Manisha Tirumalai, left, created her own interpretation of a Norman Rockwell scene for a writing prompt. Photo by Manisha Tirumalai

Cole Penz looked to the sky as the snow fell in his self portrait photo made for the “Best of Me” photo-writing project. Photo by Cole Penz

Fourth-grader Luke Boyer really didn’t like to write when he entered Lynette Springborn’s class at Cascade Ridge Elementary School last fall. He wasn’t bad at it. He just couldn’t find inspiration when given a writing prompt.

“He was always stuck,” Springborn said.

But when Springborn introduced writing assignments that incorporated digital cameras, Luke and many of his classmates became hooked.

“Photos really help us visualize what we’re writing about,” Luke said June 14. “To have that one slice (of life) in one click, that’s amazing.”

Springborn’s fourth-graders took their own photographs to inspire their writing exercises throughout the school year. Not only did it inspire more students to engage in the creative writing process, it taught them a little about the art of photography.

“We didn’t have much boundaries,” Luke said. “We got to be incredibly creative. It helped us become better writers.”

The entire project came to fruition thanks to a grant from the Cascade Ridge PTA, which purchased about 30 cameras for all grade levels to use.

“I really got to express myself,” said Monsi Pingili. Her favorite photograph was the one she made for the “Best Part of Me” assignment. She took a picture of her eyes. But she said she also appreciated the challenge of “Day in the Life,” in which students had to set up and take six photos of everyday things they did.

“It gave me a lot of material to write about,” she said.

The idea came to Springborn, an avid photographer, while figuring out what was missing in her writing curriculum last year, she said.

She asked, “What can I do to inspire them?”

With a class set of Lumix digital cameras, each of the roughly 30 students got to take one home on weekends to explore and make photographs. To fully engage in the process, Springborn required the students to do the picture-taking themselves, unless, that is, they were in the photo, in which case a parent could click the shutter release button. Otherwise, the students had to compose or direct every photo, she said.

“They needed inspiration to become true writers,” Springborn said. “When they own it, they fly. It’s just really opens up a lot of avenues of writing.”

For one assignment in the fall, Luke photographed his favorite pair of shoes, which he had worn while touring New York City, he said. He wrote from their perspective and included details and observations one might otherwise neglect if not looking at a photo.

“It was so neat, it gave me goosebumps,” Springborn said. “It just added that extra pizzazz to his writing.”

Parents praised the efforts to keep the youth interested on multiple levels. Having a camera in hand with an open-ended theme in mind, the students expressed freely, rather than thinking of a “right answer.”

Chrisann Penz noted her son Cole’s enthusiasm for the tasks all year.

“Every time he came home with an assignment, he was excited about it,” Penz said.

Springborn said she is developing a fifth-grade curriculum for the project and hopes the idea will spread to the rest of Cascade Ridge.

“Everyone in all schools could have fun with it,” Pingili said.

Reporter Christopher Huber can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or chuber@isspress.com.

The award ranges from $500 to $2,000 annually for up to four years. As National Merit Scholarship finalists, Copparam and Dipanwita are among approximately 8,300 high school seniors in the country to be awarded scholarships, which come from various corporations and universities, as well as the organization itself, in 2011. Approximately 2,900 students earned financial awards from universities through the National Merit Scholarship program.

Copparam plans to study biology and medicine and attend the University of Southern California, according to the National Merit press release. Dipanwita also plans to attend USC and looks to study bioengineering.

Students entered the 2011 competition for National Merit scholarships when they took the 2009 PSAT. About 1.5 million students competed for about 8,300 scholarships, totalling nearly $35 million.

During the preliminary round of questions, Arjun missed one question: In which country is the Airedale Valley and the Aire river located? The correct answer is the United Kingdom. The mistake sent him to the tie-breaker, where he was eventually eliminated with the question: Amman and Cochin-China are the former names of which country? The answer is Vietnam.

“Still, it has been a tremendous experience for him to come out here and compete at the national level,” Arun Kumar, Arjun’s father, said. “He did far better than he had anticipated, and is keen to return next year.”

He also noted the obscurity of the questions the youth had to answer.

“Ironically, the only ones I could answer were the two that Arjun got wrong,” Arun Kumar said.

Arjun Kumar qualified for the national contest after winning the Washington State Geographic Bee in April.

