The AC Blog

Make Your Mark at the 2018 Gala!

Get ready for the celebration of the year in just 50 days: the Make Your Mark Gala on Friday, May 18th, 2018, at Oak Hill Country Club. You can go online now to sponsor the event, purchase an ad for your business or to recognize someone special, donate an auction item, host a table, or buy individual tickets at allendalecolumbia.org/gala. Next Friday, April 27th, is the last day to buy tickets!

Join us for an evening of fine food, friendship, and lively entertainment as we celebrate the many ways the Allendale Columbia community makes its mark on the world.

Sponsorships are available at several levels and include opportunities to host a table of 8 or 10 of your best friends, class parents, colleagues, or clients. With your sponsorship or individual tickets, you and your guests can enjoy good spirits, fine family-style fare, charitable auction action, and the impressive talents of Allendale Columbia students throughout the night.. Oh, and did we mention you will also have chances to win a variety of live and silent auction items, including vacations, one-of-a-kind experiences, and valuable local products and services?

If you would like to donate experiences or items for the silent or live auction, you can enter the information at allendalecolumbia.org/gala, or contact Kayla Himelein at khimelein@allendalecolumbia.org or 585.641.5288.

Your active participation will help us in the final push over the top for our 3-year, $4 million Impact Initiative Campaign that supports AC’s strategic initiatives and opportunities for students this year and in the years ahead.

Join us!

Upper School Presents Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass

Allendale Columbia’s Upper School students present Lewis Carroll’s play Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, adapted by Rosemary Nursey-Bray, on Friday and Saturday, April 20th and 21st, at 7:00 p.m. at AC’s Curtis Performance Center. Tickets are now available at acs.booktix.com for $8.00 (higher at the door).

Save a Life at Blood Drive April 25th

You can be a life saver! Please consider supporting the Allendale Columbia School Community Service Club’s upcoming Blood Drive on Wednesday, April 25th, from 12:00 noon – 5:00 p.m. in the AC Alumni Gym, 519 Allens Creek Road in Rochester.

CLICK HERE to schedule an appointment using the sponsor keyword allendalecolumbia, or call the Red Cross at 1-800-Red-Cross. In only about an hour, donors can give a pint of whole blood or “Power Red”. A Power Red donation collects the red cells but returns most of the plasma and platelets to the donor. These donors must meet specific eligibility requirements and have type A Neg, B Neg, or O blood.

Those who donate will receive a free Red Cross t-shirt (while supplies last). Middle School students will also support the Red Cross with a bake sale at 10:30 a.m. in the Dining Commons.

Swap School Clothes, Donate Shoes at PACK Spring Uniform Swap

As you clean out your closets, please also send in any shoes your family no longer uses. Allendale Columbia is supporting a local nonprofit, Happy Birthday Cha Cha Cha, by being a collection point for a shoe drive. Adult and kid shoes are accepted–shoes, sneakers, boots, sandals and even flip flops! Happy Birthday Cha Cha Cha is a local nonprofit that adopts K-2 classrooms in the Rochester City School District and provides children with a bag full of wants and needs on their birthdays. You can read more at https://happybirthdaychachacha.org. Please place donated shoes in the lime green bins.

Nursery/Pre-K Hop-A-Thon Raises $2K for MDA

by Tammy Crowe, Lisa Crandall, and Donna Kwiatkowski

Allendale Columbia Nursery and Pre-K students hopped and raised $2,150.00 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association in the MDA Hop-A-Thon on Wednesday, March 28th. The MDA disability awareness program helps children to learn about awareness, acceptance, and assistance. We were joined this year by Heather Powers, MDA Regional Fundraising Coordinator, who honored us with her praise of the students’ enthusiastic participation.

Our 4th grade friends join us for this special event every year. The 4th graders are the “counters”, and the Nursery and Pre-K students are the “hoppers”. We hop for 2 minutes! This is our class community service project.

Leading up to the project, the class watched some short videos and learned “hands-on” how to move in a wheelchair. We also learned that:

1. Everybody is different, nobody is perfect…But all of us are special!
2. Our bodies are amazing and can do lots of things. Every person has different abilities.
3. When somebody has a lot of trouble doing something — no matter how hard they try or how old they get — they have a “disability”.
4. There are many kinds of disabilities. People don’t have disabilities because they are bad or lazy. You can’t “catch” a disability the way you catch a cold.
5. Some kids have a disability in their muscles caused by a disease called muscular dystrophy. They might use leg braces or wheelchairs, but they still like to play and be friends.
6. Doctors and scientists are working to help kids and adults with muscular dystrophy. We can help, too, by being in the MDA Hop-a-Thon!

Thank you to all of our Nursery & Pre-K “Hoppers”, our 4th grade “counters” and all of the family and friends who sponsored our students.

Tammy Crowe Tammy joined Allendale Columbia over 15 years ago working in the Pre-Primary School and Rainbow Room after school program before becoming a pre-kindergarten teacher full-time. Prior to AC, Tammy taught in a variety of educational settings including creative arts, the YMCA, and daycare programs. She's a graduate of SUNY Brockport where she earned her Bachelor of Science Degree in Interdisciplinary Arts for Children. Tammy was honored with the Virginia and Fred Gordon Chair in Elementary Education in 2007.

Lisa Crandall Lisa has been working at Allendale Columbia School since 1996, starting in our Admissions Department as the Admissions Assistant as well as a substitute teacher before securing her current role as a Pre-K teacher in 2002. Prior to joining AC she worked at Monroe Community College as the Student Association Secretary where she supervised office operations for the Student Senate, and at Progressive Childcare Center as a preschool teacher. Lisa is a graduate of Nazareth College where she earned her Bachelor of Science Degree in English Literature with a concentration in Elementary Education.

Donna Kwiatkowski Donna has been teaching nursery school at Allendale Columbia for 30 years! Prior to teaching at AC, Donna was a Graduate Assistant at the Early Childhood Research Center at the University of Buffalo while getting her master's degree in Elementary Education with Specialization in Early Childhood Education. She is also New York State certified in nursery through grade six and holds two bachelor's degrees in Early Childhood Education and Psychology.

Creativity Abounds at Evening of the Arts

Creativity knows no bounds, as Allendale Columbia School students demonstrated at the biennial Evening of the Arts event on Friday, March 23rd. The exhibition featured over a hundred works of art from students in grades N – 12 displayed throughout the school. This year’s theme was “Art Around the World”.

Honors and Portfolio Seminar Art students plied their craft in the Bruce B. Bates Design and Innovation Lab, previewing their work for the upcoming spring thesis exhibition in April. Senior Madison DeCory appreciated the opportunity to help stimulate artistic creativity in younger students, as she mentioned in an interview with News 8 Rochester: “What we want to do tonight is showcase what we’ve been doing, showcase our talents, and get other students interested in the artwork that we’re doing.”

“It’s a variety of work all the way from photography — we have a black and white darkroom which is incredible for our students to have that experience — to printmaking, painting, drawing, design, digital work, and hands on work,” said Amy Oliveri, AC art teacher and Director of the AC Center for Entrepreneurship. A group of 5th graders even demonstrated their “crankie” from the Lower School musical, “I’m Not Sleepy…Yet!”.

Students working in the Global Engagement Diploma program also participated in a bit of social entrepreneurism, selling handmade baskets from a women’s collective and shade-grown coffee to benefit the program’s partners in El Sauce, Nicaragua.

News 8 Rochester summarized the event on their evening news show.