Category Archives: Williston News

Tandem Bagels: First Impressions

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Buzzing. That’s the word.

As I walk past the line of cars and cluster of chatting, caffeinated pedestrians, I catch a first glance through the glass door, a touch of modernity surrounded by ancient brick. Inside I see a bustling cafe, a dozen full tables, and a cross-section of the Easthampton community:

A local family complete with a stroller and impressively quiet baby. A group of Williston students debriefing after a stressful day. A group of middle-aged men in grey t-shirts taking their lunch break in a brand new place.

All of them and more fit into this old building made new, and they chat over strong coffee and bagels that make me wish it wasn’t Passover.

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Photographers’ Lecture Series 2013: Ron Wyatt

Sports photographer Ron Wyatt will present the next in Williston Northampton School’s ongoing lecture series on Thursday, April 11, at 6:30 p.m. in the Dodge Room, Reed Campus Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Mr. Wyatt was assigned by Kodak to photograph the Summer Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008, and is a self-taught photographer. In his presentation, Mr. Wyatt will talk about his experiences covering the Olympic Games, as well as finding the right equipment and camera set-up, planning a shooting strategy, and the importance of knowing the game. This is a perfect way to learn about sports photography from a pro, and see images of milestone sporting events.

As Mr. Wyatt notes on his website, his “first experience with photography was an unsuccessful photo documentation of my honeymoon.” Since then, Mr. Wyatt has covered the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball, among others. His photos have appeared in various publications such as USA Today, Black Enterprise Magazine, Time Magazine, Newsweek, TV Guide, and ESPN. He currently covers corporate assignments for companies that include Six Flags, Eastman Kodak, Continental Airlines, CVS, Pepsico, and Verizon.

For information on the Photographers’ Lecture Series at Williston, contact Kathleen Unruh by email or at (413) 529-3211.

Robotics Team Places 6th at State Championship

The "Pits" where teams worked on their robots while waited for their matches to be called. Williston Wildcat Robotics is team 3157 at the right in the picture.

There are over 2,400 FIRST Tech Challenge robotics teams competing each year for the FTC World Championship (to be held in St. Louis, MO). From those thousands of teams, only 128 will win the right to go to the World Championship. On Saturday, March 16th, Williston Wildcat Robotics spent the day in Bridgewater, MA competing in the Massachusetts State FTC Robotics Championships to win one of the coveted 128 World Championship invitations.

Massachusetts is well-known for its high-technology initiatives in secondary education, and all 28 competing state teams displayed a very impressive use of technology and creativity in preparing their robots to compete in the Ring It Up! robot challenge. All teams had to be invited to the State Championships by being a member of an “alliance” that won one of the seven qualifying rounds held between December and March. An alliance represents two individual teams who work together in the Ring It Up! game to defeat an opposing alliance. Also invited were the top two judged awards winners from each of the qualifying rounds.
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YouthFilms to Showcase Work of Four

Four students will have their films screened at a showcase of young filmmakers in Northampton this weekend.

Jilly Lim, Cade Zawacki, Alex Kozikowski, and Charles Frank all had work accepted by YouthFilm 2013, which will take place at the Academic of Music Theatre on Saturday.

In congratulatory letters to the students, the festival’s review panel described the various films as “really well made,” “funny,” “original,” “captivating,” and “professional.”

The reviewers described Ms. Lim’s film, The Guilt, as having an “amazing story, great camera angles, you’re not afraid to move the camera around…The story hits home.”

Boom Guy 2.0 by Mr. Zawacki was described as  “funny, clever, original idea…That last scene with Ed is great, the cherry on top!”

Mr. Kozikowski’s Three Short Pieces earned praise for having excellent camerawork with “slow, short pans, the low angles, everything is really captivating and flows smoothly. The light is really nice as well. An excellent film!”

The review panel also accepted two of Mr. Frank’s films, Breezeless and Listen, which they described as “a notch above the rest.  Camera work…lighting, colors, editing, all worked so well together and told such great visual stories. And great performances, too! A really professional job.”

YouthFilm 2013 will be held Saturday, February 23, from 12 to 3 pm at the Academy of Music Theatre in Northampton.

[Video] On Shooting TEMPUS by Charles Frank ’13

“TEMPUS” was one of those spontaneous pieces that had absolutely no planning. I was spending the weekend in New Jersey working on pre-production for a mini documentary I’m shooting in March, when I suddenly turned to my friend Jake (the co-director of “TEMPUS”), and said, “Let’s shoot something this weekend.”

