Ms. Borden's eighth-grade science class combined art and science when they made posters about different types of simple machines. Their creations are bold and artistic, and would look great adorning the walls of any science classroom! Click through to see them.

 

Experiment Week in Mrs. Haberman’s 10^th-grade Chemistry class involved a whole bunch of reactions! What kind of reactions, you ask? Just a little good old-fashioned synthesis, decomposition, combustion, single displacement, and double displacement reactions! This may sound quite exciting, but it looks even more exciting!

For the past year, as lockdown orders have found many of us watching more movies than we ever have before, a new club at York Prep has been meeting weekly to discuss classics of world cinema. A group of sophomores and juniors founded Cinema Club over a shared love of “the seventh art,” and since November, we’ve been systematically working our way through the Criterion Collection, watching films by the likes of Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Federico Fellini, Wong Kar-wai, Stanley Kubrick, Wes Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino. We are actively recruiting new members, so if you love movies as much as we do, come join us on Mondays at lunch in Room 326 or email amarzoni@yorkprep.org for a Zoom link. Click through to read some capsule reviews of our charter members’ recent discoveries.

Last week, The Gilder Lehrman Institute announced that our very own history teacher, Mr. Gordon, was one of the ten winners in their inaugural American History in 100 Documents: An Innovative Curriculum Contest. The guidelines of the contest were to create a lesson plan using one or more primary source documents in American History: 1493-1945, which provides K-12 schools, universities, and institutions—including Harvard, Yale, and the Library of Congress—access to tens of thousands of rare letters, artwork, broadsides, and maps spanning six centuries of American history.

by Ms. Aiello

The Affinity Social Justice Club has continued to meet this semester, unpacking an array of social issues that have surfaced since the new year began. We have welcomed new members with an eagerness to share and learn from one another. Some of the topics we have addressed this semester include the inauguration and celebration of a new president, the riots at The Capitol, the COVID-19 vaccine and its disproportionate rollout, the celebration of both Black History Month and Women’s History Month, and the #stopasianhate and Black Lives Matter movements.

Countless local community groups have responded to the call from state and city governments to offer suggestions for making the police more equitable and accountable.  Our school is no exception.  At York “PB and J” stands for “Police Betterment and Justice.” Last summer, in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the resultant outpouring of protest, a library full of York students and teachers met to trade stories of encounters with police, propose areas of investigation, and synthesize ideas about necessary changes in law enforcement policy, training, and community engagement, toward a more equitable and less violent future. 

The Community Service Club is raising money to donate to the Fund For Public Schools. The Fund is a non-profit partner to the NYC Department of Education. “The kids wanted to help out their peers in NYC who haven’t been as lucky as them to be able to have returned for in-person learning until recently,” says Community Service Club Faculty advisor Ms. Dorfman. “This is an ongoing fundraiser until the end of the year.”

 

Breaking news about the COVID-19 vaccine is developing constantly these days, and one of the biggest stepping stones towards getting the vaccine for many people, has been scheduling a much-coveted appointment. Enter a new website developed and run by four New York City high school sophomores, including York Prep sophomore Daniel Rosenkranz, called Vaccine Scheduling Service.

Chair of Visual Arts and Digital Arts teacher Shoshana Spencer’s photograph “Cone and Pipe” was recently accepted into the photography exhibition titled “Vision: Shadow and Light” at Black Box Gallery in Portland, OR. The exhibition will be on view from March 1^st – 20^th. You can view her photo, along with the rest of the exhibition here.

Dancing together in person this year has brought such joy to both students and dance teachers, Ms. Hutchison and Mr. Martin. This year’s middle school dance classes are full of fresh talent! “We would love to feature one of our new sixth graders, London Reid,” says Ms. Hutchison. “She is also excelling in Drama class with Mr. Viscardi with her range of accents.” London is featured in the slideshow of photos, and you can also watch a dance routine from Mr. Martin’s eighth-grade dance class, featuring Eden McKinney and Sophia Martinez, by clicking here.

 

Students who enjoy following basketball players and ruminating on how many triple-doubles Lebron James can get in his 16th season can now join the York Prep Fantasy Basketball League! It is the perfect opportunity for students to enhance their basketball knowledge and have fun! Interested students can download the ESPN fantasy app onto their phones and receive details about the league via Canvas. There will be a draft for students to choose NBA players for their teams. The objective is to build a team that can score the most points combined. The club is run by 10th-grade students Harlan Auerbach and Brett Danowitz, along with faculty advisor, Mr. Shure. Meetings will take place once a month on Zoom
Click here to sign up!

In Mrs. Haberman’s 12^th-grade Honors Environmental Science class, a project on Waste Management turned students into innovative entrepreneurs and green publishers! “Their assignment was to learn about up-cycling and think of a product that should be upcycled, what they would upcycle it into, and how to bring their idea to fruition,” says Mrs. Haberman. “They really impressed me with their creativity!”