The Beaver Lake Middle School math team poses with awards after the 2011 Washington State Math Championship May 7 in Blaine. Photos courtesy Dennis Rogers

Eighth-grader Tommy Lin doesn’t care if people call him a nerd because he likes math. He’s the ASB president at Beaver Lake Middle School but also competes with the math team every year at the state championships.

And he does well.

Lin and his 23 fellow Beaver Lake math club competitors all placed in the top 40 percent at the 2011 Washington State Math Championships May 7 at Blaine High School, said team coach and BLMS math teacher Dennis Rogers.

The school had three teams place in the top-10 and two individuals —Michael Cao and Caleb Mok.

“People think we’re nerds,” Lin said. “But we get to represent our school. Math is something we like to do.”

In addition to Beaver Lake’s success, Pine Lake Middle School, Samantha Smith Elementary and Endeavour Elementary placed teams and individuals in the top 20 at the competition, according to event results from Blaine High School.

“First of all, math is just great,” Lin said. “It’s fun. It’s challenging. It’s educational and all kids in math club, we get to harness our problem-solving skills.”

Lin was part of the eighth-grade team that placed fifth out of 35 teams, scoring 139 total points.

The school’s seventh-grade Team 1 placed eighth out of 56 teams in the state with 159.5 points and Team 2 placed 23rd with 104 points. Beaver Lake’s sixth-grade Team 1 finished 12th out of 85 teams with 123.5 points.

Team 3, made up of sixth-graders, placed 22nd with 99 points. Mok placed fifth in the seventh-grade individual competition with a score of 27 points and Cao took 10th among eighth-grade individuals, tallying 23 points.

Rogers highlighted the selection of rigorous test questions organizers throw at the young mathematicians throughout the competition.

He admitted many of the questions are difficult for a teacher to answer.

“The math questions are really hard,” said Dennis Rogers, the Beaver Lake Middle School math team coach. “It’s pretty high level math.”

During the daylong competition, the students participate in team and individual tests. For a team test, the group of four splits into two pairs to solve 10 problems in 15 minutes.

They work on a variety of problems, including probability, algebra and geometry, Rogers and Lin said.

Beaver Lake tends to do well against the tougher teams like Lakeside, Odle Middle School and the Northwest Chinese School, they said.

“I thought it was really cool because we were competing against private schools like Lakeside,” Lin said. “It’s actually a really competitive atmosphere. We’re all scoping the other teams out. We all work together and we always get excited to hear if our school did well.”

The Pine Lake Middle School seventh-grade Team 1 placed 19th out of 56 teams and the sixth-grade team placed 20th. Smith saw a sixth-grader place third and a fifth-grader place seventh, individually.

Smith’s sixth-grade Team 1 took fifth of 85 teams with 151 points, while Team 2 took sixth with 150.5 points.

The Smith fifth-grade Team 1 placed fourth of 98 teams, scoring 140 points. Endeavour’s fifth-grade Team 1 earned fifth place with 133.5 points and Team 3 got 12th place overall in its grade level.

Lin noted the difficulty and wide-ranging variety of the questions the math competitors faced throughout the day. He particularly struggled with the probability questions. But the team did well in algebra.

“They were hard problems. It’s not just anything a kid off the street could do,” he said. “We got a perfect score in algebra.”

Beaver Lake traditionally has sent more participants to state than most schools, Rogers said.

“We’ve always been the largest team there,” Rogers said. “We’re a comprehensive middle school. Every single math teacher was represented.”

To prepare for the competition each spring, the math teams practice with old tests provided by Blaine High School and the championship organizers, he said.

Students work together during their weekly gatherings after school to help each other on problems.

“My goal is for kids to have fun with math,” Rogers said.

Reporter Christopher Huber can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or chuber@isspress.com.

Sixth graders Nick Gordon, Tom Lawler and Yijun Xie (left to right) hinge pieces of the Gaga Pit together on the field last week at Rachel Carson Elementary. Photo by Anna Marum

Kelly Cameron’s sixth grade class went GaGa after they returned from Camp Seymour for their sixth grade trip.

But we’re not talking about Lady Gaga. The students had been playing an intense form of dodgeball in a GaGa Pit (a fence-like structure enclosing the players) and couldn’t get enough of the game. So, two students from Cameron’s class, Nick Gordon and Tom Lawler, decided to build a pit of their own for the students at Rachel Carson Elementary School.

Jennifer Gordon helped her son and several of his classmates build the pit, comprised of eight hinged slabs of wood, in her garage. She said the pit provides good exercise that everyone can take part in.

