The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

Byram Hills High School

Spiral Giving Teaches Local Children About Philanthropy

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What makes a philanthropist? Google the word and a bevy of images of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Oprah Winfrey pop-up making us believe that a philanthropist is well known and extremely rich and that to earn the label of philanthropist one must make a huge financial impact to society. Two Chappaqua women, Sue Fuirst and Julie Gerstein, set out to show how even small donations can have a big impact on our community, and while doing so dispel the idea that only the super rich can be philanthropists.

In 2015, Fuirst and Gerstein introduced Spiral Giving as an extracurricular program to the Greeley and Byram Hills high school communities. Their program teaches the fundamentals of philanthropy through a specially designed curriculum that focuses on the value of local impact.  “We discuss the needs of our neighbors and donate money to local charities through a grant-awarding process that the students themselves administer,” tells Gerstein. Spiral Giving participants learn to embrace the many needs in and around our community and realize that they have the power to make a meaningful, measurable impact. While doing so, they gain an understanding of the nonprofit and philanthropic landscape of Westchester County.

Fuirst and Gerstein feel that service projects and volunteerism help to teach charity and benevolence, but often worry that these are seen as one-off events–something that is checked off as done, not something that one does. Spiral Giving was formed to help teens identify the social issues that matter to them and to provide them with the tools necessary to make a difference in this increasing backdrop of need.

Girls (L to R): Sami Miller, Chloe Greenstein and Natalie Bass

Leadership Opportunities for Participants

Spiral Giving also provides communication and leadership opportunities and encourages stewardship around giving back. Orestes Rellos, a senior at Horace Greely High School, is a third-year participant and Peer Leader at Spiral Giving. Rellos comments, “Spiral Giving is all about personal growth and leadership development, while learning about the needs of various segments of our community and doing the greatest good by giving back. Giving back takes on even greater meaning and personal application as we, the students, contribute the money that funds Spiral Giving grants. We request, review, and approve grant applications. Spiral Giving is about us, students learning, understanding and then helping our community.”

Over the past four years Spiral Giving has awarded 22 micro-grants to Westchester-based charities and nonprofit agencies. The students recently awarded a grant to Lifting Up Westchester, a nonprofit that assists those struggling to overcome the challenges of poverty, homelessness, and hunger, and provides support that leads to greater self-sufficiency. Anahaita Kotval, Executive Director of Lifting Up Westchester commented, “I love that Spiral Giving engages its student members to critically think about what funding an issue really means and that they are empowering young people to help those in need.” Learning about the various agencies’ budgets has exposed the students to something that was previously unfamiliar.

Bailey Todtfeld, another Peer Leader, says, “Spiral Giving is unique in that it shows us the business side of nonprofits, a side that teenagers rarely see. Learning about nonprofits as a business has taught me the importance of responsible usage of funds and the challenge of sustainability within organizations.”

Inspiring the Next Generation of Philanthropists

At the heart of Spiral Giving is the issue of how parents and educators can work together to inspire the next generation to become engaged in issues surrounding them. Spiral Giving wants the next generation to become invested in their future and to feel empathy for their neighbors.  Fuirst believes, “This is often a challenge in communities such as ours, where basic needs are small and personal wants are big.  Places where the discrepancy of wealth between towns is often large and affluence can lead to misplaced values.”

Spiral Giving illustrates how individuals can become a philanthropist.  By giving teens the power to make an impact at this formative time in their lives, Spiral Giving has the ability to alter the perception of high school students and show how each person has the potential to change a life, strengthen a community, and make an impact on the world.

Spiral Giving’s grants are funded by Spiral Giving 501c3 through student fundraising, collective giving and private donations. Please visit www.spiralgiving.org to donate or learn more.

Byram Hills High School Senior Wins Prestigious Rising Scientist Award

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on the Use of Avatars for Helping Teens with Autism

Byram Hills High School senior Ellen Amico was honored by the Child Mind Institute and the City University of New York with a 2018 Rising Scientist Award.

Ellen was one of five high school students in the New York metro area to win the award, which is presented to students who “demonstrated extraordinary promise in research in the fields of child and adolescent mental health or pediatric neuroscience.”

Byram Hills High School senior Ellen Amico was one of five New York-area students to win a Rising Scientist Award.

