College counselor Myra Ross ready ‘to graduate’
Before working at ARHS, Myra Ross was an elected member of the School Committee and worked on capital planning for the rebuilding of the school. “My name is on the plaque out there in...
Copy that: Anne Marie Picard is retiring!
Ann Marie Picard sits behind a large desk, personalized with neatly arranged portraits of family members and covered in organized piles of papers. Every object in the room appears to have an exact purpose...
Susie Zygmont: mark her absent next year
“If there’s a hard way to do something, I’ll do it,” joked Susie Zygmont, secretary in the Deans’ office, who is in charge of ARHS’s daily attendance. Ms. Zygmont is retiring at the end...
After 30 years teaching, Ms. Abdow poised for new adventures
Sue Abdow’s third floor classroom is noticeably different from others. An entire wall is filled with photographs of students on field trips and end of the year picnics. Their smiles light up the room....
Library paraeducator Annie Figliola ready to contra dance into retirement
Annie Figliola, a library paraeducator better known as Ms. Fig, is ready to retire after 11 happy years working at ARHS. Ms. Fig grew up in the university town of New Paltz, New York....
Ms. Palmer ready to relax with family, travel
Sharon Palmer’s path to high school teaching has been paved with adventure. She was born in Pennsylvania but moved to rural San Francisco when she was young. Palmer never thought she would be a...
Mr. Blatner ready to paddle on
After 15 years of teaching at ARHS, William Blatner, math teacher, former civil engineer, and avid whitewater paddler, is retiring at the end of the year. Mr. Blatner grew up in western New York....
From athletics to wedding planning: Pam White ready for a lively retirement
The average office worker receives about 120 emails a day in a day. Pam White is no exception. “I couldn’t even count without really counting,” she joked. The slew of emails are just one...
Students, staff mourn retired paraeducator Howard Mentin
“I know a lot because I’ve seen a lot,’’ said former ARHS paraeducator Howard Mentin, who retired in 2018, and sadly passed away in March of this year. Howard Mentin was born in the...
Limered: bubble tea, fruit smoothies, pocky, and macarons, oh my!
When 2:30 p.m. rolls around on a Tuesday, the small yet cozy bubble tea café we all know and love, Limered, begins to fill with Amherst middle and high schoolers alike. A long line...
Game of Thrones: students dish about gripping plot, violence, and last season
Nearly eight years ago, on April 17, 2011, the season one premiere of Game of Thrones was aired on HBO. Over the last eight years, Game of Thrones, sometimes referred to as GoT, has...
Ms. Dorsey reflects on a year student teaching with science department
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels recently reached 415 parts per million this year for the first time ever in recorded history, according to the magazine Scientific American. Those rising CO2 levels, the subsequent threat of...
People of Color United Harlem field trip: touring historic Apollo Theater, eating soul food at Melba’s
On Wednesday, May 1, 2019, People of Color United club members and their advisors, Assistant Principal Mary Custard and health and physical education teacher Elizabeth Haygood, boarded a three-hour bus for Harlem, NY. The...
Senegambian Scholars Club welcomes visitors from West Africa
This has been a big year for the Senegambian Scholars club at ARHS. Last February, a group of ARHS students traveled to Senegal and The Gambia for three and a half weeks for a...
Adaptive gym: making physical education accessible for all
Starting next year, ARHS will be adding a new class called Adaptive Gym. Adaptive Gym is a class where students with disabilities from the PIP (Pathways to Independence program) will be partnered with general...
ARHS legend Taj-Amir Torres
Taj-Amir Torres is a former Amherst High School football player who has taken his game to the next level, grabbing a slot in the NFL. He agreed to do a special interview for The...
Patience and perseverance: the lure of fishing
Hunter Wolfson started fishing at a young age, about 2 or 3, he said. “I kinda just grew up on it. It’s like a family tradition,” he said. He has continued to pursue...
After mass shootings, Australia, New Zealand transformed gun laws. Why can’t we?
In Australia, in 1996 a gunman opened fire on shop owners and tourists with two semi-automatic rifles in what was later dubbed The Port Arthur massacre. Thirty five people were left dead and 23...
Climate change: time to act
Imagine a world in which sea levels rise to the point that places like Cape Cod and much of Florida become submerged, a world where people have to evacuate from coastal cities such as...
Combating anti-Semitism with education
Anti-Semitism, defined as “hostility or prejudice toward Jews,” is more visible than ever, from white nationalist chants of “Jews will not replace us” at a deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in...
‘Next Gen’ MCAS testing rollout a success
We have turned the corner of MCAS season. All sophomores took the “Next-Generation” MCAS testing, on Chromebooks, starting with the English Language Arts (ELA) portion, on March 26 and 28. This was the first...
Noticing their hard work: Grinspoon Foundation honors Cisse and Fruth
ARHS French teacher Oumy Cisse and choral director Todd Fruth recently learned they had won the Pioneer Valley Excellence in Teaching Award, given annually by the Harold Grinspoon Foundation of Western Massachusetts. According to...
‘Ask for help, use your voice,’ say therapists of color
Mental wellness is a topic that’s worthy of most teenagers’ attention. On Wednesday March 13, students in grades 9-12 were lucky enough to attend two assemblies that featured a panel of mental health professionals...
AP World and AP Statistics: two new courses on deck for next year
The Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee approved two new and exciting Advanced Placement (AP) classes that will be offered beginning in the 2019-2020 academic year. The first new course, AP World History, will be taught...
Accessibility shortcoming: ADA recommends changes
All Amherst schools were audited by Julia Garofalo and Stéphane Pierre-Louis of Kessler McGuinness & Associates (KMA) in December of 2018 to find out whether they are truly accessible to people with disabilities. The...
All-States: students perform at Boston’s Symphony Hall
All those hours of practicing sometimes do pay off. ARHS students Isabelle Bouvier, Amanda Dee, Celia Douville Beaudoin, Angela Oldham Barca, and Sarah VanHorn were honored on March 9 at the All-State Music Festival,...
Career Day offerings inspire
Career Day, an annual event held in ARHS advisories since 2016, took place this year on Thursday February 28. Tenth and eleventh graders attended the sessions. On this special day, parents and community members...
Writing workshops offer information, support
When Amanda Lewis, who runs the ARHS Writing Center, and Ella Stocker, school librarian, noticed that students frequently come to them with the same sorts of questions, they decided to create a series of...
Taking environmental action at school
Taking action toward conservation and increasing environmental awareness is what the Environmental Action Club is all about. And this club practices the three Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle. Not only that, but according to...
Stress Less: workshops aim to reduce student anxiety
If you asked any student at ARHS if they are stressed, almost everyone would say that some kind of pressure has weighed down on them in the last few months, be it academic or...
