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Two Greeley Seniors Win Prestigious Gold Congressional Awards

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Greeley senior Fiona Dubrosa
In addition to commencement activities and prom, two graduating Greeley seniors Fiona Dubrosa and Will Gregson will also make a trip to Washington DC this coming June to win the prestigious Gold Medal Congressional Award.

The non-partisan, voluntary award created in 1979 is Congress’ highest honor for young Americans. Currently there are more than 50,000 young people across the United States working to obtain Congressional awards. This year, only seven students from across New York State earned the coveted Gold Medal.

In order to obtain the Gold Medal, both Dubrosa and Gregson had to complete several hundred hours in four distinct program areas: 1) voluntary service 2) personal development 3) physical fitness and 4) exploration/expedition.

Cumulatively, each recipient had to complete 800 hours for the first three program components and spend a minimum of five days/four nights on an expedition or exploratory trip. Both Gregson and Dubrosa have participated in the program since they were 13 and have won Congressional certificates and medals in past years but the Gold Medal program is the most time-consuming and rigorous.

Rep. Nita Lowey with Greeley senior Will Gregson
Dubrosa has spent numerous hours volunteering for Manhattan-based Legal Momentum, an organization that is dedicated to improving the lives of women through law and policy. She also has helped out various local organizations including the Chappaqua Library, the Westchester Food Bank, Greeley’s Relay for Life program and has tutored students at Mount Kisco elementary school.

Gregson initially began volunteering at Hawthorne Cedar Knolls Goldsmith Center, a residential treatment center for children ages 8-18 as part of a Bar Mitzvah project through UJA-Federation with his friends. A former junior varsity and varsity Greeley basketball player, he would shoot hoops with the children there and help celebrate their birthdays.

“We were nervous at first because these kids came from very rough backgrounds. The children were there because their parents couldn’t take care of them usually because of drug abuse. We thought it was important for these kids to trust people again and build a sense of community for them,” said Gregson, who worked with these children for many years and developed personal relationships with them. He now acts as a speaker on behalf of the program to motivate other Westchester teens to become involved with the center.

In terms of the personal development component for the award, Dubrosa and Gregson took very different paths to complete the required hours.  Dubrosa focused on her leadership and acting skills. She participated in the Hugh O’Brien Youth (HOBY) Leadership program and was thrilled to meet other teenagers from as far away as Turkey and France at the HOBY World Congress who “all have a desire to improve the world.”

A budding actress, Dubrosa took drama classes at the renowned Lee Strasberg Institute, the Neighborhood Playhouse and A Class Act, all in Manhattan. Gregson took a different approach to personal development by improving his basketball skills and starting his own business called Home Alone Management Services, LLC which provides home management support when people are away from home. As the consummate entrepreneur, he also offers basketball training to local children as a second business.

Dubrosa, who trains with the O’Sullivan School for Irish Dancing in Brewster, enjoyed completing the physical fitness component. She regularly competes in regional, national and world championships for Irish dancing.

Both Dubrosa and Gregson also completed difficult expeditions to achieve their hours in this area. Dubrosa participated in a one week Outward Bound kayaking trip on the Chesapeake Bay where she averaged 10-15 miles of kayaking per day. Gregson chose to go on a camping trip with his friends from Greeley to Bryce Canyon in Utah. He found the trip fun but especially challenging when his tent became sopping wet during a terrible storm. He had to re-pitch his tent with his friends at 3 a.m., but ultimately decided that it was “a really good bonding experience because you learn how to deal with each other in stressful situations.”

Both students credit their parents as strong mentors. Dubrosa also has an older sister, Maddie, who won the Gold Congressional Award previously. Dubrosa commented that several Greeley teachers have been instrumental in motivating her including Mr. Wong (mathematics), Mrs. Mosca (social studies) and Ms. Towle (biology).

Dubrosa and Gregson are looking forward to visiting the nation’s capital and meeting other Congressional gold medalists. “By incorporating all four aspects of the Congressional award into your life, you become a better person out of it,” summed up Gregson. Dubrosa will attend Carnegie Mellon University and Gregson will start a dual-degree program at Syracuse University this fall.

Greeley Theater Company: Growing a New Generation of Thespians and Fans

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The Horace Greeley Theater Company under the direction of Mr. Jonathan Gellert has had an incredible 2016-2017 season and shows no signs of slowing down. The musical Into the Woods kicked off the season this fall and this past month the students performed the play, The Laramie Project. The senior musical Grease performed the last week in March had a record breaking 200+ seniors participating in the show. In total, the theater program will put on a total of six productions for the school year!

