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Athletics and Academics lauded at FSD meeting

At a recent Farmingdale school board meeting, Garner Bass, head of the Social Studies department, presented an award to Farmingdale teacher Steve Kramer and his Contemporary Global Issues students, which includes Erica Board, Johnny Galanoudis, John Kellermann, Orlando Lopez Toro, and Cody Torlincasi, for the work on environmental awareness within the community.

The students and their teacher began their work for the Scholastic/Lexus Environmental Challenge. This is a national competition that requires a group of 5 to 10 students and a teacher to create and implement an "action plan" in the categories of land, water, air or climate to help the environment and "empower teens to create a better world."

The students implemented a recycling program for the land category at the high school. Their successful plan, not only won them the recognition from the Board of Education for bettering the community, but they also won the first round of the Scholastic/ Lexus Environmental Challenge in which the students were awarded $2500 in scholarship money and they move on to compete in the final challenge.

Also, commended was the Varsity Girls Swim and Diving team, who were named New York State Team Scholar Champions by the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, Inc. for the fall 2007 season. The 10 highest achieving team members are Kristin Reinhart, Samantha Vitale, Liz Blovksy, Melissa Gehlback, Jessica MacKenzi, Lauren Broten, Hannah Zwikelmaier, Jackie Heinz, Marissa Boccio, and Alexis Rzempoluch.

This honor requires that the team has a 90 percent academic GPA during their sports' season. The swim team's average was 98.835 percent, the second highest average in the seventeen years of the awards program. The banner was presented to the team and their coaches, Coach Ken Ilchuk and Assistant Coach Randy Corcoran, by Mr. Patrick Pizzarelli, Vice President of the Nassau County Public High School Athletic Association.

In other related school news:

•teachers gave a presentation at the January Board meeting about the new technology being used in the district. Electronic Whiteboards are now replacing traditional blackboards in classrooms in the elementary, middle and high schools.

The Whiteboards are large computer screens, which can not only automatically go onto the internet and play videos, but also provide teachers and students with the traditional "blackboard" access.

There are 80 Whiteboards in all. The elementary and middle school classrooms have Smart Boards, and the high school classes have Promethean Boards.

The teachers who gave the presentation reiterated the fact that students are more engaged when learning from the white board.

"[It] captures students' attention," said Scott Drucker, a Mathematics teacher at Farmingdale High School.

In addition, the board allows the teachers to make the most of their time. For example, teachers had to rely solely on diagrams to teach lessons and students had to take notes. The new technology can display videos for the entire class to see at once, which is particularly helpful for science lessons, explained Kim Baccarella, a science teacher at Howitt Middle School. The use of color and graphics also helps to streamline lessons and make them clearer and more interesting than writing on a blackboard with chalk.

In addition, teachers can post notes for the students online or save them for review or to provide students with some additional help.

According the teachers' presentation, since the introduction of the electronic whiteboards, homework results and class participation has improved, and it has motivated the teachers to improve their lessons too, said school officials.

Farmingdale plans to purchase additional electronic whiteboards for the classroom, said Barbara Horsley, the Assistant Superintendent for Administration.

"[Electronic whiteboards are] a strong and powerful tool for teaching at every level," she said.