St. Joseph’s MonthlyApril 2017 Edition

St. Joseph’s Monthly April 2017 Edition

Caroline’s CornerA Letter from Ms. Latham

As we conclude a very busy but successful quarter I would like to make a few acknowledgments and reflections, and wish all in our SJHS community a safe, happy and holy Easter. Firstly, thank you to all the students, parents and staff for your efforts to welcome me into the high school this year, to get to know me a little and certainly make me feel welcome. I have felt welcomed and supported from the first day, so thank you again! In addition, it was wonderful to see so many students and parents at the Parent-Teacher conferences the evening of Tuesday, April 11th. These are a critical opportunity for students to review their work

with teachers and, in partnership with parents, set goals for improved learning for the last quarter, especially as we approach finals and Regents exams.

Finally, I wish you a blessed Easter. This is the pivotal moment of our Catholic faith, and therefore the center of the liturgical year: Jesus’ rising on Easter Sunday is per-haps the greatest example of his power to turn sorrow into joy! We can also consider Pope Francis’ tremendous example of the washing of the feet prior to Easter this year at Paliano prison, as an illustration of his understanding of service. In his homily he stated “During this ceremony, let us think about Jesus. This isn’t a folkloric ceremony. It is a gesture to remind us of what Jesus gave us. After this, he took bread and gave us his body; he took wine and gave us his blood. This is the love of God.”

This is a good reminder, as we reach the end of our 2016-2017 school year, the theme of which has been “Be of Service to the World!”, that the root of our acts of service is in a loving God who gave his life for us and continues to dwell with us.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Video Production students visit the Apple store in Soho to try out the new iMovie software (page 4)

Ms. Peralta accompanied 3 students to the annual Way of the Cross over the Brooklyn Bridge (page 6)

Caroline’s Corner

Concrete Canoe Competition

Spring Musical

Apple iMovie Lab Visit

Self-Defense Workshop

Way of the Cross

Visit from Our Sister School

Sankofa Tech Ed Conference

TriBeCa Film Festival

Poem in your Pocket Day

Brooklyn Law School Trip

PWC Women’s LeadershipConference Job Shadow

3rd Quarter Honor Roll

Lady Cougars Updates

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St. Joseph’s Monthly 2

CONCRETE: the adjectives that initially come to mind for this sub-stance are often something like “gray”, “drab”, “heavy” and (let’s face it) “boring”. But on April 10th three students from the NYU Tan-don School of Engineering visited SJHS for an after school work-shop on their work with this actually quite fascinating material.

Concrete Canoe Competition Workshop

April 2017 Edition 3

The students who visited to lead the workshop are part of NYU’s Concrete Canoe team. Concrete Ca-noe is an international civil engineering competi-tion organized by ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) in which students from colleges and universities around the globe compete to build a functional and beautiful canoe out of concrete. This year’s event will be held June 15th - 17th at Colorado School of Mines.

At the beginning of the workshop, they explained the process of making their canoe with concrete through a process of trial and error; after their first canoe did not float, they had to redesign it com-pletely. Rather than simply molding the liquified concrete into a canoe shape and waiting for it to harden, they had to adjust the fluid and aggregate levels, as well as the shape of the boat, in order to find the right balance and build a boat that would float, hold passengers, and move easily across the water.

After explaining their project, they split the stu-dents into small groups so they could try for them-selves to work with concrete. With a fresh batch of concrete, students attempted to transport the material into a bucket before it dried out. Next stu-dents learned about the possibility of dying con-crete - not only gray after all! Then they used the concrete they had moved to the buckets to mold flowers and other decorations - some for the NYU concrete canoe, and some to take home.

Freshwomen Marilyn Pauta, who hopes to eventually study engi-neering in college, reflected,

“The things we can do with con-crete really blew my mind...Over-all it was a great experience. It was a messy but fun project and it taught me many things. I saw that sometimes things are worth waiting for; the three stu-dents took an entire year to fin-ish the canoe in the end they were able to create such a fasci-nating piece of art. The most im-portant thing I learned that day was teamwork: sometimes the more help you can get the bet-ter a project might result. Differ-ent ideas and suggestions can make the work process a whole lot easier and more fun!”