Coach Turi and Coach Michael got creative and produced a fun scavenger hunt for their middle school students that involved riddles and iconic neighborhood landmarks! The students found local monuments, train stations, and even Sesame Street! Can YOU tell me how to get to Sesame Street? If not, ask our middle schoolers! Scroll through the slideshow to see some other spots that they found, as they got some fresh air and exercise.

When you dig into a chocolatey brownie or a creamy bowl of mac and cheese, do you ever think about the science behind these treats? Mrs. Haberman’s 10^th-grade Honors Chemistry class recently delved into this very topic while learning about Moles and Dimensional Analysis. Her students were tasked with creating something tangible while demonstrating their knowledge.

Last year: Full attendance at York Prep School

This year: Only 51% attendance in the building

 

Last year: Attendance at York Prep’s annual Social Studies Super Bowl: 300     

This year: Over 450

 

How is this possible? In February of each year, the York Prep Pantherdome hosts the Annual York Prep Social Studies Super Bowl, where the four Upper School classes compete to answer questions about history and geography. This year, however, as with everything in the age of COVID, things were slightly different. Safety precautions made it impractical to bring a crowd of spectators into the gym, so we decided to bring the Super Bowl to them instead. The combined wizardry of Tech Director Richard Abba and History teachers Lane Choplin and Charles Kaczynski enabled us to livestream the contest not only throughout the school building but also into the home of every remote student in the tri-state area and beyond.  An additional advantage: the Middle School students could watch the show from their classrooms [and were reported to be enthusiastically shouting out answers], which has never been possible before.

The last time we caught up with York Prep alum Alexander “Sasha” Khazatsky, a little over a year ago, he had just returned from a Robotic Learning conference in Japan where he presented his paper “Contextual Imagined Goals for Self-Supervised Robotic Learning” . Since then he has maintained his prolific level of work in Artificial Intelligence research, and is currently in the running for UC Berkeley’s Class of 2021 Valedictorian!

by Talya Plush, 11th grade

Since sophomore year I have been involved in the Scholars Program. The program allows for students such as myself to take part in additional courses of our choosing. During first semester, I was able to participate in the course “Protest Literature” led by Dr. Davis. The course focused around novels and poems discussing injustice faced by African American and other minority groups.

 

Last month, we presented the Create Your Own Olympic Sport Challenge. This month, The Behind the Back Challenge is the latest installment in a series of fun physical fitness challenges brought to you by the York Prep Athletics Department. The rules are simple. Make a basket behind your back in less than 10 attempts.

Ms. Haberman’s 12^th-grade Honors Environmental Science class recently approached the hot-button topic of Genetically Modified Organisms, while exercising their creative muscles. Students collaborated on projects that showcased different facts and perspectives about GMOs.  Ms. Haberman proclaimed, “They were so creative while demonstrating a strong understanding of the material and I am SO impressed!”

Throughout the first semester, Ms. Domenicali-Shah’s Marine Biology students explored and learned about a variety of concepts. For their midterm projects, they created multi-media presentations that explained the different facets of the marine biology topics that they learned about. From tsunamis to ocean gyres, to the effects of climate change on the ocean, and color in the ocean, each presentation was vivid and engaging, and you can see a small selection of them by clicking through for the list of project links.

 

Coach Nicole recently captured her 11^th-grade P.E. students bowling in the dance studio. Not only was this a physical activity, but a lesson in physics as well! The students had to strategically roll a plastic ball and hit all the pins (the leading pin was a paper towel roll!) with just the right force and position. Other creative P.E. activities this year have included HIIT workouts, yoga (as seen in the slideshow), nutrition lessons, and of course, activities in Central Park. The students will soon participate in specially-designed trivia games interspersed with physical exercises!

Mr. Cockrell’s music students are on their way to becoming musical virtuosos. His high school students are conducting in-depth composition explorations, and a majority of the material is college-level! They started with the foundational principles in music, and have moved on to exploring composition via traditional harmony using chord progressions. 

York Prep’s 2021 student clubs are in full swing! They are currently meeting via Zoom, and new clubs have been created to meet the growing interests and passions voiced by students. Here is the official list of active clubs, along with links to videos and flyers created by club members and advisors. Students who are interested in joining any of the clubs should reach out directly to the club advisors (Please contact Ms. Feibusch for information about the Debate Club).

 

At the beginning of the year, Ms. Hersh’s seventh-grade students demonstrated their knowledge of nouns by speaking about them on a video.  It was their first use of a program called Flipgrid that they will be using throughout the year!

At York Prep, “PB and J” stands for “Police Betterment and Justice”.  It’s not a club as much as a it is a community-minded political activity, prompted by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Executive Order 203.  Last summer, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and others, and the resultant outrage and mass protest, Cuomo issued a challenge to every city and town in New York State: Gather input from your community as to the kind of policing reform they need, and write it into law by April of 2021, or risk losing your annual funding from Albany.

by Hilary Hersh

A pandemic was not enough to stop The Paw, York Prep’s school newspaper. Last spring when the school closed, The Paw’s intrepid reporters kept on researching and writing. And this fall, with some student reporters in school and some remote and eventually everyone online, the editorial staff continued working hard, week after week, to produce a winter issue coming out in January.