{"id":109679,"date":"2024-05-29T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-30T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/home\/16-years-of-thunder-mountain-high-school-commemorated-through-two-documentaries\/"},"modified":"2024-05-31T07:04:32","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T15:04:32","slug":"16-years-of-thunder-mountain-high-school-commemorated-through-two-documentaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/16-years-of-thunder-mountain-high-school-commemorated-through-two-documentaries\/","title":{"rendered":"16 years of Thunder Mountain High School commemorated through two documentaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thunder Mountain High School may be closing under the Juneau School District&rsquo;s consolidation plan, but teacher Janna Lelchuk and former TMHS students are making sure the history of the school is not forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>Lelchuk taught at TMHS from its inception in 2008 until 2023. During her time there she taught Russian, digital arts and yearbook. TMHS held its first end-of-year slideshow in 2011 when Lelchuk joined the yearbook. She digitally stored memories which she&rsquo;s now compiled into a 20-minute video titled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=e8aIUscuNbw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&ldquo;16 Years of Thunder&rdquo;<\/a> shared from her personal YouTube account.<\/p>\n<p>She finished editing in time for the video to be played on May 24, the last day of school at TMHS. The video includes a list of awards and achievements at TMHS in the closing credits. Anton Radke, a TMHS graduate of 2013, wrote the electronic music for &ldquo;16 Years of Thunder.&rsquo;&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I realized we made history,&rdquo; Lelchuk said. &ldquo;Looking at all our accomplishments over the years, I can&rsquo;t be more happy and proud. It has been an honor for me to be a Falcon and I will carry this pride throughout my life.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a Thunderdome,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;I was teaching Russian language. Dome, you know what that means? It means home (in Russian). That was my home.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><ins><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/e8aIUscuNbw?si=0C0Dt6B56flbgdok\" height=\"315\" width=\"560\"><\/iframe> <\/ins><\/p>\n<p>TMHS alumnus Sonny Hunt-Mauricio helped with the graphic design of &ldquo;16 Years of Thunder&rdquo; and he is working with TMHS alumna Karina Ireno to release a second documentary by the end of June.<\/p>\n<p>Their idea for a documentary surfaced from the 2015 and 2016 TMHS lip dubs, which Hunt-Mauricio filmed and edited while in high school. The TMHS lip dubs were created to raise funding for TMHS activities.<\/p>\n<p>The interview-style documentary, which is yet to be titled, features teachers, current students and alumni answering a series of questions about their time at TMHS.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We talked to people who had a big impact on the school,&rdquo; Hunt-Mauricio said. &ldquo;We got Dan Larson in there, Rhonda, Andy, Tina Lee, Arnold Ibias; a bunch of people who have a deep history with the school. We had them just talk about it and share what made the school special and how the community at that school was just different.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>One of the questions Hunt-Mauricio asked was &ldquo;how would you describe TMHS in three words?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>He said the most common responses were &ldquo;inclusive&rdquo; and &ldquo;a community.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>For Hunt-Mauricio, a 2017 graduate, TMHS leaves a lasting impact. He participated in the TMHS yearbook for all four years of high school.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;What really changed me was a teacher was able to pick me out from the crowd and say, &lsquo;Hey, you have something you&rsquo;re really good at and we want to put a light on that,&rsquo; and I feel like when you&rsquo;re in an overpacked school, it&rsquo;s harder to pick a student out,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My freshman year I was in a science class with Ms. Wells and we did this project. I decided I wanted to do it in Photoshop. She came back to me and said, &lsquo;Hey, the yearbook teacher wants someone who does Photoshop and you should do it.&rsquo;&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Hunt-Mauricio was one of the first freshmen to be a part of the TMHS yearbook. He said before joining he was always shy and that moment of feeling visible &ldquo;changed everything.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>He said he hopes his documentary will shine a light on TMHS like his teachers did on him.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I think for the people who are really being affected by it, I just hope that this gives them what they need to hear to be able to transition through this smoothly,&rdquo; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Both documentary projects follow another film by two newly graduated TMHS students about circumstances resulting in the school&rsquo;s closure, &ldquo;Digging a Hole in the School Budget,&rdquo; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/thunder-mountain-high-school-graduates-win-film-festival-award\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">which was honored<\/a> at the See Stories film festival in Anchorage on May 9.<\/p>\n<p>Hunt-Mauricio said if anyone would like to be included in the upcoming documentary they can send a 5&#8211;10-minute cell phone video by June 10 to northernstatemedia@gmail.com. Here are the questions he&rsquo;d like answered:<\/p>\n<p>&#8226; How would you describe the TMHS community?<\/p>\n<p>&#8226; How would you describe TMHS in three words?<\/p>\n<p>&#8226; How has TMHS impacted or shaped who you are?<\/p>\n<p>&#8226; What is a favorite memory you&rsquo;ve had at TMHS?<\/p>\n<p>&#8226; Do you have any funny or embarrassing stories from TMHS?<\/p>\n<p>&#8226; Where would you be if TMHS never existed?<\/p>\n<p>&#8226; Would you like to say anything to the current students, staff, and community affected by the school closing?<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8226; Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz.garrett@juneauempire.com or (907) 723-9356.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three Falcons alumni release their project before school&rsquo;s final graduation; another coming in June. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":944,"featured_media":109680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[73,122,989],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-109679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-ccw","tag-education","tag-filming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/944"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109679"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=109679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}