Every few weeks at McNicholas high school, the Rockets watch various clips about other students being asked about their hot takes, favorite holiday, and other simple interview questions during their lunches.
Technology teacher, Barb Gillming started these small skits and interviews in 2004 with former theology teacher, David Sandmann and his graduating class. Gillming’s theory for starting the Rocket Report was “to increase school spirit…if people knew what was going on, then more people would show up to events.”
Seniors Jake Forsthoefel, Christopher Auxier, and Joey Baca all came together to start the Rocket Report up again this school year. They took a class for Gillming in previous years as juniors and she had offered them the chance to take over the report for their senior year. They gladly accepted the offer and started to watch the original and older Rocket Reports and immediately hit the halls of McNicholas.
During some of the productions starting in 2017, Gillming was having personal and family issues. After that, all production started to slow down. By 2020 when Covid had hit, it was an unsuccessful year of filming and then it was unable to happen.
In the 2021 school year, she tried to keep it going with other students but was not having a successful time when they would try to show them during lunches. Gillming says the videos that were made last year “were beautiful. [A couple of videos were] ready to go and then when we tried to play it in the café, the projector wouldn’t work and the next time the sound system was broken.”
Luckily this year they are able to show some of the older clips and are able to show the time and effort that was put into it in the previous year. In the Rocket Reports that were shown during the fall season there were mostly clips at school. The seniors say that now their football season is over they can have more time to go find other students after school and interview them outside of school.
Many students do get a good laugh out of seeing the Rocket Report, but the seniors have been stuck on what to put in them. If anyone has ideas email the seniors at 104073@mcnhs.org (Joey Baca), 103568@mcnhs.org (Christopher Auxier), and 103655@mcnhs.org (Jake Forsthoefel).
The McNicholas Milestone 