By Donald Gilpin

Registration is open for the YWCA After-School Program (ASP) for the 2024-2025 school year at Community Park, Johnson Park, Littlebrook, and Riverside elementary schools, and also for students who attend Pre-K at Y locations.

The program is available for students from Pre-K through grade 5, with teachers from the Y providing services on school days from 3 to 6 p.m.

To secure a space in the program, parents are encouraged to register before mid-August. Applications are approved on a first-come, first-served basis with some schools filling up faster than others.

The ASP includes 30 minutes of outdoor play, weather permitting, and indoor activities such as gym time, crafting, storytelling, games, and dancing. Students will also be provided with homework help and a nutritious afternoon snack.

For more information, contact After-School Program Manager Patricia Acosta at pacosta@ywcaprinceton.org.

Registration is available on the YWCA website at ywcaprinceton.org under “What We Do, Programs.”

In other Princeton Public Schools news, Princeton Middle School (PMS) design and engineering teacher Matthew Halfacre was recently named New Jersey Middle School “Advisor of the Year” by the national Technology Student Association (TSA).

Halfacre, who is one of the TSA Club advisors at PMS, works with his students in helping them to prepare for competition in STEM-related areas at the New Jersey State TSA conference.

This year 40 PMS students attended the conference held at The College of New Jersey, and Yochin Chang brought home first place in microcontroller design; Angela Cao, Amelia Huang, and Fei-Fei Wang second place in biotechnology; Temu De Los Santos, Fransisco Vozone, and Daniel Wong second place in mechanical engineering; Amelia Huang, Aryahi Pimple, Jasmine Shah, Elena Shen, and Fei-Fei Wang second place in website design; Katy Burns, Julian Bird, and Ethan Robinson third place in construction challenge; and Milla Petrecca third place in children’s stories.

“I am proud of the creativity and the fortitude of our students,” said PMS Principal Jason Burr. “It is also an opportunity for students to visit a college campus and to connect with students from other schools and see their projects.”

Burr went on to praise Halfacre and the accomplishments of the TSA under his leadership. “His dedication has enabled many of our students to achieve much more than they ever thought possible, and we are very proud of the sophisticated technology projects created by the students in the club,” said Burr.

Halfacre described the experience of advising the club as “very rewarding,” and he commended the hard work of the students and of his co-advisor Randy Casey, who is the PMS robotics teacher.

Halfacre noted in particular the “critical life skills” developed by the students in the process of working on their projects: “reading the rules and directions for their competitions, being able to interpret and understand what they are expected to do, collaboration skills from working with their team members.”

He continued, “At the end of the season when we can see the students succeed in their work, it’s a great feeling. The students also sometimes have an opportunity to experience defeat and how to overcome those feelings and use them to motivate themselves for future years.”

The TSA Club is open to all grade levels at PMS and meets twice a week from January through March. The students spend club meetings working alone or in groups of various sizes to develop their projects, which usually involve building some sort of physical product, possibly a model or a book. They also have to create documentation that explains their work and thought processes.