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| Lake Ridge Academy’s splendidly
bedecked, duct tape elephant takes first prize in the Avon Heritage
Duct Tape Festival parade held Saturday, June 19.
Officials awarded the first place prize because the school’s
float showed such extensive student involvement. Using rolls and rolls
of various colored duct tape, the school’s kindergarten through
fifth grade children, under the tutelage of Lower School art instructor
Ann Bort, used time both in the classroom
and in Duct Tape Camp, an after-school program devised by Ms Bort’s,
to create the sculpture, the float decorations, and their costumes.
Long time Avon resident George Bliss agreed to pull Lake Ridge’s
float with his antique John Deere tractor.
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More than fifty-five
Lower School students at Lake Ridge Academy were featured as a chorus
of friends and party guests on May 12, when they performed with artists
from Cleveland Opera on Tour in a 60-minute version of Die Fledermaus,
an operetta by Johann
Strauss II. The evening program, plus an afternoon
performance for the student body at Lake Ridge, climaxed in a Cleveland
Opera on Tour Mini-Residency project that has involved the second
and third grade students since March. Mr.
Jim Whiteman, Head of Lower School, Mrs.
Jennifer Liva, who taught the children the chorus parts,
and Mrs. Ann Bort, who guided the
students to create the set and props for the school’s Die
Fledermaus production, have worked closely with Cleveland Opera
on Tour artists and staff to prepare the program.
Student choristers rehearsed many weeks, while classroom
teachers found innovative ways to connect the school’s production
of Die Fledermaus to their classroom studies.
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| Assisted by educational
material provided by Cleveland Opera on Tour, they have introduced
students to opera performance and production.
In a special two-hour session at the school, a Cleveland
Opera on Tour singer and pianist reviewed the music with the student
choristers and directed or “blocked” the students’
stage movement. When the children took their places on stage on
May 12, three Cleveland Opera singers portraying the major roles
of Adele, Rosalinda, and Eisenstein joined them.
After the performance, Jennifer Liva commented, “The
Cleveland Opera artists were impressed with our students. They don’t
normally work with such young children. They think our second and
third graders did a terrific job with a challenging musical piece.”
Cleveland Opera on Tour’s Mini-Residency Program
has been cited as “a striking example of an educational outreach
program…” by The Cleveland Foundation’s report
on community partners and awarded the Governor’s Award for
Arts in Education. This season, the group is working with 18 schools
within the Cleveland Public School system and other northern Ohio
communities.
Funding support for the Cleveland Opera on Tour
Mini-Residency Program has included The National Endowment for the
Arts, Charter One Bank, The Harry K. and Emma R. Fox Charitable
Foundation, The Hershey Foundation, The Martha Holden Jennings Foundation,
The Lincoln Electric Foundation, The LTV Foundation and The Thomas
H. White Foundation.
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| Named one of five grand prize
winners in the Playscripts, Inc. and ChannelOne.com’s first
playwriting contest, Upper School senior Amber
Stewart’s (North Ridgeville) prize winning play, A Lesson
Learned Too Late, will receive a professional reading by Playscripts,
Inc., leading to possible publication of her script.
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| Four Lake Ridge Academy
Upper School students were finalists in the Lorain County Community
College Literary Festival Poetry and Short Story Contest. All finalists
were invited to attend workshops at the Lorain County Community College
Literary Festival. Published poet William Greenway conducted the poetry
workshop, while Nancy Zafaris, fiction editor of the Kenyon Review
held the short story session. Lake Ridge Junior Yasmin
Saaka (Oberlin) took first place in the
poetry portion of the contest. She received a cash prize of $50 and
a volume of poetry by William Greenway. Her winning poem, titled “Red”,
relates her first encounter with prejudicial behavior.Lake Ridge’s
other festival finalists were Freshmen Gissel
Arredondo (Lorain) and Elisa
Whiteman (Avon Lake) and Senior Kim
Hamper (North Ridgeville).
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| In a six-state photography
contest conducted by FAVA (Firelands Association for the Visual Arts),
senior Anna Volk
(Oberlin) had two of her photographs accepted and won a $100 Juror’s
prize. Her photographs are displayed in FAVA Gallery in Oberlin.
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| Lake Ridge Academy’s
Upper School performing arts teacher, Maureen
Brady Johnson (Oberlin) has been contracted by Heinemann Publishers
to write her third book. Shoes on the Highway, Using Visual and Audio
Cues to Teach Playwriting will feature 40 photographs of shoes taken
by Maureen and her daughter, Allison (LRA’99) with methods of
using these images to stimulate creative thought.