This year our Spring 2107 musical production was written and directed by SJHS Drama, Cho-rus and Video Production teacher, Mr. Ethan Schlesser. The show was entitled Not Another School Musical because it parodied all the well-known stereotypes concerning school musical productions. The characters were named for the stock-character stereotypes they were por-traying: The Überkid (Alysa Asencio,‘18), The Ordinary Girl (Jadira Bermudez, ‘20), The Jock 1 (Lauryn Davis-Blake, ‘17), The Jock 2 (Joy Fraser, ‘17), The Weird Girl (Tylyn Garvin, ‘18), The Bad Kid (Kenesha Lousima, ‘19), The Nerd (Nina Plu-viose, ‘20), The Chatterbox (Yenile Rosario, ‘18) as , The Popular Girl (Natalyz Stultz, ‘17), The Accident Kid (Johanna von Maack, ‘19) and The Gossip Girl (Tashawn Young, ‘19).

After four months of preparation, The final mo-ments of rehearsal brought the cast lots of antic-ipation and a good deal of nervousness over how everything would turn out - would all their hard work pay off? Mr. Schlesser saw the preparation process as providing an important opportunity

for the cast to consider and experience the value of giving a project time, attention and dedication. He observed the girls grow in self-confidence as the need for instant validation eroded and was re-placed with a desire for constructive criticism and authentic praise.

When all was said and done the show was a big hit! The students felt excitement and relief as the show came to a close, and the glowing reviews and ap-plause they received was all the more appreciated because they knew how hard they had worked to prepare their performances.

St. Joseph’s Monthly 4

Spring 2017 Musical! Not Another Schoool Musical

Visit to Apple iMovie LabOn April 27th, Video Production students had the opportunity to visit the Apple Store in SOHO to try out the new iMovie software. The new software, which will be integrated at SJHS next year, is even more intuitive and streamlined than the one we have been using so far. The changes make editing faster and easier than ever.

While the main purpose of the trip was to visit the Apple store, the students who attended were also excited to have the opportunity to see a part of the city that many had never been to before. Mr. Schlesser, Video Production teacher at SJHS, sees these kinds of trips as opportunities for students to expand their horizons, and to take education out of the school building.

April 2017 Edition 5

The possibility of a child experiencing a violent assault is something that no parent wants to imagine. But for Alex Mendiola, an SJHS parent and profes-sional Jujutsu instructor, this possi-bility has become the opportunity to teach kids, teens and young adults empowering self-defense skills. SJHS Guidance Counselor Ms. Brianne Hickey finds that in discussing life on a college campus with her students, questions about self-defense come up regularly, along-side other questions about situations to avoid, how to stay safe and healthy, and what to expect academically. When Mr. Mendiola volunteered to teach a self-defense class to SJHS students, Ms. Hickey embraced the of-fer and planned a workshop that included verbal and physical instruction and practice of what to do in pos-sible scenarios students might face either on a college campus, or in their daily lives as young women in New York City.

The students who attended the workshop had the op-portunity to try several techniques for protecting them-selves, and to suggest their own potential scenarios. They found the event empowering, giving them the knowledge and skills to avoid dangerous situations when possible, and address them when necessary. Ms. Hickey hopes to plan similar events in future!

Empowerment & Safety Self Defense Workshop

St. Joseph’s Monthly 6

Every year on Good Friday, thousands of people, following a wooden cross, wind their way from St. James Cathedral in Downtown Brooklyn to St. Pe-ter’s Catholic Church in the Financial District of Manhattan, stopping along the way on the Brooklyn Bridge, at City Hall, and at Ground Zero. This pro-cession marks the anniversary of Jesus’ ascent to Calvary and the medieval tradition of the Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, which is still celebrated all over the world.