“They’re so excited about it,” said Gordon. “It’s just so fun.”

Nick and Tom first proposed the idea of building a GaGa Pit to their teacher, who was impressed by the students’ initiative.

“They came in and said, ‘What is the next step?’ The two boys took it off on their own,” Cameron said.

Cameron told the students to talk to the school’s principal, Mary Cronin, to put their idea into action. So in late April, Nick and Tom made an appointment to speak with Cronin and present their idea.

“I was shocked,” Cronin said. “They had researched everything; the cost, how to play … they literally did the whole thing on their own.”

Cronin signed off on the idea after hearing the carefully prepared presentation, and the boys went right to work.

After several hours in the Gordons’ garage, the makings of the GaGa Pit were complete. On Monday, May 23, students carefully unloaded the long slabs of wood and arranged them in an octagon. Before Cameron’s class jumped in to pummel each other with dodgeballs, the principal congratulated them.

“See what can happen when you have an idea?” Cronin asked Cameron’s giddy sixth grade class.

Then the game began, complete with a commentator, boos and shouts of encouragement from onlookers.

Nick Gordon said he was sure the students would play in the GaGa Pit every recess. All the students had been asking about it, he said.

Lexi Warden, another student in Cameron’s class, said she thought it was really cool that the elementary school now has a GaGa Pit.

“They worked really hard to get this here,” she said of the two boys.

Though the intense game has the potential to get violent, the students kept it clean and below the waist, stepping out of the pit when they were out. The game is very positive, Cameron said.

“You don’t have to be the best athlete to play,” she said. “I think the hardest part is going to be keeping too many (students) out of it.”

Intern Anna Marum can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 248, or samrev@isspress.com.

Skyline student Ryan Wolfe, closely trailed by a Spartan classmate, pushes toward the 5k finish line on the Eastlake football field Thursday afternoon. Photo by Anna Marum

A dozen members of the Eastlake band greeted more than 700 Skyline and Eastlake students with a loud, energizing performance Thursday afternoon as the runners arrived at the Eastlake football field one by one, dripping with sweat.

The 5k run was part of the students’ final in their P.E. classes. In order to pass the final, the students were required to complete the 3.1 mile trek that stretched from Skyline to Eastlake in less than 36 minutes.

Tracy Schellberg, the Skyline P.E. instructor, said she got the idea from a similar run that Issaquah High School held for its students.

“It’s a good way to collaborate,” she said.

Schellberg said the run provides a fun environment to teach students about training and setting attainable goals as a group. It gives kids a chance to push themselves, she said.

She said it was a huge success, largely thanks to parent and staff volunteers. The students were happy with the results, too, Schellberg said.

“I saw many smiles on the students faces,” she said. “Students were surprised at how well they did; they were excited to tell me their times at the end. Many of them beat their goal times.”

Schellberg said she plans to make the run a regular event and hold it once a semester.

The 5k also gave students the chance to give to the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund. Students could donate by buying a shirt for the event.

She said she hopes to donate to local charities in the future.

Kate McCary, Eastlake’s P.E. instructor, said when Schellberg suggested the schools collaborate on the run, she jumped on the idea.

“I think it’s a great experience for them,” she said. “We’re trying to motivate them.”

Sue Beahm, a mother of an Eastlake student, volunteered to record students’ times as they completed the run.

“It’s been great to have them do the same thing,” she said of students from both schools. “A little camaraderie is always fun.”

Skyline student Kevin Tibdall finished first, with a time of 17 minutes 24 seconds.

Tibdall, who runs distance for the school’s track and field team, said it was fun to run with students from Eastlake.

“I actually like the Eastlake guys,” he said.

Ethan Freed, with a time of 18:52, was the first Eastlake student to complete the run.

Freed said he was still in shape from running on the school’s cross country team in the fall.

“It felt good, though it was disappointing to finish after Skyline,” he said. “They’re our biggest rivals.”

However, Freed said the run felt more like a collaboration of the two schools than a competition.

“I did this because what better reason to skip class than run a 5k?” he joked.

McCary said the run was a success. She said the students really seemed to be having fun.

“A sunny day, fast times. We’ll take it!”

Goel, the Cascade Ridge Elementary School PTA webmaster, has created a template for PTSA websites that can be individualized around the world. Using his company, Our School Pages, Goel plans to sell the websites for $120 per year, a fee that will cover the labor, server, storage and processing fees.

