AVID Reaches Higher at UNC Celebration

A new tradition for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) students was born on April 24, in a tradition-steeped room of the Morehead Foundation on the UNC campus. The graduating seniors joined other AVID students, their teachers, Director of Equity Leadership and AVID, Dr. Sheldon Lanier and Superintendent Dr. Pam Baldwin as they formally declared their college intentions by signing their names to a document. The wood paneled walls and glittering chandeliers set the stage for a memorable occasion, but the formal event was followed by a Chick-Fil-A lunch in the adjoining sun room, with plenty of relaxed smiles all around.
   
“College signing day was an awesome event. As a senior, I really enjoyed the recognition of my accomplishments,” said Jimias Best, East Chapel Hill High senior.
   
The idea for the campus Commitment Day celebration was developed by a freshman Morehead-Cain Scholar, Mina Yakubu, who partnered with Missy Julian Fox, Director of First Look at UNC, to create a graduation ceremony that aligned with the national Reach Higher Initiative. In 2014, Michelle Obama held her first College Signing Day rally in Texas with 2,000 graduating high school students, as she announced the creation of Reach Higher. In four years, it has become a nationwide movement with participating schools in all fifty states.
     
Yakubu and Fox share similar visions and goals for expanding college access to underrepresented populations in this community. “Mina asked me to be the advisor and I happily agreed,” said Fox. “With my work and passion for getting kids to pursue a college degree, AVID is the perfect match. It is essential for institutions of higher education to play their role and create a pipeline to our public schools.”
       
Yakubu is one of 17 students serving on the advisory board of Obama’s Better Make Room/Reach Higher. Last year those students were invited to the White House to receive the First Lady’s message first hand: Go back to your schools and figure out how to get more of your peers thinking about college.
     
Yakubu said, “I planned this event because I want to further the mission of the organization to create a college-going, college-persisting culture in the community. In our first-year, I wanted to continue planning Commitment Day/College Signing Day events in Chapel Hill. I contacted Missy after learning about First Look. We met with Dr. Lanier to coordinate for the event. I am delighted with the outcome of months of planning, emailing for donations and finalizing details.”
     
“I had a wonderful time and I think it should continue to happen every year,” said Ingri Cruz Martinez from East. “One thing that I did love the most was the motivational videos they showed and that we were able to ask the college students questions about college.”
   
The AVID students heard from a panel of Yakubu and three other UNC freshmen and sophomores, all students of color, who spoke to the challenges of making their voices heard in predominantly-white institutions. Chris Suggs, co-chair of the Black Student Movement’s first year council, said that his college choice came down to UNC and Howard University. “I found it’s important to stay true to yourself and get involved on campus. Right away.” He said it’s helpful to find a team, an organization on campus, as soon as students make their college choices. “Follow their social media, get to know the members.” He said that UNC students reached out to him before he even arrived in Chapel Hill, asking how they could help him settle in.
   
Marcella Pansini, another Morehead-Cain freshman, described how much she worried about campus social life, having come from a school where “I grew up with the same 100 people.” She said she wasn’t prepared for how big the UNC campus is, but she soon joined the Multicultural Affairs and Diversity Outreach Board, and signed on to be a First Look tour guide, providing campus experiences for middle school students.
   
All of the panelists urged the AVID students to pay attention to self-care during that crucial first year in college - and to seek out mentors early, both on faculty and older students. “Use your professor’s office hours,” was a message repeated by several.
   
Superintendent Baldwin congratulated the graduates, and Dr. Lanier spoke briefly to the seniors, saying, “AVID Scholars, congratulations to all of you. I’ve seen you grow since I came to the district when you were in 9th grade.”
     
“The AVID college signing day was a great experience for me,” said Tara Thompson of East. “Being a Junior and watching that really inspired me because I know next next year I'm going to be in that same seat, signing to the college that I'll be at in the prime years of my life. I really enjoyed being able to see other seniors in AVID programs in surrounding schools as well, and see just how important and helpful AVID can be for other students.”
   