Gellert admits that it is “an ambitious high school program and I see no reason of changing that.” In the spring of 2018, he hopes to include a second musical–a children’s show geared to a younger audience to bring in the community and also gives students the opportunity to participate more.

“We want kids in the community to be really excited about Greeley theater,” said Gellert. He also hopes to offer some plays by Shakespeare and more mentoring to students who show promise as directors next season.

The Laramie Project, a play which addresses the brutal murder of openly gay teenager Matthew Shepard in the small town of Laramie, Wyoming, sparked national debate in the late 1990s. Gellert chose the show because it could “maximize student potential and growth. It provides many opportunities for student exploration of character and place. It is about the celebration of what makes us all human and what happens when an event causes us to reflect as a community, and personally of who we are and what we are. This is the very nature of all drama.”

The performance was sold-out and extremely well received by the audience. Grace Bennett, Publisher and Editor of the Inside Press, who attended, stated: “Bravo to the entire cast! Through powerful, passionate performances, anyone watching could see that the kids understood so many nuances of human behavior and were deeply empathetic to the heart wrenching subject matter.”

Violet Gautreau, a junior who played several roles in The Laramie Project enjoyed working with a smaller cast because it “allowed us to really forge bonds and make deeper emotional connections with each other, which came through onstage. I’ve never had such an emotional experience onstage before. It was incredibly rewarding to be in such an important show about human rights.”

Gellert’s goal of the theater program is to “offer a variety of productions and classes that serve all kids who want to explore and express themselves in theatre work during their times here at Greeley.

That includes both students who want to get on stage for the first time and feel more comfortable doing so, along with those who strongly desire an additional four years of pre-college or career training so that they can be competitive and continue to grow as they pursue the theater.”

Gellert also takes pride in offering stagecraft classes and opportunities for students who wish to work in set design and building. Jake O’Donovan, a junior who has worked on set design for several shows enjoys the fact that “Mr. Gellert gives myself and the crew a lot of independence on how we organize ourselves and work.”

The senior musical Grease funded by the Chappaqua PTA was directed by a former student of Gellert’s, Lee Kasper, who most recently served as an associate director for the Broadway revival of You Can’t Take it with You.The senior musical has been a yearly tradition at Greeley and proceeds from the show benefit the Horace Greeley Scholarship Fund.

Ilene Benjamin, an audience member at Grease, commented on Chappaqua Moms that “we do not have a senior in it, but we do have a strong sense of community spirit to keep the arts going in our schools. These students, all talented in their own right, worked very hard and the audience gave back the love with loud cheering and a standing ovation… Go ahead, the world is really your stage!”

A Journey of Faith and Hope

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Lavdie Maqedonci-Krasniq with her husband Besian Krasniqi
PHOTO BY KELLY LEONARD

Fourteen-year-old Lavdie Maqedonci-Krasniqi and her parents were on the second plane of refugees departing Kosovo for a new life away from war and terror. “We got to JFK at four o’clock in the morning,” Maqedonci-Krasniqi, 32, said in a soft voice, remembering her first glimpse of the United States. “It’s hard to say because I never had to speak it. As a kid, there’s a part of it that you put away. This (talking about it) is a memory lane I haven’t walked.”

Her experiences remained alive within her until her involvement with the Chappaqua Rotary prompted a speaking engagement. “A group of people came to hear my story!” Club president Dave Shields said Maqedonci-Krasniqi “became active, bringing her kids to Community Day, and is now on the board.”

Born in Prishtina, capital of Kosovo, in 1985–Yugoslavia started to break down–Maqedonci-Krasniqi’s early teenage years were fraught with worry. The regime wanted to assimilate as a nation, “and wanted us to lose our identity, language and traditions. From 1990 to 1997, we were oppressed: the economy crashed, and bank accounts were frozen. Universities, schools and hospitals were closed or controlled by Serbian military.”

Those who needed medical assistance were forced to bribe doctors with money or seek help at a private family Albanian doctor. “When I was about 10 or 11, I injured my leg while playing and needed stitches,” she said. “It was getting late, and at that time we were not allowed to be outside our homes after 6 p.m. because of the imposed State of Emergency.”

Unable to take her to a hospital, Maqedonci-Krasniqi’s father brought her to a family/friend doctor, who stitched her leg without anesthesia at his home. “I remember my mom holding me tightly while I was biting on a pillow from the pain,” she said. Albanian families in Kosovo converted their homes to schools; teachers went from house to house with different subject studies. Her grandfather’s house became a daily classroom for 35 Albanian children from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. On March 5, 1998, the small town of Prekaz was attacked, an attempt to eliminate Kosovo Liberation Army leader Adem Jashari and his brother Hamëz Jashari.