This is not the first school website created by Goel, a former Microsoft software developer. In 2009, he launched Our Science Fair, a site helping schools organize and launch science fairs. As of this spring, about 40 schools nationwide were using Our Science Fair to coordinate their events.

Goel launched the Cascade Ridge PTA website in August, working out the kinks and adding new features throughout the year.

After polishing his final product, he began selling the Our School Pages template website on April 29, allowing any school in the world a chance to purchase it and make it its own.

At the annual Washington PTA Convention April 29 to May 1, 60 schools decided to try the website for a free, 30-day trial.

“It started out as just being a Cascade Ridge thing,” Goel said. “I was a little quicker this time in making sure it could be used for any school.”

Our School Pages facilitates a number of PTA and school activities, including volunteer registration. Many PTA leaders email volunteer requests and have to wait for potential volunteers to reply, although sometimes too many or too few sign up. With the new website, volunteers can register or un-register in real time.

“It makes it easier for the organizer, because then you don’t have to keep track of email,” Goel said.

The website’s other features — an interactive calendar, parent email blasts, PTSA or PTA membership signups and electronic news posts — have helped drive up the number of online users for Goel’s Cascade Ridge website from 60 visitors in any given week to 270 during the week of the spelling bee.

His website also allows for event registration, allowing students to sign up for spelling bees, art shows, walkathons and the like, in addition to posting supplementary materials, such as spelling bee word lists.

Discovery Elementary School PTA President Deborah Evdemon said her school had already bought Our School Pages because of “the convenience of it. It’s going to make life on our board much easier. It’s going to be able to put everything on a database. We’ll be able to read stuff, too,” she said, referring to people’s sometimes messy handwriting on forms.

Each school can customize its domain name and the art on its website. Our School Pages is not a securely encrypted page, so Goel sends all Web payments to PayPal, allowing the PTA or school the opportunity to collect school fees, raise funds or sell school paraphernalia, like sweatshirts or T-shirts, through its website.

“I wanted to do away with a lot of the paperwork, ” Goel said. “It used to be kids came home with a packet this big full of forms. That first day is really painful. At Cascade Ridge, we were really excited everything was online. Parents love it because they don’t have to fill out their address 10 times.”

So far, Goel’s websites are only in English, and he acknowledges that since some families do not have access to the Internet, schools and PTSA volunteers will still have to print paper copies of forms.

“It is definitely a gradual process,” he said. “You don’t want to put your parents into shock.”

Overseeing his two website creations — Our School Pages and Our Science Fair — has become Goel’s new venture.

“This is definitely more than a full-time job,” he said. “If it gains traction, I’ll definitely need to hire people to help me out.”

On the Web

Learn more at www.ourschoolpages.com or call 1-866-616-3247 toll free.

Laura Geggel: 392-6434, ext. 241, or lgeggel@isspress.com.

Lara Hollingworth, an Eastlake science teacher, worked with UW geneticists to sequence DNA of nematode organisms (miniscule worms). She recently received a new grant to bring those efforts into the high school classroom.

Students burying tomatoes in their backyard this fall could help geneticists discover more about human disease and aging.

That was the hope of Eastlake High School science teacher Lara Hollingworth when she set out to do a summer research program with the University of Washington in 2008.

Hollingworth received a $7,000 grant to help implement a new laboratory research curriculum for students in her biology classes, according to the Vancouver, Wash.-based Murdock Charitable Trust. She is one of just 10 teachers in a five-state region to receive the grant — she’s one of three in Washington.

She first received a grant for the two-year summer research program, where she conducted research with Ryan Emerson and James Thomas at the University of Washington’s genome sciences department. They were — and still are — searching for a sister species of the C. elegans (nematode worm), the first multi-cellular organism for which scientists sequenced the genetic code.

“It’s exciting to know I can take what I learned and give the kids an opportunity to do it,” she said.

The money will help purchase dissecting microscopes and pipette equipment for students’ microbiology work. The part about burying tomatoes comes in when the students start their project to sequence the DNA of miniscule worms. The rotting tomatoes will attract organisms — hopefully including new species of the worms — for students to bring to class to observe under the microscope.

They will extract DNA samples and send them to Emerson and Thomas at the UW. There, the duo will sequence the DNA with hopes of identifying new sequences or sections. This could potentially lead scientists to groundbreaking discoveries in genome research, which affects current research in health and aging, Emerson said.

“It’s doing real research,” Hollingworth said. “It exposes kids to the best equipment and it’s what’s going on in science.”