The underclassmen spoke later about the value of attending the event. “I learned a lot from the panel,” said one student. “They explained how we shouldn’t procrastinate - that college is not a joke - you just keep your head up.”
   
Dr. Lanier noted later, “I am extremely proud of their accomplishments and the young adults they have grown to become. They are a true testament to the power of AVID.”

Click here to view Michelle Obama’s message for 2018 College Signing Day.

https://www.bettermakeroom.org/our-story/

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Tiffany Cheshire - Assistant Principal of the Year

Tiffany Cheshire
Phillips Middle School

Congratulations to Tiffany Cheshire of Phillips Middle School, the 2018-19 Assistant Principal of the Year! 

Cheshire has been the assistant principal at Phillips since August 2017. She has made a quick and powerful impact. 

"I am honored to work alongside Tiffany Cheshire every day," said Phillips Middle School Principal Drew Ware. "She embodies educational leadership with her creativity, professionalism and the way she interacts with students. She helps make Phillips a great school."

      

Before joining the team at Phillips, Cheshire served as assistant principal at McDougle Elementary School for four years. She arrived in the district in April 2013 from Alamance-Burlington Schools, and spent the 2010-11 year as principal intern at Seawell Elementary. She began her career as a Spanish teacher in Orange County Schools. 

      

After receiving her B.S. in Spanish Education at Appalachian State, Cheshire earned her Masters in School Administration from UNC-Chapel Hill.

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ESL Teacher Will Visit China as Fund for Teachers Fellow

Anne Tomalin, an ESL teacher at Chapel Hill High School, will be spending nearly two weeks in China this June, as a Fund for Teachers Fellow. The $5,000 grant covers the cost of a UNC World View Global Study program called “China: Traditions, Trends and Transformations,” which will allow Tomalin to learn about the country’s educational practices, as well as its culture and language. She hopes to “spark ideas” for ways to better support her Asian refugee students at Chapel Hill High. Although she has taught English language learners for 21 years in our district, she said that with the changing demographics in her classroom, she has felt called to adapt “not only how I teach but what I teach.”
     

Anne Tomalin

The scores on state end-of-course exams have been consistently low for the English learner (EL) students at the high school level, with only 7% scoring proficient in English II at Chapel Hill High last year. The low performance is a complex problem that requires a multi-faceted approach, said Tomalin. “I believe one missing piece of the puzzle is that we don’t have sufficient knowledge of their cultural and educational background, and how that background influences the way they learn. Without this knowledge, we aren’t able to provide them with culturally responsive instruction.”
   
“By observing a completely different educational setting, I hope to cultivate the ability to think outside of the box about how best to serve the needs of our district's EL students," she added.
     
The 2018 Fund for Teachers awards, $2.1 million total, will provide self-designed experiences for 546 educators in the U.S. One of the distinctive aspects of these grants is that they must embrace initiatives to address specific achievement gaps with students and/or with teachers themselves. Salma Zaky, Program Officer for Fund for Teachers, wrote in an email to Tomalin, “From thousands of applications from across the country, your proposal stood out as one that will bring relevant knowledge and skills back to your students.”
     
In her proposal, Tomalin noted that the number of Asian refugees in the district has demanded new approaches to teaching English, since many have arrived with weak academic skills due to interrupted schooling in the refugee camps, in addition to having very little English proficiency. In China, she hopes to gain insights into ways that our educational practices might be a mismatch for some Asian students’ learning styles.
     
Tomalin knew about the UNC organization, World View Global Study, and she chose to apply for the grant in order to cover the costs of the UNC trip to China. Included in the experience is a two-day Professional Development seminar prior to traveling abroad, twelve days of travel in China, as well as a follow-up workshop. The pre- and post- workshops are designed to help participants integrate what they’ve learned during their travels when they return to the classroom.
   
“During the trip I'll blog about my observations and experiences. I'll encourage my students to follow me while I do it, because I think it'll be meaningful for them to see a teacher experience a bit of what they contend with every day - that is, being in an alien environment with limited ability to communicate.”
   
