School News

Story By: Ben Lloyd

Overview: All doors at alfred almond are being replaced. They are also coming with new electronic closers and locks.

Features: The new doors being installed throughout the school will have a couple of features that set them apart from the old ones. Specifically, the new doors have electronic locking mechanisms and closers. The e-locks make the use of a traditional metal key obsolete by having a key card. The key card has a digital chip that sends a signal to the e-lock to unlock the door. The doors will still have a traditional metal key lock, but it will only be used for emergencies. Electronic closers are the objects on top of the doors that can be locked in place to hold them open. The closer can be controlled from a computer that has special software, to become unlocked from its place and shut the door. The e-locks can also be controlled to stay locked so no one can get in. These new features make the school a safer place for students and staff alike.

Old doors: The classroom doors had never been replaced before last year. They were getting scraped and beat up, and also did not meet current fire codes. Basically, this means the old doors would not have been able to stop a fire long enough for people to get to safety. Their windows had wire in them that would immediately be burned through, letting the fire through. Some of the doors didn't fit their openings; made of solid wood, they would expand from moisture. This made them difficult to open and close during certain times of the year.

Cost: New York State gave out a grant that would cover up to $5000 of the cost per door. Each door costs about $2000 to just be made. The closer and lock cost another $1700, then labor has to be added. The price of labor has been on the rise recently, so the $5000 from the state won't cover the total cost for the doors. Along with that, 20 of the new doors have to be sent back to be fixed, accruing even more cost, because they were built outside of the state's rules.

Story By: Ben Lloyd.Art classes at AA made dots that connected each art room to the other. All of the highschool and elementary art classes made the dots in the first few weeks of school and were put up immediately. They stayed up until the first week of December, where they will then be replaced with newer artwork.

The dots represent two different connections between the art rooms. As a physical connection of a path leading to both of the rooms, and a conceptual connection that the different rooms are always connected. This concept comes from the idea that all of the elementary kids will one day be in the high school, so they will have worked in both rooms. The dots make a pathway to each room, so the elementary students can see where they will be one day. All the elementary students saw this when Mrs.Mix, the elementary art teacher, took them for a walk following the path.

The dots were created first by making an outline for them all over the paper. Once that was done, color was added, and everyone had different ways of adding their own color. Some was added with paint, and others used pastels. After the color, many people decided to add some other basic designs to the dots. A few dots were made out of a clear plastic and more detailed designs were added to those.

The idea for the dots came from the book, The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds. The book shows a young artist who uses dots to gain confidence. The teachers wanted to do the same things with the students, give them something they can succeed in.

By doing this project all the students had an easy task that they could put their own twist on. This helped them learn how to take risks to express how creative they could be. This project also helped kids see the connections the two art rooms have, how one day they will have worked in both of them.

Story by: Ben Carstens

On 11/10/21, the writing lab made its return to Alfred-Almond, allowing students to get help with writing work from peers during study halls. If anyone is interested in getting assistance on essays, research projects, or any type of writing homework, writing lab is a great place to go. The students that help other people during writing lab are called writing shepherds, and a handful of skilled writing students are selected and offered to be shepherds.

It could be confusing at face value as to why someone would be willing to become a shepherd, and the secret is that being a shepherd has benefits. Claire Volk, senior, who accepted the request from Mrs. Snyder to be a writing shepherd last year, has only actually been able to help people with assignments 4 times due to the pandemic last year. A lot of activities were shut down in 2020 because everyone had to practice social distancing, and writing lab was one of those activities. Writing lab was only opened later into the year, and was still restrictive on where the shepherds could be for their sessions. Despite this, she still has mentioned writing lab to be extremely gratifying to participate in, and has enjoyed helping her clients learn from their sessions. Kiara Wisniewski, who’s also a senior, is a much more experienced shepherd. She has stated that she loves helping her clients line up the dots and figure out how to complete their assignment.

The big secret about being a shepherd is actually the skills gained from the experience of writing lab. This includes teaching, reviewing papers, improving essays and working with people that could potentially be strangers. These skills are essential to open up career options in the future, and to increase skills that could be needed in college. Instances that might require these writing lab skills include doing class projects with classmates you don’t know very well in college, studying to become a school teacher, getting a customer management job where you help customers with problems, and many more. The exposure that the shepherds get is extremely important, as they get a lot of clients, along with needing to put a lot of thought into the corrections they make. If the work in writing lab was effortless for the shepherds, then the exposure in turn would be less impactful. The writing lab experience becomes even more impactful when considering that high schools typically only have a few classes that include peer editing, even if those few classes are abundant with peer editing. While some of the shepherds may have practiced these skills in helping their friends with work, the experience in writing lab will far outweigh these occurrences.