April 2010 Newsletter

Annenberg, Blackrock scholarships awarded to exceptional New Visions students

Leonore Annenberg College Scholarship

Karina Melendez has been waiting a long time for things to go her way, and finally, they are. In January, she got to move into a good home when the parent coordinator at her high school became her foster mom. Then this month, the 17-year-old was selected as the recipient of the 2010 Leonore Annenberg College Scholarship. No longer will she have to worry about the prospect of tuition she can’t afford. She’ll be covered anywhere she wants to go.

The Annenberg scholarship, one of two major college tuition funds administered by New Visions for Public Schools, will provide Karina with the full, four-year cost of attendance at an academically rigorous college, including travel expenses to visit New York if she leaves the area. She was selected from among 65 applicants, all nominated by principals at New Visions schools, based on her academic achievements, integrity, commitment to service, financial need and ability to overcome adversity.

Karina, an aspiring lawyer who is ranked second in her junior class of 100 students at Bronx School of Law and Finance, stands out for her extraordinary resilience and determination. At 10, she was diagnosed with bone cancer, and for three years, her schooling consisted of tutoring at home or in the hospital. She beat cancer and performed so well on state tests that she was able to rejoin classmates her age without repeating a year. But at 14, her family was evicted from her childhood apartment, and she had to live with her aunt, in homeless shelters and then go into foster care.

Through it all, she put her energy into learning.

“A part of me always saw school as the one thing in my life I could control,” she said in a recent interview. “Everything else in my life could fall apart, but no one could take that away from me.”

Karina recalled the happiness she experienced when, in seventh grade, she was well enough to enroll in her neighborhood’s public middle school. “My hair had grown out, and I was on crutches; I didn’t need a wheelchair,” she said. “I was excited to be back to normal.” Last year, when Karina was a sophomore, her unstable living situation caused her to again miss several weeks of school, but she said her teachers and administrators at Bronx Law helped her catch up quickly when she returned.

Last summer, as she was switching foster homes, Karina was selected to participate in the prestigious Young Women’s Leadership Institute at Barnard College, where she made such a positive impression that she was placed on the college’s “students to watch” list.

Barnard was at the top of Karina’s college choices until she learned she had received the Annenberg scholarship. She remains very interested in the school but has decided she should explore all her options now that money won’t be a factor.

New Visions pairs Annenberg scholarship recipients with someone to mentor them through college graduation. Karina will continue working with Eva Lopez-Paredes, an attorney who has mentored her on Bronx Law’s mock trial and moot court teams for the past three years. Lopez-Paredes says Karina has been her school’s star student-attorney since she was a freshman. She has also tutored her peers and served on a panel that advises the principal on student disciplinary issues. In a recommendation letter, Lopez-Paredes described Karina’s tremendous motivation to excel, her rare willingness to accept feedback and criticism, and her constant desire to help others. When she becomes a lawyer someday, Karina says, she wants to do as much pro bono work as possible.

A few weeks ago, Karina was in Latin class when her principal, Evan Schwartz, called her to his office. He had told her she’d be getting a call about her scholarship application. “I had all these ideas, ‘Maybe they’re going to reject me; that’s why they want to do it on the phone,’” Karina said. She was not expecting to find her mentor, her foster mom, and a room full of school employees showering her with flowers and praise as New Visions Chief Financial Officer Stacy Martin told her she had won the scholarship.

As the tears began to flow, Karina felt a huge sense of relief.

“I was just speechless,” she said. “Things are finally falling into place.”

BlackRock-Schlosstein Scholarships

Six seniors at New Visions schools have been named recipients of the BlackRock-Schlosstein Scholarships, which provide up to $20,000 over four years, with a maximum of $5,000 per year, toward the cost of full-time undergraduate study. The scholarship amount is determined by tuition costs and financial need. The winners are:

Dieynabou “Dee” Barry, Bronx Center for Science and Math. Human rights abuses in Dee’s home country of Guinea have inspired her to become “a bettering force in this world,” as she wrote in an application essay for the scholarship. On track to be her class’s valedictorian, Dee has been admitted to Dartmouth College, where she wants to major in international studies. Her goal is to become a member of the United Nations and address human rights issues. One of 12 siblings, she has helped to raise her brothers and sisters and is proud to be the first in her family going to college. She has been involved in the organization Build On to raise money to build schools in third-world countries, and she has also developed a passion for environmental issues. “I must be the change that I seek,” she wrote. “I must catalyze others’ hearts to race faster each time the story of human injustice is told.” Dee’s college adviser Mitchell Kurz says she displays a rare blend of academic and social intelligence. On the academic side, she was her school’s top math student from 2006 to 2008, the top history student from 2007 to 2008, and she earned the school’s top scores on the chemistry, world history, Math A and Math B Regents. She has attended summer programs for high school students at Dartmouth and M.I.T., where she was the top student in her humanities class. Despite her many accomplishments, she has friends of all achievement levels, Kurz said in a recommendation letter. “Her inherent kindness makes people feel comfortable, particularly when they are anticipating being intimidated by her accomplishments.”

