Gifted Jaguars and Eagles

Today in AP Physics we had a great conversation with about STEM careers and her path in Physics. Dr. Peterson is a former student of mine and graduated from Jefferson in 2005.  She is a science policy reporter for the American Institute of Physics. Previously, she was a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics, where she worked on science writing and advocacy projects. She holds a Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an A.B. in physics and mathematics from Harvard University. She lives near Washington, DC.  Here is the slideshow she used.  I encourage you to ask your student about class today!   11/19/2021

Dear DA 10 STEM cohort and their parents, Mr. Kersten is going to have surgery next week so I will be subbing in for him for period 2 from Nov 18-23. One day I will administer a test for him. However, the other days I am organizing some speakers for our students. On 11/19 we will Zoom in Andrea Peterson who graduated from Jefferson and works at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory . She went to the U of W Madison and Harvard and will talk about her process of choosing her STEM career path. On 11/23 we will do a college panel with: -Jordan Thomson, Washington University, St. Louis - Kennedy grad -Tuan Dinh, Princeton University -Kennedy grad -Jillayne Clarke, Johns Hopkins University -Jefferson grad All the speakers will be on Zoom so students will need to bring their Chromebooks and headphones those days. Sincerely, Meredith

Join the Jefferson High School Math Team! Everyone is welcome, freshmen/sophomores/juniors/seniors at any math level. Everyone participates in practices and meets. Practices are on Mondays and Tuesdays 2:40-3:40 after school in room C123, starting November 1st. Feel free to drop in to see what it’s like! You can join the team at any time during the season! Contact Coach Rafferty (Liam.Rafferty@normandale.edu) with any questions.

The gifted department offers a vareity of ways that we support teachers. Below is what I shared with teachers at KHS and JHS today.

AMC 10/12 National Math Competition Jefferson will be participating in the AMC 10/12 on Wednesday, 2/5 from 3:00 to 4:30 in room C123. Email Liam.Rafferty@normandale.edu to reserve a spot. The AMC 10 and AMC 12 are both 25-question, 75-minute, multiple choice examinations in high school mathematics designed to promote the development and enhancement of problem-solving skills. The AMC 10 is for students in 10th grade and below, and covers the high school curriculum up to 10th grade. Students in grade 10 or below and under 17.5 years of age on the day of the contest can take the AMC 10. The AMC 12 covers the entire high school curriculum including trigonometry, advanced algebra, and advanced geometry, but excluding calculus. Students in grade 12 or below and under 19.5 years of age on the day of the contest can take the AMC 12. These competitions are administered around the country on Thursday, January 30, 2020 and Wednesday, February 5, 2020. The AMC 10/12 provides an o...

Kennedy's Science Olympiad team competed this last weekend at Rice University in Houston Texas. They competed against 36 schools, several of which are in the top 20 in the nation, and came away with some huge successes. Congrats to the following students who had top-ten finishes! 10th in Codebusters: Richmond Tu Asher Mobley Ingrid Anderson 10th in Designer Genes: Kierinn Mobley Dulce Garcia 9th in Geologic Mapping: Jessica Greymont Jon Starfeldt 10th in Machines: Jordan Thompson Ingrid Anderson 8th in Sounds of Music: Jordan Thompson Ben Griesel 9th in Water Quality: Jon Starfeldt Jessica Greymont Jordan Thompson also assembled a specific kind of bridge, called a boomilever, made of balsa wood  IN THE HOTEL ROOM,  which medalled, getting him  5th place .  Great job to Kennedy!!

I had a great time with the Asst. Superintendent and the Director of GT Services last night at the Governor's Mansion. We were hosted by the First Lady of MN and the MN Urban Debate League .  We got to hear from a diverse student panel about how debate has improved their lives.  It was fun to introduce the world of debate to some new people! 

On May 29th the Dimensions Academy High School STEM program had Shane Wood do physics enrichment with our students. Wood  does education outreach in particle physics, introducing teachers and students to data from large international experiments at Fermilab (near Chicago) and CERN (near Geneva, Switzerland). It was fun to see students calculate physics using real life data! Topics covered are explained here .  

Spoken Word Conference Sophomores and Juniors in the Nobel program are invited to an in-school field trip to work with Guante on Tuesday, May 28th for the school day at Kennedy High School.   Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre is an MC, two-time National Poetry Slam champion, activist and educator. His work explores the relationships between identity, power, and resistance, and has been featured on Upworthy , Welcome to Night Vale , Everyday Feminism , MSNBC, the Huffington Post , and beyond. Garnering over ten million views online, Guante has also performed live at the United Nations, given a TedxTalk, and presented at countless colleges, universities, and conferences. Whether deconstructing traditional notions of masculinity, challenging dominant narratives related to race and racism, or just telling stories about the different jobs he’s had, Tran Myhre strives to cultivate a deeper, more critical engagement with social justice issues, one based in both empathy and agency. An e...

I had a great morning at the Optimist Club meeting this morning at Mugshots Coffee in Bloomington.  Three students from Ridgeview Elementary got to talk about their award winning essays on engineering and the stock market.  Erin Boltik, Rick Halley and I also got to talk about the expanding programming we are offering in Bloomington.  It was fun to talk about our great program and to have such amazing students show off their talents with us!  Thanks for inviting us Optimist Club!

After a two month residency with spoken word artist, Desdamona, Kennedy Nobel Language Arts students composed original spoken word poems on a topic of their choice. "Spoken word is a performance art that is word based. It is an oral art that focuses on the aesthetics of word play, intonation, and voice inflection." On May 22, students from Honors 9 English classes, including the Nobel section, and interested guests met at the Mugshots coffee shop in Bloomington for a spoken word open mic night. The students were inspiring, and their poems had an emotional impact on the audience. I am really glad I got to attend. I was wowed by the performances and look forward to more open mic nights!