“Each recipient of the Rising Scientist Award shows drive, commitment and vision for the future of mental health and neuroscience,” said Dr. Harold Koplewicz, president of the institute. “At such a young age, these impressive students already have the motivation and the promise to make strides towards changing the way we look at and treat mental health disorders.”

Ellen received the award and a $2,000 scholarship at the On the Shoulders of Giants Scientific Symposium this past October, the institute’s annual celebration of scientific achievement in child and adolescent psychiatry, psychology and developmental neuroscience.

Through the Byram Hills Dr. Robert Pavlica Authentic Science Research Program, Ellen conducted research aimed at improving the ability of people with autism spectrum disorder to recognize emotions. She tested whether computerized avatars are an effective teaching tool in emotion recognition.

“It felt good to be recognized for my work,” Ellen said. “Working with people with autism was a great experience, and I loved it.”

As part of her research, Ellen worked with a mentor at Vanderbilt University, studying teenagers with and without autism. The subjects viewed videos of human faces and computerized avatars.

“Avatars are used a lot in research and treatment for people with autism spectrum disorder, but no one so far has tested to see if avatars are similar enough to humans,” she said.

The research found that “they are similar to humans and they’re a useful tool in cosimulating real-world interactions for people with autism spectrum disorder,” she said. “A real-world interaction can be a source of anxiety, but replacing it on the computer in a virtual way, it’s less anxiety-inducing, and they can practice.”

“Hopefully other researchers can use my study to back up or support their use of avatars in treatments they may create for people with autism spectrum disorder,” she said.

In addition to recognizing the winners for their scientific contributions, the award also honors students for their leadership and extracurricular involvement. The award is given by the institute and the Advanced Science Research Center at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Byram Hills High School Inducts 22 Seniors into Cum Laude Society

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Inducted into the Cum Laude Society (L-R front row): Samantha Abbruzzese, Ellen Amico, Abigail Binder, Alan Chang, Zachary Cogan, Rahul Gupta, Tyler Harp, Isabelle Ilan, Elyse Kanner, Emma Lucchino, David McDaniels, (L-R back row): Sydney Nepo, Pietro Perez, Brent Perlman, Lindsey Perlman, Griffen Rakower, Jonah Schwam, Hayley Siegle, Dylan Starker, Nicole Tissot, Zachary Tuzzo and Spencer Weinhoff.

Twenty-two Byram Hills High School seniors were honored for their academic achievement as they were inducted into the Cum Laude Society during a ceremony this past October.

In congratulating the newest members of Cum Laude, Principal Christopher Walsh noted that the requirement for being inducted into the Byram Hills chapter is straightforward: It’s the students who comprise the top 10 percent of the class, based on their weighted GPAs.

“Fairly simple mathematics, but their paths are anything but simple,” he said. “Behind each GPA, there are stories of perseverance, struggle, growth and enlightenment, late-night studying, weekends spent with schoolwork, extra time with teachers after school and many other sacrifices that helped them get here.”

Seven Byram Hills Seniors Named National Merit Semifinalists

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Seven Byram Hills High School seniors have been named National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalists. Front Row (L-R): Nicole Tissot, Emma Lucchino and Elyse Kanner. Back Row (L-R): Alan Chang, Jonah Schwam, David McDaniels and Joshua Freedman.
PHOTO COURTESY OF BYRAM HILLS SCHOOL DISTRICT

The school year at Byram Hills High School started off with good news. Seven seniors at the high school were named semifinalists in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program.

The students were Alan Chang, Joshua Freedman, Elyse Kanner, Emma Lucchino, David McDaniels, Jonah Schwam and Nicole Tissot.

“We are very proud of these students for this accomplishment,” Principal Christopher Walsh said. “It’s always great to have our students highlighted on a national level, and to have seven of our students ranked nationally speaks to the tremendous quality of education and support that we have here at Byram Hills.”

The Byram Hills students are among approximately 16,000 semifinalists, academically talented students who represent less than 1 percent of all high school seniors in the country and include the highest-scoring entrants from each state, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation said in a release.

