AHS Staff Spring Fever

March 23rd was "Wear a fake mustache day!"

Kindle Anderson to serve on the State Superintendent's Advisory Board

Kindle Anderson is one of 62 students throughout the state to be selected to serve on the State Superintendent's Advisory Board. Kindle was one of 3 students to be nominated to run for the position of Student State Governor, and won the election with 48% of the vote. His role includes working with Governor Deal, Superintendent Woods, as well as the rest of the Student Advisory Board to help reform education by providing solutions and new ideas to benefit students in every corner of the state. Under Kindle's leadership, 5 bills of the Georgia House of Representatives are currently being rewritten and revised by the advisory board in order to suit the needs of the students.

State Reflections Winners

Alpharetta High School has much to be proud of and we can add to it by sharing that we have 3 State Reflections winners this year, more than any other North Fulton High School!!  All have been invited to celebrate their accomplishments in a special ceremony held at the High Museum.

A special congratulations goes out to the following students:

Nicholas Felder, 12th grade / Music Category

Jun Ng, 11th grade / Film Category

Tanuja Anne, 10th grade / Photography Category

STEM Emory research fellow visit

As part of Emory’s STEM program: Imagining the Future, Alpharetta has a guest speaker, JP Canner, presenting to all the H HAP and AP bio classes on Wednesday, March 18th. 

Doctor Canner has a PhD in Cellular, Molecular, and Developmental Biology. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Emory working on skeletal muscle repair and regeneration.  Emory offers similar programs each year, matching post doctorate fellows with Atlanta area schools. One of their goals is to bring actual research scientists together with students (future scientists) to talk to them about what biological research is really like, the path they took to get where they are today, and, of course, content.

Congratulations to the 2015 Governors Honors Finalists!

Congratulations to the 2015 Governors Honors Finalists! 

Last Name	First Name	GHP Area	Finalist
Fu	Lynn	Dance	Finalist
Williamson	Jonathan	Engineering-Design	Finalist
Nelson	Katharine	Math	Finalist
Johnson	Kelsey	Music Strings: Viola	Finalist
Li	Sarah	Music Strings: Violin	Finalist
Gui	Haiwen	Music Woodwind: Flute	Finalist
Pei	Richard	Music-Piano	Finalist
Balakumar	Dhakshi	Science	Finalist
Bhattacharya	Shubhom	Science	Finalist
Tantillo	Charles	Science	Finalist
Lee	Susan	Visual Arts	Finalist
Chen	Alexander	WL-Chinese	Finalist

The Georgia Governor’s Honors Program is a four week residential summer program at Valdosta State University for current 10^th and 11^th grade gifted and talented high school students. The program offers instruction which is significantly different from the typical high school classroom and which is designed to provide students with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary to become independent, lifelong learners.

Team Visioning

The visioning meeting at Alpharetta discussed plans to set forth one to one student devices in the near future.

Thomas Time

Professional development with Thomas Van Soelen. 

AP Statistics Experiment

AP Statistics classes are studying inference, the idea of making generalizations about populations from sample results. In class on Monday, March 16, students performed an experiment to determine if long rotor helicopters have a longer descent time than short rotor helicopters. After constructing the two types of helicopters out of paper and paper clips, they did 30 flight trial of each type of helicopter, timing the descents with their cell phones. To determine if there was a difference in the mean descent times, they used the two procedures they learned in class (two sample t-tests and two sample t-intervals) to calculate whether there was statistically significant evidence of a difference.

First year Alpharetta High chapter HOSA makes it National!

We had 22 participants and 16 of them made it to the second round of the State competition. Out of those students, we had 3 finalists and 1 student made it to the national competition! There were 3,650 participants from all over Georgia!

FCCLA Winners

Congrats to Evan Schmitz and Nate Patino who won at FFCLA region competition. Nate Patino, 10th grader took first place in Recycle Redesign project.  Evan Schmitz, 11th grader took second place in Sports Nutrition event.  These students are now going to the state competition in Athens. Good job and good luck boys!

The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards

Kindle Anderson has been awarded a Certificate of Excellence from the 2015 Prudential Spirit of Community Awards.  This signifies Kindle was among the top 10 percent of all applicants from Georgia this year.  He has also been qualified for the President's Volunteer Service Award. Good job Kindle! 

Cool happenings in Social Studies

Nick Phillips and Kurt Davies had their American History students analyze the lyrics to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” this week.  Each student selected a different historical topic to research and came up with a one page summary including a picture and relevant information about the topic.  The song covers  many different political, social, economic, and cultural topics and events from 1949 through 1989.  The students then participated in a gallery walk where they read and learned about all the topics and selected one political, social, economic, and cultural project to summarize as part of their assessment.

