The Observer » cbachrach

Award of excellence in dance choreography winner

cbachrach — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:31:50 +0000

Congratulations to junior Samara
Green for winning the Award of Excellence in Dance Choreography. Green choreographed
her own dance for the “Together We Can” theme and will advance to states. Green has been dancing for six years with the Maryland Youth Ballet and currently dances at City Dance this year at Strathmore.

Award in Excellence in Literature Winner

cbachrach — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:29:55 +0000

Congratulations to junior Brian Bontempo for winning an Award of Excellence in Literature. Bontempo has been writing short stories and poems since the third grade. He pulled his idea from a poem that he wrote a year earlier about how snowflakes relate to human’s uniqueness and powerlessness.
The poem was a unique twist on the contest’s theme “Together We Can.”
Congratulations also to freshman
Emily Birnbaum for receiving honorable mention in Literature. She has been writing since she was 8 and has entered the contest every year since the sixth grade to sharpen
and strengthen her skills.

Award of Excellence in Photography Winner

cbachrach — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:27:23 +0000

Congratulations to junior Santiago
Noguera and freshman Cameron Heger for winning an Award of Excellence in Photography.
Congratulations also to senior Hillary Tilles for winning honorable mention in the same challenge.All three contestants are now in the state contest for photography.

Award of Excellence in Musical Composition Winner

cbachrach — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:22:37 +0000

Congratulations to freshman Grace Hendricks for receiving the Award of Excellence in Musical Composition and to freshman Omid Barr for receiving an Honorable Mention. Both students composed and recorded original musical pieces.

SMOB elections at CHS

cbachrach — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:19:29 +0000

CHS held the Student Member of Board (SMOB) election Feb. 10 to finalize the top two candidates for this Board of Education position. The four candidates were current SMOB Alan Xie and Lara Haft of Richard Montgomery, Malcolm Jenkins of Blake, and CHS’s Hal Zeitlin. After three hours of debates and speeches, votes were casted by over 400 students countywide, and Xie and Zeitlin were determined the final two candidates for the April election.

MCPS student film fest

cbachrach — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:17:50 +0000

The Movies at Montgomery Mall will host the MCPS Student Film Festival March 31, coordinated by senior Laura Butvinik and junior Nina Katz. The festival
will show videos that high school students
submitted to Butvinik and Katz.
The festival costs $5 for the whole day, and, during the festival, which is followed by an award ceremony, people will be able to watch all videos entered by students.
According to Katz, students may enter videos that are less than 10 minutes
into categories such as drama, animation, documentary, comedy or music video.
The festival provides an opportunity to view rising videographers and to help the students display their hard work.
“I really like films and filmmaking,” Butvinik said. “[I thought] it would be a good way to build interest and promotestudent filmmaking in the area.”
In addition to helping to support the arts, the festival is also donating all proceeds
to the Free the Children charity.
According to the Free the Children’s
website, money donated to the charity has brought over 650 schools, school rooms and water projects to impoverished communities around the world.

Senior Intel semi-finalist

cbachrach — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:00:06 +0000

Congratulations to senior Sharon Ong for being named an Intel semi-finalist in the Science and Talent Search. Ong was one of 300 semi-finalists selected from 1,744 total applicants.

Ong spent this past summer at NIH as an intern where she worked on the development of blue cone bipolar cells and the retina.

“[The purpose] is so later [in time], we can develop stem cell treatments for individuals with macular degeneration,” Ong said. “Macular degeneration is currently the leading cause of blindness in adults over the age of 55.”

CHS Matchmaker Returns

cbachrach — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:22:25 +0000

For over 25 years, the tradition of Matchmaker has existed at CHS as a way to help students find others with whom they are compatible. But three years ago, the CHS Matchmaker fundraiser went on an indeterminate hiatus. This year, Matchmaker made its comeback as a Valentine’s Day fundraiser.

The SGA distributed CHS Matchmaker questionnaires Feb. 2 to all fourth period classes. The questionnaires were then evaluated by the company Matchmaker Inc., owned by Fortress Software Inc., in order to match students with other people with similar interests. The first nine questions, with respect to height and hair preference, are required by the company, but the remaining 15 questions of all manner of topics were created by SGA members. From Feb. 9 onward, students can pick up their results for $2.00 each, and proceeds will benefit the SGA.

“It’s like eHarmony for high school,” SGA sponsor Justin Ostry said. “It doesn’t have to be a significant other; it can be friends too. It just depends on what interests people have in common.”

The point of the questions is to determine what factors students find attractive in others as well as evaluate personality traits. The SGA hopes to make enough profit from Matchmaker to finance the majority of its events and shows, such as Carnival and Mr. Churchill.

“I think Matchmaker will be successful because when the class of 2011 did it freshman year, it made a lot of money for class events,” senior SGA MCR Representative Alex Abdun-Nabi said. “I’m optimistic that [this] means we’ll have successful results and be able to continue [with events].”

Most students have found that Matchmaker is a good, fun way to make money for the school.

“We did it more for fun than seriously, [but] it was fun to look at other people’s [results],” junior Elizabeth Berriman said. “I thought it was a good idea for a fundraiser.”

Observer reader poll

cbachrach — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:27:53 +0000

The Observer polled 40 students to see how we’re doing to suit your interests. Here’s what we found:

Hispanic Program honors

cbachrach — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:24:40 +0000

Congratulations to seniors Julian Debenedetti, Leila Islam, Pablo Jakubowicz,
Danielle Kloke and Cristian Salgado
for being recognized as 2010-2011 Finalists in the National Hispanic Recognition
Program (NHRP). The NHRP “identifies nearly 5,000 outstanding Hispanic/Latino students each year.”