Christine Rudolph moves on after 39 years affiliated with ASL

Ms. Christine Rudolph is a name that many middle school students don’t know, but she’s been a part of the ASL community for many years. In fact, for 39 years Ms. Rudolph has been at ASL as a student and part of the faculty. But at the end of this school year, Ms. Rudolph will be leaving ASL.

Ms. Rudolph started going to ASL in 1972 and graduated in 1985.  She then went to college in London and the USA.  After graduating college in 1989, she came back to work at ASL and has worked here for the last 27 years.  In that time, she has only had two different jobs. She was a Media Services Technician for twenty years, and she has been the School Center Manager for the last seven years.

Ms. Rudolph said that in all of her time working and learning at ASL, the people haven’t changed, just the building.  Although the people may not have changed, she said the biggest difference in the school is that the pods that the classrooms are in used to be open and there was no walls or doors on any of them.

When she was a student here, teachers used to be allowed to smoke in school, so there would be smoke in the classrooms during lessons.

When Ms. Rudolph went to school at ASL, it was a brand new building, and she said that everything was darker than it is now, because the carpets were brown and the windows were tinted.  “Physically it has changed a lot,” she said. “Student-wise and faculty-wise, probably people are a little bit more P.C. these days but everyone’s essentially the same.”

After graduating from high school, Ms. Rudolph was only away from ASL for four years before she came back to work.  For her first two years working here, she couldn’t eat in the staff lounge or call her old teachers by their first names.  She said one of the weirdest parts of coming back to work at ASL was working with somebody who had just been her teacher.  She would always see old teachers when she was working, but now none of her old teachers work here.

After being at ASL for 39 years Ms. Rudolph knows some pretty cool things about the school.  One of these things is that on the roof of the building there is a greenhouse.  Also, what is now the theater foyer used to be the Commons, and when Ms. Rudolph was in high school, there was a food fight there.

Even though her memories have been positive, after her 39 years here Ms. Rudolph has decided that it’s time to leave. After spending basically her whole life at ASL, she wants a change.  “I’ve been in this job for a long time now, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot and done a lot but I don’t have a lot left.”

After leaving ASL, Ms. Rudolph hopes to explore different things in the technology world.  She is going to live in the countryside and explore manipulating photographs and other digital arts stuff.