06/13/2026
What’s the AV Corps? We came across this industrious team on the front page of the newspaper in 1949 and thought we’d share a few pictures.
AV is short for Audio-Visual. If you were in school from the 1920’s to 1980’s, filmstrips were a part of your school day, and they were often supported by the AV students.
The AV Corps provided teachers with help in showing educational films in class.  Watching a movie was not as easy to do in those days. 35mm films came on large wheels and had to be fed through a large film projector. Things got complicated if you didn’t know how to run the projector!
In an oral history with the AP&HS in 2025, Ken Schafer described his activities as part of the AV Club in the 1950’s at Avon Central Schools. Ken told us:
“My job was to take movies and show them to lower classmates. At school, we always had movies at lunchtime. I used to run those films. Some of the movies went on for weeks at a time because there was a short amount of time at lunch each day to watch it. So, then tomorrow you’d watch more. The projector was on a cart that I had to roll to the classroom and set up the film, keep track of where we had stopped it the previous day.”
We’re not sure if AV clubs have survived today, but clearly they played an important role, helping teachers manage their visual learning materials. Thinking about how technology has evolved, they were on the forefront of the early days of automation.
By the way, the AP&HS Museum has ACS yearbooks from 1930 to present. Stop by on Sundays from 1:00-4:00 to browse through our collection.
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