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Kudos & Accomplishments
Winners for writing, photography and design contest announced
Senior Shayna Hume, junior Sandy Cho and Caroline Heilbrun and class of 2013 alumni Tahmina Achekzai, Amy Ahn, Arya Dahal, Sunny Kim and Mallika Patkar received individual prizes at the Writing/Photo/ Design Contest on Oct. 7.
Publications recognized by VHSL
tjTODAY, tjTODAY Online, Techniques and Threshold have been awarded Trophy Class Distinctions at the VHSL Regional Publications Championship in Fredericksburg, Va. on Oct. 7.
Garg receives scholarship from Nordstrom
Senior Nikhil Garg was presented with $10,000 and received a MacBook Air from the Nordstrom Scholarship Program on Oct. 4.
Students place first at National Cyber Security Competition A team comprising of senior James Forcier, sophomore Fox Wilson, freshman Samuel Damashek and class of 2013 alumnus Peter Foley placed first in the national Capture the Flag competition hosted by the MITRE Corporation and (ISC)² Foundation.
Penny elected as president of International Key Club
Senior Raeford Penny has been named the president of the International Key Club at the House of Delegates of the 70th Annual Key Club International Convention.
Students selected for Senior Regional Orchestra (SRO)
Seniors Elise Favia, Bryan Higgins, Irene Hwang and Kyu Kim, juniors Samantha Chu, Charlene Franke, Ethan Lowman and Anna Tsutsui, sophomores Aaron Geldert and Andrew Jiao and freshmen Juliana Gruver, Jillian Khoo, Adam Kim, Wonseok Song and Jennifer Steele are named to the Senior Regional Orchestra (SRO), while senior Caitlyn Carpio, juniors Arthur He and Bobbie Sheng and sophomore Jasper Treakle are named alternatives. Students who played in the SRO are qualified to audition for the All-State Orchestra, which will be held on Feb. 22.
Four National Achievement semifinalists recognized
Seniors Anthony Carrington, Hassan El Tinay, CheyAnne Rivera and Comfort Sampong are semifinalists in the National Achievement Scholarship program, which awards Black American high school students for their high performance on the Preliminary SAT (PSAT).
Sysadmin students and alumni wins at Data Science Bowl
Out of 45 teams consisting mostly of college students or professionals, two teams of Jefferson students and alumni from the Sysadmin program placed in the Data Science Bowl, which is hosted by University of Maryland’s Computer Science Department and sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton on Oct. 5. The team placing first place comprised of senior James Forcier, freshman Samuel Damashek and class of 2013 alumnus Peter Foley. The second team placed third and comprised of sophomores Timothy Cyrus and Fox Wilson, and class of 2009 alumnus Andrew Hamilton.
tjTODAY Online
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october 10, 2013
School board adopts revised policy continued from p. 1 Several root causes of the issue of ill-prepared students were identified, including low admissions test standards and inappropriate weighting between the different portions of the entrance exam. “There are 20 percent of students who are really, really struggling with the core science and math curriculum,” Dell said. “It doesn’t mean they might not be interested in math or science, it doesn’t mean anything in the long run about their development, but it means they can’t take advantage of the really great things the school has to offer because they can barely survive the core curriculum.” Revisions to Policy 3355 were made to clarify the purpose of Jefferson as a high school and to change the admissions process itself, with the policy stating that students would undergo a “comprehensive, holistic evaluation process” which would establish “rigorous standards.” “I think the policy provides a description about what the School Board desires in candidates to attend TJHSST,” Principal Evan Glazer said. “The school’s interest is less on the policy, and more on the admissions process. We hope prospective students with exceptional talent in STEM can be identified more easily in the future.” Recommendations offered included creating a more challenging entry exam for students, particularly in the math section, and evening out the math and verbal portions of the test. Additionally, an “early admissions” option was presented to the school board for students who are considered to be extremely gifted or talented in the math and sciences. “Some of the most promising middle school math students are being denied admission to Jefferson,” Becker said. “There are also many bright students who are not succeeding in our accelerated STEMfocused curriculum, and while over half of our students are of color, there are still opportunities to increase diversity at Jefferson.” Several Jefferson students and alumni presented their experiences at the school. Senior Will Ashe, who serves as the Student Representative to the FCPS school board, demonstrated his support for the new policy, while class of 2012 alumnus Elliot Simon submitted a video shown at the meeting. “As a representative, I think it’s good that the community is speaking up. They are making themselves clear: they want a better system,” Ashe said. “As a student at
photo by Yena Seo Physics teacher and Optics lab director John Dell gives a speech at the school board meeting.
