School

I SAW A LOT of mirages as a kid. A couple of times a year, my family would make the 530-mile trip between our home in the Rio Grande Valley and my grandmother’s house in the West Texas village where I now live in my grandmother’s house. Before the interstate highways and state highways were completed, the 12-hour trip was arduous, especially in the summer. To keep my brothers and me entertained, our parents made a game out of mirages.

Following three days of rehearsals, CHS senior and clarinetist Leo Avila performed last Saturday, Feb. 12, with the 2022 Texas All-State Symphonic Band in San Antonio. The concert was held during the Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA) annual clinic and convention. The band presented a program titled “The Essence of Memory,” a piece composed by B.J. Brooks, and commissioned by the Association of Texas Small School Bands (ATSSB) in honor of Darin K. Johns, the director of bands at Andrews High School. Johns was one of three killed in a tragic bus crash as the AHS band headed to Sweetwater to perform at a Mustang football playoff game. It was premiered by the Symphonic Band under the direction of Dr. Emily Threinen in the Lila Cockrell Theatre.

Kansas State University announces Fall 2021 semester honors Nearly 4,480 Kansas State University students have earned semester honors for their academic performance in the fall 2021 semester. Among those students was Canadian High School graduate Darby Cook.

CANYON—A William Shakespeare comedy will get twists—both classical and of-the-moment—in a new production at West Texas A&M University. WT Theatre will stage the Bard’s comedy As You Like It on Wednesday, Feb.

In 2022, NPEC will award six scholarships totaling $9,000. These scholarships will be available for attendance to state and private universities, junior colleges, or vocational schools. The scholarships will be administered by the Amarillo Area Foundation.

AMARILLO—In recognition of National Engineers Week during the last week in February, Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), manager and operator of Pantex, is sponsoring $1,000 grants for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics classrooms. The goal of the grants that have been designated for grades K–12 is to foster advancement of STEM activities in the classroom and to help develop Pantex’s future workforce.

Hemphill County 4-H and FFA students exhibited 101 animals in last weekend’s Junior Livestock Show and Sale. Sales of $70,650 were recorded for 2022, with addons and Booster Club contributions still being tallied.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following feature is reprinted with permission from ROSTRUM, the official magazine of the National Speech & Debate Association. BECOMING A COACH I was a paralegal in Amarillo and needed to move home to the ranch.

In the first of a series of musicals to be presented at the Texas Crown Performance Hall, Baker Elementary School fifth-graders performed Alice’s Adventures with Idioms, to a receptive crowd of family and friends last Thursday morning. The performers are the students of Alexandra Phenix, BES music teacher. Alice’s Adventures offers an entertaining educational approach to figurative language, focusing on idioms and similes—with some special appearances by metaphors and alliteration. It begins with Alice, accompanied by her cat and dog, falling down the rabbit hole and arriving in the land of idioms. The lessons are all presented by Wonderland characters, like the White Rabbits, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Mad Hatter and March Hare, the Cheshire Cat, and the King and Queen of Hearts. Alice’s Adventures with Idioms was written by Mike Fishell and John Heath.

Small towns have their own unwritten rules known only to the natives. New people who move in can wear out their welcome by crossing the invisible lines of the small-town social code.