The Way of the Cross over the Brooklyn Bridge was started by the lay Catholic movement Communion and Liberation twenty-two years ago, and continues to attract a large crowd to a morning of beautiful music, readings from the Gospels, reflections for meditation delivered by local religious leaders, and prayerful silent walking.

Given that Communion and Liberation, now a world-wide organization, was founded by a high school teacher, Fr. Luigi Giussani, it is fitting that this year three students from St. Joseph High School joined the procession, accompanied by Ms. Peralta, who has been involved with the local group since she was in high school herself.

Speaking to Melissa Enaje, a reporter for the Brook-lyn Tablet, Ms. Peralta stated, “The reason I invite my students to the Way of The Cross is because it’s a simple gesture that lets us encounter how tremen-dous Christ is. We walk together even in a city where it could easily seem that we’re divided. Despite the fact that each of us carry our own unique crosses, we suffer together. I want my students to know that I’ll always be walking with them, and this seemed like a beautiful way to show them that.”

Way of the Cross over the Brooklyn Bridge

Visit from our Sister School in Le Puy, France

On Thursday, April 6th a group of 10 students from our sister school in LePuy, France came to visit SJHS! It was quite exciting to have students from another country come into our school and attend classes with some our juniors as their buddies.

April 2017 Edition 7

Sankofa Tech Education Conference

On April 25th, Ms. Latham, Ms. Peralta and Sophomores Marilyn Pauta, Isabel-la Castillo and Atta Gould attended the Sankofa Tech Education conference in Downtown Brooklyn. The event was or-ganized by the Sankofa Global Project, in partnership with Itefayo Cultural Arts Academy, the Wellness Initiative, Global WRITeS and NYC First.

The purpose of the conference was to provide an opportunity for educators, entrepreneurs, elected officials, stu-dents, parents and experts in S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) to come together to discuss how to effectively increase and improve S.T.E.A.M. education in Brooklyn schools.

The overarching themes of the confer-ence were:

What is S.T.E.A.M.?

How do we conceptualize S.T.E.A.M. education beyond the classroom?

What are creative ways to overcome barriers to access to S.T.E.A.M. education?

SJHS Alumna and Deputy Brooklyn Borough President Diana Reyna spoke on the first panel of the day, addressing attend-ees on the topic of what S.T.E.A.M. is and why it is a priority for Brooklyn Borough. Ms. Latham spoke on another panel on the topic of overcoming barriers to S.T.E.A.M. education access. As the first school in Brooklyn to build and install a FabLab, SJHS was honored to be the only high school invited and asked to represent what we are doing in this area.

In addition to the panel discussions, the day included hands-on demos from the programs and companies who hosted booths for the event; at the SJHS booth, students showed attendees how to print and assemble the 3-D printed prosthetic hands they had developed using the new FabLab equipment (for more on this project, see the February issue of SJHS Monthly). Those who visited the booth were impressed by our students’ exper-tise with the equipment and materials, and the girls had a won-derful time showing off the new skills they had learned this year.

SJHS Alumna Diana ReynaDeputy Brooklyn Borough President

St. Joseph’s Monthly 8

TriBeCa Film Festival: “Our City, My Story”

27 students attended “Our City, My Story,” the youth showcase for the TriBeCa Film Festival, hosted by Vee Bravo, Director of Education for the Tribeca Film Institute, and actor Jeffrey Wright. Students viewed short films in the following categories: narrative, documentary, and experimental. At the end of the screen-ing, awards were given out for the best in each category and all of this year’s winners were young women.

This is the second year that a group from SJHS attended “Our City, My Story” and while there is no assignment attached, the trip is organized for specific reasons. Part of being literate is understanding that everything can be ‘read,’ and in Eng-lish, beginning in 9th grade, we use film and images as texts. It is important that our students understand that there are messages and meaning conveyed in the world all around them, and learn how to make sense of this. This eventually evolves into media literacy, which we sprinkle throughout the curriculum.