Joanna Mei Juan Luo, High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology. Joanna, who plans to attend New York University, wants to become a nurse and is passionate about public health issues. She would like to one day work in Nairobi with HIV patients and implement birth control practices in developing countries. Joanna will be the first in her family to graduate from high school, and for the past 10 years, she has been supervising her younger sisters’ homework assignments to ensure that they follow in her footsteps. “My father was never given a chance to go to high school, let alone college,” Joanna wrote in her scholarship application essay. “From the stories he tells us, I call up a vivid mental picture of him as a barefooted child walking on the dirt road, with two buckets dangling from each end of a stick placed on his shoulder, as he makes his third trip to the village’s only water well. I have always known that if I ever wanted to honor my father with the chance to say, ‘My children all went to college,’ I would first need to set the example.” Joanna participates in many extracurricular activities, including chorus, the Red Cross Club, the school newspaper, and the tennis and volleyball teams, and she volunteers at New York Methodist Hospital. Danielle Longyear, who taught Joanna last year in pre-calculus and this year in A.P. Statistics, wrote in a recommendation letter that she is “truly the hardest working, most responsible student I have taught to date. Joanna never misses a day of school, her homework is complete and perfect every day and she even participates in class all the time. She is a marvel.”

Oi Yee Liu, High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology. Oi Yee is extremely passionate about math. “I love [math] so much that I wish I could marry it one day,” she wrote in her application essay. “It is my ‘dearest friend’ who has helped me to get through the gloomiest period in my life.” She went on to explain that after she moved to the United States from Hong Kong four years ago, “my new life in this country was overwhelming and constantly tortured me because everything required English.” Except math. “When other students laughed and talked loudly in the cafeteria, Math and I had our silent communication,” she wrote. “This stayed unchanged until my ‘dearest and only friend’ introduced me to other people.” She became known at school as “math girl.” Classmates began to ask her for help in math, and a teacher nominated her for the Math Honor Society, enabling her to make friends and improve her communication skills in English. When Oi Yee couldn’t fit A.P. Statistics into her schedule this semester, she decided to study on her own so she can take the A.P. Statistics exam. She is a teaching assistant in a remedial algebra class at her school, and she tutors younger Chinese students during school vacations. She is now fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. Her history teacher, Patrick Crowley, called her one of the most academically gifted students he’s ever encountered, writing that “Oi Yee Liu is a true testament to hard work, leadership and resiliency.” Oi Yee will attend the College of Business and Economics at Lehigh University, where she plans to major in finance. She dreams of going into the business field and using her skills to make economic contributions to her two homes, China and the United States.

Sharmin Shompa “Sini” Mollick, Marble Hill High School for International Studies. Sharmin grew up in Bangladesh in a conservative Muslim family that did not encourage her to go to school and disapproved of her desire to study biology. After coming to the United States as a high school student, she had to keep secret her study of science and goal of becoming a genetic researcher. “Because science contradicted with my parents’ beliefs, I studied for science classes when no one was around, usually in the bathroom,” she wrote in her scholarship application essay. “My passion to be a genetic researcher became stronger, since I wanted to prove to my parents that studying science would not corrupt my mind but would allow me to have a positive impact on the world…. There were many days when I felt alone, but I did not give up. Instead, I kept my focus and got a four on the A.P. Biology exam.” Sharmin took A.P. Biology, typically a class for seniors, as a junior, earning the highest grade in the class and the highest grade ever for a girl at Marble Hill. “I have taught at Marble Hill School for International Studies for five years and have never seen a more dedicated science student,” wrote her biology teacher, David Meek, in a recommendation letter. The numerous science awards she has won, in addition to her selection for a summer program at Phillips Exeter Academy, eventually persuaded her parents that her career path is worth pursuing. At Marble Hill, Sharmin founded the Gay-Straight Alliance with the objective of fostering tolerance and reducing discrimination. She is also secretary of the school math club, a member of the National Honor Society, and a tutor in algebra and A.P. Calculus. She will attend Cornell University.

