It was Agricultural Appreciation Day at Byron-Bergen High School. Senior students drove their tractors to school.
Photos submitted by Gayla Starowitz.
Connor Nesbitt
Even without the profanity, celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay is profane. He’s mean even when his soliloquies aren’t bleepin’ tirades.
Some of the students in the Culinary Arts Program at BOCES compare Chef Chef Nathan Koscielski to Gordon Ramsay. Even "Chef K" himself makes the comparison.
“I do yell in the kitchen sometimes,” Koscielski said.
Of course, Chef K never drops f-bombs. No teacher would. But neither is he mean. There are no insults tossed around like pizza dough in Chef K’s kitchen. If he raises his voice, it’s more like a stern version of Hugh Beaumont than a a vein-popping drill sergeant.
Chef Nathan Koscielski's favorite cooking shows
Ramsay — star of such shows as "Hell’s Kitchen" and "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" — has high standards and high expectations, which seems to be the fuse that ignites his expletive-deleted critiques of other chefs and restaurant owners.
Driving home those same points about quality and consistency is also the growl in Chef K’s bark.
“There have got to be standards,” Koscielski said. “Everything has to got be uniform and everything has got to be high quality. It’s got to be done the right way, the perfect way, or it’s wrong. If it’s wrong, we’re not going to sell it to a customer.”
The emphasis on the right way over the wrong way is one of the reasons Koscielski has been able to guide his students to three consecutive wins in an annual culinary competition in Buffalo.
“I’m a member of the American Culinary Federation, I know all the chef instructors at the local colleges; we kind of grew up in the food services industry together, and the fact that I’m there by myself with 15 high school students and we’re beating the faculty and staff of colleges, it’s a great honor,” Koscielski said. “To do it three years in a row means it wasn’t beginner's luck.”
It’s more than just fate that has brought Koscielski to Batavia. It’s a bit more like destiny.
Growing up in Derby, Koscielski said by high school he was well down the path to nowhere, just another ne'er do well in a small rural town.
“My Culinary Arts teacher in high school saved my life,” Koscielski said. “If it wasn’t for that man, his name was Leroy Good — and, again, I was a very troubled student in high school — if it wasn’t for Leroy Good and Culinary Arts I would be living in my parents' basement, be thrown out of my parents' house and in jail or dead. BOCES saved my life, honest to God.”
Or perhaps it wasn’t destiny. Growing up, there was no cooking in Koscielski’s home. At dinner time, his parents would pull out the menus from local restaurants and everybody would decide what to order and dad would go pick it up. After he started taking culinary classes, he was eager to cook for his mom and dad, but found there weren’t even any pots and pans in the kitchen.
“My parents oven is still picture-perfect clean to this day,” Koscielski said. “It’s about 40 years old, but they never use it.”
Despite this handicap, or perhaps because of it, Koscielski became passionate about cooking.
Koscielski holds a degree in Culinary Arts from the the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute/Le Cordon Bleu and a bachelor’s in Career and Tech Education from SUNY Buffalo. He’s been a sous chef at the Niagara Club and Templeton Landing. He was also a banquet chef at the Buffalo Club.
He started teaching at BOCES 1 in Erie County, but as the low man on the totem pole, when spending cuts came, his was the first job lopped off.
When a long-term substitute teaching position opened in Batavia, Koscielski accepted the job offer.
He was immediately impressed with the school. The kitchen, he said, with its professional stoves and industrial-grade mixers and wide assortment of pots and pans and utensils, is one of the best equipped he’s come across in an educational setting. He’s also been treated very well by the administration, he said.
“One thing that really hit home for me was in my first week of substitute teaching here, I got a knock on my door and it was Dr. Glover, our former superintendent, and he was just introducing himself and said if I ever needed anything let him know,” Koscielski said. “That hit home with me because I worked at Erie 1 BOCES for two years and for two full years of working at Erie 1 BOCES I never met the superintendent once.”
Five years ago, Koscielski was promoted to the full-time, permanent instructor position in Culinary Arts and quickly became a student favorite.
“Chef K is the smartest person I’ve ever known,” said second-year culinary student Bob Zien. “He’s literally a teacher of not only culinary arts, but life skills. The guy is a genius. He’s a genius. It makes me proud to be able to say I was in his class. It’s not often you have a teacher who is as smart and as caring about his students as Chef K is.”
Gina Muroff, also a second-year student and this year’s class president, said she was both surprised and impressed her first day of class with Koscielski.
“That first day of class you come in and you think, ‘ok, I’m going to learn about culinary, but on that first day, everything he taught was about life,” Muroff said. “He said nothing about culinary. He talked about, what do you want to do when you get out of here, how are you going to succeed? He showed us that you need to have motivation to pursue your own dreams, whether it’s going to be in culinary or not.”
Chef K talks a lot with his students about passion — passion for cooking, but more, passion for doing your best in every aspect of life, and by all accounts Koscielski is a zealous mentor.
