Ginger Bread Houses

New Officers Elected and Sworn In

December started with students campaigning for class offices. Students wrote speeches and participated in guided debates on December first and second.

Elections were held on December fifth. Dakota B. was elected to serve as "The Bull" (class president), Jeremy L. won a tight race for the position of Sergeant-of-Arms, and students elected Whitney D. to serve as class quarter-master. Austin H. was appointed to serve in the capacity academic liaison (PAL).

Matt K. retired from the Bull position and passed the gavel onto Dakota.

New students were invited to sign the class pledge and make a commitment towards academic excellence.

Students Create and Send Christmas Cards to Troops

Under the direction of Ms. Michelle, Milton AEP Students created dozens of Christmas Cards to send to American Service Men and Women serving overseas.

Jose' Earns Honors Status - Pledge to Community

Jose' became the first student of the 2011-2012 school year to complete his Pledge Log and become an Honors Member. After completing the extensive Pledge Log, Jose' presented himself before a board of adults from the community. His progress in the program was reviewed by them. After passing the review board, Jose' needed to complete a pledge to the community. 

Williamsport versus Milton Flag Football Championship

The Williamsport center AEP made, what has become, its annual visit to the Milton State Park for the flag football championship. And, as has been the case since the Milton center and Williamsport center have started this Fall football tradition, Milton reigned the victor!

Both teams fought competitively and with great sportsmanship.  

New PATH Academic Liaison Sworn In

Austin H. was sworn in as the Academic Liaison on Friday, October 7th. Austin was chosen by his peers to fill the vacancy created when the PAL moved to the position of class quartermaster.

Students raise $255 for St. Jude Children's Hospital

Students at the PA Treatment & Healing Alternative Education Program participated in the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital MATH-ATHON. 


They participated in this fundraising program to raise money that will help St. Jude Children's Research Hospital find new treatments for cancer and other catastrophic diseases. You still can help St. Jude continue its life-saving work against pediatric diseases with your donation. You can check our schools progress and donate at our MATH-ATHON Website.

Participating in this program benefited our students by giving them a reason to “do math”. Scholastic Books will providde each participant a workbook to complete.

In addition, helping others may be the most important lesson our students learn.


At the conclusion of our official MATH-ATHON, the students had raised $255. Thanks for helping us reach our goal for the kids of St. Jude!

Milton Regional Sewer Authority Field Trip

Students have been studying cellular biology for the first weeks of school. For a culminating activity, the students of Mr. Eck and Coach Kiss's class visited the Milton Regional Sewer Authority.

Why, you might ask, would we want to visit a waste water treatment plant? They process . . . well . . . you know - waste water.

The answer to why is in knowing how waste water is treated. Milton's sewer plant uses bacteria to digest the organic materials in the towns waste water. Currently the plant uses aerobic bacteria to digest the wastes. The trip to the sewer plant gave the students the opportunity to meet with a bacteria guru, Mr. George Myers, the plant superintendent. Mr. Myers explained how the plant cleans and sanitizes hundreds of thousands of gallons of waste water, not only from the homes of Milton, but also the Con Agra plant. Mr. Myers explained how over 70% of the water they treat is high energy (sub par noodles and other food stuff is suspended or dissolved in it) waste water from the food plant.

While touring the facility, Mr. Myers described how oxygen in added to the mix of brown water to help with the aerobic respiration process that allows the bacteria to digest the wastes. The brown color of the water, it turns out, is from the bacteria. Waste water, when in enters in the plant, looks closer to river water and doesn't have the brown color seen in the large tanks at the plant.

Mr. Myers also described the massive upgrades planned for the plant, dubbed Ww2E - Waste water to Energy. Using aerobic bacteria requires a lot of electrical energy to run the aerators and wastes the energy stored in the high energy waste water from Con Agra. Under the new design, the aerobic bacteria will be changed to anaerobic bacteria. These bacteria require less oxygen and will produce methane, a combustible gas. The methane will be captured and used to run electrical generators that will, in turn, make the plant energy independent. The plant will power itself.

George's guided discovery of how both aerobic and anaerobic process worked solidified key concepts taught by Coach Kiss in the science class. It also gave the students a valuable lesson in resource management.

Officers Elected

As part of an ongoing study of The Constitution and American Civics, the students of the downstairs class modeled and held their own elections.






Elections for the four offices were held on September 26. Matt K. was elected "The Bull" or Class President. Jeremy L. was selected by his peers to serve as the Sergeant-at-Arms (sort of a cross between Vice-President and Sheriff) and Dakota B. was chosen to serve as Quarter-Master. The most contested position was the PATH Academic Liaison (PAL). After a round speeches by the four candidates, the class responded to the sincere and heartfelt comments of Jose C.. Jose explained how he wishes to demonstrate that he can be a responsible and motivated student so that he can return to his home school district.


The following day, during a special ceremony that included the signing of the Downstairs Class Pledge, the officers were sworn into their positions. They will serve in these offices until the end of the marking period.

Student Pledge Ratified

After two weeks of vigorous discourse and debate, the students of the "Downstairs Class" have reached agreement on their class Pledge.

Students have been studying the founding of our country and The Constitution of the United States. As part of the experience, the young people in Coach Kiss and Mr. Eck's class have been tasked with creating and adopting their own oath or creed. The final document was to provide a framework that students could use to guide and assess their behavior within their classroom community. The process was a long one, but the journey resulted in a worthy Pledge.