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| Lake Ridge Academy senior
and resident of Westlake, Lourdes Ramirez,
has been recognized by the College Board’s National Hispanic
Recognition Program.The National Hispanic Recognition Program, established
in 1983, is a College Board program that provides national recognition
of the exceptional academic achievements of Hispanic high school seniors
and identifies them for post secondary institutions.Students enter
the program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship
Qualifying Test as high school juniors. Of the 124,000 qualifying
Hispanic students, a select group of 3,300 are chosen by the program.
This places Ramirez in the top 3% of Hispanic students participating
in the program.
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| Veronica Riffle,
Upper School science teacher, won a Fulbright Memorial Fund Master
Teacher Program award. The Master Teacher Program is an action research
project exploring ways in which electronic communications, particularly
Internet based activities can enhance and expand the impact of teachers’
exchange. The program incorporates a short-term exchange visit of
Japanese teachers and administrators to the United States, which occurs
in late March. Riffle travels for a longer-term visit with American
teachers to the Japanese schools during a six-week period this coming
summer.
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Culturefest
Lake Ridge Academy presented Culturefest,
2004 on Saturday, April 24 at the Lake Ridge Bettcher Convocation
Center, 37501 Center Ridge Road, North Ridgeville.
Culturefest, 2004 was filled with food and entertainment from numerous
cultures including African, Asian, European, Latin American and
Mediterranean ethnicity. Highlights of the afternoon will be African
dancers expressing their culture through African drum playing and
dancing, Irish and Greek dancing, Scottish bagpipe playing, and
Japanese kendo demonstration.
“The idea of Culturefest came about when several Lake Ridge
students decided they wanted to celebrate the diversity that exists
within Lorain and Cuyahoga counties. One of the goals of this event
is to make us all aware of the myriad of cultures that are present
within our own communities,” states Dr. Betsy Glor, Lake Ridge
teacher and supervisor to the Humanitarian Aid Society.
The festival was sponsored by the Humanitarian Aid Society of Lake
Ridge Academy and supported by grants from the Youth Fund of the
Community Foundation of Greater Lorain County, the Youth Philanthropy
and Service Program of the Mandel Center at Case Western Reserve
University, and The Nord Family Foundation. For further information,
please contact, Dr. Betsy Glor at glorb@lakeridgeacademy.org
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| Fourth Grader, Stephen
Rasoletti (Lakewood), had his poem, The Walk in the Library,
published in the May, 2004 issue of Highlights for Children
magazine.
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David
Schmidt, former staff member and son of first grade teacher
Sandy Schmidt, was recently featured
in the February, 2004 issue of Boca Life Magazine, a national
publication. While he worked at LRA, David was instrumental
in setting up LRA's TV/Video program. He is now the Executive
Director of Boca Raton Education Television in Boca Raton, Florida.
You can download the article here
(500Kb pdf file) |
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| Lake Ridge Academy Middle
School science teacher, Megan Doerr,
anticipates being entrenched in the science world in 2004. After eight
years of unique teaching experiences, Doerr has researched and developed
methodology appropriate for assessing the progress of middle school
students in their science classes. The frustration of the lack of
any universal assessment standards for this age group prompted Doerr
to tackle this problem. It is necessary to take into account the developmental
stage of middle school children’s intellect and their ability
to absorb and process information when considering an evaluation of
how well they are doing in the class. “
Middle school children are in-between and not much focus has been
placed on how to assess their progress appropriately,” said
Doerr. “In high school, you have standardized tests such as
Advanced Placement exams and in elementary schools little emphasis
is placed on grades as much as the use of narrative to describe
progress. This leaves a void in the middle school age group. Receiving
a grade is necessary, but to achieve that grade through existing
and traditional testing similar to that in the high school is not.
Middle school students’ intellectual capabilities are not
fully developed to process material in that way.”
Doerr will present her thoughts on standard-based
assessment methods for middle school children at the National Science
Teachers’ Conference in Atlanta in the spring. Last January,
she presented this information at the European League of Middle
level Educators in Rome.
In addition, Doerr joins twelve other science teachers
at the Kennedy Space Center in January 2004 as part of the NASA/Wisconsin
Fast Plants Workshop. Working with other educators, she will devise
experiments to be tested in the classrooms and potentially on the
International Space Station.
In the upcoming summer, Doerr is looking forward to
the possibility of participating in another program that integrates
advance computer mapping systems and scientific research.
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Convening on Lake Ridge Academy’s
campus, over 250 students and faculty from 20 high schools in
both Lorain and Cuyahoga counties were spellbound by Sam Rhine’s
presentation of the most dangerous journey of your life-the
early development of the human embryo- and other human genetics
processes. Rhine, internationally traveled speaker on human
genetics and adjunct professor at Indiana University, takes
time to answer Lake Ridge Academy students’ questions.