Governor Deal Signs Georgia Lacrosse Day Proclamation

In recognition of the fast-growing popularity of the sport of lacrosse within Georgia, Governor Nathan Deal has declared April 25, 2015 to be Georgia Lacrosse Day. This official day of celebration takes place as the SouthEastern Lacrosse Conference (SELC) celebrates their 28th Annual Championship Tournament, which will be played in Johns Creek, Ga., from Friday, April 24, through Sunday, April 26. Friday quarter final games will be played at Northview, Alpharetta and South Forsyth high schools and Greater Atlanta Christian School. Saturday semifinal and Sunday championship games will be played at Northview.

Pictured from left to right: Lynda Smith (Chair of Johns Creek Convention and Visitors Bureau), Doug Horn (SELC President), Justin Westbrook (Northview), Cooper Lyon (South Forsyth), Governor Nathan Deal, Cal Swanson (Alpharetta), Matty Biondich (Northview), Carly Connors (Northview).

Congratulations Muskan!

Muskan Raghuwanshi, a junior at Alpharetta High School has been honored for her exemplary volunteer service with the Presidents Volunteer service award.

Congrats Alpha Speech Team!

Congratulations to our Alpha Speech Team for their success at the 2015 GFCA Speech and Debate State Championship.  Our team won 2nd place in Overall Team Sweepstakes and 2nd Place in Speech Sweepstakes.  Christina Nguyen was crowned state champion in Humorous Interpretation.  Other successes include Conner Kocks,2nd Place in Humorous Interpretation, followed by Lara Strydom, 3rd Place, and Grace Palmer, 5th Place.  In Dramatic Interpretation, Deja Holmes placed 2nd, Morgan Shields, 3rd, Nalah Hill, 5th, and Karthik Ramaswami, 6th.  Kelly Lumpkin and Tate Rehklau finished 2nd in Dup Interpretation, Nalah Hill & Milx Barbose, 3rd, Christina Nguyen & Suma Yellamraju, 4th, Sarah Curtis & Alex Atchison, 5th, Anders Nelson & Karthik Ramaswami, 6th.  Emma Svitil took 3rd Place in Prose & Poetry, and Aakash Malhotra was a semi-finalist in Impromptu Speaking.

Science Olympiad Performance

This is the most 1^st place finishes that an Alpharetta team has ever had at a regional competition, congrats Mr. Cole and Science Olympiad team!

1. Congratulations to the following Science Olympiad members for winning their events at this weekend’s regional competition @ GPC – Clarkston

a. 1st place in Air Trajectory – Dan Doss and Matthew Buxbaum

b. 1st place in Disease Detectives – Nikhil Sethi and Bhanodai Pippola

c. 1st Place in Forensics – Aparna Subramaniam and Jessica Zheng

2. Congratulations to the following Science Olympiad members for medaling their events at this weekend’s regional competition @ GPC – Clarkston

a. 2nd Place in Geologic Mapping – Dan Doss and Matthew Buxbaum

b. 2nd Place in Dynamic Planet – Abby O’Meara and Jessica Zheng

c. 3rd place in Astronomy – Abby O’Meara and Kori Vocke

d. 3rd Place in Cell Bio – Shubham Bhattacharya and Hithardhi Duggireddy

e. 3rd Place in Experimental Design – Julia Gu, Aparna Subramaniam and Jessica Zheng

f. 3rd Place in Protein Modeling – Suvarsha Sura and Nikhil Sethi

g. 3rd Place in Scrambler – Eric Bias

h. 3rd Place in Technical Problem Solving – Chaewon Min and Shumrith Vinnakollu

i. 4th Place in Anatomy – Nikhil Sethi

j. 4th Place in Experimental Design – Sahithi Edavally, Shumrith Vinnakollu, and Gayathri Dhurjadi

Mrs. Futch's Physical Science Class

Ms Futch’s  Alpharetta High School Physical Science class is currently studying Physics.  The classroom activity was to determine the amount of work and power it takes to walk up the stairs every day. The students timed themselves walking and running up the stairs.  In this photo the students are gathering the measurements needed to do the calculations. 

School Play Starts on March 13th

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!

Raiders in the 2015 science fair!

Alpharetta High School participated in Fulton County science fair this past Saturday (Jan 31). All 1^st and 2^nd place winners from AHS will participate in Georgia State Science Fair (GSEF) in Athens in March.  

AHS band students selected by UGA!

Eight of our Alpharetta Band students were selected and participated in the University of Georgia JanFest Honor Band Clinic this past weekend. They were selected along with 1,000 other high school students from around the southeast to participate in this prestigious honor event. They auditioned and earned high placement in their respective honor bands and gave impressive concerts yesterday. Congratulations to Carlee Woodring, Eric Tam, Daniel Gelber, Lizzy Cohn, Izzy Vezeau, Dharani Balakumar, Henry Gilelach, and Christian Culloty. Mr. Walsh and Mr. Jenkins are quite proud of these students for their accomplishments and for representing themselves Alpharetta High School.

