(North Bergen,
NJ—January 31, 2018) Recently, High Tech students in the D|Fab and biomedical academies
had the chance to learn about the latest tools used in medical surgery and its
application, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech
High School.
In October, students
visited Triangle Manufacturing, a facility in Upper Saddle River dedicated to
the manufacturing of medical devices and implants for surgical purposes. This highly
informative field trip exposed them to the fabrication of medical devices.
This month, guest
speakers demonstrated the application aspect of medical surgery to the students
in the Resource Center at the North Hudson Center. Dr. Schwartz, a podiatrist, and Mr. Ennis, a
surgical technician, delivered a presentation about the specific tools employed
in surgical procedures. During the presentation, Schwartz and Ennis discussed
various types of screws and brackets utilized during surgery, (specifically, the
podiatric variety). By the end of the presentation, students became familiar
with another aspect of medical fabrication and the employment opportunities associated
with it.
Zach Bolich
and Sergio Gamarra, instructors of Wood Technology and Engineering Technology,
respectively, often expose their students to opportunities to learn about potential
careers that their academy training offers.
(Montclair, NJ—January 30, 2018) High
Tech junior and Graphic Arts student Carlos Hernandez of Jersey City has won
two Gold Keys, one Silver Key, and received Honorable Mentions in the Regional
Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella,
Principal of High Tech. High School.
The award ceremony takes place on
February 15th at the Montclair Art Museum, which serves as regional
affiliate for Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth,
Morris, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Union, and Warren Counties.
Hernandez moves on to the National
Scholastic competition, in which the top art and writing at the regional level vie
for National Medals. National Medalists and their educators will
be celebrated at the National
Ceremony at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Hernandez’s work joins other regional artwork
on exhibit at Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons School of Design at
The New School and Pratt Institute’s Pratt Manhattan Gallery. Winners will be announced in March 2018.
Since 1923, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the
nation’s longest-running and most prestigious recognition program for creative
teens in grades 7–12, have recognized the vision, ingenuity, and talent of America’s
youth. Each year, increasing numbers of teenage artists and writers,
filmmakers and photographers, poets and sculptors, video game artists and
science fiction writers participate in the program.
This year,
students submitted more than 330,000 works of visual art and writing to the
Scholastic Awards, with 90,000 works recognized at the regional level and
celebrated in local exhibitions and ceremonies.
“Lost” Recipient of Scholastic Golden Key
“Trapped In Plain Sight” Recipient of Scholastic Key
“The Other Cheek” Recipient of Scholastic Silver Key
“Extraordinary” and “Paradise” Received Honorable Mentions
(North
Bergen, NJ—January 19, 2018) The High Tech Consumer
Bowl team reaped the fruits of their labors at the Hudson County Consumer Bowl
Championship, besting seven schools in order to reach the Regional Championship, announced
Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech. High School.
The members of the High Tech team (seniors Tamana Bawa and
Himani Patel of Jersey City, junior Dylan Conrad of Kearny, and sophomores Jay
Patel of Jersey City and Secaucus resident Eshaan Mangat) spent countless hours
studying and quizzing one another in preparation for their Hudson County
Consumer Bowl competitions against County Prep, Dickinson, Secaucus, McNair,
Liberty, Kearny, and Union City.
An educational competition for students across the Garden State,
the New Jersey High School Consumer Bowl tests students on a number
of important consumer issues, all of which approved under the state’s Professional
Development Guidelines. Established in
1997, the New Jersey High School Consumer Bowl also enables the teachers who
coach students to obtain professional development credits.
Schools involved in the New Jersey High School Consumer Bowl
participate at no cost to them and they have immediate access to pertinent study
materials at the New Jersey Consumer Affairs website. The materials can be accessed at the
following link:
All participating students receive Certificates of
Achievement. Winners at the county and
regional level earn trophies. First,
second, and third place winners at the state level (the final level of
competition) receive individual medals and prizes.
(clockwise from left to right: Jamie Velazquez (team teacher), Eshaan Mangat, Dylan Conrad, Himani Patel, Tamana Bawa, and Jay Patel)
Fighting for Native Americans, in Court and Onstage
By LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES, New York Times
WASHINGTON — An icy January afternoon was turning into evening, and inside a warmly lit rehearsal room at Arena Stage, the company of a new play called Sovereignty had arrived at the final scene.
The sweet, 21st-century ending unfolds in an unlikely setting: a family cemetery in rural Oklahoma, not far from the spot where, in 1839, a Cherokee Nation leader named John Ridge was stabbed to death in an act of political retribution. His influential father, Major Ridge, was assassinated the same day, and for the same reason.