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| Lake Ridge Academy
students recently received Congressional Awards from Congressman Sherrod
Brown. Open to students of the Class of 2004 who have a proven record
of service either as an individual or as a club member, three Lake
Ridge Academy students were selected. Chosen for their drive, maturity,
social consciousness and true concern for others, the recipients of
a Certificate of a Special Congressional Recognition were seniors
Katie O’Grady (Fairview Park),
Morgan Szulewski-Francis (Elyria) and
Joseph Yost (Elyria). The awards were
presented at the Avon Library in late October.
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| Three Lake Ridge Academy students
had roles in the recent Cleveland Opera production of Carmen at the
State Theater in Cleveland. Eighth grader Zachary
Sweebe (Strongsville) and brothers, seventh grader
Jeremy and fifth grader Jonathon Warren
(La Grange), played mischievous gypsy children. The three were selected
not only on their acting and vocal abilities, but also on their proficiency
in speaking the French language. Their roles required they sing in
French. All have had French classes as Lake Ridge Academy offers French
instruction to its students starting in the kindergarten.
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| Ghosts and spirits
of a different sort invaded Lake Ridge Academy’s campus
on October 31. An all day event combined two of the school’s
yearly activities, Absolutely Autumn and the 4th grade Re-enactment
of life in Ohio during the early 1800’s. Absolutely
Autumn is an alternative to the traditional Halloween parties
and celebrates the splendor of autumn with hayrides, taffy
pulling, story telling and craft activities. This year’s
Absolutely Autumn happenings reflected the 1800’s theme
of the Ohio Re-enactment presented by the school’s fourth
grade class.
Moving back in time, Lake
Ridge Academy’s fourth graders donned period costumes
and spent the day living the life of early 1800’s Ohio
pioneers. They set up an Ohio village on the campus grounds
where visitors could meet and converse with the baker, brick
maker, carpenter or candle maker as they plied their trade.
Among the visitors this year were fourth graders from Eastgate
Elementary School in Elyria. Both schools' fourth graders
have been extensively studying the early Ohio period. Armed
with many questions, the Eastgate School children quizzed
the Lake Ridge Academy “Ohio pioneers” about their
lifestyle. |
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Deborah M.
Cook (right) was installed on Friday, October 10 as the sixth
person and first woman to be Head of School at Lake Ridge
Academy. With over 500 people in attendance, Sarah McClusky
Walleck (left), President of the Board of Trustees, presided
over the formal ceremony. Both share one of the lighter moments
during the installation. |
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Fourth Grader, Michael
Plecha, (Strongsville) had his drawing, Call 911
included in the Ohio State
Fire Marshal's 2003-2004 Fire Safety Calendar.
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| Lake Ridge Academy junior
Arjun Sharma
(Strongsville) was one of 700 high school students from 48 states
and 16 countries attending the National Leadership Forum in Medicine
held in Houston. This program focuses on firsthand experiences that
grasp the essence of what real medical professionals do. Through small
group discussions and on-site observations of surgeries, the program
inspires, motivates and directs our nation’s most promising
future physicians. Students are encouraged
to open their minds to all opportunities in the health care field.
Urged to pursue whatever science subject the student enjoys and
build a medical career from there, Sharma is currently taking AP
chemistry at Lake Ridge Academy. Sharma joins nine other past and
current Lake Ridge Academy students as distinguished alumni of the
program.
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| Lake Ridge Academy alumna,
Chelsea H. Michael '02(Oberlin) has
been selected as a new initiate to the PA-Eta chapter of the Phi Sigma
Tau society. Phi Sigma Tau is an internationally recognized honor
society for philosophy. As a sophomore at Washington and Jefferson
University in Pennsylvania, Michael’s induction into the society
is unusual as the honor is generally reserved for second semester
juniors or seniors.
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Lake Ridge Academy alumnus,
T.J. Bittel '03, (Bay Village), had
a goal in June 2003 to deliver as many school supplies as possible
to a high school in Rusfique, Senegal. With the help of Adrienne White,
a Fulbright scholar from Washington, D.C., T.J. connected with Moulaye
Jobe, English teacher, from the Lycee Modern de Rusfique.
The African school was only three years old, but no funding during
those years was allotted for educational materials and supplies. The
largest appropriation made by the Senegalese government in the first
year was 15 textbooks. T.J. was able to collect over 700 pounds of
school supplies and $1,290 from the Cleveland Clinic, Costco, Target,
Marc’s, UPS Store (formerly Mailboxes Etc.) and many individual
donors. The complete shipment arrived intact. Remaining money from
the shipping expense was used by T.J. to barter for a tape player
and 55 additional textbooks for the 1,100 high school students.
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June 25, 2004
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