After that day Kosovo was never the same, the war had fully began, the Serbian military was all over our country,” Maqedonci-Krasniqi said. “By March 18, 1999, we knew NATO was starting to bomb,” she said,” and by April 1, 1999, they forced us out of our homes.”

Nearly one week later on March 24, President Bill Clinton announced U.S. armed forces were joining NATO allies in airstrikes against Serbians. “I owe my life, and my family owes our freedom, to President Clinton,” she said, eyes watering at horrific memories not known to teenagers. “It was about five o’clock in the morning when we reached there, and they asked us to walk in the middle of the train tracks–kids and adults and older people–because if you stepped out of the train tracks there were active mines,” she said.

After hours of walking came to a camp–“a strip of land next to Macedonia”–filled with people from her Kosovo. “You saw people dying, older people and kids with colds, Maqedonci-Krasniqi said, and while UNICEF and the RED CROSS arrived a few days later, “little kids and older people were not handling the cold well, some didn’t even make it.”

Those who were lucky and strong caught the pieces of bread thrown to the estimated 150,000 refugees struggling to survive more than two months at the camp; people not as fortunate waited until the next round.

Maqedonci-Krasniqi’s parents chose the United States because her mother had a sister living in Elmhurst (Queens). She began high school, took ESL classes, and got an afternoon job at Burger King (where) at age 15 to help her parents and send money to Kosovo to rebuild their home.

“It was hard,” she said quietly. “My dad didn’t want to leave our house. He told us, ‘We decided to live in U.S. even after the war ended. Let’s make sure we do not regret it, let’s make sure you finish college and work hard so when you look back, I hope you can say, Dad thank you for deciding to stay.’”

Sixteen years later, the college graduate and mother of two sons (five and seven) is humble and grateful and a successful mortgage officer living in Mt. Kisco. “It is very meaningful, and we are honored that Lavdie is the most recent member of the Chappaqua Rotary Club, and of Rotary International,” Program Director Sandy Bueti said. Maqedonci-Krasniqi presented Horace Greeley High School senior Ellie Loigman with the Student Community Service Award at the Rotary’s Annual Charter Night Celebration and Dinner on March 4.

“We bought our first home, and we still continue to work hard and try to create the best possible life for our children,” she said. “We learned to never lose hope and as long as we have the freedom to follow our dreams, everything else is possible.” Still, Maqedonci-Krasniqi admitted, “there’s a part you don’t think about, yet when May 26 comes, I know I got on a plane to come to this country.”

“I am a refugee, and I am an immigrant,” she emphasized. “The only thing given to me was the freedom to come to this country. My grandmother used to say, ‘Hard work and a good heart.’ Lavdie is also a Muslim, another reason she felt compelled to share her story. “Don’t look at people a certain way,” she advised. “You may think you know them, and you don’t.”

A Poem for My Mother

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By Hannah Fenlon

Now,
I carry my mother,
who carried me.

I carry tradition,
filial piety.
I am the seaweed from the wet sand of Weihai
Picked and dried by hand
your aunt’s labor.
I am those wet strands
uniting the branches
of past, present,
and future.

I am the threads
weaving through your father’s
sick blood,
stitching together an ever growing quilt.
I stretch from his heart
to his brain
Sending strength,
where medicine had failed.

Was it hard to let go
of what connected us for those nine months;
of what connected your stories with mine;
merging your past with my future?

Now,
I only know what I’ve been told.

I’ll never know a summer night spent
folding soft dough over mounds of meat,
floured hands and wistful hearts,
a soft familiar voice
floating over the radio.

I’ll never know mornings on the subway,
then bus
riding to Stuyvesant,
breakfast sandwich pressed into your hand by your mother
her wish wrapped in tinfoil
that you return safely from school.

I’ll never know afternoons
spent by your father’s hospital bed
watching his chest rise
and fall
waiting for words,
for movement.

Your father who left before
his filial duty was done–
The white haired should never bury
their children.

Now,
we float with the wind
in opposite directions.
I am rushing forward,
while you long to go back,
while you long for more time.

Now,
I float with the wind
that connects stitches with seaweed,
that connects soy sauce and soda bread,
that connects me to you.

Hannah Fenlon is a junior at Horace Greeley High School. This poem was awarded a prize in the 2016 Chappaqua Library Young Writers Contest.

 

Hannah Fenlon

First LEGO League Event in Chappaqua Inspires Tomorrow’s Innovators

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Story and Photos by Stacey Pfeffer

The Robert E. Bell Middle School was buzzing with young scientists and computer coders from throughout the county tinkering with their Lego robots and presenting their science experiments before a judging panel. The elementary and middle school students were participating in an international competition called the First Lego League (FLL), which took place for the first time here in Chappaqua in late January.

