Four High Tech Students Cited in National Hispanic Recognition Program

(St. Peter, MN—March 17, 2016) Four High Tech High School students scored in the top 2.5% on the Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT©), based on regional results from among Hispanic and Latino test-takers, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech.

The following young scholars have been invited to participate in the College Board’s National Hispanic Recognition Program (NHRP): Bayonne resident Sophia Velasquez, Juan Meza and Gabriella Navas of Jersey City, and North Bergen resident Malena Rodriguez.

Each year, the NHRP recognizes approximately 5,000 of the 250,000 Hispanic/Latino juniors who take the PSAT/NMSQT©.

Totally free of charge, participation in the NHRP enables students to highlight their outstanding academic achievements on college and university applications.   Although not a scholarship, the NHRP does allow institutions of higher learning to identify those academically exceptional Hispanic/Latino students all across America.

From left to right: Malena Rodriguez, Sophia Velasquez, Juan Meza, and Gabriella Navas

County Prep Students Participate in 2016 Harvard Model Congress

Model Government HMC 2016

The County Prep’s Model Government students descended upon Boston for the 2016 Harvard

Model Congress late last month.  Almost 1500 students from across the globe met for four days

to take part in a hands-on simulation of American Government, in fact the largest model

government simulation in the world.   As Senators, members of Congress, G20 members, and

even Presidential Cabinet Members, County Prep’s Model Government delegates crafted bills,

testified, lobbied, campaigned and voted on legislation aimed at tackling some of our Nation’s

current challenges and issues.

President Bill Clinton sums it up best, “Working to empower America’s youth,

preparing them to be the leaders and thinkers of the future, the Harvard Model

Congress has provided many of our country’s brightest scholars with invaluable

lessons in statecraft.”

One of County Prep’s delegates, Gerard Bello described his participation as “probably one of

the greatest experiences of my high school career. Not only did I get to travel to the great city

of Boston, but I got to discuss real world issues that are very passionate to me.”

All of County Prep’s Model Government students who attended HMC 2016 expressed similar

views.  It is an event that is educational, inspires civil discourse and allows for a great deal of

fun and interests while do so!
Check out our slideshow: https://goo.gl/kGeJFA

Three High Tech Students Recognized for Outstanding Achievements in Japanese Study

(Cranford, NJ—March 11, 2016) New Jersey Association of Teachers of Japanese (NJATJ) President Yoko Fukuda has awarded High Tech’s Anthony Chae and Keyu Sheng, both residents of Harrison, and North Bergen resident Cindy Wong this year’s Japanese Language and Culture Study Award, announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech High School.

Along with Chae, Sheng, and Wong, students of the High Tech Japanese Program attended the Japanese Language and Culture Study Award Ceremony, sponsored by NJATJ at the Orange Avenue School.  Yuka Fujino, the Consulate General of Japan in New York City, directed her congratulatory remarks to a group of fifty-five high school and college students honored at the Study Award Ceremony.

“I hadn’t really paid attention to Japanese culture,” claims Sheng, “before enrolling in my classes at High Tech.”  Sheng’s interest in Japanese “light novels,” a style of fiction primarily targeting young adults, and composed of usually no more than 50,000 words in length, served as the catalyst for Sheng to engross himself in the Japanese language.  By osmosis, he became an interested student of Japanese culture as well.

Following the speeches at the Study Award Ceremony, the High Tech Japanese Club treated the audience to an adaption of “The Fisherman’s Dance” (Soran Bushi), a traditional piece depicting the movement of ocean waves, rope pulling, and dragging nets, all emblematic of the hardscrabble life of men of the sea.  

“I’m very pleased with my students,” says Akemi Dobkin, veteran Japanese instructor at High Tech.  “My students have made great efforts in increasing their mastery of the [Japanese] language and in participating in [Japanese] culture.”

High Tech Junior Jose Flores ‘Captures the Human Condition’

‘Capturing the human condition’
16-year-old Guttenberg resident gains rep as street photographer

by Art Schwartz 

Hudson Reporter staff writer
March 20, 2016

High Tech High School junior Jose Flores had just gotten out of school on Wednesday, March 9, when he saw smoke rising in the distance and hurried over with a friend to check out what was going on. “Arriving at the scene, there were fire trucks storming in and out, and factory workers gazing upon the fire while others recorded the incident on their mobile phones,” he said.

