Happy Thanksgiving

I want to thank each of you that read this blog from time to time and wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. We have a great school and I am very thankful to be a part of such a wonderful community and school. I hope that you enjoy some time with your family and focus on the truly important things in life.

Hunter's Highlights

Ardmore High School has once again won the Limestone County Schools Academic Trophy. Ardmore High School has been fortunate enough to win the trophy nine out of the past eleven years. This criteria for the award is based on test scores from the PRE-AHSGE, ACT, SAT-10, Jr. Scholars' Bowl, and Sr. Scholars' Bowl Competitions. A special congratulation goes to all the students, teachers, and administration for maintaining the academic excellence that has become a standard at AHS!

The Fall Sports Banquet is scheduled for Monday, November 22nd at 6:00. We will celebrate Football, Volleyball, and Cross Country. We outgrew the lunchroom so we moved the banquet to the new gym so hopefully everyone will have plenty of room. We want to recognize all of our athletes for the hard work and dedication they exhibit throughout the school year.

I would like to encourage all of you to take advantage of the communication tools available to Ardmore High School parents. We have our awesome website, staff e-mail addresses, blog, Twitter account, Notify Me e-mail system and Alert Now automated calling system. We truly want to keep everyone informed about everything happening at the school.

The Diamond Club is sponsoring its annual Drawdown Dinner to help raise money for the baseball program. The dinner is Saturday, November 20, 2010 in the new gym. The dinner is a great meal and a great time, and by the way, a chance to win some pretty cool prizes. Tickets are $100 and all proceeds go to help the Ardmore High School baseball program.

Basketball season is in full swing and we are looking forward to a great year. Our teams are playing hard and seem to be improving every game. Our varsity plays Elkmont, Friday, November 19, 2010 at Elkmont. We hope everyone can come out and support our basketball teams. Ardmore High School always has a great following and we know this year will be no exception.

Pro sports and big-time college athletics tend to get all the headlines and many times the news is filled with controversy, contract negotiations, taunting, jealousy, and other negative behavior. Sportsmanship is not demonstrated nearly as often as it once was and taunting the other team is more in vogue than cheering on one’s own team. High school sports may still be the purest form of sport remaining because it is truly amateur sports and hopefully still being played for the right reason. Team is hopefully still more important that individual contracts or recognition. We must be careful that the attitude exhibited by a handful of selfish athletes at higher levels of competition doesn’t find its way into high school athletics and the integrity of the game is protected. We hope our fans, students and athletes display the highest level of class and sportsmanship as the school year continues.

Hunter's Highlights

Great things are happening at Ardmore High School. The fall season is so full of activity, coupled with the beautiful fall weather makes this time of year very enjoyable. We have students involved with many different types of activities as the school year proceeds. Ardmore is blessed to have several leadership opportunities available to our students. The Ardmore Chamber of Commerce sponsors a group called the “Chamber Ambassadors” which are exposed to several leadership opportunities and given the opportunity to learn about the business world. First National Bank also sponsors a group called the First National Bank Advisory Board which emphasizes community service and introduces our students to issues associated with business and finance. We are fortunate to have such a wonderful community to help our students.

Our students are also involved with raising money for charities during the upcoming holiday season. Our students have recently been involved in “SolesforSouls” which collects shoes to send to students needing shoes because their families are unable to purchase the shoes they need. Many of our groups help local charities and groups during the entire year, but especially during the holidays.

We will be celebrating the accomplishments of our fall athletes at the Fall Sports Banquet on November 22, 2010 at 6:00 pm in the school gym. We are using the gym this year because we have out grown our cafeteria. Hopefully we will be able to accommodate everyone comfortably as we honor our students for the hard work and dedication.

I know some of you may get annoyed with hearing; “Hello, this is Tommy Hunter, principal at Ardmore High School” which means you are receiving an automated call from the school. This is an excellent communication tool and we try hard not to over-use the service but we do want to make sure parents are informed about things happening at the school. I try to announce major events at school and I send messages when school personnel ask me to make a call to announce their event. We try to set up some groups to not send everyone every call, but sometimes people miss the announcement. We do seem to still be having a few technical difficulties with parents not receiving calls and we continue to try and work out the details.

Basketball season is now in full swing. Our first varsity game is against Clements Friday, November 12, 2010 at Clements. Our middle school, junior varsity, and varsity teams are looking forward to a wonderful year this year. Expectations are high and we know our coaches and players will represent Ardmore in an exemplary manner. Coach Sanderson and Coach Walker always do a wonderful job leading our basketball programs.