The playwright, Mary Kathryn Nagle, is one of their direct descendants on her father’s side, and in Sovereignty she is exhuming some family history that is also American history. Both John and Major Ridge were signers of the bitterly divisive treaty — vehemently opposed by the Cherokee chief and many others — that removed the tribe from its land in the Southeast and sent thousands on the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma. The Ridges’ killers were fellow Cherokees, wreaking vengeance.
“It’s my family onstage,” Ms. Nagle, 34, said after rehearsal, in a greenroom in the chilly bowels of the theater. “It’s the story that was told to me from the time I was this big. I’ve carried it in me my whole life.”
What she has made of that story, a time-shifting play whose characters include President Andrew Jackson, is in keeping with Arena’s penchant for political fare like John Strand’s The Originalist, about the Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and Lawrence Wright’s Camp David.
Ms. Nagle — a lawyer who wrote and, with her fellow students, staged a play each year she was at Tulane Law School, and met her law partner when he came to the Newseum to see a reading of another of her plays — fits right in, not only with Arena but with Washington.
“She has an ability to quickly move from the personal to the political,” Molly Smith, Arena’s artistic director, said. “We live here, where we eat, sleep, drink politics, and it’s all through our personal lives. She embodies that within the work that she does.”
Opening on Jan. 24 in a world-premiere production directed by Ms. Smith as part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, Sovereignty came out of Arena’s Power Plays initiative, which aims to tell a story of the United States in 25 new works over 10 years, with one play pegged to each decade since 1776. Ms. Nagle is the first Native American voice in that mix.
“I started writing snidbits of this play in law school,” Ms. Nagle said, and in that casual, playful little word “snidbits” is a counterbalance to her cerebral intensity, the ability she has to cite case law and obscure dates mid-conversation. (She is also highly entertaining, given to talking with her hands and throwing her arms wide to emphasize a point.)
Ms. Nagle radiates the energy that her résumé alone suggests: a full-time law career, devoted to the issues that also consume her writing (tribal sovereignty, the environment, domestic violence and sexual assault); two plays getting world premieres this year on opposite sides of the country, the other being Manahatta at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; a part-time gig running the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program in New Haven.
She moved to Washington in 2015 after a stint working for a corporate law firm in New York, where she wrote Manahatta in the Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. Last summer, she moved back to Oklahoma, where she grew up. A glow came into her face when she mentioned her new house, on a lake on the Osage Reservation, but her Tulsa-based firm has an office and an apartment in Washington, and her travel-heavy practice still brings her there. When I told Ms. Nagle that I wondered not about her work-life balance but simply how she juggles her legal career with her art, she leapt right into the personal side anyway.
“I don’t have children, and I would like to have children,” she said. With an upbeat, what-the-hell forthrightness, she added, “Let me just put that advertisement out there for who wants to be the stay-at-home dad, ’cause I don’t think I can handle a third thing right now. It’s kind of overwhelming.”
The daughter of a doctor and a nursing school dean, Ms. Nagle started making up stories as a child, dragooning her two younger sisters into acting them out with her. As a Georgetown University undergraduate, she designed her own major in justice and peace studies, but took classes in theater, won a student one-act contest and wrote a play called Miss Lead, about lead mining on Oklahoma reservations, for her senior thesis.
Her freshman year, she performed in a student production of Paula Vogel’s domestic violence play Hot ’n’ Throbbing — a formative experience that Ms. Nagle said shattered her impression that there were “certain things we experience as women that are not appropriate for the stage.”
When Ms. Smith asked her in 2015 what she might like to write about for Arena, Ms. Nagle immediately thought of the Violence Against Women Act, which was strengthened in 2013, giving tribal courts the power to prosecute non-Native Americans who victimize Native American women on tribal land. Present at the signing ceremony, watching President Obama make that change into law, Ms. Nagle sobbed.
She is convinced, though, that there will eventually be a challenge to that protection — “when a non-Indian tries to argue to the Supreme Court, which they will, that any exercise of tribal criminal jurisdiction over a non-Indian is unconstitutional.”
As a lawyer, she is preparing for that scenario. As a playwright, she is imagining it in Sovereignty, a drama about broken treaties and historical rifts that is also about rape.
It was Ms. Smith’s idea to broaden Ms. Nagle’s original concept, interweaving the contemporary strand — centered on a Cherokee Nation lawyer who strongly resembles Ms. Nagle and becomes involved in a domestic violence case — with one about her Ridge ancestors. Before Major and John Ridge signed the treaty to hand over tribal land, they were instrumental in a rare case where Native Americans prevailed in the Supreme Court: Worcester v. Georgia, in 1832, establishing a crucial precedent about tribal sovereignty.