“Any program starts with the teacher,” said Batavia BOCES Principal Jon Sanfratello. “He’s passionate about what he does. What attracts kids to his program is his passion and his drive.”
Chef K’s passion is one of the great lessons former student Peter Boylan said he got from his two years in BOCES Culinary Arts Program. Boylan is now at the American Culinary Federation.
“I learned you don’t get into this industry for the money,” Boylan said. “You really have to care about what you’re doing. I may have to start off as a dishwasher and work my way up to a line cook or a sous chef and so on before I become a chef, but I think it’s worth it.”
“I’ve wanted to be a chef since kindergarten,” Boylan added. “I never did anything about it until Chef K introduced me to all the aspects of cooking. That’s when I definitely fell in love with the industry. He showed me it’s not always going to be fun, but it’s worth it. I would say I found a much larger passion for the industry because of him.”
From life lessons, Chef K’s class moves to safety and sanitation. That’s four weeks of intense lessons on foodborne pathogens, food storage, cooking temperatures, cuts, burns and slips and falls. Next, students learn how to make breads and pastries, which overlaps with instruction on overall culinary skills.
The fun kicks up a notch with the lessons on knife skills as students learn how to chop, slice and dice. Knife skills segues nicely into soups, broths and stews.
“Soups are a good way to learn about culinary arts because you have knife skills with cutting vegetables, and you have to understand the cooking of the stock or the broth of the soup,” Koscielski said. “If you’re making cream soups, then you go into the realm of thickening agents, white rue, cornstarch slurry and stuff like that. So soups are a really good devise to squeeze in a lot of culinary education into one unit.”
After soups, students move into grilling, roasting and frying, and, of course, desserts.
As the lessons coalesce, Chef K opens the annual teacher’s cafe. For 25 weeks, teachers need not pack their own lunches or take a quick run to the deli during their afternoon break. They can saunter into the department’s dinning room for a buffet of brimming with culinary variety.
As winter melts into spring, it’s time for the entire student body of BOCES to get a chance to sample the cooking of their peers. The student dining experience moves beyond self-serve dishing at a buffet, as students learn about food service — taking orders, delivering dishes and ringing up sales.
In the kitchen, the aspiring chefs flip burgers, fry fries and drop pancakes — or whatever else is on the menu that day — and to get all the hot food plated up at the right time takes teamwork. The cooks must coordinate and communicate. There might be some Chef K yelling involved.
“The more this team works together, just like a basketball team, the better they’re able to understand where each other is going to be on the kitchen floor or the court,” Koscielski said. “Once they understand not only how they work themselves but how each other works, then you have a kitchen that is a well-oiled machine. “
It’s all about establishing good habits, Koscielski said.
“There’s a famous line by a famous teacher, Harry Wong, that procedures will become routine, and I base my teaching philosophy of that,” Koscielski said. “You set up a lot of procedures at the beginning of the school year or the beginning of the lesson and after a while those procedures become routine for the students. Once those become routine you have a good educational environment for the students.”
During one cafe day, when a student brought over an ice cream sundae intended for a customer, Chef K told him flat out he got it wrong. There was chocolate on the edge of the plate. The cherry juice was dripping down the whipped cream. The brownie wasn’t in the center of the plate. It wasn’t made right, so it was wrong.
But Chef K didn’t yell. He sent the student back to the dessert table and made him do it over. The yelling commenced when the student returned.
“That’s a thousand times better,” Koscielski bellowed, his voice ringing off the stainless steal hoods. “It’s a thousand times better. A thousand times better.”
Talking about the incident later, Koscielski said it’s important to emphasize standards with each and every dish that might leave the kitchen.
“Once the student understood how to properly plate the item up, it was thousand times better,” Koscielski said.
Lesson learned.
Muroff said the fact that Chef K has such high standards shows that he cares about the future of his students. He knows what real life is like and he wants them to be ready for the what the work world is like.
“He’s definately the best teacher I’ve ever met because as I said, he cares about our future,” said the Oakfield-Alabama student who plans to pursue two years of study as a pastry chef before enrolling in a four-year culinary college. “He knows that if he doesn’t show the kids how to succeed in their future, then they don’t know what they’ll be doing when they graduate. He teaches us everything that we’ll need in our future.”
Boylan thinks Chef K is harder on the students who are serious about culinary as a career. Once Chef K learns you aspire to double-breasted jackets, jaunty scarves and toques, he’s going to lean on you, call on you to learn every day and do your best to be the best.
That challenge to mastery has proven a big advantage, Boylan said, as he’s advanced in his studies.
“I’m on the hot food team in college now,” Boylan said. “I think without him pushing me the way he did in class I wouldn’t have the opportunity to be where I am now.”
Culinary arts isn’t just about cooking. Students can also earn math and science credits, and next year they can also earn English credits. One way or another cooking involves math, science, reading and writing, and Koscielski said students will often take a lot more interest in those subjects when they’re tied to a topic they care about.
