Education

INDIAN LAND – It only took a couple of words to spark Taylor Altier’s imagination.

Altier, 16, was working as a restaurant hostess at Murphy’s Tavern in south Charlotte when a word caught her attention.

From there, the Indian Land High School student created what would soon be her own self-published novel.

INDIAN LAND – Clair Thain held up a formidable-looking taloned foot that once belonged to a hawk and told her audience of children how a hawk uses those sharp claws to catch a rodent meal.

Thain, a Wild Wings educator for the Carolina Raptor Center in Huntersville, N.C., spoke to a group of children and their parents at the Del Webb Library at Indian Land on June 17. It was the first Wednesday event for the library’s summer reading program.

Thain passed the foot around to the children, who could hardly contain their excitement.

Hannah Powell emerged looking like she had just been dunked in a swimming pool.

The rising North Elementary School second-grader had just finished playing a game at Discovery School’s Camp Invention.

In the game, she used a shield to fend off water that was being tossed in her direction. Students who played the game made their shields from construction paper.

KERSHAW – Denzel Washington didn’t stroll in the auditorium at Andrew Jackson High School on May 21, but some students may have thought they got the next best thing.

Retired football coach Herman Boone – who guided the much-celebrated T.C. Williams High School football team to a Virginia state title years ago – visited AJHS.

He also visited Lancaster High School, giving motivational speeches to the students at each school.

He was also the keynote speaker at the district’s Honor Beyond the Field banquet May 21.