Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.

Students at LHK take the next step

FALLS VILLAGE — The Lee H. Kellogg School eighth grade promotion exercise, held outside on the hill of the Falls Village campus, proved to be an emotional moment for Katelin Lopes. The class speaker and winner of the President’s Award for Educational Excellence was moved enough by the moment to let out a few sobs before collecting her breath and concluding her speech:

“Thank you, Kellogg. You are small, but you have a mighty place in my heart.”

Held on Wednesday, June 16, following a weather-related delay on June 15, the ceremony ushered the members of Lee H. Kellogg School’s Class of 2021 into the next chapter of their educational careers under unusual circumstances. 

The evening followed a strict distance-and-mask safety policy, making clear the lasting presence of the pandemic and the way it had affected the students in their final years at Lee H. Kellogg. 

But the five students in attendance (two members of the eighth grade class were unable to attend), the faculty and Principal Alexandra Juch instead chose speak on anything but their setbacks or current events. 

They remained positive, looked toward the future and focused on the core values one would expect in a promotion exercise in any normal year: personal growth, the pursuit of academic goals and extracurricular achievements, and, of course, in a town as small as Falls Village, ways to enrich and give back to the community.

 

Lee H. Kellogg School

Class of 2021

Austin Donald Bachman, Bernice Haley Boyden, Blaine Robert Curtis, Tessa Jane Dekker, Katelin Jeanette Lopes, Demetri Joseph Ouellette, Tristan Ernest Oyanadel

 

2021 Awards

President’s Award for Educational Excellence: Katelin Lopes; Tessa Dekker

President’s Award for Educational Achievement: Austin Bachman

Peter G Lawson Citizenship Award: Tessa Dekker

Tessa Dekker and Katelin Lopes were the dual winners of the President’s Award for Educational Excellence at the Lee H. Kellogg eighth grade promotion exercise on Wednesday, June 16. Photo by Alexander Wilburn

Members of the eighth grade who participated in Lee H. Kellogg’s promotion exercise included, left to right, Demetri Ouellette, Austin Bachman, Katelin Lopes, Tessa Dekker and Bernice “Birdie” Boyden. Photo by Alexander Wilburn

Tessa Dekker and Katelin Lopes were the dual winners of the President’s Award for Educational Excellence at the Lee H. Kellogg eighth grade promotion exercise on Wednesday, June 16. Photo by Alexander Wilburn
Related Articles Around the Web
Alexander Wilburn

Latest News

The Millerton News - October 22, 2026

The Millerton News - October 22, 2026

Download directly

Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

On Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Cornwall Historical Society, author and genealogist John Mills will breathe new life into the stories of some of Connecticut’s more underappreciated patriots. The reason these heroes were forgotten? They were Black.

At a time when white colonists were fighting for their own liberty and political independence, many Black men who fought alongside them remained enslaved. Some risked their lives only to return to bondage. Though enslaved people were promised freedom from both sides of the Revolutionary War in exchange for their service, Great Britain, too, was still deeply dependent on slavery. For Black people in America, the war presented both extraordinary risks and uncertain paths to the freedom that white colonists were demanding for themselves.

Keep ReadingShow less
education

A sanctuary for second chances

A sanctuary for second chances

Stephanie Saetta runs Charlie Chicken Bones, a sanctuary in Salisbury.

Madi Long
You only get one or two of these soul connection dogs, so I do this in his honor.
— Stephanie Saetta

Stephanie Saetta has spent much of her life caring for others. A physician at White Plains Hospital, she has another calling at home in Salisbury — one that has four legs and a wagging tail. She runs Charlie Chicken Bone Sanctuary, a nonprofit dog rescue that brings dogs from overcrowded pounds and the streets of Texas to foster homes in northwestern Connecticut, where they can begin again.

The sanctuary is named for Charlie, the dog who taught her how special a bond between a person and rescue animal can be.

Keep ReadingShow less
our community
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Hunter Runnette, founder and board chair of field, has spent years fostering arts and cultural programming in the Berkshires.

Provided

What do joy, gardening, artificial intelligence, the American experiment and the creative process have in common? Quite a lot, as it turns out, at least when some of the world’s most compelling thinkers get together to talk about them.

From Friday, Oct. 23, through Sunday, Oct. 25, Lenox, Massachusetts, will host the inaugural field festival, a three-day gathering of writers, artists, scholars and cultural figures at Shakespeare & Company. Billed as a festival of ideas, entertainment, learning and discovery, field brings together an impressive roster of voices to explore everything from the deeply personal to the profoundly political.

Keep ReadingShow less
community

The Pink House AM is serving up community

The Pink House AM is serving up community

Mare Rubin and Maggie Levine of the Pink House AM.

Madi Long

It all started with a yoga class. Mare Rubin was working on her second act after leaving the Upper West Side, where she’d raised a family and worked in corporate marketing. Newly empty nesters, she and her husband decided to move to the wilds of northwestern Connecticut, where they had spent 15 years as weekenders, to see what life in the woods had in store for them.

Rubin started teaching yoga classes at the Union in West Cornwall, a space designated by the town of Cornwall as a community hub with couches, Wi-Fi, occasional events and a growing yoga class schedule. She was adjusting well but missed one important thing about city life: a casual coffee shop.

Keep ReadingShow less
business

Sons of Astro are musicians, friends and bandmates — in that order

Sons of Astro are musicians, friends and bandmates — in that order

The Sons of Astro will be at the Common Pub in Housatonic on Oct. 24 and the 2nd Home Lounge in Winsted on Nov. 14.

Provided

No matter where they are in the world, musicians seem to find other musicians. There’s a shared language, a shared experience of being on stage and performing, and a shared enthusiasm for making those melodies by themselves or together. Such is the case with Norfolk and Brooklyn-based cosmic Americana band Sons of Astro.

That magnetic musicians’ bond drew Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mike Cobb into the orbit of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Matt Statler. The two neighbors took to each other right away and were soon playing open mics together. As an ethics professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Statler made the case that if he sat in for Cobb’s set and Cobb sat in for Statler’s, they could play together and double their stage time. Clearly, these men wanted to make as much music as possible. That became a little harder when Cobb and his family moved up to Norfolk, Connecticut.

Keep ReadingShow less
concerts
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.