“They’re more willing to do the homework,” Koscielski said. “They’re not necessarily interested in their English class at their home school, but when we take that English credit and we make them read cookbooks and do homework assignments off of cookbooks they’re more engaged.”
Television also plays a part in Koscielski’s lesson plans. Chef Ramsay, or his shows, is a frequent topic of discussion during class time. Students will be instructed to watch a particular show — one of Koscielski’s favorites for teaching is Iron Chef — and then dissect the show the next day.
“One of the greatest tools I have right now is the Food Network,” Koscielski said. “Students turn on the TV and they have an entire channel dedicated to cooking. The sounds, the lights, it gets them interested, it gets them going. I find the Food Network has helped my enrollment dramatically throughout the years.”
When it comes time to pick the students who will be on the culinary competition team, Koscielski has put his class through months of intense training, held them to high standards and instilled in them a pride for their work. These high school students come into the competition with the respect of the college kids they hope to beat, said Boylan, who has been both on Chef K’s teams and competed against him as a college student.
The college kids don’t feel shown up when they get beaten by Batavia BOCES students.
“We all understand that chef is giving those high school students a different level of learning,” Boylan said. “He really does give a college-level education. It really doesn’t make too much difference that they’re BOCES students. The material he gives them is what you would be learning in your first year of college.”
Sometimes, though, even college students never learn the biggest life lesson of all, the one Chef K will pound on a stainless steel table to emphasize if he must. The lesson is perhaps the most common thread between Chef K and Chef Ramsay and anyone who aspires to master a craft: You’ve got to care.
“It’s not about grade-point average,” Koscielski said. “It’s about passion. It’s about having heart. It’s having good attendance. It’s being professional. That’s what makes a good student.”
And a good chef.
A career in a kitchen is a good choice, said Chef Nathan Koscielski, because “everybody loves to eat.”
Until scientists learn how to create Star Trek-like food replicators, the world will need cooks.
It’s also a career a young person can enter without necessarily taking on a lot of student debt.
Jobs that could be available to BOCES graduates right out of high school include:
The BOCES brochure lists the following jobs and potential salaries in the culinary profession:
Some of these jobs, at least to reach the upper levels of the pay scale, will require post-secondary education. Culinary schools in the region that have accepted BOCES students include:
Notable local graduates of the Culinary Arts Program at BOCES:
So far, none of Chef K’s students have become an executive chef or restaurant owner, but he said, “I’m sure someday there will be.”
Even without the profanity, celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay is profane. He’s mean even when his soliloquies aren’t bleepin’ tirades.
Some of the students in the Culinary Arts program at BOCES compare Chef Nathan Koscielski to Gordon Ramsay. Even "Chef K" himself makes the comparison.
“I do yell in the kitchen sometimes,” Koscielski said.Of course, Chef K never drops f-bombs. No teacher would. But neither is he mean. There are no insults tossed around like pizza dough in Chef K’s kitchen. If he raises his voice, it’s more like a stern version of Hugh Beaumont than a vein-popping drill sergeant.
Ramsay — star of such shows as "Hell’s Kitchen" and "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" — has high standards and high expectations, which seems to be the fuse that ignites his expletive-deleted critiques of other chefs and restaurant owners.
Driving home those same points about quality and consistency is also the growl in Chef K’s bark.
“There have got to be standards,” Koscielski said. “Everything has got to be uniform and everything has got to be high quality. It’s got to be done the right way, the perfect way, or it’s wrong. If it’s wrong, we’re not going to sell it to a customer.”
Click here for the full story.
Oh, that smell. That whiff of manure spread on a farmfield. The odor of animal waste in a barn filled with holsteins or jerseys. The stench of a pigsty.
The first time Chef Nathan Koscielski brought a group of his Culinary Arts students into the animal science department at BOCES, their instant response was to pinch noses firmly between thumbs and forefingers. "Oh, that smell."
Animal Science instructor Holly Partridge remembers it well.
“They walked in and said, ‘oh, this is gross. What a disgusting stink,’ ” Partridge said. “Chef turned to them and said, ‘that is the smell of money, because without that smell, you don’t have anything to sell. You don’t have anything to cook. You don’t have a restaurant.’ ”
That visit came near the start of what has turned into a fertile partnership between Koscielski and Partridge, one that is perhaps unique in culinary education circles.
“We had a documentary film producer come in to show us his film ‘American Meat’ and he said visited 150 FFA (Future Farmers of America) programs and he saw what we were doing and said he had seen nothing like it,” Partridge said.
For the past three years, the animal science program has been producing the meat used in the meals prepared by the Culinary Arts students — chicken, eggs, lamb, pork and guinea hens. The partnership has helped the BOCES culinary program produce a three-peat in the Taste of Culinary Competition hosted by the American Culinary Federation of Greater Buffalo, but it’s also produced a new recipe for educating high school students about the source of their meals.
