Raiders Go to State Championship Playoffs!

The boy's AHS basketball team beat milton 71 to 52 in the first round of playoffs. Go raiders!

Chorus at LGPE

Alpharetta chorus program performed very well at LGPE on Monday and Tuesday! All three of our ensembles walked away with straight superior ratings in performance and sight singing, which means that every judge gave our students the highest rating possible.  

Congratulations Joshua Seides!

Joshua Seides has been named one of the top runners up in The 2015 Prudential Spirit of Community Awards in Georgia. Congrats!

Raider Swim and Dive at GHSA

Congratulations to the AHS Swim and Dive Team for their incredible performance at the GHSA State Meet this past weekend! The Boys’ team placed 2^nd overall in the state! Several swimmers made it on the podium: Patrick Cusick placed 2^nd for 100 yard Backstroke and 200 Individual Medley, and Jonathan Vater, Derek Wu, Patrick Cusick, and Jay Wellman tied for 1^st place in the 400 Free Relay. Way to go, Raiders!

Congratulations to our AHS 2015 TOTY and POTY!!

Congratulations to both of these outstanding professionals for their service to our school!

Words from Mrs. Kersey:

Jeff Cohen - He is probably the best math teacher in our school and one of the best teachers period.  He always makes every decision through the filter of “What is best for my students?” He makes himself available to current and former students to help them with all levels of math.  He uses songs and rhymes and other creative ways to help his students remember math skills that could otherwise be boring “rote” memorization.  Although teaching an RTI math class is not his favorite way to spend Anchor Time, he is one of the very best.  If he is given a class in the upper percentile levels or lower percentile levels, his students most often test out before the semester is complete.  He has a way of making intimidating subjects manageable for the mathematically challenged while also challenging the mathematically gifted. Jeff is always learning new and better ways to reach his students.  He is currently enrolled in the Tag co-hort here at AHS. When he isn’t in his classroom, you can often find Jeff supporting his students at sporting events, music events, etc.  I think he is involved in more ways than I have listed here.  I just know that I wish he had been my math teacher in 9^th grade (or any grade… even now for that matter) and could only dream of having him teach my own children (if I had any). 

Jeff Macko—the man everyone calls when something doesn’t work. Jeff works tirelessly to help the teachers of this building, whether it is with a computer issue or helping to fix a printer. In addition, this year he has overseen a shift to computer-based testing, working many long hours over the summer to ensure that our summer school students were able to complete their courses, then helping to reconfigure every lab in the building so it would be ready for teachers’ return. He has also shepherded a recent refresh of the desktop computers in the building (last year), now teacher laptops (this year), and the installation of our interactive projectors! Yet when he’s not making sure the school doesn’t fall into a wireless internet black hole, he also has time to collaborate with individual teachers on projects to help students, such as helping our journalism program scrape together enough technology to create a dedicated lab space for our newspaper, yearbook, and literary magazine students so that they could continue to grow their publications. 

National English Honors Society Induction

On Tuesday February 5th, the National English Honor Society inducted 24 juniors and seniors to their prestigious society. The ceremony took place in the Media Center, which was beautifully decorated with balloons for the evening. It began with wonderful speeches from the NEHS sponsors, Frank Fortunato and Maureen Bergeron, as well as from assistant principal Rebecca Perkins, former NEHS sponsor. Each officer of the club then explained one of the three pillars of the club: Scholarship, Charaificate as well as a rose. Finally, parents, students, and teachers alike welcomed the new inductees to the club with cake and punch. The night truly celebrated the new members as well as the amazing work done by NEHS. 

Celebrating AHS Senior Basketball Players

Girls (L to R): #23 Deone Cole, #32 Teja Finley, #21 Grayson Davis, #24 Asia Gill, #3 Abi Quinney

Boys (L to R): #20 Roy Winston, # 21 Aaron Thomas, #12 Devontae Cacok, #11 Jaylon Gamble, #10 Afam Maduka, #3 Mark Eze

National Signing Day

Sabrina F. Jiang signed her letter of intent to play Tennis at the United States Naval Academy. Her intended major is Biomedical Engineering.

 Chase Cohen signed his letter of intent to play pitcher for Georgia Southern University’s Baseball team. He plans to major in Business.

National Signing Day

National English Honors Society book drive

As of January 30th, the National English Honors Society collected 460 books.  They are being donated to NFCC. In this picture: Olivia Foster

Alpha Speech Team moves forward to the state championship!

The Alpha Speech Team took home the second place Overall Team Sweepstakes trophy from the Grady High Speech and Debate Tournament.  Winners included Christina Nguyen in Humorous Interpretation, Nalah Hill in Dramatic Interpretation, and the team of Justin Gaither and Cal Swanson in Duo Interpretation.  Our team picked up two more state bids.  This was the final invitational meet of the season and our team moves forward to the state championship with 32 qualifying entries.   

Other students placing at this meet:

Tate Rehklau – Dramatic Interpretation – 2^nd Place

Morgan Shields – Dramatic Interpretation – 3^rd Place

Emma Svitil – Prose & Poetry – 2^nd Place

Conner Kocks – Humorous Interpretation – 3^rd Place

Emma Svitil – Humorous interpretation – 4^th Place

Lara Strydom – Humorous Interpretation – 5^th Place

Irene Velez – Dramatic interpretation – 4^th Place

Kelly Lumpkin – Original Oratory – 5^th Place

Morgan Shields – Original Oratory – 6^th Place

Kelly Lumpkin & Tate Rehklau – Duo Interpretation – 2nd Place

Nalah Hill & Milx Barbosa – Duo Interpretation – 3rd Place

Arteen Afshar & Joshua Maddox – Duo Interpretation 5^th Place

Anders Nelson & Karthik Ramaswami – Duo Interpretation – 6^th Place

Superintendent Woods selects 2015 Student Advisory Council

Kindle Anderson, 11th grade student at AHS, was selected to serve on the State Superintendent's 2015 student advisory council. Members of the 2015 Student Advisory Council were selected from a pool of more than 1,000 students who applied to serve on the council. Students were chosen based on the strength of their essay answers, which focused on their ideas for public education and ways their own educational experience could be improved. Congrats Kindle!