Lincoln-Sudbury awards and honors

Six L-S faculty win FELS grants

The Foundation for Educators at Lincoln-Sudbury (FELS)—a nonprofit that awards enrichment grants to Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School faculty and staff to pursue their professional and personal interests and passions—announced six grant recipients for 2017. Recipients, their departments and projects are:

• Xin Dong, World Languages —  Dong, who is completing her first year of the new Mandarin pilot program at L-S, will attend the MaFLA Proficiency Academy this summer. The four-day program focuses on curriculum design under the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages proficiency framework.
• Nancy Dion, Special Education — Her grant will allow her to attend a week-long workshop at The College of the Atlantic in Maine that introduces photographers of all abilities to the art of conservation photography. She hopes print and frame the images for display at L-S.
• Samantha Parker, Science (Physics) — Parker will travel to the Grand Tetons to witness the total eclipse of the sun on August 21. She hopes to use her explorations to enrich her teaching in astronomy and other sciences.
• Nicole Frattaroli, Guidance Counselor — Frattaroli will take a 10-week course at The New England School of Photography to advance her strong interest in the art, allow her to contribute to the mindfulness curriculum and online resources, incorporate her photographs into presentations that the Counseling Department coordinates with Student Services for incoming families
• Elizabeth Carver, World Languages (Spanish) — Carver’s grant will partially fund a four-week trip to Mexico this summer to explore the Mayan culture and study their language and art. She plans to document her work by maintaining a daily journal; recording interviews with Mayan people on their past and present culture; creating portraits, collage, and sculptures of Mayan people and their environment; and writing a narrative for each and of art in English, Spanish and some Maya.
• Thomas Grandprey, Director of  Instrumental Music — he will visit museums and historic sights in Rome, Florence and other cities as well as music venues in Italy, exploring the jazz culture in Italy and make contacts for future professional and educational exchange.

FELS raises money through donations and also hosts an annual FELS Talk at the high school. Click here to see past grants.

Chess team is tops in Mass.

The L-S Chess Team came in first at the state team chess championship in April, bringing home the Hurvitz Cup as two-time state champions. There were 12 teams with a total of 46 players at the championship. L-S team members were Sudbury residents Michael Isakov, Eric Feng, Sandeep Shankar, Jesse Sun, and Greer Fried. The team won all four of its matches to finish well ahead of the competition.

Ocean sciences team in #9 nationally

The L-S National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB) team placed ninth nationally at the NOSB national competition held at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore., and won an all-expenses-paid trip to the competition after having won the Blue Lobster Bowl at MIT earlier in the year.

The NOSB competition is largely structured in “quiz bowl” style and covers all aspects of oceanography (biological, physical, chemical, and geological), maritime technology, and marine policy. The competition also required the team to take on the roles of stakeholders testifying in front of a congressional committee, with judges playing the parts of members of Congress, and advocating positions related to an actual and complicated piece of energy legislation. The students were required to submit written statements in advance, and they followed up with oral testimony and answered questions from the committee about the legislation at the competition. The L-S team placed sixth nationally in this portion of the competition.

Team members (all from Sudbury) are seniors Melody Phu, Steven Weiman, and Julia Wyatt, and juniors Michael Isakov and Avi Lepsky. Dr. William Pegram, an earth sciences teacher at the high school, is the faculty sponsor. The team also toured a large National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel based on the Oregon coast, went out on a small research boat to create temperature and salinity profiles of estuary waters and to sort out and classify the life forms found in a trawl of the same waters, and toured a large repository of marine sediment cores stored on the Oregon State campus.

Sobkowicz chosen to work with Apple on classroom technology

Mark Sobkowicz, a computer science and physics teacher at L-S, was selected as an Apple Distinguished Educator for 2017, one of approximately 130 elementary, secondary and higher educators in the U.S. to be so honored. Individuals selected as ADEs work with Apple to develop new uses for technology in the classroom and share insights with educators and policymakers throughout the world.

With the recent improvements to the high school’s information technology infrastructure, technology has been integrated into classrooms across the curriculum. In addition, an AP Computer Science Principles course will be offered at L-S for the first time in 2017-18 with a curriculum was designed by Sobkowicz based on the introductory computer science course taught at Harvard University. A demonstration of how Apple computing is used in L-S classrooms can be found in his online application for the ADE award.