Follow Tomalin on her learning adventure in June!    #FFTFellow

https://travel4learningblog.wordpress.com/

Fund for Teachers strengthens instruction by investing in outstanding teachers' self-determined professional growth and development in order to support student success, enrich their own practice, and strengthen their schools and communities.

http://www.fundforteachers.org/

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Smith and Phillips Middle Schools Qualify for MathCounts State Finals

On Friday, February 16, the Smith Middle School MathCounts Team competed against 20 other schools and 160 students in the Orange-Durham Chapter MathCounts Competition. The event was held at the Carolina Student Union and hosted by the UNC Department of Mathematics.

Smith won the overall competition, taking eight of the top 10 spots. All 10 Smith students finished in the top 18. Ben Li was named the individual champion. The team qualified for the MathCounts State Finals held in one month at the NC School of Science and Math.

Phillips Middle School came in second place as a team, and Jeffrey Zhu of Phillips came in second place individually. The Phillips team also qualified for the State Finals.

Please join us congratulating the following students:

(Perfect score is 46)

Ben Li - 45 
Jeffrey Zhu - 44
Leo DeJong - 43
Michael Dai - 43
Bo Chi - 42
Kevin Ji - 40
Amanda Zhang - 39
Sophia Benjamin - 39
Thomas Shundi - 38
Tyler Yang - 38
Ben Knight - 37
Kevin Li - 37
Rama Varanasi - 36
Jiwon Kim - 35
Luke Chen - 35
Tyler Tan - 34 

The Smith team is coached by Boyd Blackburn and Rachel Haber. The Phillips team is coached by Angela Short. 

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Glenwood Hosts African-American Read-In

History Month by hosting a Read-In with guest readers, who all shared storybooks, poems and biographies of and by African-Americans. Glenwood’s event took place February 8th and 9th in classrooms and the media center. Nearly every student, K-5th, experienced the gifts offered by more than two dozen readers who included Superintendent Dr. Pam Baldwin, CHCCS district staff members, School Board members, UNC athletes and a variety of Orange County commissioners and others.

"I always enjoy my time reading with our students," said Board Member James Barrett. "Their natural curiosity and passion for learning is inspiring." Board Vice-Chair Margaret Samuels and Board Member Amy Fowler also took their turns in the reader’s seat.

The Orange County Board of Commissioners was also well represented in the slate of readers. Chair Mark Dorosin shared a quote that really inspired the 5th graders: "The struggle is the victory." That simple statement prompted much circle discussion among the 5th grade students. They shared their own struggles and talked about how working through struggles is a victory in itself.

Commissioner Renee Price first spoke about her educational background, as well as her professional journey. She mentioned that, as a graduate student, she had spent most of a weekend accompanying Rosa Parks to events. Students were fascinated by that revelation, and they had plenty of questions for Price. She then read a number of Langston Hughes poems to 4th grade students, and she sought their responses and interpretations.

“The readers inspired students to learn more about African-American history, leaders, and authors, as well as inspiring them to continue working hard in their educational paths,” said Katherine Whittington, Glenwood, Principal Intern and co-organizer of the read-in.

A small group of 5th grade female students enjoyed a Lunch-and-Listen when their guest readers appeared in the classroom. JoJo Jones, a UNC freshman basketball player, and Ru Mucherera, a soccer player, took turns reading, asking the girls questions and sharing their own thoughts about education, stories, and sports. 

Jones read Despite the Height, a book by former UNC star point guard, Ivory Latta; the picture book captures the WNBA player’s experience learning to play basketball against her older, bigger brothers. Both women encouraged the girls to remember how important it is to focus on academics, even when sports are a primary passion. “Do the best you can in school,” Jones said. “Just because you play the sport well doesn’t mean you automatically get to go to any school you want.” She went on to say that she’d like to play professional ball, but not for long; she hopes to return to law school and become a sports lawyer. Jones provided an off-the-cuff, brief overview of Title IX, and she urged them to think about why it matters in so many areas of women’s lives.

