Carnegie Vanguard High School’s theater department’s one-act play adaption of “When the Rain Stops Falling” won the Best One-Act Play award in the 2014 UIL State 5A Championship in Austin.
Student Justin Lau was named best actor, and Jackson Burhnam and Anastasia Vayner received the all-star cast award.
The UIL One-Act Play contest is the largest high school play contest in the world. More than 14,000 Texas high school students in more than 1,000 plays participate in more than 300 contests.
Two Yates High School students got one of the best surprises of their lives so far — $40,000 each toward their college educations.
Janell Howard and Jamey Watts were on the volleyball, basketball, and track teams during their four years at Yates. That, along with their high grade point averages, made them eligible to apply to the Josie Haller Teal Scholarship.
Students in Jane Long Academy’s Futures Academy of Pharmacy Technology met with corporate representatives from Walgreens on Monday.
The Walgreens representatives toured the campus because the pharmacy giant is considering partnering with the school to provide resources, training, mentorships, internships and more.
Sgt. Juan Deluna
Learning he was not a high school graduate came as something of a shock to Sgt. Juan Deluna. The 27-year-old ex-Marine had just returned from his third tour of duty overseas and was trying to apply for a job with the Houston Police Department when he found out.
“I was under the impression that I was already a 2005 graduate of Jones High School,” he said. “Sadly, I was not.”
Sgt. Deluna only learned of the discrepancy when he tried to obtain a copy of his high school transcript, which is a required part of the application. But instead of a complete transcript confirming his status as a Jones HS alumnus, Sgt. Deluna discovered that he was just shy of the district’s graduation requirements.
Madison High School’s Vladimir Gonzalez Lopez (right) was named the 2014 KBR Science Teacher of the Year. With him is last year’s second place winner, Samuel Saenz.
Vladimir G. Lopez, a physics teacher at Madison High School, isn’t interested in spoon-feeding his students their lessons.
“Science is a process,” he said, “And you can’t expect anybody to give you the answers. Students have to do the experiments and try new things, because that’s what they’re going to need when they’re doing real science.”
It’s precisely that commitment to cultivating students’ own investigative skills that has made Lopez the first-place winner in KBR’s fifth annual science awards program. The contest was created in 2009 to recognize new and effective models of instruction that emphasize the scientific method and critical thinking skills.
Students from Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy participated in the national SeaPerch Challenge at the University of Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss., last weekend.
The students recently were selected as first place in poster/presentation winner at a regional competition, which advanced the school to nationals for the first time. The students placed 20 out of 42 in the national competition.
From “Go, Dog, Go” for pre-K and kindergartners to “Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick” for 12th-graders, the reading lists for the 2014-2015 Name That Book competition are online — just in time for leisurely summer reading.
There’s an added incentive to tackle the lists now: Books read from the Name That Book selections will count toward HISD students’ summer reading program goals, and if they’re checked out from a local public library, toward the library’s summer reading program levels.
The Name That Book competition is sponsored each spring by HISD’s Department of Library Services. It’s a program designed to familiarize students with classic literature as well as contemporary, award-winning books across a variety of genres. Teams of students are asked questions about books in their reading level that will test their comprehension of characters and plotlines.
Fourteen Houston ISD students are certified welders thanks to a partnership between the district and Houston Community College.
Four seniors and 10 juniors from Austin High School graduated with Basic Welding Helper Certificates on Saturday. How did juniors earn the certificate? The courses the students took at Austin HS were dual credit and the juniors also completed required classes at HCC Southeast, which made them eligible for the certificate.
Teenage girls at Jordan High School had the opportunity Friday to meet with about 40 female professionals to learn about careers in the property development field that they may choose to pursue.
A group of Bellaire High School students skipped their prom to compete in the National Economics Challenge and won!
Seniors Patrick Giradet, Ridge Liu, Laura Zhang and Jinchen Zou flew to New York City for the quiz bowl, which aired live on CNBC on Monday. In addition to receiving a trophy, the team was awarded the honor of ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.