- By Cathy Moseley
- Around Town
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Luke Kutler
Thousands of men and women have participated or volunteered in Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY) programs, making it America's premier youth leadership development program.
Started in 1958 by legendary actor Hugh O'Brian, the HOBY program nationally reaches out to every public and private high school, and internationally there are HOBY-style programs in Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, China, England, Korea, Mexico, and Taiwan.
HOBY's vision is 'to motivate and empower individuals to make a positive difference within our global society through understanding and action, based on effective and compassionate leadership.' HOBY's success is the direct result of its 4,000 national volunteers who plan and execute its programs - Leadership Seminars, World Leadership Congress, Alumni Activities and Community Leadership Workshops.
Luke Kutler, a Lansing High School sophomore, is this year's HOBY winner. Luke is invited to attend the seminar at SUNY Oswego from May 29-31st . He is part of a fifty year history and will be counted as one of the 355,000 outstanding sophomores to go through the leadership seminar.
Lansing High Students Qualify for Regional Shakesapeare Competition
Four Lansing High School students memorized and recited twenty-line monologues before judges in order that one could earn the privilege of moving on to the Regional Competition to be held on Syracuse Stage in March. Lansing's competition is a step in the National Shakespeare Competition sponsored annually by the English-Speaking Union of the United States. Students across the nation in grades nine through twelve compete in school-level competition. The winner of the school-level competition then goes on to represent his/her school at the regional competitions and the winners at the regional levels travel to New York City in April to compete at the semi-final and final levels. The grand prize of the competition is a two-week summer course at the Oxford School of Drama in Great Britain.
Those offering monologues for adjudication were freshman Sarah Beckwith, sophomore Tara Miller, junior Adam Beckwith and senior Maxwell MacKenzie. Judges Julie Berens, Andrea Huskie and Jill Vaughan offered Adam Beckwith the honor of first place. Max MacKenzie represents Lansing as the winner of second place.
Lansing Middle Schoolers Win High Honors in Wordmasters Challenge
Three Lansing Middle School students recently won highest honors in this year's WordMasters Challenge-a national language arts competition entered by approximately 230,000 students annually, which consists of three separate meets held at intervals during the school year.
Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the Challenge, sixth grader Meeta Shrivastava and eighth graders Agi Csaki anad Lucy Rogers all earned perfect scores in the year's first meet, held in December. In the entire country only 31 sixth graders and 72 eighth graders achieved perfect results. Other students at the school who earned outstanding results in the meet included sixth grader William Lewis and eighth grader Jonathan Sun. The school's students were coached in preparation for the challenge by Cathy Moseley.
The WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting words (considerably harder than grade level), and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships. Working to solve the Challenge analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically. Though most vocabulary-boosting and analogy-solving activities have been created for high school students, the WordMasters materials have been specifically designed for younger students, in grades three though eight. They are particularly well suited for able and interested children, who rise to the challenge of learning new words and enjoy the logical puzzles posed by analogies.
6th Graders Earn First Place in Quiz Bowl
Fifteen members of Lansing's sixth grade Enrichment team recently earned a FIRST place in the New York State Thinking Cap Quiz Bowl. The 'Bowl' is a computer contest of 100 multiple-choice questions. Areas covered include math, geography, government, sports, spelling, science, literature, English, history, general information and just plain fun trivia. It is a team activity offering two chances to answer correctly each question. Therefore, teams who do well usually are teams who can come up with a consensus answer quickly. Lansing's sixth graders achieved 99%. Fourteen fifth graders took the same contest scoring 90%. This earned them a very respective second place in New York State. Seventh and Eighth graders compete at the end of January. Congratulations to all fifth and sixth grade students involved!
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