Living By The Bell Of Newtown High School

By Eliza Hallabeck

“You should have been there,” as the opening words for the Newtown High School yearbook from 1978 read. The words were placed under an image of students sitting on the hill overlooking what was then Bruce Jenner Stadium, the home of the Newtown Indians.

In 1978 students at Newtown High School could have been humming to songs by the Bee Gees, Rolling Stones, or Eric Clapton. In 1990 Madonna, Jon Bon Jovi, or Billy Idol could have been played at dances. And in 1997 the hallways may have held students hiding their tape cassette players with songs by Puff Daddy, the Spice Girls, or Third Eye Blind playing into hidden headphones.

NHS may have grown in size since three graduates attended the school, but for Jennifer Dellasala, Trent Harrison, and Randi Kiely, the school is still home.

1997

In 1997 NHS was under construction, and the hallways were packed and Jennifer Dellasala was graduating.

She played lacrosse after school, knew that she wanted to teach, but did not know that goal would eventually bring her back to her alma mater.

“I love where I work,” said Ms Dellasala.

Some of her favorite teachers from high school are now her peers, and she said only one thing troubles her about working with them. “Their first names are still a problem,” said Ms Dellasala, “but everyone here is very warm and welcoming.”

After graduating from high school, Ms Dellasala attended the University of Connecticut in Storrs.

“Ever since I was younger there was always something there,” said Ms Dellasala. She loved history classes and visiting museums and eventually, “I just started to love working with students.”

After graduating from college, Ms Dellasala entered NHS looking for a job. She was hired after sitting before a board of teachers.

“It’s been fun working here,” said Ms Dellasala, “and it’s a fun town to grow up in.”

Two teachers that were at the school while she was attending it and who are still there are Linda Buonagurio and Russ Weiss, she said.

“They were two of my favorite teachers,” said Ms Dellasala. “They really enjoy teaching.”

She said she loved all of her teachers from high school, because they had a great way of interacting with the students. She particularly remembers some of their teaching techniques now that she is teaching.

“Their mannerisms,” said Ms Dellasala. “The way they would speak to you. They weren’t just interested in your learning, but also you as a person.”

One of Ms Dellasala’s favorite memories from NHS came from playing clarinet in the band. In her sophomore year the band went to California. “We got to be on national television,” Ms Dellasala said.

Now in her classes she said she sometimes has brothers and sisters of students with whom she attended high school.

Other than playing sports and playing in the band, Ms Dellasala said the Edmond Town Hall was the after school place to go for her in middle school. In high school she said students would go to the Blue Colony Diner on Church Hill Road.

1990

During his freshman year at NHS Trent Harrison, now a science teacher at the school, practiced lacrosse on the field behind Misty Vale Deli.

After graduating in 1990 Mr Harrison attended school at Dickenson College in Carlisle, Penn., where he majored in geology. After he finished his master’s degree at the University of Bridgeport, he started teaching at different schools. When NHS had an opening for a teacher, he took the job.

“It’s actually fun working with people who taught you,” said Mr Harrison. He said it also helps the students approach him with honesty and trust.

When in school though, he said he remembers most of his classes were “sit, take notes, read the book, and take notes.”

Now he said there is more discussion in the classrooms. As a teacher, Mr Harrison said this plays to his advantage, because this is the type of teacher he has become.

“The relationship between students and teachers is less formal then it was 20 years ago,” he said. He added that while this is a good thing, it can also lead to less discipline.

His classes were not all just the sit and take notes kind, because he said during his freshman year he went for a canoe ride down the Connecticut River with a group from one of his science classes to see “Earth science live.”

“I’ll say I was a nerd,” said Mr Harrison, who took honors science, math, and English classes. He added that he took the honors English classes mainly to be with his friends. “I was more of a science and math person.”

“When I was growing up here,” said Mr Harrison, “you went home, threw your bag in the corner, and you went out.”

He said he remembers driving all terrain Vehicles with friends through fields — with permission, he added. He also remembers building tree forts after school with friends.

“You just went out and did stuff, because we didn’t have cellphones,” said Mr Harrison.

When he moved back to town after college and working in Texas, he said there were houses where there used to be forests.

He knew he wanted to be a teacher when he was working for Northface, an outdoor clothing and gear store chain, when two women he was helping pick out jackets told him he is a teacher.

He realized that instead of selling the jackets to the women, he had been teaching them about them.

“I like being back here,” said Mr Harrison, “because when I teach Earth science I use things in town.”

He will name water sources, roads, and places for the students to recognize and connect with.

“You talk to the kids and you’ll name a road and the kids will know the road,” Mr Harrison said. “It makes it pertain to them.”

Last year he had a student ask him if he would help her test water near her home. She brought the results to him to help her, and they found things that helped her parents.

“They can see what they’ve been doing here in this building is going out into their lives, and that’s what it’s about,” said Mr Harrison. “That’s the part that gives me the warm fuzzies.”

 1978

For Randi Allen the halls of Newtown High School did not disappear in 1978, as they do for most graduates, but instead they reopened years latter to welcome her back as social Studies teacher Randi Kiely.

“It really was like coming home,” said Ms Kiely. After graduation Ms Kiely attended classes at Western Connecticut State University for history, and after having children, she returned to start work on her education degree.

In 1999, after teaching at another school, Ms Kiely accepted an open teaching position at NHS. She said had also finished her student teaching at NHS while working toward her education degree in 1993, and some of the staff who had been at the school then were still there in 1999 to welcome her back.

“There are still a few around that I had as teachers,” said Ms Kiely.

There are also “a huge chunk of Newtowners” that she recognizes from high school.

“I see kids of people I went to school with,” said Ms Kiely, “and I will see the family resemblance.”

For the most part, Ms Kiely said she shares these memories with her students’ parents, and not with the students themselves.

“[The students] are more interested in me having gone to high school in the 70s,” said Ms Kiely, as compared to attending NHS specifically.

Since the 1970s Newtown has not changed much, according to Ms Kiely, because of Newtown’s strict zoning laws, but that there is much more traffic now. Ms Kiely added that her husband, who also grew up in Newtown, played baseball in the road on Botsford Hill Road, but now that would not be possible.

“There’s just a lot more traffic,” said Ms Kiely.

The 1970s were a time of change at the school, because Ms Kiely said the school was caught in a time of allowing 18 years olds who could legally drink alcohol to leave campus. By the year she graduated, she said the school was acting more like it was a prison.

Ms Kiely said when she was a kid Newtown still had a bowling alley, the Nighthawk was not yet associated with the high school. and students did not attend as many after school activities as they do now.

“I just always loved going to school,” said Ms Kiely. “I made my mother buy me a school lunch box before I had to attend school.”