Before the students could start to design their Pledge, they participated in several days of inquiry into "values" and character traits. The beliefs of our founding fathers - George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and other early leaders of the United States - were compared to the beliefs and values of the students. Mr. Eck ensured that the virtues of academia were also included.

Then, much like the designers of the Constitution, the students convened a convention. The first day of the convention, the students were given very little guidance from the staff. The ensuing chaos provided an important lesson on the importance of having order. The second day of the convention, Mr. Eck opened with a lesson on parlimentary procedures. The students selected Jeremy L. as the chairman and the following sessions were more productive.

On the twenty-sixth of September the students held an election for class officers. Under the leadership of the new student leadership, the class held a final review of their document and voted to ratify the 2011/2012 class pledge. During a special ceremony the following day, students swore to do their best to uphold the ideals of the document by signing the pledge.

QOTD

Your goal is waiting to be achieved. How bad do you want it?

QOTD

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

QOTD

Acceptance is seeing with your heart not with your eyes.

The Bucknell/M&M Conspiracy

Coach Kiss was eating his M&Ms the other day and started to ponder the ratios of the different colored candies. He was adamant that there were more orange and blue then other colors. Mr. Eck was immediately suspicious, with Bucknell's colors being blue and orange, and accused Coach of being biased. Both staff members, being men of science, decided an investigation was in order.

A work force of inquisitive scientists was needed. The downstairs class was perfect for the task.

Each student was provided with one bag of M&Ms. The immediate task was to sort and count the candies. Then the data was collected for analysis. Finally, the candies needed to be consumed - a tough job, but someone had to do it.

After the crunching the numbers (and the candies) the student scientists compiled the data and constructed a variety of graphs and visual representations of the data (histograms, bar graphs, and pie charts).

Coach was right. The most prevelant colors in the samples were Orange (26.43%) and Blue (23.30%).

QOTD

If you think nobody cares...think again! PATH staff care about you and are willing to help in any way we can!

QOTD

A smile improves your face value! Practice smiling! It does everyone good!

QOTD

Pulling together in time of trouble helps everyone out! Let's pull together during this time of struggle that so many people have had!

The Oobleck Files

By Jeremy L. and Adam T.

On Thursday, 9/1/11, the Milton AEP conducted a bizarre experiment. The experiment included cornstarch, food coloring, and water. Students added the water to the cornstarch and created a substance that turned from a liquid to a solid and back again. Students emptied  the bag into their hands and it felt as if it was wet clay! They took the experimentation to a new level, when they added food coloring which combined with the water and cornstarch causing it to turn into a more colorful substance.

The experiment took place in the down stairs classroom at Milton PATH AEP program.The students conducted it to see what would be the outcome. They started to see what was going on with their wild experiment. It was changing colors right before their very own eyes, further more they took out the color changing substance and put it into our hands and it slipped through our fingers, which surprised them even more than when it changed colors.

One student said "It was an interesting experiment, even though it was extremely messy, and it was really fun to mess around with." Coach Kiss told us "that the experiment went surprisingly well considering the circumstances even though it was messy."

Orientation Week

By Natosha P.

Monday 29, 2011 was the first day back to school for Milton, Path AEP students. The teachers had gathered several different activities to orientate us back into a school routine. Monday through Wednesday the upstairs and downstairs classes did several different things to get to know each other better. For instance, the students were put into groups to see how well they worked together. The students were put into four different groups. The students were given a bucket of water and a bar of soap. The object of the activity was to work together to see how long the bar of soap took to dissolve in the water.  We also went over the Path of Life with Miss Steph. The Path of Life is a model of life, good decisions, and getting back on track.

Teams compete against each other
to see who can dissolve a bar of soap fastest

QOTD

Self control is knowing you can but deciding you won't! Exercise self control!

QOTD

The expert in anything was once a beginner! You can be an expert!

QOTD

Make an effort...not an excuse! Excuses will not be accepted!

QOTD

If you don't have time to do it right...you must have time to do it over! This is one of the quotes that your teachers will live by this school year! So be responsible with your work!

QOTD

First full day of classes. Today is a great day to learn something NEW!

SunnyD Book Project

Dear Parents :

I am excited to tell you about a great program that can bring free books to our school. It’s called the SunnyD Book Spree, and the program will donate 20 books to every classroom that sends 20 SunnyD UPC labels. 

It would be fantastic if our school could benefit this year. Last year, SunnyD donated over 250,000 books to schools across America. Imagine every classroom getting 20 new books!

Save SunnyD UPC labels, and send them in to our classroom. I’ll collect and mail them to the program for our free books. Ask friends and family to collect labels too. 

You can get more information and a free Book Spree enrollment kit at sunnyd.com/bookspree. It’s very simple to do. Thanks in advance for helping us make the classroom a brighter place for our kids!

Sincerely,

Mr. Eck

Happy New Year!

It's going to be a great year! Or, It'll be something else. It's really all up to you. Here's one to grow on: "Failure to prepare is to prepare to fail!" - John Wooden -UCLA Coach

QOTD

Be someone you would be PROUD to know! I hope we all want to be proud of our choices and proud of ourselves

QOTD

Attitudes are contagious.....is your's worth catching??? Let's all start each day on a positive note!

Quote of the Day-August 29, 2011

Your teacher's goal is simple...to help you reach your goal.

Hi from Ms. Steph

Welcome back!! I hope you have come ready to learn and be an active participant!