A veteran superintendent told me a long time ago that no matter what you might be facing, keep your focus on the kids. So without further ado, let’s recognize, celebrate, and draw encouragement from our amazing, talented, smart, kind, compassionate students!
Spotlight on Instruction 🔦
Outside at Village, our fifth grade classes have been taking advantage of the beautiful weather during the changing seasons. Taking nature walks around the Village campus, students are able to enjoy the sights and sounds of the natural world. The fresh air and movement is a welcome break – and (as it did for Thoreau) has also contributed to their creative writing process. Students collect items on their walks like leaves, acorns, or pine cones, and then write a narrative about the item, focusing on descriptive details and a clear story line.
Meanwhile, fourth graders at A.P. Willits Elementary are also learning about the environment – specifically erosion – through immersive (no pun intended) hands-on lessons. Students worked together to build “stream tables” with sand and clumps of clay to simulate the forces of nature that shape our Earth. This interactive experiment allowed our students to witness firsthand how water influences the land, and apply terms such as weathering, erosion, and deposition to a discuss about how erosion shapes landscapes and affects communities.
Newsday has named three of our basketball players to the list of Long Island’s top 100 players.
Senior A.J. AbuSaab is a third year starter – at 6 foot 2, he dominates on the court as a point guard. On our girls team, Sophomore Sam Schneider is known for her ability to finish plays and score, on average 11 points a game last year. Junior Kate Nelmes is a strong defender, which earned her Conference AA-I defensive player of the year last season.
Last week, the girls' varsity basketball team opened up their season by winning the Islip High School Anil John Tip Off Classic. After topping Islip Wednesday night, our ladies defeated a tough Patchogue-Medford team to secure the Championship! Sam was named to the All-Tournament Team and Kate was named the Tournament MVP. Senior Carly Greenbaum made headlines this week for securing a subsequent victory over highly-regarded Half Hollow Hills East with a steely shot in the final seconds of the game.
After an impressive final season on our Football team, Quarterback Mustafa Mozawalla was named Nassau’s top quarterback of the year by Newsday. Congratulations Mustafa on an amazing season and this well-deserved honor! Also this week, two of our students received the Outstanding Physical Education Award from the New York State Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. Each year, Nassau recognizes up to two seniors who exhibit a physically active lifestyle both during and outside of school, and who demonstrate leadership by being a positive influence on their peers. This year’s recipients were Rose Cohen and Nicholas Yang. Rose has been an integral part of Strength and Conditioning classes, committing herself to pursuing personal health and fitness goals, and serving as a role model for her peers. Nicholas Yang has been a fixture in the pool forever, having excelled in Aquatics, Lifeguard training, and Water Safety Instruction. In addition to being an All-County swimmer, Nick serves as a lifeguard and swim instructor with our Learn to Swim program and our Stingrays youth swimming team. Congratulations Rose and Nicholas on your amazing accomplishments and the way you’ve given back to this community!
#SyoStars⭐
Sixteen (!) of our high school student artists were selected for the Nassau County Juried Exhibit at the Art Guild of Port Washington. The Art Guild of Port Washington is a nonprofit organization which encourages local artists to embrace their craft through education and exhibition. Congratulations to these students and to our terrific Art faculty guiding them on their journey!
Our music students and teachers headed to Rochester last week to accept NYSSMA’s Presidential Citation at its Annual Winter Conference. The Citation is the highest award a K-12 school district can earn to recognize excellence in Music Education.
As part of the celebration, our All-State musicians performed in ensembles with talented student musicians from across New York. One of our students, Braden Moran, was also featured in the Electronic Music Showcase for his composition titled “City Life.” Plus, our Chamber Orchestra and Wind Ensemble groups were selected to perform at the Concert Hour. What an array of honors for our fabulous student musicians to illustrate the cumulative strength of our entire music program K-12!
One of our students took it upon himself to make our high school auditorium lobby a little bit brighter, in a literal sense. Junior Corey Schack has been doing an independent study on photo restoration with his Digital Photography teacher Amanda O’Rourke. He noticed that All-State musician photos from 40 years ago were almost completely faded. So, he scanned the original images, uploaded them into the restoration software, and went to work.
Using multiple tools to increase the contrast, enhance the details, and correct the imperfections caused by the natural aging process, he literally brought the images back to life. In fact, they probably look even better than they did originally! In total, he restored 32 photos and put in close to 20 hours of work. Thank you, Corey, for making sure our pride in these standout alumni will never fade!
Members of our Syosset Fire Department might appreciate seeing one of our current Commissioners back when he was an All-State saxophone player (Gio, I had no idea!). Now, if only Corey had a way to restore the imperfections of my natural aging process…