“If you ask my students at the beginning of the year where food comes from, they say it comes from the grocery store,” Partridge said. “Where’s your eggs come from? It comes from the grocery store? Where’s your milk come from? It comes from the grocery store. That’s the mindset that Americans tend to have now because we’re so far removed from production.”
Both Partridge and Koscielski said that by bringing the two programs closer together, they’re teaching future cooks to respect the ingredients that go into their recipes and teaching future farmers about quality ingredients. The farmers learn about how to raise animals properly and the cooks learn to reuse waste in a way that is better for the planet.
“I make every student hold a little chick that was just hatched in their hands and tell them that in 16 weeks, that chicken is going to be on your cutting board,” Kosciekski said. “I don’t do that to be mean. I do that to teach them respect for the ingredients. When you’re holding a living animal and you know in 16 weeks, that’s going to be on your cutting board and you’re going to cook it, well, I can’t teach that through a textbook. There’s no better way to teach them to respect the animals.”
“When they wheel it down, they wheel it down knowing it will feed animals that they will eventually use in their class,” Partridge said.
It’s a long walk down hallways with tile on the walls and past many, many classrooms to get from the cooking class to the animal class. There’s a right turn, a left, a right and a left again. A walker might be tempted to leave breadcrumbs the first time on the trail, but it is a two-way path. Students from both classes will visit each other during the course of a school year as eggs hatch, grow into chickens, are sent off to a meat processing house and finally return to Chef K’s kitchen so they can fulfill their culinary destiny.
When chicks grow into chickens, the culinary students weave through those hallways to pay a final visit to the birds that will soon provide broth for their noodle soups or thighs for their cacciatores.
“They get to feel what a live bird feels like; to feel what the breast of a live bird feels like; to feel the weight of a live bird; to feel its breathing and its warmth,” Partridge said.
Poultry is slaughtered off campus by professionals. The plucked and dressed birds are returned to BOCES frozen and ready for whatever recipe Chef K might be cooking up for his students to learn. The Animal Science students are then invited into the kitchen to see how a bird is broken down for meal preparation.
“I don’t know of a college that is doing what we’re doing here with the integration of the farm,” Koscielski said. “That’s one of the reasons I work here, because I can’t get this anywhere else. Being able to work with my farmer on a daily basis, I don’t get that anywhere else.”
Two years ago, BOCES hosted members from throughout WNY of the American Culinary Federation. The main course: chicken. The cooks: students. The guest speaker: Holly Partridge. The federation members learned about the breed of bird and how it was raised and then got a taste of what Partridge preached.
“They were blown away,” Partridge said. “I showed them the difference between a commercial chicken, which is a very different breed of bird, and the chickens we produced. They were amazed at the difference in flavor because of how they were raised and the breed of the animal.”
The animals raised by Animal Science are farm fresh, which makes for a better meal, but they’re also organic, which Koscielski said not only means a richer flavor, but also a farming process that is healthier for the environment.
Books such as "The Omnivore's Dilemma," "Food Inc." and "King Corn" are required reading in Koscielski’s class, he said.
“We want students to learn about organic, healthy food that leaves a small footprint on the environment,” Koscielski said. “It’s something I’m very passionate about.”
The partnership is only going to expand in the coming years, both Koscielski and Partridge said.
By next year, Animal Science will have an expanded hen house, producing more eggs — enough eggs to stock Koscielski kitchen for the entire school year. With 100 percent of the culinary program’s eggs grown on campus, BOCES will save money on egg purchases.
Partridge and Koscielski are also hatching a plan to sell duck eggs along with breads and pastries at a local farmers market this fall.
“The goal is to not only promote the Animal Science Program, but also give kids an opportunity to run a business venture,” Partridge said.
The plan will need approval of the BOCES board.
Animal Science students spend a lot of time with the pigs, lambs, ducks and chickens they raise. They hold them, feed them, shepherd them and learn their traits and personalities. Learning to read an animal is an important skill to develop, Partridge said. They’re easier to herd when you can predict their next move and you can avoid trouble if you understand their moods.
Students also help care for the dogs of BOCES faculty and students. There are lessons, too, in canine socialization, grooming, feeding and walking.
Rather than a contradiction between mixing household pets with animals raised purely to provide sustenance, Partridge said students learn valuable lessons about farming and the humane treatment of livestock.
“They understand that if you want to eat meat, you’re going to raise the animal humanely, but you’re not going to raise them like your dogs,” Partridge said. “You’re going to raise them in an environment that is economical and humane for that animal. The needs of a pig are different than the needs of your dog. The needs of a chicken are different than the needs of your canary. They understand that food comes from an agriculture process. It comes from driving down the road and watching that manure spread on the field and understanding it’s not just there to make your life miserable because it smells. It’s a byproduct of what we’re doing so you can eat.”
It’s a lesson that doesn’t take long for students to learn, Partridge said.
