Memory Project
This semester, art students at Ames High School joined the Memory Project, a charitable nonprofit organization that invites art teachers and their students to create and donate portraits to youth around the world. These portraits are given to those who have faced substantial challenges, such as neglect, abuse, loss of parents, violence, and extreme poverty. The purpose of the portraits is to provide youth a meaningful mementos and a personal keepsakes. The project also allows art students to practice kindness and global awareness while enhancing their portraiture skills. “I always want to emphasize to students that they should make meaningful art - I want them to make art projects they want to keep or give away as a gift. I also love the idea of incorporating service learning into the classroom.” said art teacher Lindsay Wede.
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Meeker Little Cyclone Captains
Students at Meeker Elementary are using some of their free time to make an impact on the culture of their school through the building’s new Little Cyclone Captains initiative. The student leadership program provides students with opportunities throughout the day to have a positive platform to lead and be a captain for kindness. Each day, captains serve as greeters (who are called “morning sprinkles”) at the front door to provide a welcoming smile as students enter. Captains also take time during their day to write kind notes to other students. They often come in during their recess time, pick from a pile of student names from across all grade levels, and write notes of encouragement or inspiration. These notes are then placed in the student’s cubbies by School and Family Counselor Kari Deal to serve as a pleasant surprise. She has noticed that many notes remain in their cubbies for weeks at a time.
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National Honor Society 2018
The Ames Community School District would like to congratulate the 128 Ames High students who earned membership into the AHS chapter of the National Honor Society (NHS). This year, 61 seniors and 67 new members were recognized and celebrated at an April 22 event at Ames High. Each chapter of the National Honor Society can have slightly different criteria for admission, but all assess academics, service, leadership, and character. New members were chosen by a selection committee based on how each student upholds the purpose of the Ames High School Chapter. Over 100 applications were considered this year for new membership, increasing the competitive nature of the process.
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Science Olympiad State Competition
The Science Olympiad is a competition where students work in partnerships competing in different disciplines in science that include chemistry, physics, biology, engineering and general science knowledge events. High school and middle school students competed at the state competition on Saturday, April 7th at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Historically, to say that Ames has dominated the State Science Olympiad would be an understatement. The Science Olympiad is like a track meet for science where a team of 15 students compete in 23 events with usually 2-3 students in each event. The more 1st places finishes the better, and the team with the lowest score wins. This year, 16 teams competed at state in the high school level and 18 at the middle school level. Ames Middle School has been competing for the past 26 years and has won state 23 years. Ames High has been competing for 25 years and has won 24 times. Their only loss came last year and this year’s team was hungry to reverse that outcome.
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Jazz Band Championships
The Ames High School Jazz Band, under the direction of Andrew Buttermore, participated in class 4A at the 43rd Annual Iowa Jazz Championships on Thursday, April 5th, 2018 in Ames, IA for the first time in school history! Longtime Ames High Band Director Home Gartz (1962-2003), confirmed that no jazz band participated in any competitions under his tenure. “They were called 'dance bands' and 'stage bands' in the early years. It is quite an accomplishment to achieve this award.
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Ames High Culinary Students Compete in a “CHOPPED” Competition
On Friday, April 6, four Story county schools gathered for a culinary arts expo held at the DMACC Hunziker Center in Ames. Participating schools included Ames High School, Colo-NESCO High School, Nevada High School, and Roland-Story High School. Students participated in a “CHOPPED” competition using the mystery ingredients of turkey tenderloins, strawberries, zucchini, mushrooms and strawberry patch kids candy. During this competition, students applied skills and knowledge learned in their Family and Consumer Sciences classes to create an entrée using the required “mystery” ingredients. Students had 40 minutes to prepare their entrée all while being evaluated on teamwork, safety and sanitation, food preparation skills, and presentation of food. The judges for this competition were Executive Chef Robert Bruno from the Iowa Stater restaurant at the Gateway Hotel, Chef/Owner Evie Peterson from Farmhouse Catering in Nevada, and Director of Member Services Sheila Larson from the Iowa Turkey Federation.
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National History Day competitors moving on to state!
Twenty-six Ames students competed at the Historic Highways Regional History Day competition today. The competition judges students based on original research they have conducted around the 2018 theme: Conflict and Compromise. The students are ranked on their ability to find and creatively present primary source information; they may present their research as a film documentary, website, exhibit, research paper, or performance. Students who are ranked top 2 in each category progress to the state competition in Des Moines on Monday, April 30.
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Mathcounts Middle School State Tournament
On Thursday, March 23, six students from Ames Middle School competed in the state Mathcounts tournament held at DMACC. In…
Read moreFellows 4th Grade STEM Challenge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UteTEkD3GKE Right before spring break, the 4th grade teachers at Fellows Elementary created STEM challenges for their students with hands-on activities that presented students with a “problem” to solve and limited resources. Christy Franco said, “We decided to do the STEM challenges for several reasons. We know students learn best with hands-on exploration. For these activities, they must collaboratively come up with a plan, try it out, revise as needed, and test it. The STEM challenges allow our students to integrate scientific inquiry, technology, engineering, and math.” All four teachers combined the approximately 100 fourth graders and split them up. “We wanted to make this large group feel like a community and we want students to have the opportunity to work in groups with others they don’t normally get to work with during the school day,” said Franco.
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Youth Diversity Inclusion Committee
The Youth Diversity Inclusion Committee (YDIC) is one of the newest groups this year at Ames High an is already increasing awareness about social justice. YDIC is composed of student leaders from a variety of different organizations that include student council members, SACRE (Students Advancing Civil Rights Education), Spectrum (LGBTQA), DECA (business), and SHEPH (Students Helping End Poverty and Hunger), among others. The group got started in the fall when they attended the inaugural Youth Diversity and Inclusion Summit in Des Moines along with many other CIML-member schools. Junior Kijune Kim said, “A lot of us were really inspired at the Summit and presented a lot of ideas there and wanted to take them back to Ames High, but it didn’t happen that way.”
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