Media Tips Are in Chronological Order
May 14, 2008
A newly commissioned piece of music in honor of Mary Read, Annandale High graduate who died in the Virginia Tech shootings, will premiere at the Annandale High Spring Band Concert on Thursday, May 22, at 7 p.m. The piece includes snippets of the Annandale High fight song, Tech Triumph from Virginia Tech, and parts of “Amazing Grace” and was made possible thanks to the support of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts scholarship program. The Annandale bands will also perform music from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” a Glenn Miller medley, Broadway tunes, and music from the Beatles. Contact principal John Ponton at 703-642-4100 or john.ponton@fcps.edu or event liaison Jack Elgin at jack.elgin@fcps.edu.
Juniors in the Annandale High International Baccalaureate (IB) program attended a matinee performance of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman at Arena Stage and earned accolades from the cast and senior dramaturge of Arena Stage during a special after-performance workshop. The students asked questions that elicited contemplation, deliberation, and passion in the replies and comments from the professional cast and staff members. The professionals were impressed that the Annandale students had not studied the play prior to the performance but were still able to insightfully and accurately react to, analyze, and evaluate what they had witnessed. They received compliments on the quality of their questions, their discernment and erudition about the dialogue, the characters, the staging, and the actors’ craft and received applause from the cast, staff members, and other workshop attendees. Contact principal John Ponton at 703-642-4100 or john.ponton@fcps.edu or event liaison Augustine Twyman at augustine.twyman@fcps.edu.
Colin Powell Elementary web curator Rhapsody Barbrow has been awarded the FCPS Best Practices Award for May for her work on the school web site. Barbrow was cited for excellent adaptation of the elementary school template (http://www.fcps.edu/powelles). Awards are presented monthly during the nine-month school year. Contact principal Brian Hull at 571-522-6000 or brian.hull@fcps.edu or event liaison Rhapsody Barlow at rhapsody.barlow@fcps.edu.
Jeevan Karamsetty, a fifth grade student at Oak Hill Elementary, has been named to the U.S. team for the World Youth Chess Championship to be held in Vietnam in October. Karamsetty, along with five other students from the U.S., will compete in the U-10 boys section of the competition. He qualified for the tournament by being one of the three highest rated candidates in his age group in the country. Karamsetty has been playing chess for five years and has won national and several state chess titles. More than 100 countries are expected to send teams to the competition. Contact Pardha Karamsetty at pkarams@gmail.com.
Oakton High student Isabelle Yun won first place in the 11th District category of the Congressional Art Competition, and Stuart High student Thomas Lau won first place in the 8th District category, both sponsored by the Arts Council of Fairfax County. Taking second place in the 11th District competition was Mike Crampton of Pimmit Hills Alternative High; third place winner was Amanda Schmick of West Potomac High. Second place winner in the 8th District was Yeomin Kim of McLean High. The students’ artwork is currently on exhibit at the Verizon Gallery on the Northern Virginia Community College Annandale Campus. Contact the FCPS Department of Communications and Community Outreach at 571-423-1200.
Nine Sunrise Valley Elementary students were among the 2,500 students competing in the 2008 National Burt Lerner Elementary K-6 Chess Championship last weekend. The following team members played seven rounds of chess in three days: Shicheng Zhao, Shirley Burt, Annika Lee, Paul Tudan, Oliver Gainer, Jarret Lee, Nikhil Ramachandran, Shiling Zhao, and Nitin Ramanchandran. Contact principal Elizabeth English at 703-860-3660 or elizabeth.english@fcps.edu or event liaison Jyothi Ramanchandran at ramanjyothi@yahoo.com.