By Madeline Armstrong
The Biliteracy Pathway Award for the Garden City Park, Hillside Grade, Manor Oaks and New Hyde Park Road schools was announced at the New Hyde Park-Garden City Park Board of Education’s first-ever live-streamed meeting June 13.
The biliteracy program was proposed in February and a committee of 14 teachers was created.
“I’m not sure that I’ve ever been more proud to be a part of this committee and all their hard work,” said Denise Connolly, New Hyde Park-Garden City Park assistant principal.
According to Tamara Chyi, one of the English teachers in the district, once the committee was created, a choice board was created for students, Rosetta Stone was rolled out to support language learning and then the committee presented the program to students and parents.
All students were given the opportunity to submit a video introducing their language. Some students talked about themselves in that language, some students did a dance or sang a song and others presented their research on the culture of the language. Overall, 96 videos were submitted from the district with 15 from Garden City Park School, 42 from Hillside Grade School, 14 from Manor Oaks School and 25 from New Hyde Park Road School.
Four of these videos were shown at the Board of Education meeting. Priya Kaur, a fourth-grader at Hillside Grade School, did an Indian dance and Nathan Wu, a second-grader at Garden City Park, sang a Chinese song.
All the students who participated will receive a certificate and there will be an awards ceremony where each school presents an individualized school video, according to Chyi. Additionally, each team at each school created a bulletin board to showcase all the participants and their hard work.
This semester the program was only available to students in second, fourth and sixth grades. Starting in the fall, however, all students in second through sixth grade will be able to participate. Two different types of certificates will be awarded: a participation award and an achievement award for those students who showed exemplary work, according to Chyi.
Following the presentation, the four students whose videos were shown were given their certificates and congratulated for their hard work.
“The best part of being on the Board of Education is to watch the children present stuff to us,” said one of the trustees.
The board also announced that the Moving Up ceremonies was to begin June 14 with Hillside Grade School. The New Hyde Park Memorial graduation was scheduled to take place at Hofstra on June 26 at 4:30 p.m. The board ended the meeting by addressing the concerns that were raised about the lack of communication between the board and parents in the district.
“We’ll continue with our goal of trying to communicate better,” said Kathryn Canese, school board vice president.
