This Week In the Ann Arbor Public Schools

October 5, 2009

This Week’s Good News!

• Huron High School has 23 Semifinalists in the 2010 National Merit Scholarship Competition:  Siyue Ai, Rebecca Cao, Yanoing Chen, Robin He, David Hiskens, Robert Isenberg, Lanxin Liu, Nicholas Luongo, Eric McCabe, Rachel Miller, Renee Philson, Christina Rowan, Kathleya Strode, Callie Svaan, Xu Tang, Michael Toner, Catherine Vogt, Brett Williams, Victoria Wu, Daniel Yang, Qiao Zhang, Jonathan Zhu and Tianyang Zou.  In addition Donovan Hyter is a Semifinalist in the 2010 National Achievement Scholarship Competition.
• This week, a delegation of 14 junior high school students from our Sister City, Hikone, Japan, are visiting Ann Arbor. The Hikone delegation is headed up by Matsuo Ikegami, the Chief Director of the Hikone International Friendship Association, and Kumi Okada, a Nishi Junior High School English teacher.
  Highlights of their visit include an opening day reception at Forsythe Middle School, a picnic at Gallup Park, an all day trip to Greenfield Village, and a Sayonara Party at the Conor O'Neill's Celtic Room on Sunday.  The Japanese students will also be spending three days this week in Ann Arbor middle schools and high schools.
  AAPS will be sending a special delegation of Ann Arbor students to Hikone later in this month to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the sister city relationship between Ann Arbor and Hikone.
• Stone High School teacher, Joanna Johnson won a grant from DonorsChoose.org for a project called "Cooking Class." This donation is for approximately $500.00 worth of equipment that she will use to help our students gain life-skills in food preparation.
• I want to thank Tyrone Weeks and the Rising Scholars for inviting me to their class last Friday.  The Rising Scholars program invites community leaders into the classroom in order for the students to engage in a dialogue with the visitor to become familiar with different occupations and learn what preparation was necessary to achieve the position currently held.  The student hosts are very gracious and well prepared.  It was a pleasure to visit the Rising Scholars.

Todd Roberts, Ed.D.
Superintendent