That victory is the proud story Ms. Nagle was raised on, the story her grandmother told her that gave her faith in the Supreme Court and made her want to go to law school. The play follows them through that case and the treaty signing to their deaths.
The cemetery, by the way, the one where the Ridges are buried: That’s where Ms. Nagle plans to end up, too, one day.
In Sovereignty, Kyla García portrays a Cherokee lawyer whose career loosely resembles the playwright’s
(Nazareth, PA—December 13, 2017) High Tech Wood Technology and
Engineering Technology majors took advantage of a terrific opportunity to tour
the Martin Guitar & Co factory, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella,
Principal of High Tech. High School.
Zach Bolich and Sergio Gamarra, instructors of Wood Tech and
Engineering Tech, respectively, and Jamie Velazquez, lead History teacher, accompanied
students to the Martin Guitar & Co factory to witness the art of
guitar-making, a process that requires a harmonious blend of handcrafting and the
latest mechanized methods, such as CNC routers, laser cutters, and assorted design
and modeling software packages.
Tour guides escorted the High Tech group through the factory,
where teachers and students saw firsthand the construction of guitars, from the
cutting of rough lumber to the market-ready product. The process requires more than 300 steps to
complete, a task handled by the capable and talented craftspeople at Martin
Guitar & Co factory.
The Wood Tech and Engineering Tech students also learned about
the history of guitar-making, learning about Martin Guitar & Co’s
humble beginnings as a business venture as well.
In addition, Wood Tech and Engineering Tech students had the
opportunity to explore the Martin Guitar & Co Museum, where attractive
displays showcased over 170 exquisitely-crafted guitars, a true testament
to Martin Guitar & Co’s storied career.
By the end of the tour, students jammed in the rarified “Pickin'
Parlor,” strumming Martin Guitar & Co's high-end, Limited Edition guitars.
Cyberbullying: The ‘Message’ That Could Change A Life
The New Year had barely started when the headlines were heard across the globe, another teen died of bullycide.
It doesn’t matter what age you are, online harassment is affecting people around the world. Cyberbullying is not only child’s play, from the highest office in the land to parents, teachers, celebrities and every walk of life — no escapes the risk of becoming a victim of digital abuse. Internet shaming doesn’t discriminate.
We can’t allow these headlines to go in vain, all of them are opportunities to open dialogue with not only your children, but with your schools and communities.
Teens helping teens
Recently AT&T announced the winners of their annual AT&T Film Awards, a competition for young, aspiring filmmakers. A high school student from Bayonne, New Jersey, David Mansour, submitted the winning entry in the youth category, highlighting a topic that is both pervasive and alarming in today’s social media-centric world: cyberbullying.
His short film, Leave a Message, showcases how one positive message can make a life-saving impact. It reminds us that we all have choices in life. Not only the victim that is being attacked, but the bystanders (see video here: https://youtu.be/Jz_7OCyauwM)
David’s video is so empowering, it’s not only relateable to young people, like online harassment, this message resonates with everyone of all walks of life that has the ability to reach-out to someone that is struggling. You may be the reason they survive tomorrow.
”Leave a Message” is leaving an imprint on people of all ages. I asked David Mansour the following questions to find out more about his thoughts behind his strong message.
Q. Being an upstander is exactly what many people need when they are struggling with online hate. How would you encourage a teenager to be that person to “Leave a Message?”
David: “You leave your message when you finally let go of others’ opinions of you. You may feel bad for someone, but you have to act on that. Feeling bad for someone isn’t enough – a message isn’t a message until it is delivered.”
Q. Many teens are reluctant to get involved. What can we do to change this bystander culture?
David: “Teenagers are too obsessed with their social status and will not do anything that would potentially taint it. Logically speaking, their “social status” won’t get them a job in ten years. On the other hand, simply speaking up for someone being bullied may save their life – a much more permanent act.”
Q. When you were experiencing online bullying, did you get your parents involved? If so, were they able to help? If not, why?
David: “I never spoke to my parents about anything I was going through, and I deeply regret it. When you think of your parents, you need to know that they also have wisdom of the time that you are going through and that they have also went through the same thing, just in a different form.”
Q. Digital resilience is helping teens deal with cyberbullying. With your experiences of online hate, do you feel you’ve become more resilient and it’s equipped you to better be able to help others?
David: “I feel much more resilient simply because now I found an outlet to help others – film. It always starts with one person. When one person with a voice finally decides to speak up, it sends a ripple through the water that many are drowning in: the internet. Stop using platforms such as Twitter and Instagram as weapons, but rather as tools to help encourage the happiness of others and the overall betterment of our communities.”