Please help us congratulate the JHS Chess Team who competed at the Minnesota State Chess Association’s Scholastic Statewide Tournament on March 24-25. On an individual basis in the K-12 th  grade section, senior David Floeder achieved 5 th  place, junior Aaron Thomson placed 6 th  and 9 th  grader Serena French placed 9 th , junior Joshua French also competed and helped the team tie for 2 nd  place and brought home the 3 rd  place trophy in a nail biting tie breaker tournament ending game. The tournament took place at St. Catherine’s University in St. Paul. Congratulations chess players!  Thomson, French, French and Floeder are all DA HS students or DA HS graduates!

Rea  Banerjee and Jillayne Clark, both 10th graders in the DA HS program, tied for the top score on the AMAYTC ( American Mathematical Association of Two- Year Colleges  )  Student Math League exam this year at Normandale Community College!  They will be recognized by Normandale this spring with a cash prize and an award from the math department!  Congrats to  Rea and Jillanye ! 

The Kennedy Science Olympiad team placed 7th and Jefferson placed 15th at the state Science Olympiad competition out of 33 teams! Congrats to all the individual students who placed in the top 10 in their categories: Kennedy: Dillon Ackerman - 1st place in Dynamic Planet, 4th place in Microbe Mission Ella Anderson - 2nd place in Mission Possible, 3rd place in Write it - Do it Jessica Gremont - 1st place in Dynamic Planet Gunnar Anderson - 2nd place in Mission Possible Phil Malacek - 3rd place in Rocks and Minerals Ben Griesel - 3rd place in Rocks and Minerals Savannah Salato - 4th place in Microbe Mission Madison Chesky - 3rd place in Write it - Do it Jefferson: Zoe Gabrielson and Adeline Vacura - 7th place Mission Possible Freddy Alonzi and Ryan Martz - 8th place Mousetrap Vehicle Ryan Martz and Joseph Pham - 8th place Remote Sensing Hannah Pham and Amy Wang - 9th place Towers Mary Haddad and Daria Weinzierl - 10th place Write It Do It

The Gifted and Talented department will take Nobel students to the History Theater on Thursday, February 22nd to see “A Crack in the Sky”.  This will be its world premiere and it features two local playwrights, Harrison David Rivers and Ahmed Ismail Yusuf. The play is described as, “ From Somalia to the U.S.A. 1984.  A young shepherd boy stands in front of his mother to tell her of the decision he has made in the night. He has had enough of the nomadic life, of herding goats and sheep, and is leaving to seek out a better life. With that, he sets off on an adventure that takes him on the road less traveled from Somalia to Minnesota. It’s the epic tale of Ahmed Ismail Yusuf who, inspired by Maya Angelou, discovers the power of the written word.”   For more info go to:  http://www.historytheatre.com/2017-2018/crack-in-the-sky We hope to use this experience to give students exposure to local authors.  We plan to follow up on this field trip by me...

The AMATYC math contest will be held at Normandale on Friday, 2/23 on the 3rd floor of the College Services building.  3pm - get your room assignment 3:30-4:30 - math contest Winners can earn prize money.  Bring your graphing calculator. Practice tests available online:   http://www.amatyc.org/?page=SMLPastQuestions For more info:  tony.dunlop@normandale.edu

Good luck to the KHS Science Olympiad team as they go to the state tournament! From Coach Elsmore: "I’m happy to report that the Science Olympiad squad took 2nd overall after breaking a tie with Eastview based on the number of first place finishes in individual events. Our students really stepped up, many of them improving from middle of the pack finishes in prior meets to medaling in this one.  We are onto our state tournament on  March 3rd . Please take a moment to congratulate any of our amazing medalists you may have in class: - Dillon Ackerman and Rachael Chhang - 1st in Dynamic Planet - Savannah Salato and Madison Chesky - 1st in Anatomy and Physiology - Ella Anderson and Madison Chesky - 1st in Write It Do It - Dillon Ackerman and Savannah Salato - 2nd in Microbe Mission - Gunnar Anderson and Alex Thomson - 3rd in Hovercraft - Ben Griesel and Jordan Thomson - 3rd in Towers - Rachael Chhang and Aley Rosas-Mondragon - 3rd in Materials Science ...

Congrats to the Kennedy Science Olympiad team! https://khs.bloomington.k12.mn.us/node/3132939

American Mathematics Competition Are you interested in competing in the American Mathematics Competition in February?   We are looking for talented mathematicians to compete.   This is a national math competition and it is a way to show colleges your math talents! If you are interested please email the Math Team coach, Dr. Liam Rafferty at Liam.Rafferty@normandale.edu by Wednesday, January 3 rd so that we can register you.   The competition days are 2/7 & 2/14. For more info about the AMC exams, including practice problems, go to https://www.maa.org/math-competitions/amc-1012

Jefferson: Science Olympiad - Intro meeting will be after school on November 9th.  Practices and meetings are held in C127. FFI:  Talk to Mr. Cory Carufel (ccarufel@isd271.org) Robotics -  Intro meeting has occured but you can still join See Mr. Don Verdegan in A Wing (dverdegan@isd271.org)  Math Team FFI  Dr. Liam Rafferty (Liam.Rafferty@normandale.edu)  Dr. Rafferty teaches Calc I for DAHS at Normandale Community College. The Jefferson Math League Team meets on Mondays and Wednesdays after school in room C103 for around 45 minutes except for the Mondays when we have meets. This is  2:45-3:30  on Mondays and  2:15-3:00  on Wednesdays. The team started this week, the practices are open to anyone who would like to come, and it isn't necessary to come to all practices to participate. About half the team is in a Fall sport or marching band, and doesn't start coming until November. Kennedy: Science Olympiad  ...