Stephanie George, Collegiate Institute for Math and Science. Stephanie loves history, and she has been on a quest to learn about her family’s past in Jamaica to help define her identity as an Afro-Caribbean American. She enjoys learning about the similarities in folklore and beliefs around the world. “I get goose bumps when I think of how all our lives are linked together through history,” she wrote in her scholarship application essay. “I enjoy the challenge that history offers, being able to read every history textbook and still not know everything there is to know about it. I love the thought that perspectives on a single historical event can change depending on the socioeconomic status or even the religion of the individual looking at that event. Every time I learn something new about history, I am fitting a piece into this enormous complex and riveting puzzle.” This year, Stephanie is working on an independent study in history where she is creating a fictionalized account of an American family running from the pre-Revolutionary War period to today, using the genealogy of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. At CIMS, she is president of the student government, vice president of the National Honor Society, an editor on the student newspaper, and a representative on the school leadership team, a decision-making body that meets with the principal, staff and parents. An active member of her church youth group, she participates in an enrichment program at Albert Einstein Medical Center and has attended the Chappaqua Summer Scholarship Program for the past three years. Stephanie is also a strong advocate for HIV and AIDS awareness and serves as a peer educator for Jacobi Medical Center’s Project BRIEF, which conducts quick, confidential HIV testing. She will attend Vassar College.

Shi Giang “Luis” Ng Tong, East-West School of International Studies. Luis was raised in Colombia, where he was the only Chinese person at his school. From the time he was a young boy, he wanted to contribute to solving humanity’s problems, such as finding a cure for cancer; however, he stopped school in seventh grade. Luis resumed his education when he arrived in the United States but was ashamed of his language barrier and the fact that he was older than his peers. But his determination remained, and since his sophomore year, he has been the top student in his grade and taking college courses through the College Now program at Queens College. He is now fluent in English, Chinese and Spanish and studying Korean. His science teacher Gloria Nicodemi says he’s the first student she’s ever taught who scored a 100 on the earth science Regents, then got another perfect score the next year on the chemistry exam. Luis works a part-time job to help support his family and will be the first in his family to go to college. He also beautifies his school and community with murals, tutors elementary school children and runs a chess club at the local library. “I strive to become an engineer who solves the people’s challenges of today and tomorrow, to struggle side by side with humanity’s problems,” he wrote in his scholarship application essay. “I do not want to be just anyone, I want to be someone that leaves a mark in the world before my existence extinguishes.”

New Dorp wins double at 2010 U.S. Virtual Enterprises Competition

Each year hundreds of teams across the country put their entrepreneurial skills and business acumen to the test as they vie to be named winners of the U.S. Networks of Virtual Enterprises (VE) National Business Plan Competition.

A New Visions school, New Dorp High in Staten Island, produced the top two winning teams this year. New Dorp’s VE law team, comprised of Thomas Rodberg, Alyssa Gainey, Mark Lipari, Faten Odeh and Alex Wong, nabbed first place. Classmates on the VE management & insurance team – Maria Bobova, Emilia Dmochowska, Ruslan Kainov, Olsen Mata, Seemal Shahid and Frances Shpol – won second. The New Dorp teams beat out 17 other finalists from California, Tennessee, Vermont, South Carolina and New York.

Each team works with a business partner, and the teams from New Dorp partnered with longtime New Visions supporter Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. Volunteers from the law firm’s Urban Education Initiative offered a helpline where they fielded questions from the New Dorp students grappling with their business plans. As the teams trained for the regional competition, Simpson Thacher invited them in to present their plans to a panel of the firm’s senior lawyers, who asked questions and provided feedback.

The notion of a simulated enterprise in which students acquire hands-on experience in business, economics, finance and career education is not a new one. But the VE program in New York City, which has programs in 50 schools across the five boroughs, prepares students for college and career by combining a rigorous curriculum with hands-on application of many academic skills. The program’s curriculum includes writing, speaking, math and technology. According to its Web site, it seeks to motivate students by setting high expectations and showing them the relevance of their education,

At New Dorp, students apply as juniors to become part of the prestigious VE elective class, interviewing with senior participants in the program. They must submit teacher recommendations and be meeting all school requirements. The students do not necessarily have to be at the top of their class academically, but they must show a desire to compete and learn. The number of applicants ranges from 75-100 students each year, vying to fill only ten available spots; five on each team.

The students who are accepted become interns within the school’s VE companies for the remainder of their junior year. Most companies have five departments: administration, accounting/finance, marketing, sales/purchasing and human resources. Interns may work for any and all of those departments.