“Discussions about the books, authors, and lives of those that they read about continued to be discussed throughout the week,” Whittington said. “We loved seeing our young scholars interact with community volunteers who inspire them and challenge them.”

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District High School Students Excel in Learning Through Languages Symposium

The pairing of UNC and Duke in conversation often brings to mind the sports rivalry, but the frequency with which the universities collaborate in academic and research initiatives deserves more of a spotlight. A group of CHCCS high school students and teachers benefited from one of those collaborations recently by participating in the Learning through Languages Symposium. Produced by the Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at UNC and Duke, the event took place on December 13 at the FedEx Global building on the UNC campus.

    

Now in its third year, the Symposium seeks to challenge advanced language students with a competition that demands excellence in both written and oral research skills. Deliver an off the cuff analysis on the impact of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, speaking only in French? No problem for these students. Or answer a range of questions from judges in Japanese about the Western influences on current Israeli politics? Piece of cake. This is what these students prepared for in teams of two or three, and the rigorous expectations seemed to delight them all.

    

Of the 34 teams competing from across the state, 11 were from CHCCS, sponsored by seven world languages teachers of Spanish, French, German and Japanese. Of the 18 prizes awarded this year, eight went to our teams. East Chapel Hill High student Makenna Meyer said, “The symposium helped me improve my Spanish in so many different ways. Through our research, I learned words that wouldn't ordinarily be on a vocabulary list. Through the formal paper, I was able to practice my writing. Through the oral presentation and question/answer period, I was able to practice my speaking and listening skills. However, the symposium experience is very valuable to me not only because it improved my Spanish, but I was also able to learn about other cultures and languages.” Meyer’s team, sponsored by Spanish teacher Justin Seifts, tied for two honorable mention awards for their research on the Rohingya crisis.

Spanish IV students at Carrboro High, Julia Connor and Dani Kaufman-Sedano, won an honorable mention in Best Scholarship for their project, also on the Rohingya crisis. Their teacher, Amy Olsen said, “We're extremely proud of them at Carrboro for representing the district's stellar World Language program, and also for winning an award the first time their school was selected for competition in the Symposium!”

    

The guidelines for the competition required students to use APA style instead of the more familiar MLA. Each project had three components: the written paper, the oral presentation, and the project visual. Students chose their topics from one of four strands: Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, Europe or Middle East and North Africa. The contest design promotes research methodology, technology literacy, and critical thinking, and it addresses the Department of Public Instruction’s Essential Standards for the study of World Languages.

    

Judges for the competition were professors or graduate students from UNC and Duke. One of the judges for the French presentations was Dr. Deb Reisinger from the Practice of Romance Studies at Duke; she also happens to be a CHCCS parent. “I work closely with AP curriculum and development, and so I was eager to meet the students who were taking AP courses in World Languages. What an impressive group! Our AP French students were simply outstanding. Not only had they produced written analyses that reflected critical thinking and strong research skills, but they were able to talk about their research on refugees and migration with me in French. What stood out most was that these students were clearly passionate about learning, and able to articulate the importance of learning about the world from multiple perspectives. I am thrilled that my child will have the opportunity to participate in CHCCS' excellent AP program.”

    

One of those French students from Chapel Hill High, Daniel Zaretsky, was on the team that won Best Use of Written and Oral Language (across all languages). He said, “The Research Symposium was definitely a very enriching and important experience as a language learner. Of course, we couldn't have done it without Mme. (Christen) Campbell. The processes of researching and writing the paper, and preparing the presentation, were definitely eye-opening, and I encountered many interesting and shocking facts while exploring the details of the refugee crisis in the Middle East and its effects on Lebanon.”

     

Congratulations to all of the award winning teams from CHCCS, as well as all the participants who put so much effort into their scholarship and presentations!