Speech and Debate at Emory

Last weekend, schools from across the country came to Atlanta to compete at one of the largest gatherings of speech and debate competition, Emory University’s Barkley Forum. The Duo Interpretation team of Milx Barbosa and Nalah Hill finished as semi-finalists. Quarter-finalists include Conner Kocks in Humorous Interpretation and the duo interpretation team of Justin Gaither and Tate Rehklau.

AP Night at AHS

Congrats to Eddy Koh and Mrs. Ramsey!

Alpharetta High School Senior Eddy Koh and AP Calculus teacher Brendan Ramsey are honored by Dr. Kersey and the Alpharetta Rotary Club as the student and teacher of the quarter for their service and commitment to excellence!

Big wins for Alpharetta speech team!

The Alpharetta Speech Team had successful wins last weekend at the Milton Classic Speech and Debate Tournament.  Our team won four more bids to the state championship, bringing our total now to thirty.  Emma Svitil and Emily Hanmer picked up bid in Poetry & Prose, as did Karthik Ramaswami and Irene Velez in Dramatic Interpretation.  Our team also won all three of the interpretation events with Cal Swanson and Justin Gaither winners of Duo Interpretation, as well as, winners Kelly Lumpkin in Dramatic Interpretation and Deja Holmes in Dramatic Interpretation.  Maya Nnaeto placed third in Impromptu Speaking.  In Humorous Interpretation, Conner Kocks was third, Christina Nguyen, 4th, and Coyvan Greer, 5th.  In duo interpretation, Nalah Hill and Milx Barbosa 
placed 3rd with Christina Nguyen and Suma Yellamraju, 4th, and Sarah Curtis and Alex Atchison, 5th.

Guest musicians from our community came to visit in Orchestra

FBLA first place winners

On Tuesday the 20^th, AHS hosted the FBLA Region 9 Leadership Conference. Alpharetta once 
again won the sweepstakes trophy for the school with the most competition wins. The students  with 1st place finishes were: 
Banking & Financial Solutions- Ben Dugger 
Business Financial Plan- Ben Dugger, Nishant Reddy & Srikar Thammishetti 
Computer Applications- Nikhil Sethi 
Desktop Publishing- Alison Mahoney & Wendy Zheng
Digital Video Production- Matthew Goodman, Alex Luegers & Gavin Ng 
Global Business- Apurva Gundaria, Jong Rak Koh & Nikhil Sethi
Marketing- Kristin Graves, Mariana Matias & Muscan Raghuwanshi 
Network Design- Kevin Goff, Christian Guerrero & Jack Rager 
Public Service Announcement- Srikar Komanduri, Devon Merlette & Dennis Podvitz 
Securities & Investments- Varun Tangirala 
Sports & Entertainment Management- Willie Chang, Shadman Ibnamasud & Rajiv Reddy 
Business Ethics- Alex Chen, Rohan Kansara & Torus Lu 
Business Presentation- Dhakshi Balakumar & Gloria Chan 
Emerging Business Issues- Brian Hu & Vaibhav Kumar 
Job Interview- Julie Nygaard 
Public Speaking II- Kindle Anderson
Sales Presentation- Arman Qureshi 
Future Business Leader- Apurva Gundaria
Congratulations to all of the FBLA competitors!!

Ms. Harris class participates in Test Kitchen

Alpharetta High School was selected as one of only 12 schools in Georgia to participate in a new program sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture.  Angie Yarbrough, our school cafeteria manager is given a new recipe each month to test on students. Students fill out a survey and their feedback is sent to the USDA for review in order to make decisions for use of these recipes in our Georgia schools.  Ms. Harris’ class provided very positive feedback and honest suggestions as well.   All USDA recipes have fruits and/or vegetables as new nutrition guidelines for students provide more fresh fruits and vegetables on school menus.  This year more students are eating fruits and vegetables than ever before when they purchase a school breakfast or lunch.

"I responded to Angie’s request in the beginning of the school year when we were in our Experimental Design unit. When we returned to the classroom I asked the students what factors they could apply to Experimental Design (control, independent and dependent variables). This served as a good 'mini review' of this unit since we covered it so long ago." - Ms. Kaylyn Harris

Aditya Sood has advanced as a Semifinalist in the Coca-Cola Scholars Program!

Dr. Avossa connects with AHS faculty

On January 8th Dr. Avossa came to meet with AHS faculty in the auditorium.  Mr. Hatcher was the lucky winner of a new iPad!

AHS student Benjamin Bearup featured on foxnews.com

Benjamin Bearup, 10th grade, was recently nominated for the Prudential Spirit of Community Award.  He also writes for a national magazine called Airways magazine. Over Christmas break he was flown by Airtran to Milwaukee to cover their final flight into Atlanta.  His article was picked up by Fox News. Here is the link to the story Onboard the last AirTrain flights. 

Building Community Teacher Workday

STAR Student and STAR Teacher Nomination

Alan Hesu  and Mr. Smilley