New Dorp has two VE companies. The VE law team handles mock contracts and legal documentation for the companies within the network. The management and insurance team sells different types of mock insurance including homeowners insurance and life insurance.

When students become seniors, they take over and are able to decide if they want to start different companies or continue with their school’s current VE. Though able to change the company themes, most teams decide to continue because of the connections and strategic alliances built through the years.

Students participate in designated departments just as they would in a real work setting. They contact the other VE teams to do business, though real goods are not produced, and transfer virtual funds through a Web-based banking system provided for them by Virtual Enterprise.

Seniors must write and submit new business plans and take on the roles of chief executive officer, president and vice president, each heading a department.

None of this would be possible without a great teacher to lead the dedicated students. According to his colleagues, Paul Presti fits the bill. As the VE coordinator and computer applications teacher at New Dorp, Presti challenges his students to be the best.

“I set the bar very high. If I were to just tell them ‘let’s just look good, have fun, do the best we can,’ it wouldn’t be right. I’m not that kind of person,” he explains, “and our goal is to win national championships, to be the best high school virtual business in the country and not because I said so but because a panel of judges says so.”

Having two teams within one school also gives students an advantage, Presti says. “They push each other,” he explains. “They see one team taking it to the next level and that pushes them to get there as well and it just goes back and forth. Ultimately, having two teams makes each team stronger not just by helping each other, but also by competing against each other.”

New Dorp’s VE program created the first law firm within the VE network back in 2005. The New Dorp VE law team, working closely with VE’s central headquarters, has grown to play an influential part in creating and implementing standards for other law teams.

VE offers hundreds of paid internships each year to students participating in the program; it also helps students get their foot in the door for permanent employment. New Dorp administrators have multiple stories about former students getting jobs in large part due to their time spent in VE. One girl went for a job interview and was given the position on the spot because the man recognized her from the cover of an article about the VE program.

The VE program also provides students with access to scholarships. Senior Maria Bobova, CEO of the VE management & insurance team, was offered a scholarship to Molloy College after the recruiter listened to her speech at this year’s competition. Senior Thomas Rodberg, CEO of VE law team, was offered a scholarship to Macaulay Honors College at CUNY.

Being the best requires sacrifice. Presti works with the students after school, often until 6 p.m. Last year, Thomas’s family changed the date of a Caribbean cruise vacation that coincided with the city VE championships.

After two tough preliminary rounds in this year’s national competition in March at the 69th Regiment Armory, both New Dorp teams moved on to the championship round, along with four other teams. After a review by another set of judges, the top three winners were announced at the opening of the 2010 International Trade Fair in New York City. And the New Dorp teams could proudly call themselves champions.

The first-place winners received laptops; those in second place won netbooks.

G2G campaign goes online

This spring, New Visions launched www.NYCG2G.com, a Web site that will serve as the hub of the Good to Go college and career readiness campaign. Features include:

BLOG2G, a blog on the journey to college by students from the Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem and FDNY High School in Brooklyn. Readers are encouraged to comment on their entries to join in a conversation about college readiness.
The G2G Beat, a place for user-generated content, where students can post their own videos, start discussions and build a college readiness community. Under a new contest, the first 500 students to register on this portion of the site will win a $10 gift card to either iTunes or Amazon.com.
An ongoing video series on the road to college, made by students at the Academy for Careers in Television and Film and featuring New Visions students and graduates.
A video at the top of the homepage set to the dynamic “Good to Go” song created for the campaign by Impact Repertory Theatre, a Harlem youth group that was nominated for an Academy Award for a song it created for the movie “August Rush.”
Success stories and advice from successful students in New Visions schools.
Information on upcoming events, including test dates and college fairs.
Answers to commonly asked questions for guidance counselors, as well as a feature where students can submit questions to be answered by a guidance counselor.
Grade-level benchmarks.
Basics on financial aid and college applications.
Tips for parents in both English and Spanish.
A permanent archive of G2G talent contest entries.

This is just the first stage of the Web site, and we hope to add features moving forward to provide an even more valuable resource to students and families with the G2G campaign.

This spring has been an exciting one for G2G. In addition to the Web site launch, we hosted our official kickoff March 11 at Brooklyn Museum, where prizes were awarded to the winners of the G2G talent contest. We gave away four $1,000 first-place awards – in the song, video, art and essay categories – as well as four $400 second prizes and four $200 third prizes. A complete list of winners, as well as an archive of the contest entries, is available at http://www.nycg2g.com/News_And_Events/Post_Detail.aspx?id=7. An archive of the contest entries is at http://www.nycg2g.com/News_And_Events/Post_Detail.aspx?id=60.