She applied for this grant, which was supplemental to her research program, last November.

“It makes my job exciting. It’s giving hands on ways to teach kids,” Hollingworth said. “It’s what kids should be learning, and I have an opportunity to implement what kids should be learning.”

Hollingworth and Emerson noted the difficulty schools have in bringing high-level or research-based curricula into the classroom.

“With cuts in education, it’s exciting to know you can bring what’s really going on at a research level for kids,” Hollingworth said.

Most high school science programs teach what already is known — it’s fact-based. Through the inquiry-based curriculum, Hollingworth’s science students will actively contribute to a body of ongoing research that could influence significant discoveries in the study of aging, human disease and general biology, Emerson said.

“It’s really important because students end up going to science class in high school and learn facts and figures,” he said. “I think chances to actually participate in discovery are few and far between.”

While the research at Eastlake will take most of the school year, it still has great implications for the ultimate goal of providing cutting-edge geneticists with samples to work with, Emerson said. It’s an opportunity not many plateau students will have, he said.

“It exposes kids to what it’s like to do research and work with model organisms,” Hollingworth said. “They’re really looking at a real DNA sequences.”

Reporter Christopher Huber can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or chuber@isspress.com.

Eastlake students Jack Callahan, left, and Madison Heck play Twister with friends in the Eastlake gym at Plateau Pink Day May 11. Photo by Christopher Huber

It didn’t matter that the rain had forced vendors and event goers inside for the second year in a row. The Eastlake drum line cheerfully welcomed students from Skyline, Eastside Catholic and Eastlake to the second annual Plateau Pink Day May 11 with a groovy beat.

The event was organized entirely by students on the Tri-school Council, a group of ASB officers from all three high schools in Sammamish and aimed to promote cancer awareness while providing a festive community event. The event raised money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, said students.

“It’s a mix of awareness with a fundraising aspect,” said Adam Hawkins, an Eastlake student helper at the event.

As the rain fell, students and school staff arrived in cars, rather than the planned walk down the hill from Skyline. But inside the Eastlake cafeteria and gym, participants enjoyed cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, teriyaki and other scrumptious meals and goodies, as well as inflatable toys.

Plateau Pink Day took just two months to plan this year, compared to most of the school year in 2010, student organizers said. That’s partly due to the process being streamlined for the student council. The Tri-school Council, with four or five leaders from each school, met once a week for close to two months to nail down logistics, which many said was the toughest part of planning an event that draws hundreds of people.

“The biggest challenge was each school had a lot of things going on at the same time (as this event),” said Luke Janicki, of Eastside Catholic.

Another challenge the event poses is each ASB team having to merge its style with the other two schools’ leadership, students and teachers said. It teaches them how to navigate school rules and the differences between the schools.

“I think it’s easy to get in a little bubble,” said Karen Skoog, an Eastside Catholic teacher and leadership advisor. “All of a sudden, they have to coordinate (with other groups).”

The 2011 ‘Pink Day” drew more people and featured more activities, organizers said, including laser tag in the west wing halls of the school. Leading up to the event, ASB groups sold pink T-shirts with each school’s logo ironed on. This year, the event fell in the middle of an overall awareness week, during which students at each school wore different colored clothing each day to show support for causes like Japan disaster relief, breast cancer awareness, suicide prevention, etc.

The council primarily works together to plan Plateau Pink Day, but also represents a general partnership among the high schools throughout the school year.

“I like how it involves everybody on the plateau,” said Eastlake sophomore Kelsey Nyce, a member of the council. “I personally love meeting new people.”

Eastside Catholic chaplain and director of campus ministry Father Bill Heric greets senior Jeff Derus as he arrives for the first day of school. Photos by Christopher Huber

The first day of school at Eastside Catholic went much more smoothly this year than in 2008, school administrators said Aug. 26 as students poured through the doors en-masse. The 2008 opening day was somewhat chaotic as teachers, administrators and students all scrambled to familiarize with the brand-new building. Although both the high school and middle school start simultaneously now, traffic flowed steadily down the quarter-mile driveway as parents dropped their students off for the start of the school’s second year at its new location in Sammamish.

Chaplain and director of campus ministry the Rev. Bill Heric and other administrators greeted students as they climbed the stairs to the school’s main entrance.

And by 7:55 a.m., five minutes before the first bell, the halls were silent.

Eastside Catholic got its usual late-August start, ahead of Eastlake and Skyline, which start Sept. 1 and Sept. 2 respectively.