The fire had broken out in an empty construction trailer near Walmart on Tonnelle Avenue. Firefighters spent a couple of hours putting it out, while Flores documented the incident in photos. But it wasn’t really the fire he was interested in. It was the people.

Flores, 16, has been shooting urban landscapes and candid portraits for a few years now, first on an iPhone and more recently on a DSLR camera. Adjusting the images in Photoshop, he began posting them online and building a reputation as a street photographer, which led to him working for Nike, Reebok, Wings Air Helicopters, Grado Headphones, and more.

“I enjoy using a wide angle,” said Flores. “I get really close and use an off-camera flash to get more dramatic. It creates a feel; the photo looks fabricated and also very real. It also has purpose because photographs capture fashion and how people look today. In a couple of decades they will look very different.”

Hitting the streets

“I like shooting people who stand out,” said Flores about how he developed his stark photojournalistic style. Getting into photography only a few years ago, he has evolved his technique considerably.

His introduction to photography was shooting videos on an iPhone in 2013. “At the skate park my friend asked if I could film this line,” or set of skateboard moves and tricks, he recalled. Flores taught himself to edit the videos but burned through a pair of cheap computers so he opted to switch to still photography, still using the phone.
_____________
“Street photography just feels like such a natural way for me to express my surroundings, what I grew up with, and my personality as a whole.” –Jose Flores
____________ “With skateboarding you learn the basics, then you put your flavor to it, your style, how you twist, how you land, where you put your arms,” he said, drawing a parallel with photography. “Skateboarding’s not a sport, it’s an expression. With the iPhone you’re forced to make something good out of something not so good. I was forced to learn composition.”

Expanding his subjects Flores began manipulating the images digitally and compositing them. “Compositing is when you take a cool sky and put it behind a building, plus a flock of birds so it looks poetic, then switch the colors so the clouds are really orange,” he said.

Shooting on rooftops and in abandoned locations, he posted the striking images online and built a strong following of fans. But he quickly felt restricted by the style and content.

Shoveling snow to get money, he bought a Canon Rebel t3i camera from Craigslist. “It’s like a tourist camera, entry level,” he said. “When I bought the camera the colors and how I edited started to change. And then the things I started to shoot started to change. When I found street photography it’s so different. You really put your own style on it.”

Inspired by the documentary Everybody Street about street photographers, Flores began focusing more on individuals in gritty environments. At first, “I tried way too hard to be ‘stealthy,’” he said. “It got boring too quickly using a zoom lens. I remember the first time though when I took a picture of someone right across them with flash, I instantly fell in love. I was forced to interact with who I was shooting. I wasn’t hiding anymore. Street photography just feels like such a natural way for me to express my surroundings, what I grew up with, and my personality as a whole, which in a way exudes out of the photos I take.”

Social passport

In addition to skateboarding, Flores was influenced heavily by music and graffiti culture. A bedroom guitarist who jams to Hendrix and Santana, he listens to a wide variety of bands from jazz to R&B to hardcore and identifies himself as straight edge.

“Hardcore people share the same ideas and have energy,” he said. “The lyrics preach positive mental attitude, PMA. With graffiti I started learning about their stories. It’s people who just like expressing themselves and the thrill of painting on the wall. With photography I feel that same thrill. I went to Jersey City and this guy started saying photography is the new graffiti. It’s democratized; anybody can get their hands on it. Like me.”

A lifetime resident of Guttenberg, Flores was inspired by street photographers like Bruce Gilden, Jill Freedman, Ricky Powell, Jamel Shabazz, Bruce Davidson, and Boogie, who chronicled drug addicts, gangs, crime, and poverty. Nowadays he spends a lot of time in New York shooting the gritty underbelly of the city.

“There are a lot of characters on the street that people turn a blind eye to and don’t want to bother with them,” he said. “I’m kind of like the antithesis of that. I want to tell their stories. I want to find out about their life. I want to document them. There are a lot of crazy characters. You hear all these stories and it’s so inspiring. Every passerby has a life.”

