What's Happening this Week at AMS?

Wrapping up first quarter each year always signifies the move into busier seasons, and this past week and upcoming week are evidence of that! You'll see pictures from our Q1 behavior celebration and Kindness Week 2026 later in the newsletter, but we've also leapt from football, volleyball, and cross country season right into girls' basketball and boys' wrestling seasons. We have a HUGE new squad of cheerleaders for these upcoming seasons (so many that we had to order more pom pons, bows, and uniforms!), and we're looking forward to walking to AHS this Wednesday to view the first audience performance of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" - this year's high school musical.

In addition to all of these activities, teachers and students continue with teaching and learning every day, and our intervention reading and math groups are focused on filling in learning gaps for students. Our staff and students even found time to make Dr. Delay and Dr. James feel the love on "Principal Appreciation Day" (pictures below). Ultimately, we have a lot going on, and we aren't slowing down anytime soon!

At the start of the year, there were 168 out of 341 Longhorns who qualified for an enrichment math or reading group for "Longhorn Time" because their FastBridge scores were above benchmark. And just during the first quarter, we moved 8 additional students into enrichment from our reading comprehension groups. This is excellent movement for just 9 weeks, but that's not everyone who made improvements. There were a handful of students who made progress in their phonics skills and moved up to fluency groups; three handfuls of students who made progress in their fluency skills and moved up to comprehension groups; a huge bushel full of students in math intervention groups who progressed enough that we had to re-group all the math Longhorns to reflect the student growth! Without going into all of the specifics, this is awesome news that shows our students are working hard to gain the skills they were missing and that our teachers and the resources we are using are effective.

Students who met the following criteria had a blast at the Q1 behavior celebration:

• 90% or higher attendance (all types of attendance)
• NO failing grades
• NO office discipline referrals
• No more than 3 morning tardies

The 6th grade team of teachers planned this quarter's celebration, which included pumpkin painting, roasting s'mores (with fire safety help from the Abilene FD), bobbing for apples (the students LOVED this one!), hayrack rides, a petting zoo, a cake walk, dodgeball, gaga ball, and spike ball, among other activities. It was a great celebration!

To wrap up Kindness Week each year, AMS students take part in "Kindness in the Community" all around town. Below are just the first set of pictures from the event - students helped at each school in the district - painting, cleaning, helping rake leaves, etc.; others helped clean up yards, worked inside of community locations, made blankets for our local nursing homes, wrote cards for active duty military soldiers, made kits for animals that have to visit local animal hospital, and much, much more! Volunteering and serving others comes naturally for some students and is more of a challenge for others, but ultimately, we get to spend an afternoon each year giving students the opportunity to experience the joy of selflessness.

AMS will be losing a valued member of our faculty at the end of December this year. Christine Scherbring, 8th grade Literature teacher, will be moving on to a new career that provides big opportunities for her and her family. We will miss her, but we also support her reaching for her dreams. We are interviewing candidates for that position over the next two weeks and hope to find an amazing person to fill her role starting in January. Mrs. Scherbring will still be in Abilene and has committed herself to making the transition smooth for the students and the new teacher, and our 8th grade Longhorns will continue to receive high quality instruction.

One of our student leadership teams is the "Elementary Pals" team, and this past week, they visited Kennedy Elementary to learn and play with the students there. Our middle schoolers all loved working with the littles :)

November 9 - Laurie Veal, AMS Financial Secretary

November 18 - Mel Dannefer, 6th grade Social Studies

November 22 - Sheri Graefe, 8th grade Communications

On "Dress Like your Younger Self" day during Kindness Week, we had a rainbow of old letterman jackets on display. Our teachers are the best when it comes to joining the students in spirit week themes!