Toll Gate High School is preparing to put on display some of their students’ finest art works at the second annual Arts and Technology Fair on April 24 from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

According to Susan Paolella, who is in charge of planning for the event and teaches photography at Toll Gate, the night is intended to show off student projects to relatives, friends and community members.

“Students want to share [their work] with their parents and friends, because a lot of times, they don’t get to see it,” Paolella said. “They do all this beautiful work, and they upload it to our Google Classroom that we use, and it’s not shared.”

Learning to work through the creative process and the challenges it brings to create results students can be proud of, Paolella said, has been a key part of Toll Gate's courses. 

Paolella has been running preparations for the fair in an interim position. She said that the blueprint from last year has helped significantly in making sure this year’s experience is similar.

“Luckily, it’s not the first time,” Paolella said. “We know what Dean [D'Andrea, chair of the Technology and Visual Arts Department] did last year. And we wanted to make sure to make this as community-oriented as possible.”

Attendees will also be able to enjoy refreshments, face painting, musical entertainment from Toll Gate’s band and chorus and a community painting station for those who wish to make their own art.

Many of the teachers involved in the event teach multiple forms of art. The classroom of art teacher Susan Geurard was full of sketchbooks, ceramics, and models made by students. 

“[Our students] all have different strengths,” Geurard said. “Somebody might not be very strong with drawing, but they’re so good with color, or so good with carving or painting. It’s my job to find their little niche, and give them enough opportunities to see their strengths.”

Classes were working last week on projects to be shown on the 24^th, with Paolella’s class focusing on a stop-action edited photo, Geurard’s writing and illustrating a short book and Ashley Lynn’s class making 3-dimensional models of each other using tape.

Toll Gate robotics teacher Adam Ricci said his classes last year had a scrimmage between robots they had  built.. This year, he’s looking at having more of a showcase of students’ work than a competition.

While students in Ricci’s class don’t all come into his classes with the same knowledge of programming and coding, the projects that they work on help students gain a wide breadth of knowledge about robotics.

“One kid did not know how to program this year, and he’s [Toll Gate’s robotics team’s] head programmer now,” Ricci said. “It’s great to see these kids grow.”

While the teachers’ fields- and the projects students are preparing- varied significantly, every teacher said that getting to see students show off their work to the community was very rewarding.

“It’s good to have our students show off what they do,” technology education teacher Richard Beauregard said. “Last year we had a good turnout, and it was a good time. We’re looking forward to it.”