Some seniors at Shelby County High School will step into the world of an author... a local one at that – Tracy Coffee Gayle, a teacher at Wright Elementary, whose book “Tilt-A-Whirl”, will be part of the annual Reading Gala this year. Seniors select books to read, which are also selected by a teacher or community volunteer. They are then grouped according to book titles for table discussions that will take place March 22 – when those with Gayle will feel sorry for Vera, cringe about how Wanda behaves, and fall in love with Aunt Beatrice... all characters in Gayle’s first novel.

Mary, Mary... Quite contrary... How does your garden grow? – That could have been the theme poem for Melissa Hutchens’ science room at West Middle. Each table had been assigned a cup with paper towel and seeds – monitoring the changes over a six-day period with varying set-ups for each cup. Some with light; some without... some with water; some without – so the students could compare and contrast the results.

Shawn Allen Jr., a junior at Shelby County High School, was elected President of his class here – and also at the Senate Page School in Washington DC where he has been on a salaried leave from his studies since September for Senator Mitch McConnell. He was one of 30 in the country selected for the prestigious program... the only African-American. He will deliver the school’s commencement speech at 10 a.m. Friday when a reception will be held in the Kennedy Room in the Capitol. 

There were pods of people learning all over Painted Stone Elementary – in the classrooms as well as in the hallways where small group assistance sessions were under way. That meant there was a lot of thinking going on as well, as indicated in Heather Fallen’s room where children were examining pictures in a book to determine what thoughts they generated and were circling words in the text that they believed were important to the theme, which was weather. The first word they circled as a group was drizzle.