Teen Spotlight: In conversations about equity, where do students stand? aspentimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aspentimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Photo by Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
Kayla Tehrani is a teenager at the end of the day, and sometimes those characteristics stand out. Other times, notably during swim meets, the Aspen High School junior is a driven, ferocious competitor, a key trait that has turned her into one of the state’s top swimmers.
“I’d like to see her consistently work as hard in practice as she does in competition,” AHS girls swim coach Katherine Keel said. “Kayla is one of the most motivated swimmers I’ve ever coached. She’ll complain about warming down or longer distance sets in practice, but it’s more of a shtick, as it’s obvious there is a fire burning inside her to be the best. Any challenge or doubt motivates her even more, and she lights it up when it matters most.”
IF YOU GO …
Where: Aspen District Theatre
How much: $10/students; $15/adults
Tickets: aspenk12.net IF YOU WATCH…
Where: aspenk12.net
When: May 20-22, 6 p.m. nightly
After a 2020 cancellation, an often-disrupted school year and 14 months of pandemic life, Aspen High School’s annual musical is back, live and in-person. With distanced seating for 200, the curtain goes up Friday in the Aspen District Theatre for four live performances followed by three nights of streamed online shows.
Students began distanced and masked rehearsals in January, when the coronavirus infection rate was spiking locally and the return of live theater seemed a long way away. Five months later, with vaccines out, infections down and most public health restrictions dropped, Aspen High School will open its production of “Songs for a New World,” crossing a finish line few could envision this spring.
A Pitkin County Vaccination Clinic was in full swing in the Aspen High School gymnasium to administer the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine in Aspen on Thursday, May 13, 2021. (Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times)
Local public health officials do not think that large numbers of visitors to Aspen and Pitkin County this summer will result in sky-high numbers of COVID-19 cases like it did over the winter.
While large numbers of visitors yielded increased local case counts in December and January, public health did not see a corresponding rise in cases when large spring break crowds descended in late February and March, said Josh Vance, Pitkin County epidemiologist.
Muck Off
You can’t turn on the news these days without hearing about the singular problem sweeping the nation, the one threatening America’s youth at an alarming pace: optional, anonymous student surveys on equity.
Just kidding; it’s only a problem in Aspen. Kidding again, although it is an issue weighing heavily on Carbondale resident and recently re-elected Colorado State Board of Education member Joyce Rankin. Last month she penned an opinion column
, “Sex, Religion and Your High School,” about a “serious problem” with an Aspen High School survey on equity that she said concerned parents brought to her attention.