Nassau School Notebook: Hicksville, Bethpage teams win FIRST top awards
Bethpage High School's Regal Eagles team won one of the three Chairman's Awards, the top honord, at the FIRST Robotics Competition Awards Show/Gala de la Compétition de Robotique FIRST. Credit: Bethpage School District
Teams from Hicksville, Stony Brook and Bethpage were the top winners this spring in Long Island's LEGO and Tech competitions hosted by the nonprofit For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, known as FIRST.
Hicksville Middle School's Meteorites Cubed team took home the Champion's Award, which recognized the team that best embraced the tournament's core values while achieving excellence and innovation, at the FIRST LEGO League Challenge Long Island Championship.
The event tasked 21 teams with identifying problems related to people not being active enough and designing a new piece of technology, or improving an existing one, to help solve that problem. Teams submitted videos of their robots, answered questions from judges and participated in 25-minute sessions to review their robot and core values.
The Stony Brook School's SBS Bears team won the Top-Ranked (First Place) Award and Inspire Award (First Place) at the FIRST Tech Challenge Long Island Championship, which tasked 20 teams with creating robots that delivered goals into target zones, scored rings into a tower goal and launched rings to knock over targets.
Bethpage High School's Regal Eagles team won one of three Chairman's Awards, the top honors, at the FIRST Robotics Competition Awards Show/Gala de la Compétition de Robotique FIRST. That event tasked more than 100 teams throughout New York State and Quebec with building and programming industrial-size robots.
The competitions were held virtually and presented by the School-Business Partnerships of Long Island.
BROOKVILLE, PORT WASHINGTON AND VALLEY STREAM
Students at Davison Avenue Intermediate School in the Malverne Union Free School showed their school spirit - both in person and from home - last month during Field Day. The school's in-person activities included classic field-day races with inflatables, while its remote activities included an art session and interactive brain teasers. Credit: Malverne School District
Long Island ACT-SO
Three Nassau County students were winners in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Long Island Academic, Cultural, Technological & Scientific Olympics (called ACT-SO) and will compete this summer at the national level.
The ACT-SO is a yearlong achievement program for Black students in grades 9 to 12 that focuses on development through academic and cultural achievement; the program culminates in an annual competition.
The winners were: Devin Moore, Long Island Lutheran High School in Brookville, gold medal in the short-story category; Diana Benedicto-Jimenez, Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, gold medal in the biology/microbiology category; and Angelique Brewington, Special Music School in Manhattan, silver medal in the music/instrumental/Classical category. Brewington resides in Valley Stream.
The Carle Place School District and the Carle Place Teachers Association were recognized last month by the American Federation of Teachers for being open for in-person instruction five days a week for grades kindergarten to 12 during the COVID-19 pandemic. From left are Carle Place Board of Education Vice President Neal McLaughlin, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, Carle Place Superintendent of Schools Christine Finn and Board of Education President John DiFrisco. Credit: Carle Place School District
EAST MEADOW
Business plan winners
A W. Tresper Clarke High School team — Anjali Aggarwal, Ryan Faude, Jeena Trinh and Raheem Sheikh — won first place in Junior Achievement of New York's Business Plan Competition, which attracted more than 100 teams statewide.
The team created a cube-shaped product, titled CerebroTech, that connects to an app and helps strengthen concentration, boost memory and ease anxiety similarly to a fidget spinner, the school said.
"We designed it specifically with students in mind, because we can get distracted during online learning," Sheikh said. "With our product, they not only can focus better but can also train their brains so they can improve mental capability in the future."
COUNTYWIDE
Irish writing contest
Max McConville of Oyster Bay High School, Taylor Wolfe of H. Frank Carey High School in Franklin Square, and Madeline Rose of Wantagh High School won first-place prizes of $200 in the Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area's 2021 Martin J. Kelly Writing Contest, which invited students to submit essays on heritage. More than 300 entries were received from 13 schools.
Second-place winners of $150 and their high schools were: Sanya Chandhok, Bethpage; Anna Conway, MacArthur; and Abigail Seff, Wellington C. Mepham. Third-place winners of $125 and their high schools were: Jacqueline Bodycomb, Sacred Heart Academy; Arleen Mathew, Sewanhaka; and Caroline Owen, Manhasset.
— MICHAEL R. EBERT
Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.