PHS Students Collaborate on Play

The Princeton High School (PHS) fall play, Bethel Park Falls, which was recorded at PHS last week and will air on ShowShare by Broadway on Demand on Friday and Saturday, November 19 and 20, represents a collaboration of more than 150 actors, art students, and tech crew.

The theme of the play, which is about a community trying to save its beloved park, is reflected in the teamwork of students and their teachers in the process of creating this production over the past two months. The show was directed by drama teacher Julianna Krawiecki, along with art teacher Bridget Schmidt and technical director Jeff Van Velsor.

“For us, the message of Bethel Park Falls celebrates our togetherness, artistry, and the special magic of belonging to a group of like-minded individuals,” said Krawiecki. “Though we each used a different medium — wood, fabric, clay, sound, light, our bodies, and voices — our final goal was the same: to bring the story of Bethel Park Falls to the PHS community.”

Krawiecki discussed the challenges of creating theater during COVID-19. “For the past two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, our PHS artists, technicians, and actors lost their collaborative space, and everything about rehearsing and producing our work had to change as we worked remotely and reimagined our process,” she said. “At the end of the day, theater and art are about community, the shared experience and meaningful collaboration. While we are still facing many COVID-19 restrictions, we are overjoyed that we were able to restore much of this process for our students this fall.”

For the play’s setting in the park, art and tech crew students created 145 hexagons on stage, with 60 wood panels making up a tree, 50 ceramic tiles in the rolling hill, 21 painted fabric flowers, and 14 embroidered badges representing the joys to be experienced.

“Each hexagon represents one person from the PHS community who added something of themselves to make this production unique,” said Krawiecki. “They are a population of the school that is finally able to be in the same space, creating and sharing ourselves, our talents, our joy, our commonality.”

To purchase tickets and stream the show, visit broadwayondemand.com.

Hun School Teachers Honored by University of Chicago

The University of Chicago has recognized for Outstanding Educator Awards three teachers from the Hun School of Princeton: Amy Wright, computer science and engineering chair; Kyle Bucy, English teacher; and Joel Michalchuk, performing arts teacher.

Described by the University of Chicago as teachers who “change lives, care deeply about their students, and have an infectious love for learning,” Wright, Bucy, and Michalchuk were nominated, respectively, by Mei von Kaenel, Pedro Poli, and William Hu, newly admitted University of Chicago students who graduated from Hun last spring.

All three teachers commented on how rewarding it is to receive recognition from a student for their work.

Pennington Students Lead Community Service Initiatives

Pennington School students have been working on a variety of community service projects to support a local food pantry, to bring joy to pediatric patients at a local hospital, and to provide hygiene products for Afghan refugees who are living at McGuire-Fort Dix Air Force Base.

Several student have volunteered at the Hopewell Valley Mobile for Pantry, packing many bags of food that were delivered to families in need in Ewing and Hopewell.  Pennington’s Community Service Club has coordinated a donation drive of hygiene products for Afghan refugees, and the club plans to support the refugees throughout the year and will participate in another drive early in 2022. 

Another group of Pennington students is working on Jared Boxes, small storage boxes filled with gifts, toys, games, crayons, coloring books, and fun activities, to donate to pediatric patients at a local hospital.

Work of PHS Seniors is Featured in National Journals

The work of two PHS seniors, Adamantia Metaxas and Roushu Chuang, students in the PHS Research Program, has been featured in national journals.

Examining the effect of trace metal imbalances on the development of Alzheimer’s disease, Metaxas’ work, “Imbalances in Copper or Zinc Concentrations Trigger Further Trace Metal Dyshomeostasis in Amyloid-Beta Producing Caenorhabditis Elegans,” was featured in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Chang’s paper, “Shortage of Social Support in High School Online Learning During COVID-19,” was featured in the International Journal of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Studies. 

Both students worked under the mentorship of PHS research teachers Mark Eastburn, Jaqueline Katz, and Jennifer Smolyn.

In other news from PHS, senior Akash Jim has earned a perfect score on the 2021 Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism Advanced Placement exam, one of only two students in the world to do so.

According to CollegeBoard, that administers the exam, which is equivalent to the second semester of introductory physics that a physics or engineering major would take in college, there were 48,171 students who took the exam in 2021, with 23 percent earning a 5, indicating mastery of the subject, but only two students who answered every question correctly.