An assignment for CASD seniors: Send in your photo
The 350 seniors at Connellsville Area High School and Connellsville Career and Technical Center didn’t get to gather for the customary end-of-year class photo before COVID-19 school closures cut their final year short.
Thanks to the district’s teachers, however, they will gather in a different way.
High school teacher Amy Witt and middle school teachers Sara Bruschi and Gina Irwin plan to turn the hillside by the high school into a sea of seniors’ faces, letting them showcase their Falcon pride one last time.
“All of our seniors from our high school and our career and technical center are going to get a yard sign. The whole hillside is going to be decorated with 350 signs to honor our senior class,” Witt said.
Jamie McPoyle, president of the teachers’ union, supported the project, and the teachers themselves – from elementary school through high school – are paying to have the signs and a congratulatory banner made.
They just need a little help from the seniors themselves.
Witt is asking that each CASD senior email a photo of themselves – and only themselves – to classof2020@casdfalcons.org
The photo, due by April 30, can be a senior class picture or favorite photo, and should be a high resolution one.
“We hope when they come down Falcon Drive and they see the sea of graduates there … we want them to know they should be proud in this moment,” Witt said.
Teachers across the district participate in graduation every year, Witt said, some watching students they’ve known since kindergarten get their diploma. The abrupt way in which the coronavirus pandemic ended the school year left many teachers with the need to let students know how much educating them has meant, Witt said.
And the faculty wants to give the Class of 2020 one last lesson with the display.
“In a time of uncertainty, one thing is certain: your teachers in the Connellsville Area School District support you and congratulate you,” Witt said.
The signs and banner should be put up in the first or second week of May. As long as they socially distance, seniors are invited to have their photos take with the display, and at some point, each senior will be able to take his or her individual sign.