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Schools

New Hyde Park Memorial High School Happenings

A food drive, teaching French and an upcoming 'challenge.'

It’s been a busy fall so far at with plenty more activities to come. Here are some of the recent highlights:

Food Drive

The Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) held its annual Thanksgiving Food Drive on Oct. 31 through Nov. 8.

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This year, the FBLA collected a record number of canned and non-perishable food items for less fortunate families in the community. All items were donated to the St. Vincent’s Youth Outreach Program in Elmont, NY.

In addition, all FBLA members donated one canned food item and expressed their pride in helping those less fortunate during the annual “Dress to Impress Breakfast,” which coincided with the food drive.

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Teaching French

Madame Kort’s senior French class visited the Garden City Park School to teach and promote French education to sixth-graders.

The seniors made learning French both fun and informative with hand-made board games, whimsical game pieces in the shapes of animals and huge bags of assorted candy.

The goal of the day was to foster an interest in French education, and the seniors felt proud of having passed down their knowledge on to the younger students.

What’s Coming Up:

The New Hyde Park Memorial High School will take on H. Frank Carey High School in the first round of MSG Varsity’s “The Challenge” on Dec. 4, airing at 6:30 p.m on MSG Varsity, Cablevision’s iO TV Channel 14.

The Challenge” includes 192 high schools from the entire tri-state area—Long Island (with Nassau and Suffolk as two distinct regions), the Bronx, Brooklyn, Westchester/Lower Hudson Valley, New Jersey and Connecticut. This season, Long Island will be represented by 32 high schools from Nassau County and 32 high schools from Suffolk County.

The New Hyde Park Memorial team is represented by seniors Jennifer Lee, Adam Priest, Parth Trivedi (Captain), David Indictor and Geoffrey Lin (Alternative). Academic advisors are Christine Vosswinkel and Anna Caruso.

“We’ve [competed in ‘The Challenge’] several times before and it’s basically a lottery system on whether or not you’re selected to participate and we made it into participation in Round One almost every other year,” said academic advisor Christine Vosswinkel.

Vosseinkel went through a program at New Hyde Park Memorial called The Talented and Gifted Program and she and her co-advisor Anna Caruso investigated the members in the club in who would be interested in participating in the competition.

“We try to put together a team where there are contestant students that have varied expert knowledge to make a well rounded team, so the five students that we have this year were essentially picked among their peers and from recommendation from the faculty as well,” Vosswinkel said.

Caruso did the lead mentoring this year with the team and went over the different rules to the rounds and the types of questions asked.

“We wanted to make sure the students were well versed because [the rules of the game] are just as important as the knowledge component because it is a game show scenario,” Vosswinkel said.

Jared Cotter is back for his third season as host of “The Challenge” and he will serve as moderator, testing competing teams on their knowledge of history, arts and literature, current events, math and science in front of a live studio audience.

Participating schools advance through a series of elimination rounds with one school in eash region being crowned regional champion and winning $2,500 for their school. The winning teams from each region go on to “The Challenge” Championship where they square off in a tri-state showdown. The school awarded the title of tri-state Champion will receive $10,000 in prize money and each student participating in the final “Challenge” Championship game will receive $500.

“We are very confident in our five seniors,” Vosswinkel said.

Check back with Patch after the first round on Sunday for results and comments from the team.

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