Many people can guess why Aspen High School is rated best in Colorado, but no one actually knows our secret of climbing to the top. In our school, you will see no iPhones coming from back pockets but instead letters from secret-admirers. To be honest, students like myself don’t feel the need for the technology lifestyle.

Dewey Decimal, for example, loves learning and reads the encyclopedia during his free-period. He also enjoys crosswords and reading the comics during lunch where he can get hilarious jokes to tell his peers.

“During office hours I usually do the puzzles in the newspapers or tell riddles with my friends in the commons,” Decimal explained.

If you take a sneak peek into a classroom, you may notice students discreetly passing notes to each other. Elizabeth Sevewrite scratches words onto the chalkboard but does not notice the quiet note passing.

In math students can’t wait to reference the logarithm textbook when in need for an answer. Students like Al Gebra are extremely good at addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and can do almost any problem in their head.

“Math is my favorite subject because I am really good at making graphs just from looking at an equation,” Gebra said. He also enjoys astronomy, where they meet at night to look at the stars.

In World Geography, it is required for each student to bring a globe to class every day. Jenniletter Morandi-Benson reads us her personal journal entries from the Civil War and Gretchen Classhoun brags about her letters from Christopher Columbus.

Walk into the English department, and you will see students writing their IAs in cursive and reading the newspaper by choice. Face to face conversations are valued by all students as a way to discuss homework, sports and gossip.

Before school teachers gather with students for extra-help meetings. Free penmanship lessons and Cotillions are also available after school weekly for those interested.

You may hear the marching band at football games and pep-rallies, or the choir sing the national anthem on senior night. At homecoming, winter formal and prom students get down with the choir and if you are lucky, you can score a square dance with Moral Penderson.

Thanks to the science department’s handmade sundials, the bell rings exactly on the dot. Students do not have the distraction of staring at the clock in any classroom.

It’s simple- Aspen High School did not jump on the technology train, though most of the world revolves around it.