Blog

  • Student Government 2010-2011

    As a small school, we are proud to have an exceptionally active and organized student government, which serves as a voice for the students and liaison between the school administration. Under the guidance of Ms. Marinos, a Social Studies teacher, the student leaders meet weekly to discuss projects, proposals, and create action plans to fulfill their goals. Representatives from grades 6 through 12 work together to improve communication between the grades. Committees handle specific projects, such as safety, recycling, and the school store, and report their progress at the meetings. Recently, they organized a high school dance called “The Glo.”
    Let’s get to know our new leadership team and see how they plan to get things done for East-West: Anthoulla Themistokleous and Hiba Rashid will succeed Max Poumie and Ogo Morka as Student Body President and Vice-President during their senior year. Elections wrapped up earlier in May for positions in the student government. Candidates campaigned by preparing speeches, submitting references, interviewing with student government, and participating in public debates. Student leaders are responsible for representing our student body and serving as role models for middle and high school.

    Clockwise from top left to right: Ogo Morka, Max Poumie, Anthoulla Themistokleous and Hiba Rashid

    Anthoulla joined East-West as a 9thgrader in 2008. Along with being an active member of student government, she is also one of the leading members of Planet Eco Green Solutions, the environmental club. She joined the club because of her growing interest in gardening and sustainable food. Easily recognizable by her bright smile and frequent trips to the microphone at Morning Muster, Anthoulla is committed to helping people and the environment and learning more about the world.
    Hiba was one of East-West’s first class of students as a 7th grader in 2006. She is known around the school for being a bright, ambitious student and she takes after school courses at Queens College. After watching East-West grow and change each year, she is proud of her school and its potential. Hiba has taken advantage of East-West’s unique language offerings by completing all available Japanese courses and taking on Korean as a second language. She hopes to travel to Korea someday to further her language studies. Hiba is currently contributing as an East-West News Intern and learning more about online journalism while publishing regular articles for the blog. Recently, she interviewed Ms. Hartong, our Drama teacher. Check out her articles on the blog!

    What do you like best about East-West?

    A: The cultural diversity. I love that East-West is so different from other schools. Our school is small, but it has a lot of potential.

    H: I would say the variety of classes and clubs and how there is something that fits everyone’s interests. You can always start your own club if there isn’t one that suits you. I am planning to start a Key Club chapter with Mrs. Braverman to help more students find volunteer opportunities.

    Why did you decide to run for President and Vice-President? What do you hope to accomplish?

    A: I wanted to run for president to enhance our school’s potential and help other students appreciate East-West more. I want to bring more unity between the middle and high school and create more afterschool opportunities, like a cheerleading squad for our new basketball team.

    H: It’s our last year, so I wanted to make lasting changes and contribute to the school. I hope to improve collaboration between middle and high school and create events that will engage students and boost school pride.

    What is one of your favorite memories about East-West?

    A: Definitely Culture Day or Advisory Day in 9th grade. My advisory with Ms. Rhi focused on culture, so we brought food from all different cultures. One student, Josh Alvarez, brought in his electric guitar and students would visit our classroom.

    H: Our first Field Day! It was first big event ever and it was so much fun to have all the students and teachers involved.

    What is a skill or talent you have that not many people may know about?

    A: I would say I do a lot of research if I’m curious about something. Ok, or maybe singing. It sounds good to me when I sing, so maybe I have a secret talent that only I can hear??

    H: My native language is Urdu and I can read and write in classic Arabic. I also like singing!

    What is your dream career?

    A: I don’t want to do one thing forever. But I do want to travel and I want to help people. Maybe I will teach internationally. I want to see the world and know the good and bad for myself.

    H: When I was younger, I wanted to be a singer. Now I’m thinking about becoming a journalist. I want direct experience about the news I see on TV. I’m especially interested in human and social issues internationally, like with women and children.

    What would you like to tell your fellow students?

    A: Stand up for yourself! Don’t let other people push you around and tell you how to feel or how to be. When I was younger, I would be very influenced by my friends, especially in middle school. But I realized that I had to stand up for what I believed in.

    H: Don’t waste your time on unimportant things or you will regret it. Focus on your education and think about the future.

    Good luck with leading our school next year! East-West is proud to have you as our representatives. Hiba and Anthoulla will meet with the current school government leaders and present their reflections in a follow-up post.

  • Ms. Horowitz (Phys. Ed. teacher & Coach) writes:

    MainSen Koo finished 2nd in the 6th grade long jump and has now qualified for City Championships.

