Spring Break has broken and Ramapo Central students return to school for the home stretch final quarter. To date, it’s been a good year for the district, both on the field and in the classroom.
- Suffern Middle School students learn to navigate the hero’s journey through online gaming.
Suffern Middle School 6th grade teacher Peggy Sheehy was written up recently in The Journal News about how she weaves lessons on myths and heros into the world of gaming. According to Journal News reporter Gary Stern, Sheehy is the co-creator of a curriculum that ties in the “World of Warcraft” to the Common Core learning standards for 6th graders in her double-period humanities class.
Suffern Middle School 6th grade teacher Peggy Sheehy.
“We study the hero’s journey,” Sheehy said. “It’s what we do.”
Students in the multiplayer role-playing universe apply lessons in literature and history as they learn to navigate their avatars through the weird world.
A technology and media specialist who recently returned full-time to the classroom, Sheehy has traveled around the country and world giving presentations and training on how she merges gaming with education.
Read Stern’s full feature on Sheehy and her educational gaming class here.
Ramapo Central Roundup
Eighth-graders got hands-on with the FTC robots.
Seventeen mother-daughter pairs participated in the 6th Annual Women In Engineering Breakfast at Suffern Middle School in early April. The event is part of the school district’s initiative to encourage 8th grade girls who have demonstrated an aptitude in pre-engineering coursework to enroll in the high school’s elective engineering sequence
And to hopefully consider an engineering career.
The breakfast included a strong recruitment pitch female members of the Suffern High School’s FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics team and a hands-on, mother-daughter design challenge.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Douglas S. Adams, an engineer himself, probably summed up the bright future prospects of engineers best.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Douglas S. Adams visited teams as they rushed to complete the design challenge.
“The sky is the limit,” Adams said, adding: “There are very few unemployed engineers. Please take advantage of what this school district has to offer.”
Although the Suffern boys hockey team’s winning streak was cut short by Scarsdale in the Division 1 Sectional finals in February, Suffern’s Kevin Hill was the leading scorer in Rockland Coutny and won The Journal News Player of the Year award (for this side of the Hudson). Hill, along with team mates, Justin Tiso, Tom Brennan and Nick Modica, were also named as members of The Journal News’ first team.
Suffern High School students earned nine medals in seven categories at the 2013-14 Hudson Valley Regional Science Olympiad in February at Byram Hills High School. Suffern’s A team finished ninth overall and second among Rockland teams; B team placed 20th. In all, 41 teams representing schools in Rockland, Westchester and Putnam counties competed in the event.
Suffern High School debate teams, pictured with advisor Dr. Robert Wilson, placed first and fourth in the 2014 Rockland County Debate Championship.
Also in February, Suffern High School’s Academic League team completed its season with a second place finish in the Rockland County Academic League Invitational.
The annual tournament, hosted at Suffern High School, is the culmination of a nine-week series of school-to-school academic competitions. Teams representing Rockland’s public high schools competed in three, 20-minute rounds of competition. Four members from each team competed to correctly answer questions spanning current events, world history, science, pop culture, foreign language, math—and more.
Four Suffern High School DECA chapter members medaled at the New York State Career Conference in Rochester, March 5-7. The statewide competition draws winners of regional contests to compete in a series of career-related events, ranging from business interviews to professional business writing to team decision-making and role-play.
In late March, Suffern High School debate teams placed 1st and 4th at the Rockland County Debate Championship at Clarkstown High School, where 14 team competed. The policy debate concerned Second Amendment gun rights and gun restrictions and took place over three days.
Seniors Sean Clinton and Tom Bristow took first place; senior Rebecca Philip and sophomore Cameron Martel placed fourth. It was the second consecutive year that Suffern High has won the county championships and the third time in the past five years.