He recalls one incident where he was followed by a questionable character into an alley while shooting. “I didn’t know if I was being robbed,” he said. Instead he struck up a conversation and wound up invited to shoot individuals holed up in a makeshift home made of scrap metal in midtown. “That was one of my favorite photo sets.”

“You have to know how to interact with these people,” he said. “A lot of people get mad at you and you have to learn how to make them not break your camera. I learned how to communicate with people from different backgrounds. I know how to talk to someone from an affluent position. I know how to act with someone who is struggling, and around fashion and addicts. It’s kind of like having a social passport.”

Flores has been working hard to get his name out there, “capturing the human condition,” as he puts it. And his work has brought numerous companies to his door. “I love doing professional work and seeing how my style incorporates in a commercial environment,” he said. “I love fashion stuff because I can get really weird and experimental.”

“I want to do what I love for the rest of my life,” he said. “Just keep evolving. Shooting things that aren’t really captured because people don’t want to take the risk.”

A sampling of Flores’s photographs can be viewed at josefloresnyc.tumblr.com or instagram.com/josefloresnyc.

Art Schwartz may be reached at arts@hudsonreporter.com.

Explore 2000 Student Showcase

Friendly Reminder:

Our Student Showcase is on Tuesday, March 22, 

from 9:00-10:30 AM.

Join our Gods and Goddesses for a 'Fashionably Late Runway Show', take a tour through ancient lands,

and discover how the engineering advancements of these civilizations are still present in our modern times.

The Explore 2000 Sewing Project

February 2016, students from County Prep High School’s Fashion Design Class shared a special project with the students of Explore 2000 Middle School for their Family Career Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) Competition Focus on Children lesson.  Five dedicated individuals worked as a seamless team (no pun intended) to facilitate our 8th Grade Class with a “sewing project”.

Two high school Seniors, Mauli Maniar and Christine Jimenen, took the lead with the project; actively joined by Sophomores Lissette Hernandez, Jalzary Gutierrez and Leslie Santana.  The teacher team situated the students in a circular meeting style, each on a task table. With their well-developed plan, the teacher team explained their project, reviewed the materials then distributed them.  They taught the students how to sew and provided hands-on assistance and visual explanations throughout the project time.

We wish all of the students good luck on this competition.

Two of our student reviews:

The County Prep Fashion Design team did an excellent job of directing the 8th Grade students of Explore 2000. I thought that teaching kids how to sew was a great idea. I know how to hand sew already, so I was the first one done. If you finished early you got to add a button. You had a choice between a red heart and a brown football. You also have a chance to write on your heart or football. I hope the team comes back so we can make more stuff. –A. Ponce, 8th Grade

We had a few obstacles here and there, but they were always able to help us to come to a conclusion. My favorite part was when we finally finished making our footballs so that we could stuff it. It helps to learn the basics so I can at least sew a button when I need to. Sewing was time consuming, but it was actually fun at the same time. I learned that it also requires a lot of patience in order to get the best outcome. –C.Casavecchia, 8th Grade

I look forward to future collaborations with this team of teachers. They provided a unique learning opportunity for our students. We wish them much success with their FCCLA Competition.

Explore 2000 Middle School Alumna

Ivy Jane Dimaculangan is a proud alumni of HCST’s County Prep. In 2015, her senior year at County Prep High School, Ivy Jane interned for Explore 2000. While working for Explore 2000, she worked closely with the staff and faculty, getting to know the Explore 2000 family on a more personal level. She didn’t realize that by taking the internship, she would form friendships worth a lifetime.

Ivy Jane, 18 years old, is a freshman at Montclair State University, majoring in Linguistics with a minor in Speech Language Pathology/ Audiology. She dreams of becoming an Audiologist, looking forward to treating patients who have hearing and auditory disorders.

These days, Ivy Jane volunteers with her community’s Philippine Nurses Association as they host their monthly Free Health Screenings, providing screenings for blood pressure and glucose levels all paid for by the PNA. In addition, she has decided to be more active on campus by applying to be a Peer Advisor at Montclair State University for the Fall 2016/ Spring 2017 school year.

Ivy Jane is incredibly grateful to Ms. Lin-Rodriguez and the Explore 2000 family; without whom, she would not be as successful as she is today.