Student Reporters: A Look Into Our Schools

On Sunday, April 22, 2012, Amherst Regional High School’s all-female choral group won the overall best ensemble award at the second series of WGBY-TV’s Together in Song after singing four pieces in a live performance at the Paramount Theater in Springfield, MA. The series showcases studio performances by forty-four of western New England’s best children’s, high school, college, and adult choirs, including the UMass Chorale and the Manchester Silk City Chorus.

Tess Domb-Sadof, a senior at ARHS, has been awarded a scholarship by the Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover foundation.

The foundation was named for the promising eleven year-old from Springfield, MA who unfortunately committed suicide in mid-2009 after enduring intense verbal abuse at the hands of his peers. Although Walker-Hoover did not identify as gay, he was degraded with anti-LGBT language; his case highlighted the fact that many young students are bullied at school due to actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender expression and that many severe situations go unreported.

Khalila Lord-Arond recently received an award for achievement on the First in Math web site after earning points through completing a variety of difficult mathematical tasks. The program combines work and fun to help students with many aspects of math, ranging from single-step addition to complex algebra. First in Math is extraordinary due to its positive reinforcement for correct responses and its lack of penalties for incorrect ones. This alleviates typical anxiety regarding ‘wrong versus right’ and puts the emphasis on the process and patterns, encouraging students to take an interest in mathematics as a subject.

Zoe Langsdale, ’13, works on both the Student Advisory Board and the School Committee to assist with communication between the two.

The Student Advisory Board began when Hailey Andler, ’11, wanted to be involved with and increase student advocacy. Andler was made aware of a Massachusetts law requiring school committees to have a student advisory committee, and she worked with ARHS School Committee members to organize one. The Student Advisory Board works to receive information from the student body pertaining to specific aspects of the school with which they take issue and regularly meets with ARHS Principal Mark Jackson and Amherst Superintendent Maria Geryk.

After writing and memorizing five speeches on various topics, ARHS senior Josh Wolfsun was named the Massachusetts Oratorical Champion. Wolfsun, who will be attending Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania next year, was awarded an $1,000 scholarship and will represent Massachusetts at the national competition in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 14^th. The overall national contest winner gets an $18,000 scholarship. Second place takes home $16,000, and third place receives $14,000.

Seventh-grader Ethan Thayumanavan recently qualified as a semifinalist at the 2012 Massachusetts National Geographic Bee. His win was announced after he completed a written exam quizzing him on topics ranging from state climates to vocabulary terms for physical features on maps. Students in grades four through eight were eligible to display their geographic knowledge and enter the contest, which was initially designed to encourage teachers to include geography in their classrooms, spark student interest in the subject, and increase public awareness about geography.

For the past 3 years, the Model United Nations club at Amherst Regional High School has been attending the Model United Nations Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Model UN faculty advisor Stacy Foulis loves taking her students to the “well-organized and well-run” conference.

“It’s exciting to hear the committee chairs recognize ARHS delegates, knowing that I'm going to have the chance to hear them speak their position in front of the whole committee.” said Foulis. “[I look forward to] seeing ARHS students debating their country’s position with passion.”

Solomon Goldstein-Rose, ARHS Senior, is making history as one of the youngest voting members of a town-wide board in Massachusetts. The eighteen-year old will attend seven meetings in the place of Steve Rivkin, who resigned from the Amherst School Committee on January 1.

“I chose to volunteer for the Committee mainly to set a precedent for student involvement in school politics, and to demonstrate that having a student in a position of authority benefits the district,” said Goldstein-Rose.

His official duties as of now include reviewing budget information, preparing to vote on numerous controversial issues and gaining a broader perspective of his peers and their priorities.

Margaret Gallagher’s third-grade class at Pelham Elementary School has been improving their writing through a unique program at the Amherst Cinema. “See Hear Feel Film” is a New York-based program that teaches third-graders critical viewing and storytelling skills. It was brought to Western Massachusetts after the Amherst Cinema raised $100,000 to use as grant money. According to the Amherst Cinema website, “See Hear Feel Film” has been taught to nearly 40,000 school children since 2001 and is aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for English Language Arts and Literacy.

At three recent Community Forums, local students, parents, guardians, and residents were given the opportunity to voice their opinions on a later start time for Amherst Regional Middle School and High School.

“Through the forums, I hoped for a meaningful exchange of information,” said ARMS Principal Michael Hayes. “Interested school community members could hear more about the reasons behind why the School Committee is exploring this change and the School Committee and administration could hear more about school community members’ feelings about the potential change.”