An outside consultant visited CHS last year and filed a report of recommendations that the committee will use in their study. The curriculum committee could recommend that wardrobe be permanently eliminated from CTE offerings.

Barbeau said that the administration did not want to start wardrobe classes and buy new equipment the year before the curriculum would be under review.

“We could potentially have had a group of kids who would be starting and not continuing, or if you start a group, then you’re committed to moving those kids through,” Barbeau said.

The same logic was not applied to culinary arts, which will be starting up again this year after being put on hold last year due to construction. Maybe that is because of the sensationally lavish – and sensationally expensive – culinary arts room in the new wing. A vast, professional-grade kitchen would look much worse left empty than a wardrobe room.

And not only is culinary arts being resumed this year – it is getting an entirely new curriculum. Thus, it seems that what Barbeau wanted to avoid with wardrobe has happened in culinary arts: the curriculum committee will be compelled to keep culinary arts as is, so as not to have wasted so much time and money.

Barbeau said that part of the reason culinary arts will resume this year while wardrobe does not is that more students enrolled for culinary arts than wardrobe last winter. This may be due to the excitement surrounding the new kitchen, and it does not necessarily translate to increased student interest in culinary arts as a profession. In fact, college counselor Carolyn Blair said that two thirds more CHS graduates study fashion or wardrobe in college than study culinary arts.

Freeman said it seemed to her that the administration made the decision based more on preconceived notions and assumptions about the wardrobe program than actual data.

As for why both wardrobe and culinary arts weren’t brought back this year, Losos said that a new FACS teacher has been hired, Lauren Battram. Battram is very young, and they did not want to overwhelm her by giving her two new curriculums to create and teach. Battram is fully qualified to teach wardrobe as well as culinary arts.

For now, Fashion Club will serve as substitute for actual wardrobe classes, and Battram will be the sponsor. But this is not a sustainable solution. It works well when there are students who have taken wardrobe classes in the past and are therefore highly skilled in sewing, but those students will soon graduate. Whereas DECA has business classes associated with it, Fashion Club would be just that – a club.

“Without a class for students to learn the basics, it’s extremely difficult,” said former FACS teacher Linda Williams. “And a club is just not going to do that.”

Caroline Kennard (12), who has taken wardrobe classes and was in Fashion Club last year, agreed – she said Fashion Club would not work as a permanent replacement for wardrobe classes.

The quality and complexity of the work done in a club would certainly not be the same as a class, and it is hard to imagine CHS graduates going on to prestigious fashion schools such as Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising – as they have in the past – without a fully operational wardrobe class at the high school.

There are other problems with the idea of a club substitute. Due to the intrinsic drama of high school, it is not as inclusive as a class – Williams said that, by her judgment, only a third of the students who were skilled enough to be involved in last year’s fashion show participated. And Battram said that to apply for grants for money and equipment she needs to have an approved FACS program. Without something like wardrobe class, she won’t be eligible.

For now, wardrobe class’s future hangs in limbo. It may be reinstated next year, or it may be discontinued and “replaced” by a club. Boland, among many others, is concerned.

“The longer you keep a class out of the program of studies, then the less likely it is to come back,” she said.

At the same time, so much is new. The addition and renovations have rendered much of the school’s interior and exterior unrecognizable, and new teachers, from culinary arts and journalism to math and English, have changed the face of the staff.

For better or for worse, this year’s Clayton doesn’t feel quite the same.

Maybe part of the reason I have this sense of profound change is that we here at the Globe have been working for much of the summer on a transition of our own. As you have likely noticed by now, the Globe Newspaper is no longer. Its replacement, the result of several years of contemplation and evolution, is the Globe Newsmagazine.

It was not an easy decision to give up our beloved broadsheet publication, nor was it a decision that we took lightly. In the end, we felt that the newspaper format was becoming too cookie-cutter, too boring, and too standard. We needed a change, and you hold the result in your hands. Though this issue is only 24 pages, all others will be 48 pages.

