School Life: Winners
Published 11:49 pm Monday, March 10, 2008
Harbour Pointe Middle School names students of the month
February’s theme for student of the month at Harbour Pointe Middle School in Mukilteo was “open minded,” an attribute from the school’s International Baccalaureate program profile.
The school selected the following students who best demonstrated these qualities:
Sixth grade: Gillian Gamoke, Brian Moon, Deepkiran Singh and Evan VanCotthem
Seventh grade: Paul Barton, Amelia Kraft, Kevin Lim and Ankita Sharma
Eighth grade: Alyssa Gilbert, Dennis Mojica, Sydni Rhoads and Ryan Spencer
Mountlake Terrace’s Jazz Ensemble makes finalists for New York festival
Mountlake Terrace High School’s Jazz Ensemble 1 is a finalist for the prestigious Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival.
Essentially Ellington takes place in New York City May 15-17.
Mountlake Terrace High School’s Jazz Ensemble 1, under the direction of Darin Faul, submitted a recording of three Ellington songs. They competed in the blind judging against 82 other bands in North America.
Jazz Ensemble 1 is one of 15 jazz bands selected. Others include bands from Garfield, Roosevelt, Shorewood and South Whidbey high schools. Jazz Ensemble 1 was also a finalist and third-place winner in 2005, a finalist receiving honorable mention in 2002, and a finalist in 2000.
Kelsey VanDalfsen, a junior in the Mountlake Terrace High School Jazz Ensemble 1, was the first-place winner of the Essentially Ellington Student Essay Contest with 53 contestants. She won a paid trip to New York City, where she will read her essay at Essentially Ellington, in addition to other prizes.
Before the competition, Jazz Ensemble 1 will participate in a daylong workshop at the high school led by a professional musician sent by Jazz at Lincoln Center. The jazz band will also participate in workshops, jam sessions and other activities at Essentially Ellington as part of the competition and festival.
Kamiak High School chemistry teacher wins Princeton fellowship
John Anderson, a Kamiak High School chemistry teacher, was recently awarded a fellowship to Princeton University for a summer institute in molecular biology.
While there, he will be working with the Princeton faculty and Nobel Prize-winning scientists studying DNA.
@3. Headline Briefs 14 no:Students’ artwork will get wide audience at new transit center
Students from Edmonds-Woodway High School had a chance to work with professional artist Gerry Newcomb earlier this month to create their own art, which will be displayed at Community Transit’s new Mountlake Terrace Transit Center.
The students made clay molds that Newcomb will use to create cast-glass panels, which will be installed at the transit center. It was one of four sessions involving high schoolers; the first two were at Mountlake Terrace High School and the final two were at Edmonds-Woodway High School.
Newcomb is a glass artist whose cast-glass pieces are sold at galleries in five states. After students create the molds, Newcomb takes them back to his studio, where he will pour a plaster material over the clay to create another mold. He will put colored glass into the plaster molds, then fire it in a kiln to melt the glass, creating the final piece.
The project appealed to Aniqa Mihas, a junior, who took a clay class last year and heard about the project from friends.
“I thought it would be a cool experience,” she said. “I kind of wanted to do a fossil, but they wanted more natural scenes, so I kept messing with it and it sparked my imagination.”
Aniqa’s piece included grooves and raised areas with a variety of markings. She used several tools, including seashells, to create it.
Another junior, Matt Kinnear, has worked with stained glass before, and he jumped at the chance to participate.
“I’ve done some stained glass, done some clay and a wall mural in elementary school,” he said. “I thought this would be more fusing glass, but I still enjoyed it.”
In addition to Mountlake Terrace High School, Edmonds-Woodway was chosen for the project because of its proximity to Mountlake Terrace and the new transit center.
When the new Mountlake Terrace Transit Center is completed in early 2009, most of the art created in the work sessions will be installed. A few panels will be held in reserve to replace ones that are damaged. Those reserve pieces will be displayed at Community Transit’s south Everett offices.
The new transit center will include a four-story, five-level parking garage that will accommodate about 660 cars, along with surface parking for about 220 more. The facility will more than double the parking capacity of the old park-and-ride lot.
@3. Headline Briefs 14 no:Harbour Pointe Middle School wins Auburn jazz competition
The Harbour Pointe Jazz Band recently earned first place in the middle school division at the Auburn Invitational Jazz Festival.
The band was competing against 10 other middle school and junior high jazz bands from the area.
@3. Headline Briefs 14 no:Sno-Isle teacher praised for losing
Tory Klemtsen, the computer services and networking instructor at the Sno-Isle Tech Skills Center in south Everett, made an appearance on NBC’s “Today Show” recently.
She is a member of the television show’s Joy Fit Club, which honors people who have lost more than 100 pounds through diet and exercise.