Great things are happening every day at Ardmore High School and across Limestone County Schools. Unfortunately, in society bad news is the focus of most of the media and the gossip. We are very fortunate to live in such a great community and have such a great school system filled with outstanding young people. Just remember when you hear bad reports of one student there are thousands that are doing what they are supposed to do and representing their community and parents admirably.

Meet the Tigers

Come out and meet the Tigers Tuesday night, November 9, 2010 at 6:00 in the new gym. First National Bank sponsors this event every year and it is great for our players and coaches to get ready for the upcoming season. Hope to see you there!

Hunter's Highlights

The autumn horizon displays its magnificent fall foliage as the brisk air quietly invades the Ardmore community. The autumn air was the perfect setting for the 2010 version of Parenting Day was held recently giving parents and teachers an opportunity to talk with each other and find a way to better meet the needs of the students of Ardmore High School. Ardmore was host to over 400 parent conferences while students enjoyed their day off from school.

Basketball season has begun and the West Limestone Tip-Off Tournament in full swing. We are looking forward to a great basketball season because we know our players and coaches have been working extremely hard to prepare for the season. Fans are waiting with anticipation for the noise of the buzzer and the swoosh of the ball through the net as the Tigers fill up the basket. We encourage each of you to come out and support our teams.

The Award Winning Ardmore Tiger Marching band displayed their usual excellence as the recently performed in the marching contest at Gordo. The sounds of the band “Chicago” reverberated through the evening sky as our excellent musicians played their parts flawlessly. The band received all superior ratings and was awarded “Best in Class”. Mr. Nelson, Ms. Rhinehart and all the band members are to be congratulated for their hard work and excellence.

Coach Jackson and Ms. Roop recently carried a group of science students to visit the Space and Rocket Center located in Huntsville. Our students learned first hand of the historic role this area played in the space race. We are fortunate to live in an area that has such a strong impact on the endeavor to increase human knowledge through space exploration. Our students were well behaved and showed once again that Ardmore students are well behaved and represent their parents, school and community with class. A special thanks to Coach Jackson for coordinating this trip as he has done for so many years. Ardmore is very fortunate to have a man like Coach Jackson teaching the young people that come through our doors.

Ardmore high school is proud to announce Ms. Pam Emerson as its 2010 Teacher of the Year. Mrs. Emerson teaches Geometry, Advanced Geometry, and Algebra IA and is an Ardmore High School Graduate. She did her Undergraduate Studies at Athens State College and her Graduate Studies at The University of West Alabama. Emerson's teaching career began at Hazel Green High School spending 5 1/2 years there before returning to Ardmore in January of 2002.

Parenting Day

Great turn out today for Parenting Day at Ardmore High School. We want to thank all the parents that came by the school to see us today. We hope we were able to answer your questions and as always if you have anything you would like to discuss please give us a call.

Parenting Day

We invite all of our parents to come and see us on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. We look forward to hearing from you and remember we will also be issuing parent passwords to access your child's information.

Hunter's Highlights

Things are in full swing at Ardmore High School. The fall sports season officially ended with our varsity football game against Tanner. Our guys played hard, but came up a little short. We are very proud of how our team performed winning four games in a row in the second half of the season. Of course winter sports begin the very next Monday with our MS basketball teams playing in the West Limestone Tip-Off tournament. As always please check our website for more information.

On Tuesday, November 2, 2010 Limestone County Schools will conduct a Parenting Day to encourage parent/teacher conferences. Students will not be in school; instead, the faculty will be at school from 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. to meet with parents. You should have received forms from your child, if not please contact your child’s teacher to set up a time to visit. We look forward to meeting you and working together we can help ensure you child will reach his/her fullest potential.

First National Bank's Meet the Tigers for the 2010-11 Winter Sports will be Tuesday, November 9th at 6:00 in the new gym. Come and enjoy the food, fellowship, and support the Tigers. We invite everyone out to this wonderful event which is sponsored by First National Bank. This gives us an opportunity to recognize our athletes and show them our support for the upcoming season.

Our English classes and our History classes go to the computer lab to “Moodle”. Now if you aren’t familiar with Moodle, it is a website application our teachers use in order to give our students an “on-line experience” as required by the state of Alabama for graduation. Teachers post assignments on a website called “Moodle” and the students visit the website and submit the completed assignment. Our world is certainly moving toward more things being completed on-line and we want to give our students every opportunity to succeed in the global economy.