Garden City students perform with local pro

Garden City chorus students hit a high note last month when they performed at a sold-out concert featuring Emmy-nominated singer Michael Amante, known as "The People's Tenor."

The performance included Garden City Middle School's 65-student festival chorus singing background on three songs at the renowned vocalist and recording artist's fifth annual holiday show, called "A Tribute to Veterans," at NYCB Theatre at Westbury.

Amante, a resident of Floral Park, invited the students to perform with him after he saw a video of them singing and visited the school earlier this school year to see them perform in person.

"It was a great opportunity for students to work with a professional," said school chorus director Nancy Menges. "It raised the bar for them. They realized that as singers it's not enough to just sing. They're actors as well and need to show a song's emotion on their faces."

Menges said students began weekly rehearsals for the show in September and rehearsed at the school with Amante a few times starting in November. During rehearsals Amante told the students to sing with "big voices" to be heard in the 3,000-seat venue.

Performed songs were "You Raise Me Up," made famous by Josh Groban, Queen's "Somebody to Love" and "America the Beautiful."

"The performance went very well with lots of high energy," freshman Justin Bergson said in an e-mail. "Everyone gave their all. The end results made each and every rehearsal well worth it."

The event was sponsored by the middle school's PTA Arts-in-Education Committee and the Music and Theatre Legacy Foundation of Garden City.

“The blending of the Music and Theatre Legacy Foundation, Michael Amante and the chorus was Arts in Education at its best,” said Music and Theatre Legacy Foundation president Kathleen Mucciolo-Kolins. “As President of the MTLF, I hope this concert created lifetime memories and sparked creativity for each of the students.”
 

GLEN HEAD

Denmark athletes visit

North Shore High School's varsity and junior varsity boys basketball teams last month hosted 58 student athletes from Denmark who were on a tour to experience American culture.

Each foreign student shadowed a North Shore basketball player for a day and stayed in the player's home for a night. They also spoke to classes about life in Denmark - such as fashions and foods - and played a series of exhibition games against the North Shore teams.

"It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be able to get to know someone from a different country and learn how they are similar and different to us," said senior Greg Knox.

HICKSVILLE

Learning about child labor

Hicksville High School students recently learned about the dangers of child labor during a webcast coordinated by New York State United Teachers and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights in Washington, D.C., in recognition of International Human Rights Day.

The event, "Speak Truth to Power," included a lecture by Roberto Romano, filmmaker of a 2010 documentary about children forced into labor in cocoa farms of West Africa's Ivory Coast. Students saw "The Dark Side of Chocolate" film, and Romano encouraged them to become "human rights defenders."

MASSAPEQUA

New cyber cafe

Massapequa High School held a ribbon-cutting ceremony last month to unveil a renovated cafeteria with energy-efficient kitchen equipment, large monitors displaying the day's menu, and an adjoining cyber cafe with 15 computers for teens to use during lunch breaks.

"The space was sorely deteriorating," said deputy superintendent Alan Adcock. "Now it's a place students can take pride in."

COUNTYWIDE

Holiday card contest

Two Nassau County students - Chase Callahan of Carman Road Preschool in Massapequa Park and Fahiym Williams of Long Island High School for the Arts in Syosset - were first- and second-place winners, respectively, in a holiday card design contest coordinated by Nassau BOCES. Their images appeared on holiday cards sent by Nassau BOCES to educational leaders throughout the state.

Dozens of submissions - ranging from pencil sketches to computer-generated graphics - were received, and judging was done by Nassau BOCES' Educational Foundation.

ISLANDWIDE

Women in science

Fifty female students from local high schools recently learned about careers in science at a Career Day event featuring four women from Brookhaven National Laboratory. At the event coordinated by the nonprofit Brookhaven Women in Science, the four scientists gave presentations on their research - on Alzheimer's disease, proteins that cause the common cold, and such - and peppered their talks with career advice.

Students toured the lab's National Synchrotron Light Source, which uses powerful X-rays to study magnetism, and the control room of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider accelerator, which allows physicists to study what the universe may have looked like at the start of its creation.