Each August, AHS students arrive at the building on High School Road. Whether someone is new to AHS or is returning to the familiar environment, all students have something unfamiliar to become accustomed to in the early days of school– teachers and their classes.

In the beginning of the school year, teachers introduce students to the new classroom environment.  How they do this, however, differentiates between the classes.

“My week one goals, the main one, is to establish positive classroom atmosphere, and make everyone feel welcome and feel comfortable participating, working with their peers, and making myself approachable,” head of mathematics department, Eileen Knapp says.

To create this positive environment, Knapp has the students work together to solve puzzles. The puzzles simulate what would later in the school year be math problems. Some groups solved the puzzle and others did not. This incompletion set up an opportunity to show the students that this can occur as the year goes on, but that that’s okay.

“Sometimes, we don’t get to that final answer when the time is up,” Knapp said, “but we’re still learning and we still have something to contribute and something that we’re taking away from the problem, even if we don’t finish.”

Knapp talks with her students about the growth mindset- how the brain is constantly growing and that it grows more when you make mistakes, and even more when those mistakes are recognized and when you can learn from them.

“…we work together, we make mistakes, we learn from each other,” the mathematics teacher said.

Although some teachers may like their students to remain quiet throughout the duration of the class period, Eileen Knapp actually prefers the opposite.  

“When classes are overly quiet, they aren’t learning as much as my classes that are talkative,” she said.

Reginelli takes a similar approach to his classes in the first week of school.

“I try to let all of my students know… the community is super important,” the Spanish teacher said, “That we’re going to do it together, that we’re going to be successful together, and we’re going to help and support each other.”

Reginelli establishes this class relationship through name games and team building activities that require the students to work and communicate with one another “to try to help build that community and that trust.” Reginelli runs his classroom in what may be considered an untraditional manner. He makes it clear to the students in the first week that they are going to have fun- a word that may not be commonly used in a classroom. Reginelli takes this idea of fun and combines it with community to build what he views as a good classroom environment.

“I’m a big believer in that this isn’t just a class, this is an experience that we can all have. I want it to be memorable for the students and that starts with kind of building that community,” Reginelli said.

A major focus for Knapp and Reginelli may be to build community the first week, but Tameira Wilson, head of the IB department, has a different priority.

“I like to just have students understand expectations,” Wilson said, “and try to get them a little bit excited about the content they’re going to engage over the course of the year.” However, she would still like to be approachable.

“…my expectations don’t create a person that’s not understanding and not flexible and not willing to work with them and understand where they’re coming from,” Wilson said.

Whatever way teachers approach students in the beginning of the year, it is almost a given that the teachers and students continue to build a relationship throughout the year.