Jefferson, I think they are doing a good job in trying to preserve our reputation. I don’t know if I agree with all the points that were made, but I am appreciative of their input in the process.” To emphasize the blatant lack of diversity in the student population at Jefferson, members of the Coalition of the Silence, who filed the federal civil rights complaint, appeared in front of the school board. They stressed that there were distortions in the process, as well as racial bias, concerning entrance into Jefferson as well as Level 4 GT centers. “As long as the student population at TJ does not fairly reflect the diversity of the community the students are drawn from, we need to seriously analyze the causes and work on solutions to help alleviate the imbalance,” school board member Ilryong Moon said. Following the presentations and speeches given by teachers, students, parents and concerned citizens alike, the school board voted unanimously to adopt the new policy, paving a way for future Jefferson students not only to have exceptional quantitative skills, but also to be provided a higherlevel education in the subjects of science, technology, mathematics and engineering. “All the educational research shows that if students don’t have the opportunity to be exposed to challenging curriculum, many will never achieve at the highest levels,” Strauss said. “We have to make sure that FCPS provides all students, from kindergarten on up, with every possibility to achieve at the highest academic levels possible.”
Navy Yard shooting impacts students continued from p. 1 “I didn’t hear about the shooting until after my dad called to tell me he was okay,” Amanda Lim said. “It concerns me that something like this could happen in a place as secure as a government military base, because then it could easily happen at Jefferson.” On a larger scale, the Navy Yard shooting is just another one of the troubling calamities that have become more and more prevalent in the U.S., following on the heels of the deadly Boston Marathon bombing. Freshman Jeb Berger points out several changes that can be made to the law to reduce the frequency of mass shootings, such as instating a waiting period for purchasing guns and running background checks on buyers. “I think these events affect our community by jarring us awake. The same way Sept. 11 beefed up security in airports, mass shootings are bound to do the same,” he said. “This is especially true in D.C., where there
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are many government facilities. I live not far away from the National Guard building in Arlington, and George Mason was backed up from the traffic at the gate of the building to Columbia Pike, as the guards were doing full checks of the employee’s cars.” President Barack Obama has ordered for more investigation on security of Navy Yard, in hopes that events like this will not arise again anywhere. Changes are also being implemented across the country as states such as Pennsylvania, Connecticut and California tighten up safety procedures on military and naval bases. The Navy Yard reopened on Sept. 19, although the site of the shooting, Building 197, remains closed. “Many of my colleagues are still shaken by the experience and it will take a while before they get their sense of security back,” Chhay Lim said. “I found talking to each other about the incident and sharing the emotion of that tragic day was comforting.”
It concerns me that something like this could happen in a place as secure as a government military base, because then it could easily happen at Jefferson. - junior Amanda Lim
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Physics classes separate based on calculate level continued from p. 1 According to McDowell, this will help students to learn physics concepts in a way suited to their needs; however, the system will never be instituted on a larger scale. “There are a number of students every year that require extra help in physics, and we want to do everything we can to ease that, so when we see an opportunity we try to take it,” McDowell said. The physics teachers did not decide before schedules came out to switch the classes. When they saw that between the two classes there was about the same number of students in pre-calculus and in AB calculus or higher, they decided to make the change. Some students believe that this idea is unfair because classes will end up being taught at different levels. Another issue brought up is that the overall exchange is not being implemented throughout the entire department. “I do not think it is a good idea because they might skip over the basics and I would rather have the review of pre-calculus concepts,” junior Carolina Hatanpää, who was switched from Smith’s class into Forbes’s, said. Other students, however, believe that the separation will be a way to help students whose mathematical ability might not measure up to the physics courses’ requirements. “All of the physics teachers are exceptional, so I do not think it makes a significant difference,” junior Pegah Morahdi said. “It is nice to be around people in the same math level, though, because we all have an equal understanding of the subject matter.” In the calculus classes, teachers are instituting a similar sort of separation based on whether a student has already taken calculus. The teachers believe that this will help students who had AB calculus because those students will not need to spend as much time on review. “There are a lot of topics in BC calculus that are difficult, and students that have had AB calculus can move faster through review and spend more time on the harder concepts,” math teacher Marianne Razzino said. Most of the students that have already taken AB calculus were put in one of three classes being taught by math teacher Pat Gabriel. Unfortunately, not every student that has already taken AB calculus ended up in one of these classes due to number constraints. “We had a lot of students who had already taken AB calculus this year, which is why we originally decided to do it,” Razzino said. “Unfortunately, we cannot fit all of them into three classes.” Gabriel has already instituted several new teaching strategies to better meet the needs of the students in her classes. “One of the major reasons that students that had already taken AB calculus struggled in third quarter is that many of those topics are based on pre-calculus topics and it had been two years since they had those topics,” Gabriel said. “By going through material that students have seen before more quickly, we will be able to spend more time on third quarter topics, including some review of the pre-calculus concepts.” Gabriel has also customized her homework assignments to benefit her classes, which are entirely made up of seniors. “I decided to give my students a little taste of college,” Gabriel said. “College homework is often assigned in weekly problem sets and is graded for completeness and correctness. I am instituting this policy.” Many students are happy with the decision to separate the math classes because they believe it will help them learn the harder concepts. “I like it because we can move faster on the things we already know and spend more time on other things,” senior Maria Kanevsky, a second-year calculus student, said.