“The kids have really gotten over that, ‘oh, I don’t want to eat that pig, it’s so cute,’ to ‘we are raising a quality product for a reason,’ ” Partridge said. “I’m not getting kids coming in crying that that little pig is going to get killed for somebody to eat. I’m getting kids with the understanding that production animals that we raise, we handle different than the companion animals that we raise.”
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Press release:
Notre Dame High School will publically launch a $5 million capital campaign on Tuesday evening at Stafford Country Club. This will be the most significant capital campaign in the school’s 62-year history. The "Faith in the Future" capital campaign will allow the school to invest in facility improvements, technology upgrades, and endowment fund growth.
“We are excited to be investing not only in our school, but in the lives of many students from the Western New York area,” said Joseph D. Scanlan, Ph.D., principal. “Providing a world-class education is costly. As our building ages, there is an increasing need for repairs and improvements. This holds true for the physical structure, building utilities and internal technology capabilities.
"Additionally, for an increasing number of families the cost of a Notre Dame education remains challenging and tuition assistance funded by an endowment can often be the deciding factor in a student enrolling.”
Co-chairpersons Don and Joan Bausch, Thomas and Lynn Houseknecht, and Jerry and Carmela Reinhart, along with Major Gift chairpersons Bill and Terry Fritts, are also pleased to announce the significant progress made toward the $5 million goal. During the early phases of the campaign, the school has been successful in securing more than $2 million due to the generosity of friends and alumni of the school.
The capital campaign will be a five-year effort with the active portions of the campaign running through the end of the year. Notre Dame will be asking for support from the school’s family, friends, faculty, staff, students, alumni, parents and the general community.
Notre Dame High School has been named as Buffalo Business First’s #1 Private Catholic Co-educational High School in Western New York; #1 Academic High School in Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming counties; and ranks in the top 15 percent academically for all Western New York high schools for the last six consecutive years.
For more information on the capital campaign and how you can support Notre Dame High School, please contact Gloria Snyder in the school Advancement Office at 585-343-2798.
All staff have been invited to respond to the question of what made or makes them feel particularly proud of being part of Batavia City School District. We are beginning to post their responses on our website (www.bataviacsd.org) and on our facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/BataviaCitySchools ) which has space for your comments. If you’d like to share a note about something that made or makes you feel proud of the District's staff or students, email Kathie Scott, kscott@bataviacsd.org
Superintendent of Schools Christopher Dailey shared this: “A nationwide ranking by U.S. News & World Report gave high marks to Batavia High School, placing BHS in the U.S. News Top 150 schools in New York and in the Top 2,000 nationwide.
Of more than 30,000 total public, charter, and magnet schools reviewed nationwide, out of which approximately 19,500 were ranked, Batavia High School was placed at 1,824; out of more than 1,000 total schools analyzed in New York State, of which 268 were ranked, BHS was placed at 145. Based on 2011-12 data, the results were determined through the use of overall student performance on standardized tests and how well-prepared students were for college-level work. Availability of specialized classes for students of all skill levels as well as student-to-teacher ratios also factored into the rankings.
This is Batavia High School student Ross Chua busting out with his beatboxing talent at the 2014 "Batavia High School Talent Show" last night, which aimed to raise funds for Thomas Ackley, a former student of the Batavia City School District who is fighting cancer (see April 7 article).
Masters of Ceremony Amanda Schelemanow (member, BHS chapter of the Tri-M Music Honor Society) and Spencer Hubbard (Mr. Batavia 2013) introduced 16 entertaining performances by students and faculty. Here they are (all performances are vocal unless otherwise specified):
Tim Martin and Lauren Dunn, piano/vocal performance of "Little Talks"
Steven O'Brien doing yo-yo tricks (which the event's faculty supervisor, BHS chorus teacher Dan Grillo, called the best he has ever seen in person).
Darneisha Thomas, "Bound to You"
Mason Russ, "Boss of Me" (theme from the TV show "Malcolm in the Middle")
Nephy Williams, "Beautiful"
Kesa Janes, "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" (from "The Phantom of the Opera")
Justin Baiocco, "My My, Hey Hey" (from the Neil Young album Out of the Blue). Baiocco's talent consisted not only of the vocal performance, but also his ability to play the guitar and the harmonica at the same time.
Laura Guiste, "Hallelujah"
Marissa Carbonell, "Oh! Darlin' "
Andrea Gilebarto, "Nightingale" (vocals and piano)
Hannah Bluhm, "If I Die Young"
Dan Grillo, "Good Bye Yellow Brick Road" (piano and vocals)
Rachel Flint and Ashley Williams, "There You'll Be"
McKenna Dziemian, "Set Me Free" (sung in both English and Korean)
And finally, there was the "Faculty Dixieland Band" playing "Down By the Riverside" and "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue"
Dan Grillo (drums), Stuart McLean (bass)...