          

Learn more about the Symposium at http://areastudies.unc.edu/ltl/

Below are the award winners:                        

Best Overall Research Project on Contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean:

• Julia Cummer, Meenakshi Kaundinya and Daniela Martínez Leal of East Chapel Hill High School, teacher Valerie Huet, for “L’Ouragan Maria Révèle La Négligence Envers Porto Rico” (“Hurricane Maria Reveals Negligence towards Puerto Rico”)

Best Use of Written and Oral Language:

• Alec Caruana, Robin Huang, and Daniel Zaretsky of Chapel Hill High School, teacher Christen Campbell, for “Une investigation de la présence des réfugiés syriens au Liban” (“An Investigation of the Presence of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon”)

Honorable Mention of Best Use of Written and Oral Language:

• Justin Holly, Emmy Soll, and Nikita Zaretsky, of Chapel Hill High School, teacher Christen Campbell, for “Les effets du Printemps arabe sur la traite des humains en Tunisie” (“The Effects of the Arab Spring on Human Rights in Tunisia”)

Honorable Mention of Best Scholarship (tie):

• Julia Connor and Danielle Kaufman-Sedano of Carrboro High School, teacher Amy Olsen, for “Examinando la crisis rohingya como limpieza étnica” (“Examining the Rohingya Crisis as Ethnic Cleansing”)

• Makenna Meyer, Noah Clapacs, and Natalie Troy of East Chapel Hill High School, teacher Justin Seifts, for “La respuesta mundial a la crisis de los rohingya: Buscando soluciones cooperativas para una crisis en crecimiento” (“The World’s Response to the Rohingya Crisis: Seeking Cooperative Solutions for a Growing Crisis”)

Honorable Mention of Best Visual Presentation (tie):

• Rebecca Guo, Jane Hwang, and MeiXuan Zhu of East Chapel Hill High School, teacher Yoshimi Yamagata Aoyagi, for “中国、日本、インド、ベトナムの 勢力拡大による国境紛争”  (“China, Japan, India, and Vietnam’s Increasing Power and the Resulting Border Conflicts”)

Honorable Mention of Research Project on Contemporary Asia:

• Makenna Meyer, Noah Clapacs, and Natalie Troy of East Chapel Hill High School, teacher Justin Seifts, for “La respuesta mundial a la crisis de los rohingya: Buscando soluciones cooperativas para una crisis en crecimiento” (“The World’s Response to the Rohingya Crisis: Seeking Cooperative Solutions for a Growing Crisis”)

Honorable Mention of Research Project on Contemporary Middle East and North Africa:

• Jillian Breithaupt, Ethan San Pedro, and Haruna Tsukiyama of Chapel Hill High School, teacher Yoshimi Yamagata Aoyagi, for “イスラエルの政治への欧米の影響” (“Western Influence on Israel’s Politics)

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Carrboro High Global Cultures Students Experience History in Alabama

“Waking up at 3:30 a.m. certainly isn’t my favorite thing to do on a Sunday morning, but it was definitely worth it for this trip.” So said Ana Leigh, one of the 42 Carrboro High School students in Matt Cone’s Global Cultures classes who traveled to Alabama the weekend before Thanksgiving.

     

The experience was built around the study of the 2014 book Just Mercy and the work of its author, civil rights and criminal justice lawyer, Bryan Stevenson. However, the trip brought powerful learning and revelations that reached well beyond the hour spent with the noted activist at his non-profit law firm Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). “It wasn’t ‘just a field trip,’” said parent Chris Simmons, a Duke assistant vice-president in Government Relations. “It was a well-thought out, academic experience that required the students to think, prepare and reflect in ways that they aren’t always required to do. Isabel is still talking about the trip, and we have no doubt that her exposure to the issues and people in Alabama will continue to shape her worldview.”

      

The students wrote journal entries, recording their evolving ideas about history, race and identity, as well as capturing moments of high emotion and humor. One powerful moment of connection is cited in an entry by Simmons’ daughter Isabel, who quoted one of the chaperones, Leah Abrams, a 2016 Carrboro High graduate who now attends Duke. “Leah Abrams’ words really stuck with me. She said that over her time on this Earth, she’s learned that the most important, impactful thing one can do as a White Ally is to sit back, keep their mouth shut, and just listen to the words, thoughts, and ideas, of their peers of color. I thought that sentiment made sense, and it is a strategy I plan to carry with me not only for the rest of the trip, but in my day-to-day life.”