In addition to its connection to the English curriculum, the trip is fun. It takes students out of their element, and this is not limited to just the screening itself; exploring the neighborhood around BMCC and the TriBeCa Film Center can pro-vide a broader understanding of New York and is another form of literacy—ge-ography— navigating and negotiating space and understanding one’s impact on the surrounding space.

by Aiesha Turman, English Department Chair

Aiesha Turman has been on faculty at SJHS for a lit-tle over a year and is chair of the English Depart-ment. She teaches the entire 9th grade, a sec-tion of 11th grade, and an

elective that rotates yearly. She is passionate about connecting literature to real experiences in order to sup-port students’ deepening their critical and analytical thinking skills.

April 2017 Edition 9

Poem in Your Pocket Day!

Did You Know? Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 27th) is a city-wide poetry celebration, started in 2002 by the Office of the Mayor and the NYC Departments of Culture and Education, and ex-panded to the rest of the US in 2008 by the Academy of American Poets. In 2016 it was brought to Canada by the League of Canadian Poets. Every year, for one day during April (NYC’s Poetry Month), students, teachers, and the general public are encouraged to choose a poem, carry it with them, and share it with others throughout the day. There is even a special hashtag to share poems on social media: #pocketpoem.

To facilitate interaction, criti-cal and analytical thinking, English teachers at SJHS told students about Poem in Your Pocket Day early in the week. They utilized space in the hall-way, filling it with small and large stickers to encourage students to leave and take a poem. Throughout the month of April, the English Depart-ment focused on poetry, with students writing everything from sonnets and couplets, to haiku and diamantés.

Students wrote original po-ems and presented them in class the same week as Poem in Your Pocket Day. Teach-ers encouraged them to write original poems, as well as to use parts of poems and songs that they thought would be of use, somehow, to their peers. They included a wide selec-tion, ranging from Alice Walk-er and Emily Dickinson, to rappers TuPac and Kendrick Lamar.

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Brooklyn Law School Field Trip

Tiana-Sade Smith, a senior who hopes to become a law-yer and eventually run for public office, found in the field trip exactly the encouragement she needed to pursue her dreams. Current students explained the long pro-cess required to become a lawyer - from completing un-dergrad to taking the LSAT and applying to law school, to studying and clerking, to taking state bar exams.

Despite the difficulty of this path, the law school students repeatedly emphasized the importance of not giving up when experiencing discouragement. Hearing about the journeys of several women of color through undergrad

and law school helped inspire Tiana to work hard to be-come a lawyer so that she can help rectify racial and other injustices built into the current criminal justice sys-tem.

The field trip was also beneficial for students who do not intend to study law. Senior Gayhena Paul is interested in pursuing a career in medicine; nonetheless she found the opportunity to speak with women of color in the legal profession deeply inspiring.

Like law, medicine is a field in which, in addition to re-quiring many years in school and plenty of stressful ex-ams, African American women are underrepresented and face racial and gender discrimination. So, hearing from women who had overcome these obstacles and followed their ambitions gave her a boost of confidence and willingness to do the hard work necessary to suc-ceed in her chosen profession.

On April 26th, several students took a field trip to Brooklyn Law School to learn more about the pos-sibility of studying law, and the different career paths available to students who pursue that path. They had the chance to meet current students at the law school, take a tour, ask questions, and even seek out mentors.

Path to a Career in Law

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Earn a Bachelor’s DegreeCommon undergraduate majors for pre-law students: English, Political Science, Econom-ics, Philosophy, Journalism and Business

Pass the Law School Admission Test (LSAT)The LSAT measures skills in areas important for future legal work, such as reading comprehen-sion, information management, analysis and critical thinking, reasoning, and argumentation.

Identify Law Schools and Complete ApplicationsThe Law School Admission Council is a great resource during this research phase.

Earn a Juris Doctorate Degree While studying, choose a specialization in an area of interest, and complete legal in-ternships over the summer.

