News 8
The battle to win a Silver Knight Award Since 1959, the Silver Knight Awards have recognized high school seniors in Miami-Dade and Broward counties who have had positive, long-term impacts on their communities. By Yara Faour STAFF WRITER
The Silver Knight Awards program recognizes high school seniors with impressive performance in academics and community service. The program, hosted by the Miami Herald, is open to all high school seniors in public, private and parochial schools in Miami-Dade and Broward counties who have maintained good grades and, more importantly, have strong records of service. “The award, though you have to turn in grade-point averages, and for general scholarship you have to turn in test scores, really is a service award. They want to know that you’ve had some sort of positive impact [on the community]” the school’s Silver Knight coordinator Preston Payne said. Students may be nominated
into one of 15 categories: Art, Athletics, Business, Drama, English and Literature, General Scholarship, Journalism, Mathematics, Music and Dance, New Media, Science, Social Science, Speech, VocationalTechnical and World Languages. To become a Silver Knight nominee, students must be nominated by their schools. Each school is permitted to nominate only one student per category. This year, 12 Gables students were nominated to be Silver Knights recipients. At the school, seniors who wish to be nominated must fill out an application that serves as a draft for the actual Silver Knight application, and submit it to Payne in November. A committee of teachers then chooses the 15 nominees from the pool of applicants and determines what category each student will be entered into. Once the school has
a nominee for each category, the nominees proceed to the actual Silver Knight Award application. The Silver Knight Awards process consists of an interview and an electronic application about community service and school achievement. “Each nominee is also allowed to put together… twelve support pages… [which can include] photographs, letters, emails, planning sheets… [to] give judges a sense of both who you are…and the impact your project has” Payne said. The application was due by January to the Silver Knight coordinators, and interviews followed in April. Interviews are directed by panels of judges invited by the Miami Herald. Each category has its own panel. Nominees are evaluated based on their service, achievements, character and leadership. Interviews for each student usually
pertain to that student’s category. “In the Music or Dance category, last year, our music person was asked to stand up and sing during the interview, so you need to know about the subject area” Payne said. Each panel of judges selects one Silver Knight and three Honorable Mentions. Broward and Miami Dade counties issue awards separately, but have a joint ceremony. Silver Knight Award winners receive $2,000, a Silver Knight statue and a medallion. The Honorable Mentions are presented $500 and an engraved plaque. Since 1959, the year of the first Silver Knight Awards, a total of 81 Gables alumni have received Silver Knight awards in 13 of the 15 categories. Presently, the school’s 12 nominees will learn the results at the Silver Knights Awards ceremony on May 18 at the James L. Knight Center.
And the Silver Knight nominees are... STAFF WRITER
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-Project: raising money to build a school in Guatemala with the organization “Guatemaltecos Extraordinarios”
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-Project: Coordinating sales for fundraisers, bake sales and a clothing line to fund work done for the 400+ children who walk through his church’s doors
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The following 12 students are the school’s Silver Knight Award nominees, seniors selected for their prowess in academics, community service and paid work.
-Project: directing a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth as a fundraiser for the Shihanouk Hospital Center of HOPE in Pnomh Penh, Cambodia -Editor-in-Chief of Catharsis