Summer Enrichment, Innovation Spaces & Weekly Boost

Thursday, June 17, 2021

Dear North Colonie Families,

Here’s to another week in the record books – with one more to go in the school year. Next Friday, June 25 is the last day of school. Tomorrow, North Colonie schools will be closed to observe the Juneteenth holiday.

Free Summer Engagement For Students in Grades 7-12

North Colonie Central Schools is proud to announce that this summer will be filled with many camp and club offerings for students to re-engage and re-connect. Most of the in-person activities will be hosted at Shaker Middle School. We tried to have something for everyone. The deadline to sign up is 3 p.m. on June 25.

Innovation Spaces

We are excited to announce that our innovation spaces at the middle school are one step closer to reality! Over the last few weeks we have done an internal search for innovation teachers and interviewed many talented and inspired teachers who wanted to be part of such an exciting opportunity for our students. Under the direction of Mr. Gary Cimorelli, district instructional technology specialist, the middle school innovation team will be working throughout the summer to plan opportunities for our middle school students to explore new interests, discover new skills, and drive their own learning.

Coding and Robotics Lab: Mr. Brian Ashline
Makerspace: Ms. Catara Vinson-Westbrook
Humanities Center : Ms. Kaitlyn Chirico
Health and Wellness Center: Ms. Renata Relyea
Clean Technology Lab: Mr. Kris Navratil
Simulations Center: Mr. Mark Kaercher

Please read more about our team. As the summer progresses, we look forward to sharing information with you about our these spaces as well as our elementary innovation spaces!

Weekly Boost

2020 and 2021 Shaker High School Alumni Hall of Fame ceremony: On Monday, we were thrilled to officially induct new members in the SHS Hall of Fame. Congratulations to the 2020 and 2021 inductees! You can watch the ceremony here.
It’s exciting that Michael Tong, a ninth grader at SHS earned first place in this year’s Virtual Junior Achievement Titan CEO Challenge. It’s a simulation-based competition where students apply their knowledge of business as they compete in the cell phone industry. Read more about it.
Bravo to Blue Creek students and their Directors Brook Greco and Heidi Quackenbush for this virtual musical, “Let’s Hear It For The Heroes!”
Take a look at the artwork from seniors in Advanced Studio Art & Design 3 who completed our rigorous 5 credit sequence of visual and media art while at Shaker.