       

After twelve hours on the bus, students arrived in Selma late Sunday afternoon where they met Joanne Bland, a tour guide with deep roots in the civil rights history of that city. Every single student shared at least a few thoughts about Bland’s impact on their understanding of the March on Selma and Bloody Sunday in 1965; some students filled nearly a page, writing about their guide. “She told everyone to pick up a rock,” wrote Ana Leigh. “To me and everyone else, it seemed a little silly picking up a random rock off of the ground. But then Ms. Bland went on to tell us that that was the rock she and countless other people stood on, on March 7, 1965. The rocks we held in our hands were pieces of history.”

      

Cameron Farrar wrote about the impact of Bland leading the group across the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge. “I left my phone on the bus because I wanted this to be a moment when I connected to (the experience of) being there. Once we got off the bus to start the walk I began crying. It was not that the particular history was one I was unaware of, but because of the fact that I was hearing a first hand description of what took place and the reminder that our country is filled with so much hate that these poor people were not protected, yet folded back into their hometowns and were beaten all through the night.” Bland told her she didn’t have time to cry, “that you must do something about it.” Farrar wrote, “That really settled with me.”

    

“We concluded by coming back to the bridge and lining up two by two to march,” said Niya Fearrington. “It was a catalyst for me because it was like stepping in the steps of past innovators and world changers, and it was if it was confirming and setting me up for all the things to come.”

     

Curtis Kinnaman wrote, “The bridge was narrower than I expected. As we walked, I attempted to picture what that day was like, what it was like to have police intent on violence riding on horseback trying to chase you and beat you off of the bridge. However, no amount of imagining can even come close to what it was like on that day. The feeling of walking across that bridge was surreal and one I cannot describe. It was quite an extraordinary day and it was eye opening for me in many ways.”

     

On Monday the students started the day in the company of Elijah Gaddis, a UNC PhD graduate who’s now a professor at Auburn. Gaddis is a public historian, a curator of digital projects, including “A Red Record,” a documentation of lynchings in the American South. Kate Brownstein reflected on how her attitude toward claiming North Carolina as her home state shifted after talking to Gaddis. “Elijah was saying… that being proud of North Carolina does not mean that we are supporting the problems or the bad parts, but we can be proud of good parts, making the point that having pride and also having things that need to be changed are not mutually exclusive.”

      

An encounter that students recorded with excitement and detail was a random meeting with a middle-aged artist named Frank Hardy. He encountered the group on the streets of Montgomery and after clearing his invitation with Mr. Cone, he led everyone to his painting studio and kept his audience enthralled as he told the story about growing up black, poor and extremely dyslexic in the 1950’s. Many students wrote longer passages about their experience with the artist than they did about any other part of the trip. David Knox wrote, “He talked about how growing up, he didn’t entirely understand the concept of “whiteness” and considered the poor white people around him as just fair-skinned black people. That was a particularly interesting idea for me, as I grew up poor with a similar sort of ignorance/innocence regarding race.”

     

David Gonzalez-Chavez noted, “The story of Frank’s life was one which inspired me greatly; it showed me how it is possible to chase dreams and achieve them even given extreme hardships.”

      

From Frank Hardy’s studio, the group walked to the Southern Poverty Law Center and a meeting with its president Richard Cohen. Before their conversation with Cohen, the students toured the Center, and many of them recorded the impact of seeing numerous shelves filled with different colors of soil from the places where lynchings have occurred. “They covered a whole wall and there are still more to come…,” wrote one student.

          

Cohen’s remarks and exhortations affected some students strongly; he challenged them to comprehend the impact of low voter participation and cited the 100 million voters who didn’t turn out in 2016. Gonzalez-Chavez wrote, “He inspired me to act in whatever ways that I can, to fix the problems within our nation as he explained that the people that primarily brought about change through the Civil Rights Movement were students.”       