On April 24, we continued promoting our G2G message at the Ninth-Grade College and Career Resources Fair held at Minisink Beacon. This event armed ninth-grade students and their parents and guardians with the knowledge they'll need about college and career readiness early in their high school careers.

Tribeca Film Festival features NV student work

Students from three New Visions high schools are winners in the Tribeca Film Institute’s “Our City, My Story” competition, which showcases the city’s best student-made work during the Tribeca Film Festival.

The winners, whose films are among 13 selected from throughout New York City, are:

Jacquelyn Gutierrez, 14, a freshman at the Academy for Careers in Television & Film. Jacquelyn made a six-minute documentary about her 16-year-old sister Ashley Gutierrez’s struggles and joys as a teenage mother. The film chronicles Ashley’s journey from trying to conceal her pregnancy to changing her lifestyle to support a new baby. Jacquelyn, who lives with her sister and nephew along with their mother and other siblings, says she wanted to show that parenthood “is a lot of work,” but Ashley is determined to persevere.
Talia Charlton, Tatiana Perez, Jennifer Marroquin and Samantha Ojeda, students at the Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem. The girls developed a public service announcement in their film class about underage drinking and other issues faced by young urban women.
Donovan Cooper, Akeem Gill, Kandacy Jones, Shedall Courtney Ventour, Isaac Russell, Khamar Douglas and Jose Guzman of FDNY High School and Winnifer Estevez of High School for Civil Rights. (FDNY is a New Visions school.) These students made a public service announcement about teenage spousal abuse through their work after school with the Brooklyn College Community Partnership at the Jefferson high school campus.

All the winning student films will be screened at noon April 30 at the Borough of Manhattan Community College Tribeca Performing Arts Center at 199 Chambers St.

Community Health Academy of the Heights breaks new ground

Community Health Academy of the Heights, a New Visions school, will soon become a neighborhood destination in Washington Heights when it relocates to a new community center.

Ground was broken April 8 on the the Lucille Bulger Center for Community Life to be located at West 157th Street and Amsterdam Avenue and scheduled for opening in September 2012.

The site will house the school, known by its acronym CHAH, as well as the main offices of Community League of the Heights (CLOTH) and a primary care clinic. The arrangement will be particularly beneficial to CHAH since the school prepares students for health-related careers.

“I’m convinced that the school emerging in the space behind us will become a national model,” said Beverly Donohue, New Visions’ vice president of policy and research. “It is a school as center of community in every sense of that phrase, and it will take advantage of everything that Washington Heights has to offer.”

When Lucille Bulger founded CLOTH in 1952, she “dreamt of doing something for children in such a way that would make an impact that would affect their lives forever. And not just them, but everyone they would come into contact with,” the organization’s board chair, J. Loren Russell, explained under a sunny sky at the groundbreaking ceremony. “And you are sitting on the spot where that’s actually going to take place.”

CLOTH, which began as a volunteer association, today serves as an advocacy, service and development organization that meets the needs of community youth. It runs CHAH in partnership with New Visions, New York Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia Medical Center.

The community center is being made possible with $52 million contributed by organizations including the New York City School Construction Authority, the New York State Department of Health, the Harlem Community Development Corporation, the Ambrose Monell Foundation, and the offices of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, City Councilman Robert Jackson, Assemblyman Herman D. Farrell Jr. and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

“Fifty-two million dollars for this project…will, during its lifetime, change the lives of 52 million families,” said a cheering Yvonne Stennett, executive director of CLOTH.

The Community Healthcare Network’s facility on the ground floor of the new building will provide the space to double the amount of patients the organization currently sees. Columbia University students and doctors from neighboring New York Presbyterian plan to mentor Community Health Academy of the Heights students, hoping to spur their interest in healthcare professions.

“Brick and mortar are important, but teaching and reaching out to the community really makes a difference,” said Dr. Robert Kelly, chief operating officer of New York Presbyterian.

CHAH, which opened in 2006, currently serves sixth through 10th graders with plans to expand through 12th grade. With students split in two buildings, CHAH has long needed a new home; however, the school’s challenges have done little to stifle Principal Sandra Maldonado’s faith in her students. “We are going to be ‘good to go,’” she said, referring to New Visions’ Good to Go college and career readiness campaign. “Our children are going to go to college, be prepared for college, and come back from college and work in our communities. That’s what this vision is about.”

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