We have high hopes for the Globe Newsmagazine. In terms of content, we will still deliver the same quality reporting on local issues, and we will continue to provide information, insight, and opinions to the Clayton community. More of our breaking news coverage will move to our website, chsglobe.com, and the print publication will emphasize in-depth feature stories.

The design of the Globe Newsmagazine is where we will showcase our editorial staff’s creativity and talent. We hope that our new format will be more appealing to you, our readers, and we expect it to be a little more fun for us, too.

Above all else, we urge you to pay attention to the Globe. We have a strong commitment to providing you with the best that student journalism can offer – if not more. The Globe has long been an integral part of the Clayton community, and we intend to continue that legacy of comprehensive reporting all the more vigorously this year. You may be surprised by what you can find within these pages. Enjoy.

Power lines run across a road in the small Honduran town of Catacamas. (Fergus Inder)

Lisker and Inder spent a week in Honduras working with a group of doctors from Wash. U. and across the nation to treat patients. Both found out about the trip, which is an annual event in its tenth year, through their parents who work at Wash. U. The town itself was small but spread out, consisting mainly of small, one-story buildings.

“The hospital was about 15 minutes on paved roads from the center of the town, which has a cathedral,” Lisker said. “And as you go out from the small center of the town, the fringe communities are mainly stricken with poverty, and you can see that as you go out, the poorer the community becomes.”

Lisker and Inder saw upwards of 300 patients a day at El Hospital Santo Pedro Hermano, with common ailments ranging from asthma to epilepsy.

“A lot of the time, [the doctors] would prescribe medicine, we would go get it, and then teach the patients how to use the medicine,” Inder said. “But then some doctors would have you do preliminary interview on what medicines [the patient] is taking and what their symptoms are.”

Asthma is a major problem in Honduras because cooking is often done with firewood and trash is often burned. The dusty roads only add to the problem. As a result, Lisker and Inder gave out inhalers to many of the patients.

Patients crowd a hallway of El Hospital Santo Pedro Hermano as they wait for treatment. (Paul Lisker)

Much of what struck them was the poverty that they encountered in Catacamas, things like illiteracy that are so foreign to Clayton.

“The memorable part is seeing people come in without shoes, and you’d give people their prescription and they’d say, I can’t read this,” Inder said. “I’ve never been in a place where that sort of poverty exists and where people are so grateful despite that.”

Indeed, the people were grateful. Lisker said that you could see by “how they smiled” that the patients knew they were getting great treatment. But at the same time he said that patients would often ask for just a bit more medicine, hoping that it might last them the year until the next doctors come.

“The interesting thing about all of [the patients] is that, regardless of their socioeconomic status, they always came with their Sunday best – they came with their best clothes to see the American doctors,” Lisker said.

Inder and Lisker had a chance to get to know some of the patients and doctors that they met in Catacamas. Inder mentioned a neurologist from Cuba, Otico, who taught him how to diagnose Parkinson’s, and a pair of young girls he spent time with.

“I worked a lot with the kids,” Inder said. “I would entertain the kids while they were waiting because I worked with the pediatrician for two days. There were a lot of really cute kids – I had them playing Fruit Ninja on my phone.”

Lisker, too, found his experience working with children especially remarkable. He described one patient, a young boy, who was microcephalic, meaning the circumference of his skull was much smaller than usual.

“As I worked with one of the pediatrics, there were several extremely tough cases which I thought were very memorable,” Lisker said. “There was a particular case of a microcephalic patient who had unfortunately developed the condition prenatally because of radiation to the mother with cancer. So just seeing the father with the microcephalic [son] was a rather impressive experience.”

In short, while most students spent their spring break sleeping in, relaxing and vacationing, Lisker and Inder spent theirs changing lives. And as they gave an impoverished town life-changing medical care, they found that they, too, were changed by their experience.

“It’s hard to decide if one week changes your life,” Lisker said. “But there’s no doubt that this week was a memorable experience that will last me throughout my life.”