The event here was one of the preliminary events for FLL and consisted of both junior FLL teams (with participants ranging in age from 6-9 years old) and FLL teams with children ranging in age from 9-14 years old. There are 32,000 FLL teams competing in 88 countries in more than 1,400 events.

John Houston, Co-Director of the Hudson Valley FLL based in Poughkeepsie, estimates that there are about 1,000 students from throughout the Hudson Valley participating in FLL events this year.

At the Bell event, there were 12 FLL teams vying for the championship with towns such as Ossining, Briarcliff Manor, Larchmont and Scarsdale represented along with several teams from Chappaqua.

FLL teams are judged by a panel and participate in the event by programming an autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field (known as the robot game) and developing a solution to a problem they have identified (called the project), all guided by FLL core values such as teamwork, friendly competition and finding solutions. All FLL teams are mentored by a coach (usually a parent) but the robot and project components are done exclusively by the children.

Team Supernova from Chappaqua gets ready to present their model

Animal Allies: The FLL Theme This Year

This year’s FLL theme for the project component was called Animal Allies, which explored how humans and animals can interact better. Team Gryffindor, a team with participants from Chappaqua and Ardsley chose “ How do we reduce avian fatalities due to human obstacles?” as their project.

The middle school students were pleased to speak with leading experts in the field such as ornithologists, bird enthusiasts and Audubon Society representatives.

The team eventually won the robotic design component and placed second overall this year, advancing to the regional semi-final tournament in Poughkeepsie this February. The team also participated last year in FLL and advanced to the world competition.

“I think that curiosity, enthusiasm and team spirit are the key attributes that differentiate Team Gryffindor. They have come together as a team, complement each others skills and they learn from each other. Curiosity leads them to dig deeper into problems, helping them come out with innovative solutions,’ said Ardsley-based co-coach and parent Rajat Goel. His daughter, Khushi loved being in FLL because “we [Team Gryffindor] get to work together, learn many different life skills, such as programming, research and presentation. All this is done while having fun. This also gives us an opportunity to look at some of the world’s biggest problems and try to solve them.”

There were also several junior teams who participated in the event. Augie DeRose, a third grader at Roaring Brook Elementary School with his team the Chappaqua Minecrafters worked on a project called Stop the Mite. Augie said he enjoyed building the Lego model and working with his team every week led by co-coaches and Chappaqua parents, Rosemary Chi and Gene DeRose. Brenda Kavner DeRose, Augie’s mother commented that “the big lesson was working as a group, incorporating everyone’s ideas and learning how to present it.”

“Kids in the FLL program, do well because they are very motivated, and want to make a difference in the world. For most, it is the first time that they work on a long-term project where they can have an impact.

The robotic part of the competition is also a popular draw. FLL also places a considerable emphasis on collaborative skills, like gracious professionalism, and cooperation/competition, which are some of the most important work skills kids may have,” noted the event’s organizer Alexandre Eichenberger, a Chappaqua father, IBM employee and past FLL team coach and judge.

Following the Robotic design competition at FLL–Team Gryffindor showcases their experiment

Town & PTA Lend Support for FLL Event

Eichenberger noted that the FLL event was a collaborative effort with help from the PTA and the PTA STEM committee, in particular.

The Chappaqua School District also supported the event in terms of logistical help and encouraging students to participate in the competition. Joshua Block, the District’s Director of Mathematics, was instrumental in the success of the event and liaising with the District. Town Supervisor Robert Greenstein and Eric Byrne, the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction, both spoke at the event.

Block, who served as a judge at the event noted that, “Besides the valuable skills the students learn from FLL, I admire how persistent they were to overcome challenging obstacles in solving the problems, and produce working robots. That is probably the most important thing any kid can learn, and will help them succeed not only in school, but their careers.”

Currently the district is in the middle of developing K-12 STEAM skills and curriculum and looking to involve the entire school community in their efforts. “The PTA STEM committee has been a huge help in this, especially with their STEM fest that they are hosting on April 29th,”added Block.

“If you have a chance to attend a FLL competition, you will see numerous examples of teams helping each other, from lending each other missing parts, giving each other tips on how to build or program better robots, and generally just helping out.

The goal of FLL is to make a sporting event for children engaged in STEM- related activities and make it fun and encouraging,” said Eichenberger. For more information about FLL, please visit www.firstlegoleague.org.

Stacey Pfeffer lives in Chappaqua with her three children and husband. A frequent Inside Press contributor, her articles have appeared in NY Family Magazine, Westchester Family Magazine, Westchester Parent, and Kveller.com.