Sean Krauss (clarinet), Brandon Ricci (trumpet) and Jane Haggett (piano)
Press release:
On March 19, a distinguished group of 23 students from Byron-Bergen Jr. High School was welcomed into the National Junior Honor Society (NJHS) by its President, Lauren Burke. Ms. Burke addressed the audience with a challenge: Continue to excel in the five qualities that members of National Junior Honor Society must represent – Scholarship, Citizenship, Service, Leadership, and Character. “While the recognition [of being a member of National Junior Honor Society] is great, the true reward is the satisfaction in knowing that you are working to be the best person you can be.”
The induction ceremony featured two guest speakers – English Teacher Diana Walther and Music Teacher Laurence Tallman.
Mrs. Walther focused on the skills needed to be a successful citizen. She shared stories of witnessing the newest members of NJHS exhibiting those skills. “I see perseverance. Each of you has shown me, at one time or another this year that you finish what you start,” she said. “Your character is transparent through your choices. You do what’s necessary to be successful, and are beginning to realize that there is a distinct difference between the ‘easy path’ and the ‘successful path’ in life. Walking down the more challenging path has led you here.”
Mr. Tallman referenced the recent Byron-Bergen musical production “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” which is based on the writings of acclaimed author and philosopher, Robert Fulghum. He reminded the audience that some areas of wisdom, often learned at a young age, play a vital role throughout a lifetime. “We must be reminded of them from time to time, because these are the things that remind us to live not just for the self, but for the better of the whole. They remind us to practice civility, good character, kindness, and love. And, like anything, they must be practiced daily in order to become a regular part of your life.”
The National Junior Honor Society Vice President, Margaret Graney, concluded the ceremony by reading descriptions of the five defining qualities of NJHS members and lighting a candle to signify the importance of each quality in our lives.
Congratulations to National Junior Honor Society 2014 Inductees.
7th Grade
Sarah Bleiler
Kolbi Brew
Lydia Campbell
Adam Drake
Mariah Fee
Jared Fregoe
Leah Gale
Emma Goodman
Annaliese Hersom
William Johnson
Oliver Kelley
Rayelle Merrell
MacKenzie Rosse
Brianna Shade
Emma Smith
Wade Thompson
8th Grade
Cameron Brumsted
Benjamin Chaback
Brionna DeMichel
Justin Hannan
Brendon Kendall
Adam Swapceinski
Esther Wilkins
At Jackson School today, Christine Bow received her official certificate and recognition for being named 2014 New York Agriculture in the Classroom Teacher of the Year from Cornell Cooperative Extension.
Above, Bow shares her bouquet of flowers with some of her students.
Barb Sturm, Cornell Cooperative Extension, handed out seeds to teachers to give to their students. Above, Bill Calandra collects seed packets for his class.
Press release:
Fourth-graders at Byron-Bergen Elementary School are on track to making a substantial economic impact on their state and their community. The class has created a well-researched rationale for designating yogurt as the Official New York State Snack, based on job creation and promoting healthy eating.
They sent handwritten letters – over 200 of them – to state legislators, farm owners, and yogurt companies. Their idea is now a bill sponsored by New York State Senators Mike Ranzenhofer, Kathleen Marchione, and James Seward and by Assemblymen William Magee and Steve Hawley. The bill is currently in committee.
The 17 members of the “Snack Pack,” led by fourth-grade teacher Craig Schroth, say yogurt deserves the title of Official New York State Snack. Student Madelyn Pimm says, “New York is now the biggest yogurt producing state in the U.S., with over 30 processing plants. Governor Cuomo refers to us as the ‘Yogurt Capital of the Country.’ We are the fifth largest milk producing state. We have three yogurt companies right here in our own community – Alpina, Müller-Quaker, and O-At-Ka. Many of us have family members who work there.”
“We want to support the yogurt industry and help create more jobs,” says student Alayna Streeter. “If this becomes law, there will be more opportunities for farmers who milk the cows, for drivers who deliver the milk, for people who make it into yogurt and other products, for distributors, and stores – jobs all down the supply chain.”
“Making yogurt the official snack will help New York promote healthy eating,” says student Caleb Calhoun. “Yogurt tastes great and is really good for you.”
These students are all highly knowledgeable and engaged in the legislative process they started. Letters of support from their representatives line the classroom wall. “Our whole class came up with the idea to promote yogurt,” says student Carly Bergeron. “We’re learning about government in action.” The class is hoping that they may be invited to Albany if their bill becomes law. Follow the progress of the bill at http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/S6695-2013.
“We want to get the word out and build backing for our bill. It’s important for everyone to support the yogurt industry because they are also supporting our communities with jobs,” says Alayna.
One yogurt company is already grateful for the assistance being drummed up by the Byron-Bergen students. Chobani plans to send a representative to the school to thank the students in person later this spring.
After the Batavia City Schools entry into a NYS Lottery contest was disqualified, a group of parents were sharing their disappointment on Facebook when some suggested maybe there should be a local fundraiser for the music department.
Allison Chua said, "I can do that."