Within a few hours we had conceptualized a video, scouted a location, acquired free equipment, and found a third crew member to help us out. With a backpack full of snacks ready, Jake and I picked up our dancer and crew the next morning, and began shooting on instinct with no real plan of attack. After five hours, the sun started to set, and Jake and I retreated to our editing station.

For 10 and a half hours through the night we edited and finished “TEMPUS.” Thus far, “TEMPUS” has drawn attention from director/cinematographer, Philip Bloom, cinematographer of “Act of Valor,” Shane Hurlbut, and lastly, Red Bull. Hope you enjoy!

TEMPUS – Sony FS700 from Jake Oleson on Vimeo.

Williston Wildcat Robotics – Winning Alliance!

Editor’s note: Over the weekend, the Williston Wildcat Robotics Team was on a winning qualifying team and earned one of only 16 invitations to a state-wide robotics championship in March. Ted Matthias, computer science teacher and FTC Robotics Team #3157 coach, explains.

Williston Wildcat Robotics, FTC Team #3157

For the last five years, an annual group of our most creative, engineering-minded students have participated on Williston’s Wildcat Robotics Team. Their work has synthesized principles of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as they have designed, built and programmed a medium-scale metal robot. Their robot is specifically designed to compete in the nationally-supported FIRST Tech (Robot) Challenge.

FIRST (“For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology”) is a non-profit organization founded by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and other innovative devices. FIRST conducts four different robotics programs on the regional, state, and international leves. High school students usually compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) program; all 2012-13 FTC teams compete in the “Ring It Up!” Challenge.

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A Singing School…And So Much More

by Yoonji Kim ’15

201111017_Schnaittacher_215 As Williston is noted as a “singing school,” our student and faculty musicians have a significant impact on the community. Ranging from singers to jazz band performers, our school musicians perform a wide variety of musical genres, and the beauty of the music brought to the community is very meaningful. Although music is not a regular part of our daily routine or as main stream as athletics, Williston shares and builds community around music through our always well-attended concerts.

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Starting the New Year With Confidence

Catherine Sanderson at Williston 2012

Last Wednesday, the Parent’s Association held our first meeting of 2013, and hosted Catherine Sanderson, Associate Professor of Psychology at Amherst College, who presented a talk called “Five Strategies for Parenting a More Confident Teenager: What the Most Current Research Shows.”

We think we speak for everyone who was in the room when we say this was completely fascinating. Professor Sanderson is a gifted speaker, despite a post-cold touch of laryngitis, and captivated a crowd of concerned parents and faculty/staff.  We will get personal for a moment, and put it right out there that being a parent of a preteen or adolescent involves tremendous effort–with no reciprocal encouragement about 90 per cent of the time. Hearing Professor Sanderson identify our anxiety provoking and confusing  parenting moments as the norm was very comforting.

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The Willistonian: Remembering Al Lavalle

by Courtney Aquadro ’11

Williston has always taught us about how change is possible. There is no better
representative of this idea than Al Lavalle. Dan Curylo, a coworker of Al’s,
says that, “He changed the whole cage…changed people…changed the
school…all for the better.”

Al passed away on November 25th after a long battle with colon cancer. The day
alums and students found out about his passing, Facebook was overflowing with
memories of All and  people thanking him for all he taught them. Al worked in
The Cage for ten years before joining the physical plant. While he was in The
Cage he imparted many life lessons onto hundreds of people. Following is a
tribute from a few alumns who will never forget him.

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Science Program Tackles Big Questions

An outbreak of fungal meningitis. That’s the problem that University of Massachusetts Professor of Chemistry Dr. Scott Auerbach asked AP Integrated Science students to solve when he visited The Williston Northampton School on November 15.

As the students settled into groups of three and four, Auerbach outlined the grim statistics: 438 cases in 19 states with a death total of at least 32.

“Today’s goal is to understand the role science plays in making sense of understanding this outbreak,” Auerbach said. “Your job is to be Beth Bell, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.”

This was one problem that the students weren’t going to be able to solve by looking in the back of their textbook—and not being able to immediately find the solution is the point. When Science Department Chair Bill Berghoff put together the pilot program for the integrated science class, his aim was to encourage collaboration and scientific creative thinking.

“I’m really big into inquiry-based learning,” he said. “You have to do experiments, you have to do activities, to really understand what’s going on.”

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