    MainKong Koo finished 1st in the 7/8 grade long jump and has now qualified for City Championships.

    The 7/8 grade 4 X 100 relay team (MainKong Koo, Sam Lee, Jackie Liu and Jason Benavides) finished in 1st place and have qualified for City Championships.

    The following placed but did not qualify for City Championships:

    The 6th grade boys 4 X 100 relay finished 3rd.
    David Singh finished 5th in  the 7/8 grade long jump.
    Patrick Wong finished 4th in the 7/8 grade shot put.

    These results are from all Queens Middle Schools.

    The championships will be on June 4th on Randalls Island.

  • Ms. Hartong with her backstage crew during play rehearsal

    Ms. Hartong, a former actress, playwright, and director is a new Drama teacher at East-West! She is responsible for organizing our first school play and is contributing greatly to the growth of our school. Ms. Hartong is also a Theater professor at Brooklyn College.

    She was born in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1968 and graduated from Smith College at the age of 22. Ms. Hartong started her own theater company in Massachusetts, where she also studied Shakespeare at Shakespeare and Company.

    Before beginning her career as a teacher, she was involved in many aspects of professional drama. In 1994, Ms. Hartong even became a stand-up comic in Amsterdam, Netherlands! She began an international tour as a one woman show and continued to direct plays. This journey allowed her to gain knowledge about different forms of acting and enhanced her acting.

    Thanks to these experiences, she won a Jerome Grant award for playwrighting. She participated in the Best of the Fringe Festival in Montreal, Canada and is a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab in NYC.

    After being satisfied with her acting career, she decided to settle down and realized she wanted to teach youth about acting and its significance. To fulfill this goal, she participated in the International Theatre and Literacy Project in Tanzania, as an arts educator to teach the students there how to express themselves through acting.

    Ms. Hartong applied this teaching experience when she returned to the U.S. and officially began teaching around 2004. In the beginning, she taught elementary school students and then branched out into higher grades. This is when she became part of the staff at East-West.

    -       May 3, 2011

    During our conversation, her immediate responses were so expressive and insightful, it seemed like she had prepared them beforehand! What I was most curious about was why Ms. Hartong chose to become a teacher at East-West instead of any other high school. “East West, to me, seemed like a school that was very unique.” She really wanted to teach high school drama and she appreciated the diversity within our school as well as our community. Ms. Hartong believes that the best qualities of the East-West students are respect and the desire to learn. “Something is always happening at East-West. It’s never boring.” She hopes that someday her students can have their own drama studio to allow them to focus only on acting.

    Ms. Hartong believes that Drama class is as important to students as academic classes because it can help them enhance their personalities. The class emphasizes public voice and speaking up about your beliefs. This can help students build self-confidence, even in front of a large crowd of people. Even from her own experience, Ms. Hartong has gained this boost in confidence because of drama training. She believes it allows people to “think on their feet.” It even helps her teaching skills because standing in front of a class of students is similar to acting in front of an audience.

    Drama class also helps students learn about the world since we are often taught about drama history. Most importantly, Drama class is a “release from the academics.”

    Tanzanian students performing

    After her muster presentation about teaching drama and theater in Tanzania, I became more curious about her experience there as compared to East-West. She believes there are significant differences between the students. She explained that the students in Tanzania are used to being limited because of the lack of large funds towards their education. It’s a privilege for them to gain as much knowledge as they can from school. “Students in Tanzania are never late for school and they always do their homework.” However, students in East-West do share the same enthusiasm and dedication to their work as the ones in Tanzania.

    Ms. Hartong

    We moved on to speaking about the first East-West school play, The 25th. Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. “I’m really honored to be the first.” Ms. Hartong is facing a mix of emotions about this event, from excitement to nervousness. But, most importantly she feels really proud of her cast for their dedication to this play. She’s confident that they will meet her expectations and “rise to the occasion”!

    Play rehearsal

    I wanted to finish off our interview with a quick piece of advice Ms. Hartong may have to offer to our students. She thinks that students shouldn’t take their education and all the privileges they have for granted. Ms. Hartong believes that “East-West is a high caliber school” and students shouldn’t just let the time pass them by. They should appreciate what this school has to offer and sincerely enjoy their years at East-West.

    Thank you Ms. Hartong for your time and sharing all the interesting information about yourself as well as drama and acting! Good luck with the school play!

    The 25th. Annual Putnam Country Spelling Bee

    Wednesday, May 25th. and Thursday, May 26th.

    7 p.m. in the Auditorium

    Tickets will be available this week during Lunch Periods 3 and 7!

