Alison Hollis
10th Honors English, Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition
What’s your favorite thing about teaching seniors?
“I like teaching seniors because they have one foot or like, maybe their eyes out the door and into the real world. I enjoy like a little bit of a rebellious spirit in a student, it’s one way for me to gauge if what I’m teaching is working or if how I’m teaching is working. Seniors tend to be more engaged and sometimes more rebellious, which I genuinely enjoy. I also think, with seniors, because they’re about to go into the real world, or at least the collegiate real world, I can put mature topics in front of them and they can handle it.”
Who’s a senior you would shout out?
“In my sixth period, there is a pair of students who, like, are just quietly, every day, like are ready for class, are thoughtful, really consider what we’re reading, and it’s Maya Zelinski … and Grace Bennett. Like I can just always count on them in class to do exactly what we’re doing, to be engaged in what we’re doing … so I wanna shout them out as AP Lit students, but I … literally could go around and shout out the vast majority of my classes.”
What’s your favorite memory from your senior year of high school?
“I had a very, very close in-group of friends, we’re all still friends … Our senior year, because of the way our schedules aligned we ended up with a year in which we didn’t actually have full class loads because of the nature of our schedules and so we got to have a lot more free time than we had in previous years, and so I got a lot of really good friend time. So, one of my friends after school like every day, every other day, she and I would leave after second period because that’s what we got to do at my school. We’d go get breakfast and go back to my house and we’d do some studying, some hanging out. I had a really nice schedule, so I got a lot of free time.”
What’s your favorite memory of class of ‘24?
“So, this year [my classes] did a, like, Victorian-style tea party, it was my literary tea party with my AP kids and they all came dressed as … a literary character from this year. I’d never done it before, and so I was a little apprehensive that they weren’t gonna get into it or come dressed, and they were fully engaged, fully in their characters, we had great food. It was just a day where we really got to experience the joy of literature and not necessarily the heavy-hitting academic analytical part of literature, so that was hands down my favorite.”
Karen Bolden
JROTC I, JROTC II, JROTC III, JROTC IV, JROTC I Honors, JROTC II Honors, JROTC III Honors, JROTC IV Honors
What’s your favorite thing about teaching seniors?
“It’s good to see how far [seniors] have come. If I have a senior it’s because I’ve had them since they were in the ninth grade as a LET 1. And so it’s just good to see them come to that high point, and then getting ready to go out into the world, and to hear from them what JROTC has done for them and has meant to them and how they’re going to be able to use it in the future. My favorite thing is we have a project that’s called the capstone project. [We’re] actually doing that, like, right now. We teach the class at the beginning of the year, their senior year, and they’re supposed to write a paper on each LET year they’ve been in ROTC and culminate with that senior year and then give a briefing and they’re supposed to embed the briefing with pictures and everything from their freshman year all the way up. And it’s very interesting to teach that and then to see the final and finished product and to hear from them how they have grown each year. You can tell in the pictures how they’ve grown. And they give that briefing to the year 1 cadets so the year 1 cadets are excited and have tons of questions for the seniors.”
Who’s a senior you would shout out?
“[I would shout out] my battalion commander, her name is Shivani Menon. She’s been unlike any other battalion commander that we’ve had here in the Spartan battalion. She came in and when individuals said that she couldn’t do this or couldn’t do that, she … defied all of that and has taken the battalion to high levels.”
What’s your favorite memory from your senior year of high school?
“I would have to say, just trying to figure out what it is I wanted to do. Looking back at my brothers who 4 of 5 were connected with the military, and so just talking to them and hearing about the military, that was one of my favorite memories. And then being able to come into the military, and I served for 32 years.”
What’s your favorite senior prank you’ve seen at White Station?
“I had a student named Austin McCartney, I forgot what year McCartney graduated, and he came in like on a walker with gray hair and I had no idea what was going on, what the day was, and so when he came in I’m like, ‘What? What is going on with you? Did you hurt yourself?’ I was very concerned that he had hurt himself, well come to find out he didn’t hurt himself, he just decided to dress up like an older person and play like something was wrong with him.”
“I’m gonna miss this class, 2024. They really have impressed upon me, they’re leaving a legacy to the other cadets. I think with this class I’ve gotten a little bit more personal with them and then having to be without an assistant instructor or the AI, army instructor, they really stepped up to the plate and helped out.”