She's set up a fundraising page at First Giving.
While the page shows no funds raised yet, Chua said she has received $300 in checks and some parents have said they will donate when they get back from Spring Break vacation.
The NYS Lottery contest involved schools making a video of students singing "Thank You for Being a Friend."
Students were very upset, Chua said, when the lottery disqualified their video after it had already been selected as a finalist and was leading, by a slim margin, in votes.
"This is a way for us to show them we do appreciate what they do," Chua said.
The grand prize for the contest was $10,000, but Chua said the parents are setting a modest goal of $2,500 for their fundraiser, which is equivalent to the third place prize in the contest.
To donate, visit the First Giving Web page. To donate by check, mail your check to Batavia City Schools Parent-Teacher Coalition, attention Allison Chua, 260 State St., Batavia, NY 14020. All donations will go to the music programs of the school district.
For the second year in a row, students at Batavia High School are putting on a Mr. Batavia contest aimed at building relationships between the high school and the community, particularly local nonprofits.
There are 10 contestants this year representing 10 different charities. Money raised will go to the winner's charity.
"We weren't sure how it was going to go last year and we raised $1,700, so we're hoping to exceed that this year," said Lisa Robinson, one of the faculty advisers for student government.
Along with the 10 boys competing, 15 girls are putting together the show (not everybody participating was available for a picture late this afternoon).
The contestants begin the show with a group dance, followed by a lip-sync contest, a talent contest, a swimsuit portion and then the boys come out in tuxedos donated by Charle's Mens Shop for a question-and-answer period.
Nine of the 10 charities have committed to having displays set up in the cafeteria for the evening.
The show starts at 7 p.m., Friday, March 21. Tickets are $7, $5 for students.
Oakfield-Alabama schools are closed this morning, due to weather.
Pavilion school is closed, due to plumbing issues.
Pavilion students scheduled to take a regents exam at Pavilion High School are to report to the elementary building at their scheduled test time.
The National Weather Service has a wind chill advisory in effect until 10 a.m. with wind chills expected to be 15 to 25 degrees below zero.
Photos and information submitted by John Summers.
Genesee Community College held a graduation ceremony Thursday night for its students who successfully completed a two-year registered nursing program.
Top photo, Kathy Palumbo, director of Nursing at GCC, addresses the graduates and audience.
Christy Summers receives her RN pin from Shana Flow and and Patricia Kendall-Cargill.
Graduates Meghan Domm, Angeline Coast, Brandon Richards, Christy Summers, and Jessa Woodley.
From The Batavian's news partner, WBTA:
Batavia Middle School and the high school are OPEN.
The announcement was made by School Superintendent Christopher Dailey shortly before 6 a.m. this morning in a voice mail message to parents.
Kindergarteners at Jackson School got firsthand experience at a Thanksgiving feast today with all the trimmings. The students filed into the auditorium, some of them dressed as Native Americans and others arrived as Pilgrims on the Mayflower. Teachers then served them a lunch of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, corn and apple sauce.
Above, Colin gets his meal, and below are Julia and Cameron.
Bullies like the passive response. It means they're getting to you. They like the angry or frustrated response. It means they're in control and you're not.
What children need to learn is the confident response. The response that communicates, you're not getting to me, but if you don't stop, I'll take control.
For bullies, that response is no fun.
And teaching children how to respond to bullies with confidence is the goal of a new anti-bullying program instituted by the Pavilion Central School District.
The Bully Boot Camp -- seven lessons that parents complete with their children -- was developed by Timothy Shoemaker primarily as an online course parents purchase from his Web site, timothyshoemaker.com.
One of the social workers at Pavilion, Chuck Kron, saw Shoemaker speak at Genesee Community College for a youth camp last spring and decided to check out his Web site.
"I thought he was a very effective speaker for the kids," Kron said. "You could year a pin drop. So I went to his Web site and checked out his tools and resources and I found them concrete, totally unique, boots on the ground, roll up your sleeves kind of stuff."
After some discussion, Shoemaker developed a plan to make the boot camp available to entire school districts. Kron liked the idea because it would allow school districts -- particularly Pavilion -- to provide the program to parents and students at no cost to the parents.
Pavilion did a trial run with the program last spring and is implementing it this year, making Pavilion the first district to offer the boot camp on a districtwide basis.
The program has already proven its effectiveness, Kron said. There was a student and parent who went through the boot camp in 10 days last spring. A few days after completing the program, the child showed up in Kron's office.
Kron admits that his first thought was along the lines of "oh, no, here we go again," but actually the student was quite proud of himself.
"He used a certain specific exercise to confront a bully in the lunch room and he felt good about it, and a lot more confident," Kron said. "He's been significantly less picked on, but when it happens he feels equipped and confident. He's no longer going home crying. He no longer wants to not come to school any more. Instead, he feels like he's got a little tool box to reach into."
