Newcastle High School's First Ever STRUT Week Helps Teacher Battling Cancer

It’s the first ever STRUT Week for Newcastle High School, which means a week of fun for a good cause.  

“Most schools plan this in like a full year, like they spend the whole year working on this and we were like well we want to do it,” said Clare Bebout, a sophomore at Newcastle High school and one of the organizers of STRUT week.  

STRUT Week stands for, students, teachers and racers united together. 

“All of our events are for our students and then the evening events are for the whole community,” said Maddie Brasel, a senior at Newcastle High school and one of the organizers of STRUT Week.  

Events started at the school with a pep rally and food trucks, and all week long there’ll be community games and events throughout the community. There’s even a car smashing  

“We get to spray paint a car and you pay like $5 to hit a car. And it’s a good fund raiser, a lot of people pay to do it,” said Bebout.  

All this to raise money for their earth science teacher Mr. Kauk  

“He’s such a bright spirit. Every time you see him, he’s got a huge smile on his face,” said Bebout.  

Mr. Kauk is battling pancreatic cancer and hasn’t been able to teach since December.  

“It’s amazing, I’ve been at this for thirty years and you never anticipate something like this,” said Bryan Kauk, earth science teacher at Newcastle High School.  

Mr. Kauk is only in his second year at Newcastle, but the community has embraced his as one of their own.  

“I don’t know a lot of the community yet, but now I will because I can’t say enough or do enough to hopefully give back one day,” said Kauk.  

And while there is a lot of fun planned for the week, these students have not lost sight of what it’s all about.  

“Once we found out that we could give the money to Mr. Kauk and his wife, to help with medical bills, like that was one of the most exciting parts of the whole thing,” said Brasel.  

Gratitude given and received  

“I look forward to at least showing my appreciation for all that they’ve done for me,” said Kauk.  

All the fun comes to an end on this Thursday when the students present the money they’ve raised to Mr. Kauk.  

For a list of all the activities visit their group Facebook page Newcastle High School STRUT Week.