This article appears courtesy of the Springfield Republican.
February 11, 2008
By Alex Peshkov
AMHERST - Gold medals once again rained on Amherst-Pelham Regional High School students in the National Russian Essay Contest.
Students, enrolled in one of the country’s best high school Russian language program, distinguished themselves in the annual contest, with 21 of the 30 participants earning gold medals at their respective levels, along with six earning silver and two earning bronze medals.
The result is outstanding even for the Amherst students who win regional and national contests each year, and have represented this country at an international Olympiad in Russia.
"The Amherst students really outdid themselves this year," said Judith C.B. Wobst, a Russian teacher who has been the driving force behind the program since 1970s.
"Please accept my awed congratulations at your students’ prowess. How do you do it? They have such strong skills in grammar, syntax, spelling . . . and they write such creative, lively essays," said a note sent along with the results by Jane W. Shuffelton, a Russian teacher in Rochester, N. Y., and president of the American Council of Teachers of Russian in Washington, D. C., which organizes the contest.
The results have just been announced from the November contest. In it, students wrote an essay at their own schools. This year they had two hours in which to formulate and write an essay on the topic "Why I decided to study Russian." They competed in advanced and intermediate levels.
"It seems like the essay contest went very well for everyone who participated this year, with medals awarded all around," said Sasha Rivera, advanced student and Russian Club officer who earned a gold medal.
She said that for her personally, this year’s essay question came at a very good time.
"I’d just finished a project for English, a play, that required a lot of research on Russian history during the 1980s, research that had to do with that which interests me most about Russia: its contrariness. So I wrote about how Russia is made of a lot of paradoxes - in Moscow, the juxtaposition of centuries-old cathedrals with skyscrapers and big business; in Russia in the 1980s, the masses suffered a low standard of living while the "nomenklaturists," the government elite, enjoyed huge apartments, high salaries, and limitless complementary perks; 2007, "the year of the Russian language" according to (Russian President) Putin, was characterized by the deaths of several outspoken Russians and typically rampant media censorship - and was also the year I fell in love with Pasternak, Akhmatova, and Nabokov."
The essays of the gold medal winners will now be sent to the Pushkin Institute in Moscow for a second round of international judging.
"The stellar Russian program at ARHS equipped me with the language skills to write what must have been a good essay on those topics, since I was awarded a gold medal, but more importantly than that, I think, the program has gotten me passionately interested in and concerned with Russia’s history and present and future, its culture, and of course its language. I would not be the same person without it," Rivera said.
The high school also organizes a monthlong trip to Petrozavodsk in Russia every other February and this month Wobst and a group of her students are living with Russian families and attending a Russian school.
They also visit Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Petrozavodsk students come to Amherst every other October. The exchange has been taking place since the 1989-1990 school year. Petrozavodsk is a city of 300,000 in Russia’s northwest corner, near Finland.
The advanced gold medal winners are Brittany Baglow, Atticus Brigham, Annie Fisher, Ben Parson-Gomberg, Luke Levy-Moore, Erika Norden, Sasha Rivera, Hannah Ryan, Noah Tetenbaum, and Jenae Thom.
The advanced silver medal winners are Tommy Benfey, Olivia Crough, Cecilia Darby, Aleksandr Popstefaniya, and Lisa Rising.
Andrew Kiefer took a bronze medal.
At the intermediate level, gold medals were given to Aravis Albert, Anna Armstrong, Kate Atkinson, Alison Cherrington, Myles Darby, Genevieve Higgins, Alanna Lloyd, Glynis MacMillan, Caroline Mabee, Robin Palmer, and Kelsey Welborn. Silver medals were won by Jessica Duda and Aliza Micelotta. Emmy Fabrizi took a bronze medal.