      

The last major event of the tightly scheduled Monday was the visit to Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative. Students had studied Just Mercy earlier in the fall; many of them had been moved by the accounts of racial injustice in the book, but students wrote about how hearing Stevenson discuss those same cases in person provided a deeper and more complex meaning. All of the students had crafted and rehearsed questions for Stevenson, though they knew few would be chosen in the time allotted with the author.

     

“When he started to call on us for questions, I nearly dislocated my shoulder shooting my hand in the air,” wrote Ellanya Atwater. “By the grace of God, he picked me, and I got to ask him my question about the backlash he may have received from the black community because he works for the institution that has historically and continuously oppressed our race. He told me that there are going to be a million people telling me that I shouldn’t spend the rest of my life doing this, but it’s going to be the few people who really need your help who tell you that what you do is important. That makes everything worthwhile.”

      

Stevenson spoke about the challenges of working in the criminal justice system when most people categorically perceive defendants as guilty or innocent, without understanding other conditions. This led Gonzalez-Chavez to extrapolate, “I saw the error in how I often judged people without considering their prior experiences. I saw how I often failed to contextualize things before I interjected with my own opinion.”

      

Several students expressed relief and gratitude that Stevenson emphasized the ability to help people and affect change, even without consideration of grades or occupation. Although only five students were able to ask questions, many others remarked on the power of hearing Stevenson’s responses to their peers. Diamond Blue wrote that, after he answered her question, “everything Mr. Stevenson had said to me, completely made me feel stronger, and capable of doing anything.”

       

“As a teacher, I was pleased to see the students ask such nuanced, raw questions,” Cone said. “At one point, one of Bryan's assistants wiped tears from her eyes because she was so moved by what one of our students shared with Bryan.”  

       

Afterward, the group gathered on the sidewalk outside EJI and debriefed. The emotions ran high, and a great number of students reflected on the elements of the trip that they perceived to be life-changing. As one student wrote, “After yesterday and today, speaking with all the inspirational people, we all felt a collective urge to go out and change the world. We said time and time again to not let go of this energy, the urge, and the momentum.”

     

“This year's trip was one of the most profound and positive experiences of my career,” Cone said. And judging from the hundred plus pages of student reflections, the trip will be remembered by many as a highlight of their educational lives, an ongoing source of inspiration and clarity.

The Public School Foundation’s funding allowed all interested students to participate in the experience, by covering fees for those who needed financial support. Multiple students noted their gratitude in their journals.

https://www.splcenter.org/about

https://eji.org/bryan-stevenson

http://lynching.web.unc.edu/

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East Chapel Hill High Students Win Award at iGEM Jamboree

Instances of academic achievement and innovation among CHCCS students persist at such a high level that it’s unfortunately too easy to take specific efforts for granted - “ah, another award, another recognition.” Yet many of the district’s students who step on national and international platforms are producing stellar, college or graduate level work that deserves the spotlight back home.

     

One such group recently returned from the annual iGEM Giant Jamboree competition in Boston. Seven students from East Chapel Hill High spent four packed days of learning and sharing, and they returned with an award for the Best Innovation in Measurement, and a nomination for the Best Poster Award. All this in addition to being one of only 44 high school teams internationally who made the cut to compete at iGEM this year.

     

The International Genetically Engineered Machine Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of synthetic biology, with an emphasis on open community and collaboration. Teams of high school and college students choose projects that seek to improve global conditions with research and genetic engineering.

      

Organized and energized by junior Cecilia (Chae Hyun) Lee, the team from East came together last year, intent on developing a research project long before they decided on the area of focus. Lee had participated on an iGEM team when she lived in San Diego, and she missed the organization’s influence in her life. So she decided to create a team at East. The other students are Karlie Tong, Maddie Lorie, Amy Westerhoff, Lindsey Yan, Ananth Murthy and Nancy Liu.