They were chosen from more than 1.6 million high school juniors in about 22,000 schools across the country who took the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

More than 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to earn finalist standing, and about half of those will win a scholarship and the Merit Scholar title. The students are competing for 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million, awards that will be announced in the spring and summer.

Byram Hills High School unveils Latest Interdisciplinary Art Mural with a Focus on Physics

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF LISA FLAM

At Byram Hills High School, unwelcoming hallways full of cold, bare cinder block wall have become the oversized canvas for colorful, creative and incredibly detailed paintings celebrating subjects like literature, history and chemistry. These eye-catching, collaborative pieces of hallway art have sparked conversation, and maybe even some inspiration as well.

The murals of Byram Hills, created every other springtime, are the product of visual arts teacher John Anthony Lopez, who works with other educators to transform curriculum into carefully crafted artwork. In total, a mural will take 18-months to complete, with students involved in its production the whole way. From the beginning, the jobs of research and image input fall upon students who are taking courses in the mural’s subject area. Later, the mural is finished off with a four week period of painting by Mr. Lopez’s advanced drawing and painting class.

Creating Enduring Artwork

“The goal is, first of all, to create a lasting testament to the students and the curriculum, but also to give students an experience in creating public art,” Mr. Lopez said. “It’s something they can come back to in years, and even decades to come.”

Each mural features an abundance of historical figures, sites and works of art or literature that relate to the curriculum. The murals are painted in the proximity of the classrooms where the subject is taught, sometimes bringing several stretches of cinder block to life.

“They’re an expression of the importance that our faculty sees in their curriculum, and in different ways of expressing it,” Mr. Lopez said. “And it shows a love of the material.”

Music Mural Kicked Off Project

The first mural came about in 2008 when Aaron Lockwood and Marna Weiss of the Music Department worked with Mr. Lopez to make the band and orchestra space feel less industrial in a way that incorporated the curriculum. The result was the two-part band and orchestra mural that features famous artists from Duke Ellington to Mozart.

Mr. Lockwood, the only teacher whose mural is inside a classroom, still refers to it a decade after its creation.

“I find it especially inspiring when I can point to a face on the mural, and make a connection to the composer and/or the style of music being played in class,” he said. “Recently, to generate a conversation about the Mozart piece that we were learning in class, I pointed to the wall and said, ‘Mozart is watching. If he were to comment on your articulation, what would he say?’”

After this success, murals were produced for World Languages, Chemistry, World History, and Literature in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 respectively.

Einstein Serves as Inspiration for Latest Mural

This spring, the sixth and most ambitious mural to date, was created. It’s called “The Evolution of Physics,” named after the title of Albert Einstein’s famous book.  The mural covers two 30-foot walls that face each other, and features over 30 noted physicists from across history.

For the first time, this mural features 3D elements such as a solar system and golden spheres traveling downhill to demonstrate acceleration. In an interactive twist, QR codes have been included throughout the work of art, which can be scanned for more information (this project is not yet completed; biographies of the physicists that can be viewed once the QR code is scanned are being worked on by current physics students).

Hidden in this mural are meanings and metaphors left for visitors to uncover. Why is Johannes Kepler dropping the apple onto Isaac Newton’s head? Why is Einstein looking toward Newton across the hall? In this mural, placement of the figures is all relative, stimulating realizations and reinforcing material learned in the classroom.

“It’s that surprise factor,” said physics teacher Paul Beeken, who spearheaded the mural with Mr. Lopez. “We’re hoping this will be the hook to keep students interested. By design, this wall involves dozens of different themes all running concurrently. That’s the whole point. We want them to come back to the wall four and five times, and each time see something different. It’s complicated on purpose.”

Dr. Beeken, whose excitement for this project is driven by his passion for physics, hopes the mural will generate student interest in the sciences.

“I’m not trying to turn them into scientists per se, but I do want them to appreciate its importance in their lives,” he said. “I’m shameless in trying to get kids hooked on the idea of learning how science serves them and the framework for understanding our world.”

How successful the mural will be at generating interest in the sciences has yet to be seen, but one thing is for certain, it draws plenty of attention.   

“The walls were really bland before,” said Danielle Cronin, a rising senior at Byram Hills High School who assisted with the painting of the physics mural. “I think the mural really makes people come to the physics hallway to figure out what the mural is about.”