Last night's introduction to the boot camp was attended by maybe a dozen or so Pavilion parents along with six or seven administrators from school districts in the area. Kron and the other administrators in Pavilion walked the group through what most of the seven-day course covers (ideally, a parent goes through the course in seven consecutive days with a child, with each session taking about 30 minutes).
Robin, a parent who attended said she's exicted to get started with her child, who had been a bit picked on last year and it's starting again this year.
"I learned (tonight) that I can give my son really great skills he can use as he is growing up
and can use in the future," Robin said. "It will help him in school and throughout his life. It's really important for my child because he's extremely passive. I'm hoping I can change that and get him to be more confident in himself."
One of the lessons, in fact, covers teaching a child how to act confident even if you don't feel confident. Body language, facial expressions and tone of voice can all be used to convey confidence even when you're trembling inside.
"What this does is build up the victims' capacity to take the target off their heads," Kron said.
Implementation of the program doesn't mean the school district is letting bullies off the hook. The traditional methods of dealing with bullies -- punishments and consequences -- still exist and the district councelors will still try to bring about mediation and restorative justice, but the program is unique in providing students ways to neutralize bullies and helps give the parents the means to help their children.
"Often parents, when kids come home and say somebody is bothering them or somebody is bullying or harassing them, parents feel very powerless," Kron said. "They say, 'I wish I could just go into that school and tell that bully off myself.' Well, this gives parents something to do and channel that energy in a positive way that benefits their kids."
Top photo: Mike Brown collects examples of bullying from parents at Tuesday evening's introductory session. Bottom photo: Katie Newby tosses a wad of paper at Chuck Kron in a demonstration of the kind of practice a parent and child might do together on how to effectively respond to a bully.
Photos and information submitted by Aaron Brown.
Last week, the Pembroke Intermediate School celebrated Red Ribbon Week. Throughout the week, students and staff participated in Spirit Days, celebrating choosing a life that does not include drugs. The week concluded with a school-wide assembly and balloon launch.
Friday evening John Kennedy School hosted its annual Community Night. Nearly two dozen local businesses participated along with the police and fire departments and Mercy EMS. It was a chance for parents and children to enjoy some free pizza, play games and learn more about what the Batavia community has to offer.
NOTE: I'm a bit slow in getting these posted because the SD card in my camera turned out to be damaged, so it was a bit of a task getting the pictures off.
Press release:
Students in grades six through eight, who are new to Batavia Middle School, or transferring from a private or parochial school, are invited to attend an Orientation program on Thursday, Aug. 29 at 9 a.m. in the Middle School Auditorium. The program will include an overview of our Middle School and will be followed by a building tour. School counselors will be available for students and parents.
There's also this:
On Thursday, Sept. 5, Batavia Middle School will be holding their Orientation Day for fifth-grade students. Students will be participating in the “Connect Day” program throughout the day.
Fifth graders will spend the morning participating in team building activities, finding their lockers and meeting their teachers. During the afternoon, students will be experiencing traveling to their classes and meeting their counselors.
Fifth-grade students need to arrive to school by 8 a.m. and will report to homeroom by 8:07. All students will be dismissed at 2:45 pm.
Sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students will not report on Sept. 5. The first day of school for all Middle School students (grades five through eight) will be Friday, Sept. 6.
The BMS “Connect Day’s” purpose is to help fifth-graders feel more comfortable as well as help them achieve success in their first year at the Middle School. The program is designed to both welcome and support the fifth-graders by assigning them a Mentor (an eighth-grade student who has met the qualifications of being a good role model and a positive leader). Along with supporting House students, the “Connect Day” program helps Mentors develop leadership skills, responsibility and team work as they begin their transition process to the High School.
Anyone with questions is asked to contact Miss Rogers, fifth- and sixth-grade House Administrator, 343-2480, ext. 3001, or Mr. Eric Knapp, Interventions Counselor, 343-2480, ext. 3002.
Press release:
Assemblyman Steve Hawley (R,C,I-Batavia) organized a meeting on Aug. 20 between State Deputy Secretary for Education De’Shawn Wright and more than 20 local school superintendents and Board of Education members. The gathering provided local education leaders with an opportunity to voice their concerns and opinions on the challenges facing schools and teachers in Western New York, as well as what the state must do to improve local education.
“The fact that the governor sent such a high-ranking education official to our community shows that our calls for fair aid allocation and greater control of our schools are being heard,” Hawley said. “Issues such as Common Core, mandate relief, special education programs, and eliminating the Triborough Amendment, Gap Elimination Adjustment and frivolous lawsuits were examined.
"The local education leaders in attendance did a terrific job of illustrating to Deputy Secretary Wright the need for equitable school aid regardless of geographic location or socio-economic status. The meeting helped make the point to the highest levels of the State Education Department that children in low-wealth school districts deserve the same opportunities as kids in wealthier areas.
"I thank Deputy Secretary Wright for taking the time to travel to our community as well as all of the local education leaders who did such a tremendous job showing how much Western New York cares for its students.”
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