      

They recognized that they couldn’t form a research club without securing a teacher to sponsor them. When they asked engineering instructor Bill Vincent about sponsoring their work, they received a qualified YES. “I could tell they were very inspired so I agreed to be their sponsor, but I explained that I could provide them a space to meet, supervision, and minimal guidance,” Vincent said. “As it turned out, this was all they needed. They took the proverbial ball and ran with it.”

       

The students to decided to seek a mentor at the university level. They found Dr. Joseph Harrison, a fellow at the UNC Lineberger Center. “Recently, I had been interested in finding ways to spread my enthusiasm for science outside of the lab setting, and connect with members of the public,” Harrison said. “I thought working with high schoolers would be a fun way to achieve this goal."

      

During the students’ first meeting with Dr. Harrison, they tossed around various ideas for subjects. Club founder Lee said, “Unfortunately, none of us really knew what genetic engineering was (since I was on the human practices team on my previous iGEM team), so we worked together to learn from scratch with Dr. Harrison! We came up with our project mostly because we were inspired by the incident in Chapel Hill earlier this year when there was an over-fluoridation in our water systems, and the water supply had to be temporarily shut down. It got us to think about how developing areas would deal with a similar situation.”

     

Dr. Harrison noted that when he began working with the East students, his expectations for what high school students had been taught were sometimes off the mark. “I have been doing research for over 10 years and it’s easy to forget certain challenges that beginners in the lab face, like using a multichannel pipette. But it was really rewarding seeing the team master some of these techniques over the summer and even make a video to show others how to use these techniques."

      

The final project embraces the potential for real impact in parts of the developing world. As the team’s project description states, “(we) seek to develop the fluoride riboswitch, a strand of mRNA that can bind to fluoride and regulate the expression of downstream genes, as a technology to combat fluoride contamination in water. We developed a system where the fluoride riboswitch controls the expression of chloramphenicol acetyltransferase, allowing bacteria to grow on the antibiotic chloramphenicol in the presence of fluoride. We will use this operon to screen and select riboswitches with higher responsiveness to fluoride.” The team envisions being able to use engineered fluoride riboswitch systems as tools to sequester, bioremediate, or detect fluoride in a cost-effective manner.

     

"We actually developed a really valuable screening methodology that has many applications,” said Dr. Harrison. “We are currently trying to spread the word about our system and try to get it in the hands of researchers studying riboswitches that would benefit from using it. What we have already developed could be used to test for toxic levels of fluoride in water, but we hope to continue to develop our project to have a better readout and provide more quantitative results."

      

Throughout the fall, the team members worked on the set of deliverables for the Jamboree:  the formal presentation itself, a wiki and the poster. They also needed to raise funds for the expensive trip and entrance fee to the competition, but it all came together in time to travel to Boston - and earn recognition.

     

Patty Berge, biomedical sciences teacher at East, said, “More important than their intelligence and knowledge content is (the students’) dogged determination, motivation, and perseverance to achieve and impact their community positively. These kids overwhelmingly impressed me and I am so proud of their achievements!!”

     

Lee said, “The Giant Jamboree was truly a unique experience where we got to celebrate our year’s worth of research - from brainstorming to the presentation.”

     

“iGEM provided me with invaluable tools in the areas of collaboration, team work, time management, and public speaking,” said team member Maddie Lorie.

      

The entire experience served the team with the kinds of exposure and skills-building that would be tough to replicate outside of the iGEM process. "I truly felt that I was making a global impact,” said Karlie Tong. “This experience brought me closer to my team as we fundraised passionately to get to Boston - and opened my eyes to the dilemma of water fluoridation in developing countries. We aren’t done yet either.”

      

The team hopes to publish its research eventually, but for now, they’re simply focused on making up all of the school work they’ve missed in recent weeks.

      

Congratulations!

      
To learn more about iGEM, visit http://2017.igem.org/Main_Page
or their wiki page at http://2017.igem.org/Team:East_Chapel_Hill

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