School Board approves bell schedules for 2017-18 school year
Last night, the School Board approved bell schedules for each school. The times will be posted this week on school websites.
Last night, the School Board approved bell schedules for each school. The times will be posted this week on school websites.
The Albany Public Schools Foundation announced its list of annual scholarship winners. The awards go to graduating seniors from Greater Albany high schools.
Albany Public Schools Foundation issued a press release announcing the winners. Pictured are Jessica Woodall (left), winner of the Chris Lukesic Memorial Scholarship and Evelynn Flamez, winner of the Albany Chamber Pipeline/LBCC scholarship.
NEWS RELEASE
Albany Public Schools Foundation
Contact: Aimee Addison 541-979-2773
June 10, 2017
The Albany Public Schools Foundation was honored to award nineteen scholarships, totaling $44,250, to high school seniors from the 2017 Albany graduating classes this year.
Albany Options scholarship award winners were: Jordan Monet Jackson, Albany Public Schools Foundation scholarship; Alan Hernandez, Albany Chamber Pipeline/LBCC scholarship.
South Albany High School scholarship award winners were: Emma Clare, Jim Linhart scholarship; Riley Swanson, Howell/DKG scholarship; Hannah Barber, Eric Mann scholarship; Cristian Amador and Katie Osuna, Jeanne Linn scholarship; Katie Osuna, Central Willamette Credit Union scholarship.
West Albany High School scholarship award winners were: Josh Rondeau and Delanie Phillips, Teddy Brown scholarship; Felicia Lopez-Martinez, Jim Linhart scholarship; Denisse Medina, Joseph Blickenstaff scholarship; Jessica Woodall, Chris Lukesic Memorial scholarship; Lauren Schuh, Howell/DKG scholarship; Anthony Straw, Botkin Memorial scholarship; Evelynn Flamez and Kylan Moe, Albany Chamber Pipeline/LBCC scholarship; Emily Harding and Riley Lamont, ATI – Allegheny Technologies Inc. scholarship.
The Albany Public Schools Foundation scholarships range from $500 to $5000 and are available for one to four years. The Foundation, founded in 1984, has awarded $348,994 in scholarships. In addition, the Foundation funds classroom grants and school enrichment grants providing support for education enhancing opportunities throughout the Greater Albany School District.
Please contact the Albany Public Schools Foundation at 541-979-2773 for more information on how you can help support kids in the Greater Albany Public School District through setting up or donating to a scholarship fund.
Video of Thursday night’s graduation ceremony is available here.
Photos from Grad Walk 2017 are available here!
Hawleywood Photography will be posting photos of the 2017 Graduation Ceremony here. (The password has been emailed out to senior families via School Messenger. Please contact the office if you did not receive it.)
Albany Teen Graduates with Service Dog (KEZI)
From K to yay: West Albany graduates celebrate with elementary school visits (Democrat-Herald)
Gallery: WAHS Graduation (Democrat-Herald)
School is almost out and summer is just around the corner! However, there is still a lot to wrap up before students can start enjoying the nice weather without the stress of school for a couple months. A few helpful reminders and tips for supporting your student with end-of-year activities and stress can be found in this article from USNews.com.
In this month’s edition you will find new information about the following:
This will be the last Counseling Center newsletter for the school year – we will resume in September.
Have a wonderful summer!
Photo: Democrat-Herald
Two GAPS teachers have plans for travel and educational enrichment over summer vacation. West Albany High School teacher June Morris and Memorial Middle School teacher Kerrie O’Brien will travel to Chile in July with 10 other Oregon teachers to learn about the geography of Northern Chile.
The following story in the Democrat-Herald explains the details:
Two Albany teachers will be sharing a new perspective with their science and geography students this fall after spending part of their summer studying in northern Chile.
June Morris of West Albany High School and Kerrie O’Brien of Memorial Middle School will travel to Chile from July 5 to 22 with 10 other Oregon teachers.
The trip’s costs are covered courtesy of the Center for Geography Education of Oregon. The center, housed at Portland State University, organizes and pays for travel opportunities for its member teachers as part of its mission: to improve geography education throughout the state.
“The idea is that teachers who teach about the world should travel the world,” explained Morris, who teaches Advanced Placement European History, AP Human Geography and freshman geography at West.
The opportunity to travel enhances not only the teacher’s training but the student experience, because students tend to be much more engaged when they’re hearing a firsthand perspective, added O’Brien, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade science and a Talented and Gifted enrichment class at Memorial. And, she said, it may inspire more students to travel themselves.
This will be the teachers’ second overseas trip with the Center for Geography Education in Oregon. Both traveled to Turkey in 2012.
In Chile, the teachers will be exploring various geographical areas, from the arid Atacama Desert — “There are places it has not rained for as long as there have been people there to report it,” O’Brien said — to the Willamette Valley-like terrain of the Central Valley.
Both teachers will use the experiences to craft lessons for their students on their return.
O’Brien, whose seventh-graders study plate tectonics, is planning a unit on how Chileans coped with a 1960 earthquake considered the most powerful ever recorded. Both Oregon and Chile lie near subduction zones, which means multiple opportunities for studying what might be done locally in advance of the devastating quake expected to someday strike the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
Morris said she hasn’t got a lesson plan fully developed yet — that’s part of what will be done through the trip — but as an AP European History teacher, she’s looking forward to seeing the legacy of Spanish colonialism and its effect on indigenous populations.
Both teachers say they joke that geography is “the mother of all subjects,” but at the same time, neither one really see that statement as a joke at all.
Until she took a professional development course with the center, then called the Oregon Geographic Alliance, O’Brien said she thought of geography lessons as filling in blank maps with crayoned rivers and mountain ranges.
After that experience, she said, she’s learned the subject is really about the essence of the human experience: how people’s surroundings affect them, and how they in turn affect those surroundings. Everything from travel to trade, language development to social changes, is affected by the placement of a society in the world.
“Knowing where stuff is is kind of important, but it’s much more important to think geographically,” O’Brien said.
Not all teachers get much exposure to geography in that way, Morris added. That’s why the center’s work is so critical, she said: It helps teachers to develop that understanding of geography as an essential topic.
“It’s really excellent professional development,” she said. “We’re supposed to go out and be geo-evangelizers.”
Advanced Placement classes include a final test or project. If students meet minimum score requirements, they receive college-level credit for the course. Most classes have a final exam, but studio classes, such as art, require final projects that are shipped to independent evaluators for scoring.
This project by West Albany High School student Conner Welsh is on display at the school. It will be sent for judging. Conner is in Babette Grunwald’s art class.
Advanced Placement courses are offered in numerous subjects at both South Albany and West Albany high schools.