FHUHS Administration

Fair Haven Union High School Principal’s Newsletter

The Fair Haven Scholars Bowl Team took 3rd place at the Quest for the Nest Competition held at Lyndon State College in Lyndonville. The only team that beat our team was from Phillips – Exeter Academy (with tuition over $42,000). Several of our members scored over 300 points individually. The highest individual score was earned by Slater Abigail Rampone. While no individual state champion is crowned in Vermont, there is Scholar’s Bowl team champion. While Abigail thinks South Burlington may be the team to beat, she is hopeful for a high finish with a chance to win the second bracket. This is Abigail’s third year on the team that also has six seniors for a total of just over 20 students. Along with being a high honor roll student, she is also an outstanding actor and musician, having just earned a top seat for clarinet at the Northeast Music Festival held in Lake Placid. Next week the Scholars Bowl team will start selling Lindt Chocolate as a fund raiser for their trip to Saint Louis in June. Please support your Scholar’s bowl team and buy lots of chocolate!

Technology Integration News

Clarena Renfrow, Technology Integration Coach at FHUHS, has reported some exciting technology use happening at our school. Ben Worthing, Science Teacher, has been working hard on creating an exciting opportunity for students to learn. The concept is called flipping your classroom and it involves students watching a narrated video as homework to do before they get to class so that they can be ready for hands-on work at school. Mr. Worthing creates the videos that teach the content and uploads them to YouTube as well as burns them to DVDs. Students either watch the videos on YouTube or take a DVD home with them to watch. They fill out a worksheet as they watch the video to assist them in remembering the material. Then in class the next day, they are ready to complete their other tasks with teacher support. In this way, students get the support they need and don’t end up with homework to do at home that they don’t understand.

Kathy Gallagher, Math Teacher, has been concerned about students who are absent from school not getting the material that is gone over in class. She also worried about students who get home, attempt their math homework and have difficulty remembering all the steps. So she teamed up with the Tech Coach and now Ms. Gallagher is using her Smartboard and a microphone to record her lessons as a video. Then she uploads them to YouTube and puts the link to the video in EdLine where students have access to it! Now when a student is out sick, they can go to Ms. Gallagher’s EdLine page and watch what they missed in class. Students who need additional assistance doing their homework can also watch the videos to review the concepts and steps. Currently she is using this method in one of her courses and will branch out to the other classes in the future.

Stafford Technical Center’s Community Service theme this year is “Give Back”. They launched this effort on October 26th by raking and cleaning up the lawns of local senior citizens and several recreational parks within the Rutland area. The entire student body (over 200 students) , faculty and staff participated in this project. Everyone wore bright orange T-Shirts with the logo “Give Back” emblazoned on the front. The logo was designed by the Stafford Technical Center Digital Arts Program. Each senior who had their leaves raked were also presented with a homemade apple pie courtesy of Stafford’s Culinary Arts Program. This initiative is Stafford’s way of thanking the Rutland Community for their continued support .

Stafford would like to acknowledge the Southern Vermont Council on Aging and Grace Congregational Church for their support. We would also like to thank the following businesses and organizations for their help with donations of supplies and equipment. Without them, this project would not have been successful. A special thanks goes out to Casella Waste Systems, Home Depot. Aubuchon Hardware-Rutland, Gilmore Home Center, Noble True Value, LaValley’s Building Supply, Rutland Public Schools Transportation Department, Rutland County Transfer Station, and the Department of Corrections. Several students in Stafford’s Video Production Program-Zach Hampl, Jordan McClure, Logan Greeno, and Soleil Bosley put together an amazing video capturing the event.

Slater senior Katherine Pouliot has been honored by the Vermont State Athletic Director’s Association as one of their Vermont Scholar-Athlete Award winners. An awards banquet was held recently at the Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center in South Burlington, where Katherine and was recognized along with just nine other seniors from across Vermont.

Katherine’s involvement in athletics has provided the necessary balance in her schedule, as she has undertaken more activities than can be imagined. On top of being ranked 8th in her class and carrying above a 96% GPA, she has been class president, and student Council Vice President. In these positions, she has been the driving force that re-instituted our Winter Carnival and Y-Day (yearbook day) activities. . At times, I think athletics provided Katherine with the rest she needed from all of her other extracurricular activities! Her value to her teams is evident in her leadership qualities, as she has been, or will be, a captain of all three of her teams this year, and will finish her athletic career with 11 varsity letters. She appreciates the process that athletics provides for her to become a complete young woman, and has proven over this period of time that the busier you keep yourself, the faster it goes, and the more successful you become.
Post Season All MVL Recognition

Girls Soccer-Shelbylynn Hall-MVL 1st Team; Boys Soccer-Noah Harrigan- MVL 1st Team, -Justin Pelerin- MVL 1st Team; Field Hockey-Charlene Metcalf- MVL 1st Team-Kala MacKenzie-MVL 1st Team-Bethany Alger-MVL 1st Team; Selected to play in the North/South Senior All Star Football Game at Middlebury College: Robert Coloutti, Neal Hier, Parker Lamoureux, Derick Hernandez, Levi Ellis.

Students of the 1st Marking Period at FHUHS

Students of the marking period

Current Benson Village School Science teacher and 2006 FHUHS graduate Michael Ellis was our Academic Awards Ceremony speaker. Mike’s speech earned many accolades and will appear in print and video on our website. This will also be true with our other noted speakers from previous assemblies. During the assembly students were recognized for earning honor roll status and special awards were given to those seniors showing excellence on the Science NECAPs. It was nice to recognize our Slaters for having a top Scholar’s Bowl team, DII state championship football team, NCAA DI athletic scholarship and the students with the highest NECAP scores in the division. Scott Messer – Social Studies, Kaisa Czarnecki – Foreign Language, Brittany Jette – FairHaven Annex, Alexandar Caraballo – Family & Consumer Studies, Matthew Tomsuden – Industrial Arts, Jacob Silver – English,Sarah Czarnecki & Samuel Hoenes – Music, Alex Hernandez – Science, Brittney Sisk – Art, Bethany Alger – Business, Matthew Tomsuden – Work Study/Career Seminar, Alex Hernandez – Math, Colleen Pouliot – Computer Applications, Kelley Daley – Physical Education, Cassie Ciejko– Stafford Technical Center –Culinary Arts, Jordan Pedro – Stafford Technical Center –Power Mechanics/Welding. Congratulations to all!

Have a great week,
Brett C. Blanchard, Principal