As the juniors went on to continue their second day of PSAE testing, freshman and sophomores went through various workshops of their choice. The hour long workshops, which were student led and teacher chaperoned, ranged from robotics to baking and even to Pokemon.

This was a new thing that East Leyden tried to incorporate so students could “follow their passions” and to try out experiences that they may not have tried out before.

Basketball, volleyball, rock climbing, and dodgeball seemed to be the most popular. Dodgeball was one of the more intense games where students were genuinely more competitive and were more involved versus any other sport.

At one of the calmer sessions, such as the Nail Art and Hair Style workshop, student leader freshman Klaudia Lilliana, said that “it’s always been my passion [and] ever since I was little I liked to play around with makeup [and] people should really try new things.”

Two of the participants, freshman Alyana Nieves and Kathy Gacek, said that they had a lot of fun and that they’re happy they got to learn a lot of new makeup, hair and nail techniques.

On the other side of the school, students who weren’t very interested in participating in any of the workshops offered instead chose to attend the “Create Your Own Workshop” session.

Science teacher Ms. Marisa Kapinos was one of the chaperones for the session and said that “it’s pretty much students who are spread out [in the cafeteria] and they’re basically chatting about anything they want to chat about. It’s basically just hodgepodge and [there’s] lot’s of different things going on.”

After the workshops, students returned to their homerooms and began working on a new Leyden project, LHS10x.

LHS10x is where students are to try to make Leyden and their community 10 times better with new ideas.

On the first day of the PSAE testing days, students ended the day in their LHS10x homerooms, where they started to form ideas to fix the school and/or community.
On the second day, students presented their ideas, by using slogans and catchphrases, in front of their classrooms.

Each class then voted on the idea they felt was the best of the whole class and the top community and school ideas was submitted to Principal Jason Markey who will then select the best one which will be submitted to the leadership conference.

With the sophomores and freshman experiencing new things, and coming up with ideas to make Leyden a better place, the students and faculty will hopefully see some inspiring changes coming up soon.