Q. Life is about choices, in 2017 we sadly coined the word bullycide. Let’s hope your message spreads globally — so more people that are considering their choices realize someone is there for them. How do you see cyberbullying changing in the next year or so? Do you think youth are finally being more responsible and respectful to each other?
David: “Cyberbullying is becoming more and more discouraged as time goes on, partially due to the pop culture figures that are also spreading the messages of love and positivity. The youth are very open to suggestions from their idols, so we need these idols to set good examples as well.”
Q. What inspired you to make your film?
David: “My film was made in honor of a young man that committed suicide in Long Island. He was not supported when he was bullied and it ultimately led to the loss of his life. His school was reluctant to help and dismissed several incidents. His death was not in vain. I aim to spread the importance of anti-bullying.”
Thank you to David for his time and support in curbing online hate.
(New York City--January
11, 2018)Twenty
students in Dr. Laje Gashi and Mrs. Christine Kawtari’s French Club took the
opportunity to see the classic musical The
Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella,
Principal of High Tech High School.
The Phantom of the Opera, based on Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, offers the tale
of a young soprano, Christine Daaé, who becomes the object of affection of the titular
character, who lives mysteriously in the catacombs under the Paris Opera House.
The show, celebrating the thirtieth anniversary
of its phenomenal run this year, has the distinction of being the longest
running musical in Broadway history.
“The French Club
devotes itself to the appreciation of French culture,” states Mously Lo, a
resident of Jersey City, “so it was only fitting that we were given the chance
to experience a live retelling of a French classic.”
During intermission, students
discussed cultural and linguistic references laden in the musical, which they ably
recalled from their French classes.
“Seeing The Phantom of the Opera live helped to remind
us of the reasons that we celebrate and admire French culture,” says Bar
Yifrakh, a resident of Hoboken.
(January 10. 2018---Hollywood, California) High Tech High School’s
David Mansour, a Bayonne resident and junior in the school’s Audio/Visual
Production Department, has received the award for Best Youth Filmmaker of
America and First Place in the Youth Category at the AT&T Film Awards,
announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech.
Mansour’s Leave a Message shows a teen’s
perspective on cyberbullying. The film demonstrates that one phrase, one
text, or one call can literally make the most significant impact in a person’s
life.
“David has taken an assignment and pushed the limits of his
craft,” says Gregg Ascolese, Mansour’s Audio/Visual Production instructor at
High Tech. “He continues to improve
every day he walks into the studio. He
is a true catalyst.” On top of taking home the AT&T Film Awards trophy for Best Youth Filmmaker, Mansour will take part in a week-long academy and receive a package of camera equipment valued at $2,000.
This year County Prep’s Creative Art students participated in their first ever Starbucks Holiday Cup design competition. Each student created a holiday or winter themed design which was submitted and displayed in our hallway this past December. Drawing on top of the actual cups prove to be a tricky task, but our students met this challenge with great success! The display showed a variety of creative, well thought out designs that each student added their own personal touch to.
With the help of our volunteer teachers, the votes were collected and awards were given! Our first place winner, Jenifer Ngo, designed a Christmas movie themed cup, featuring many of the classics- Home Alone, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Charlie Brown Christmas, Santa Claus and more!
-Ms.Mulrain (Art Teacher)
The final prizes were awarded to those as follows:
First Place: Jenifer Ngo
Second Place: Rachel Soto
Third Place: Adrian Restrepo & Jesenya Gavis (tied)
(Pittsburgh, PA—January 2,
2018) For a third consecutive year, the High Tech Dance Department will perform
at the National High School Dance Festival, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella,
Principal of High Tech High School.
This year’s National High
School Dance Festival will take place at Point Park University from February 28th
through March 4th. Out of the
234 dance selections submitted for adjudication by the National High School
Dance committee, the committee has chosen only 67 pieces.
One of which the committee chose
happens to be the work of High Tech senior dance major Elyssa Cueto, a resident
of North Bergen. Her piece, Flume, had originally been featured in Meraki, High Tech Dance’s April showcase.
Cueto has
even appeared in Jennifer Lopez's music video, “Amor, Amor, Amor.”
“I’m
extremely proud that the committee recognized Elyssa's work and I look
forward to seeing her piece performed at the festival,” declares Trista
DeFilippis, Head of the High Tech Dance
Department and the school’s Performing Arts Liaison. “This
festival is an amazing experience for the dancers because they get to meet,
take class, audition, and perform among peers of their artistic caliber.”
