School Notebook: Long Island winners in science olympiads
A team from Great Neck South placed second among high school teams at the New York State Science Olympiad in Syracuse. Credit: Great Neck School District
Teams from Ward Melville High School in East Setauket and Great Neck South High School are advancing to the national level after being among the top finishers at the New York State Science Olympiad, held in upstate Syracuse.
This year's state olympiad consisted of 60 high school teams and 40 middle school teams that qualified after participating in one of 24 regional competitions statewide. Teams vied in categories ranging from Bridge Building to Mousetrap Vehicle, the latter of which challenged them to build vehicles using one or two mousetraps as the means of propulsion.
Ward Melville and Great Neck South placed first and second, respectively, among high school teams. They will compete virtually in the National Science Olympiad on May 9-14.
To reach the state level, teams were among the top finishers out of hundreds of groups that competed in one of five regional tournaments across Long Island. The high school regionals were won by teams from Great Neck South, Syosset and Ward Melville, while the middle school regionals were won by teams from Paul J. Gelinas Junior High School in Setauket and Wisdom Lane Middle School in Levittown.
Other Long Island high schools that reached the state level were Bayport-Blue Point, Chaminade in Mineola, Division Avenue in Levittown, Half Hollow Hills East in Dix Hills, Hauppauge, Hicksville, Jericho, John F. Kennedy in Bellmore, Kellenberg in Uniondale, Manhasset, Earl L. Vandermeulen in Port Jefferson, Roslyn, Paul D. Schreiber in Port Washington, Smithtown East, The Stony Brook School, Wantagh and West Babylon.
Other Long Island middle schools that reached the state level were Bay Shore, Carrie Palmer Weber in Port Washington, Great Neck South, Hauppauge, Jericho, Jonas E. Salk in Levittown, Manhasset, Port Jefferson, Robert C. Murphy in Stony Brook, South Woods in Syosset, and West Hollow in Melville.
PORT WASHINGTON
RULER Mentor School
John Philip Sousa Elementary School is one of six schools internationally to be named a RULER Mentor School by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. RULER, which stands for "recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing and regulating emotions," is a systemic approach to social-emotional learning that infuses principles of emotional intelligence into the culture of schools.
John Philip Sousa uses RULER tools ranging from a "blueprint for managing conflict" to a "mood meter" that helps identify changing emotions, school officials said.
The approach was implemented at the school starting in 2016.
COUNTYWIDE
Irish writing contest
Molly Bagatta of Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead, Meghan Lazzarini of Kellenberg Memorial High School in Uniondale, and Dana Scruggs of Bethpage High School have been named first-place winners in the Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area's 2022 Martin J. Kelly Writing Contest.
This year's contest, which attracted 176 students from 19 schools, asked participants to use "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper," the iconic photograph by Charles Clyde Ebbets, as a springboard for an essay about immigrant workers building New York City.
Each student was awarded $200.
ISLANDWIDE
State Science and Engineering Fair
Thirteen students from Long Island were among the first-place winners last month in various categories — ranging from animal sciences to translational medicine — in this year's New York State and Engineering Fair, which was held at the New York Hall of Science in Queens.
The first-place winners and their high schools were: Ashley Hsu, Commack; Chigozirim Ifebi, Elmont; Chloe Chang and Kayla Sohn, Herricks; Natasha Kulviwat, Natalia Pahlavan and Janice Rateshwar, Jericho; Christian Kim and Ericka Lai, Manhasset; Dara Neumann and Tarunika Sasikumar, Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK; Jessie Dong, Roslyn; and Tyler Nagosky, Smithtown West.
"Their desire to tackle social, environmental, political and medical issues plaguing society is laudable," said the fair's president, Serena McCalla. "The students have overcome limitations associated with two years of COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns and slowdowns with reduced access to research facility mentorships."
— 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.