Pass the Bar Examination In order to practice law, you must past the certification exam for the state(s) in which you intend to work.

April 2017 Edition 11

PWC Young Women’s Leadership Job ShadowStudents in Ms. Schaeffer’s Business and College Readiness Class attended a Job Shadow at Price Wa-terhouse Cooper on April 28th. Upon arrival, each SJHS student was assigned a personal mentor with whom they would collaborate throughout the event. The day began with the students and mentors planning out the students short, medium and long-term goals. Next, they reviewed a sample resume, looking for errors and room

for improvement, and discussing what should and should not be included in a successful resume. After this exercise, the students revised their resumes with their mentors assistance. With their goals and resumes polished, interview dos and don’ts were discussed. All of the PWC mentors stressed the importance of being yourself, networking and being well-groomed when you interview. This was followed by a lunch-time discussion of what it is “really” like to work in a male dominated field and how women can advocate for themselves.

At the conclusion of the day, students were given a folder containing a mock career and monthly income. Using this information, they listened to a mini-lesson was given on gross pay, net pay and deductions. Once the students understood what they would be taking home each month, they were given a budget and asked to allocate their money. Almost all of the stu-dents had to revise their needs and wants.

Mentorship

Resume

Writing Interviewing

St. Joseph’s Monthly 12

2016-2017 3rd Quarter Honors

Freshwomen

Sophomores

Juniors

Seniors

Principal’s ListMaria Constable Marilyn Pauta Isabella Castillo

1st Honors Leilany Tochimani Solano Jiawen Pan Teresa Soriano

2nd HonorsNina Pluviose Jayda Grant Emely GilBrianna Marshall

2nd Honors (cont.)Angelica MartinezMaritza CuatecoAshley RomanHalle Marius Danah ClarkKayleah SeranoTral Marly ClersaintAkellia BowensDaisy FuentesAlecia HartJiovana AragonCiara WalkerSelena MorreiraAniya MorenMarielys MarteKadijah PrinceAniyah EldridgeNaisha Chery

98.496.495.3

92.691.590.789.889.789.589.188.888.388.187.987.987.687.187.187.086.386.0

92.8

91.590.1

93.593.193.192.9

Principal’s ListBethgeana Coq Karielys OrtizKeyla Farfan

1st Honors Lisa Avila Johanna Von MaacTashawn Young

2nd Honors (cont.)Melissa PierreKimberl Bustos OtavloKenesha LouismaNathalia PazLeslie-Ann WhiteKyia FardinJada Edmond

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96.795.0

94.792.190.3

88.988.087.286.185.9

Principal’s ListRaven Pitt

1st Honors Emily GomezSamantha AcostaKirsten ClenkianJaycee Mondesir

2nd HonorsHannah Pierre-LouisGaheyna Paul Alysa AsencioNaya RogersAlemtsehayGetahunDorte Bien-aimeJenai DavisLilliana HernandezEva Jefferson-Page

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95.5794.3894.2993.00

95.0091.2991.0091.0090.13

89.6388.3888.3386.13

Principal’s ListJessica PetersRomona Martin Camille DianandVictoria GjoniMeliah Descartes

1st Honors Stephanie MunozJanessa William-sonJoy FraserAkeia WadeLauryn Bradley Sapphire Hilton

2nd HonorsGenelle Sonson Keiyanna Michel Amari CrissAnnissia YoungSonaia CropperNancy QuizhpiNeisha LewisChastity RamirezJordan RevanderKimora JordanLutney SagesseBrianna CarterMelissa Yacinthe

97.3897.2995.2994.3893.23

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91.2591.0090.8390.7190.3889.8889.1588.8888.8388.3386.2985.6785.40

Track Team at Bullis Ath-letics Invitational on April 15th

Genelle Sonson, 3rd in 200m and 100m at Poly Prep Outdoor Invitational

Visit to LIU Women’s Basketball, April 20th

Softball game on April 27th!

Kimora Jordan pre-paring to throw the discus, April 15th