    Students: $3 and Adults $5

  • East-West community members, students,  teachers, and administration welcome our visitors from Hangzhou No. 14. From Chinese sister school

    On April 14th, East-West welcomed delegates from Hangzhou No. 14 Middle School to solidify our new relationship as sister schools. Our guests visited classrooms to learn about our teaching methods and met with students and staff.

    We held a press conference to announce our partnership and answer questions from the community about our new roles, the benefits to our schools, and our educational philosophies. Members of our Community Advisory Board were present, as well as local and national media.

    From left to right: Alfred Rankins, Linna Yu, Pauline Chu, Shirley Bryant, Margie Chen (Duo Wei Times), Zhen Ping Dai (Sino Television), Susan Yu (The China Press). Not shown: Dorothy Woo, Connor Streets (Flushing Times), Felicia Guo (World Journal). From Chinese sister school

    Teachers from both schools are encouraged to form collaborative projects and have their students work together. We look forward to seeing how we can learn from each other. Here are examples of how they have collaborated with sister schools abroad in the past.

    Profile from the Zhejiang Foreign Experts Affairs office:

    Hangzhou No. 14 Middle School established in 1904 and is recognized as a first-grade provincial key middle school in 1996, is one of the most historically famous middle schools in Zhejiang Province.

    As a key foreign-related unit, the school is globally oriented and has strengthened international exchanges in cooperation. It has successfully established the widespread relations with Britain, USA, France, Australia, Japan, and others.

    Visit their school website to learn more!

    Excerpt from the Flushing Times:

    East met West at the East-West School of International Studies in Flushing Tuesday afternoon.

    The occasion that brought the two hemispheres together was the arrival of a principal and social studies teacher from the institution’s new sister school, Hangzhou No. 14 Middle School in Zhejiang, China.

    The representatives met with East-West Principal Ben Sherman, faculty members and Chinese language students in order to exchange ideas about teaching and learning as well as to get a feel for one another’s cultures...

    “We are preparing students for a world in which Asia is growing in importance,” Sherman said. “To our guests from the Hangzhou school, we are looking to build this relationship so that principal to principal, teacher to teacher and student to student we can learn from each other .... This kind of cross-cultural pollination, like the coming of spring, helps to re-energize our schools.”

    Click here to read more.

    The principals from both schools wrote “East” and “West” in Chinese characters to commemorate the event. The banner is displayed in the principal’s office. From Chinese sister school

    Visit the album for the event to see more photos.

  • 11th grade students visit SUNY Albany

    East-West continuously plans college trips for our students in their last years of high school. It is a great opportunity to gain an understanding about the various options they have when choosing the college they wish to attend. Through these trips, students can explore their interests regarding majors and several other aspects of college life. It is important for students to participate in these trips because they can open their eyes to what their future might be.

    A college trip to SUNY Albany was organized on March 24, 2011 by Ms.Park to which all sophomores and juniors were welcomed. We were able to visit the whole campus as well as gain insight on what the college has to offer. It was a great chance for our students to understand life at SUNY colleges, ask questions, and think about whether they would want to consider this type of college.

    Once we’re seniors, we will have to make these crucial decisions related to college. Our own East-West 2011 seniors have already gone through this process and have began receiving acceptance letters! College trips have had an influence on their decisions so we encourage students to participate.

    The colleges which our 2011 seniors have been accepted to are:

    Adelphi University
    Ateneo de Manila University
    CUNY- Baruch
    CUNY- Borough of Manhattan Community College
    CUNY- City College
    CUNY- City Tech
    CUNY- Hunter
    CUNY- John Jay College
    CUNY- Kingsborough Community College
    CUNY- LaGuardia Community College
    CUNY- Medgar Evers
    CUNY- Queens
    CUNY- Queensborough Community College
    CUNY- York
    Daeman College
    Dowling College
    Five Towns College
    Hosftra University
    Long Island University- Brooklyn
    Long Island University- C.W. Post
    Manhattan College
    Marymount College
    Muhlenberg University
    New School University- Eugene Lang
    New York Institute of Technology
    Newbury College
    North County Community College
    Pace University
    Seton Hall University
    St. John's University
    St. Joseph's College
    SUNY- Brockport
    SUNY- Maritime
    SUNY- New Paltz
    SUNY- Oneonta
    SUNY- Plattsburgh
    SUNY- Univ. at Buffalo
    Univ. of Massachusetts- Boston
    University of Bridgeport
    University of Leeds- U.K.
    Wagner College
    Widener University

    Congratulations to our seniors! We hope to have even more success for the years to follow.

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