LREI’s Academic Teams
The LREI high school robotics team performed very well in all practice tournaments and made a good showing at the New York City FTC Championship Tournament on March 13th, in this its inaugural year. The team made up of all 9th graders with one 10th grader learned a lot from the experience and hopes to build on this years success during next year’s season.
The middle school robotics teams had another great season at the FIRST Lego League Tournaments. This year’s theme was “Smart Move.” Teams were challenged to find innovative ways to efficiently transport people, objects or information across different spaces and present their plans to a panel of judges. Judges “looked for teams whose quality research, innovative solutions, and creative presentation best reflect an in-depth understanding of the various scientific disciplines and issues involved with the Project.” At the Manhattan FIRST Lego League Tournament, LREI’s Advanced Middle School Robotics Team made of veteran team members earned the 2nd Place Award for their project presentation on the use of Maglev trains to improve our subway system. The Rookie Team composed of 6th graders earned the 3rd Place Award for their project presentation on the use of biofuels in cars.
The middle school Rube Goldberg team finished 5th out of 24 teams in this year’s competition. This annual contest challenges students to create contraptions that accomplish a simple task in a very complicated manner. This is our 4th year in the Fay School/MIT/GE/Mc2 competition. We had 12 students from the sixth-eighth grades involved this year, the biggest turnout yet.
Not really a team…..
This year marked a watershed moment for LREI and for the Advanced Advocacy Media class, as the senior fall class received kudos for two collaborative pieces. The film “201 Varick Street” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYLzh8RofRg), an investigative work of the dark goings-on at the hidden immigration detention center located just minutes from 40 Charlton, received a recognition award from the Educational Video Center’s Youth-Powered Video Film Festival and third place prize at the NYC Social Justice Expo, competing against hundreds of students from schools across the five boroughs. “Insure Our People” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg-0zq2sxNAwas) a vivid call to action for healthcare insurance reform, was an official selection of the prestigious Westport Youth Film Festival.
Summer Grants
Each summer, LREI awards summer grants to support program development. Two years ago we began awarding a series of travel grants to support travel by LREI employees that does not have to be, though may be, related to the curriculum. This year’s grants include:
Travel grants were awarded to:
- Mark Bledstein, high school history teacher, who will travel the southern rim of China with nine other educators and four history and language specialists from the University of Colorado;
- Nick O’Han, high school history teacher and school historian, who will travel to a number of sites in order to continue his research into the history of the School and the life of our founder, Elisabeth Irwin;
- Meghan Farley Astrachan, high school drama teacher / director and Performing Arts Department Chair, who will travel to the South of France this summer and will follow the Trail of Ochre in the village of Roussillon. Where the trail will creatively lead her no one knows….
Program Development Grants were awarded to:
- Rebecca Schwartz and Gina Goldmann (first grade teachers) to fund their work on the first grade literacy/word study program;
- Kate Treitman, fourth grade teacher, to travel to San Francisco to visit Angel Island in support of the fourth grade immigration curriculum;
- Rebecca Schwartz, first grade, and Randi Reinhold, third grade, who will use their grant to support the creation of anti-bias education resources for the lower school faculty;
- Beth Binnard, Fours teacher, and Rose Reilly, math specialist, to research and develop a year long math curriculum for the Fours that will be in line with the lower school math program, in general.
- Matthew Rosen, seventh grade humanities teacher, in order to identify and develop additional resources and reading material, focusing on primary sources, for the seventh grade study of Colonial America;
- Wendy Bassin and Heather Brandstetter, fifth grade core teachers, to add to the fifth grade’s study of ancient civilization and life by creating a unit that asks the students to make comparisons between the ways ancient civilizations produced food and the ways we do so currently;
- Stephen Volkman, seventh and eighth grade science teacher, in order to create several new units for both the 7th and 8th grades, establishing yearlong themes for each grade and integrating a number of new concepts into the course of study;
- Karyn Silverman, high school librarian, and Tom Murphy, history department chair, to support their redesigning of the ninth grade history curriculum in order to better integrate information seeking/management, organizational, and technological/media skills with the history content;
- Margaret Magee, high school science teacher and ninth grade dean, in her work creating a new on-line information source for ninth graders and their families in order to foster an easier transition to high school;
- Vinay Chowdrhy and Stephen MacGillivray, high school media studies teachers, who will be remapping the Media Arts curriculum in order to better balance film theory and history with production skills and creativity;
- Micah Dov Gottlieb, high school assistant principal, who will be creating a new twelfth grade science elective called Green Energy.