BA’s Lower School honors five students
Beaufort Academy’s Dr. Randy Wall Memorial Fountain is surrounded by 100 bricks and five benches honoring five students each year who exemplify one of the school’s core values: integrity, intellect, leadership, pride and respect.
A week after naming the 2019 honorees for the upper school, the school announced this year’s honorees for the lower school. They are: Parker Doscher (intellect), Lorelei Vasquez (integrity), Amorette Chapman (leadership), Ella Bekemeyer (pride) and Raynor Gault (respect).
Beaufort’s Gress makes Austin Peay Dean’s List
Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn., recognized Beaufort’s Natasha Gress as one of more than 2,200 students named to the Dean’s List for academic achievement during the Spring 2019 semester. To qualify for the Dean’s List, students must earn a semester GPA of 3.5 or greater.
Four Broad River students perfect at WordMasters
Seven Beaufort County School District students earned perfect scores in the spring edition of a national vocabulary competition, four of them coming from Beaufort’s Broad River Elementary School.
The WordMasters Challenge, the nation’s longest-running language arts competition for elementary and middle school students, holds three meets for nearly 150,000 students during each school year. In the 2018-19 academic year’s third competition in the Blue Division, four Broad River Elementary School students earned perfect scores – third-grader Maddox Adcox and fifth-graders Kylee Douglas, Angela Estrada and Jaime Maldonado Najera. The students were coached by Patricia Horton.
The other perfect scored came from Anna Williams (Hilton Head Island Elementary, coach Sharon Politi), Kensley Kaney (Red Cedar Elementary, 4th grade, coach Virginia Pratt) and Sosie Spires (Bluffton Middle School, 6th grade, coach Erin Morgan).
“Perfect means just what it says, and that obviously represents an outstanding performance on a national stage,” said interim superintendent Herb Berg. “To have these students build such strong vocabularies at such young ages is wonderful.”
Nationally, only 15 third-graders, 29 fourth-graders, 59 fifth-graders and 49 sixth-graders earned perfect scores.
The WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that encourages students to become familiar with new words that are considerably harder than grade level, then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies that express various kinds of logical relationships.
Although most vocabulary enrichment and analogy-solving programs are designed for use by high school students, WordMasters materials are created for younger students in grades 3-8. Working to solve the analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically.
Beaufort’s Petrone earnes Master’s degree from The Citadel
Jennifer Petrone, who works for the Beaufort Police Department, earned a Master of Arts in Social Science from The Citadel, graduating during The Citadel Graduate College commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 4 in McAlister Field House.
Graduates accepted their diploma from Citadel alumnus Gen. Glenn W. Walters, USMC (Ret.), who was officiating as president for the first time.
The Class of 2019 includes 350 graduates who received a master’s degree and 98 who earned a bachelor’s degree.
Four BA students earn seals of biliteracy
Beaufort Academy students Emma Hincher, David Mathai, Jane Ward and Ariana Gonzalez earned Global and S.C. Seals of Biliteracy as a result of their STAMP test scores.
STAMP (STAndards-based Measurement of Proficiency) is a web-based test that assesses foreign language proficiency. The STAMP test has three sections – reading, writing and speaking.
Test items are based on real-world, every-day situations. STAMP measures a test taker’s language ability according to benchmark levels that are based on national standards.
BA’s Rushing, Ingraham conduct oral history project
In conjunction with the U.S. Library of Congress, Jeffery Rushing and Heston Ingraham, two juniors from Beaufort Academy, had the opportunity to conduct a veterans oral history project.
This oral history project is a program designed to use students and other citizens to interview men and women who have served in the U.S. armed forces. These interviews are recorded digitally and archived in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
This way the descendents of veterans can hear their achievements and stories in their own words.
Jeffery and Heston met with a decorated Marine who had served in Vietnam. The students were able to interview the veteran and record his story. This Marine wished to remain anonymous to the public, but his story will be available for his loved ones to hear and see.
The Library of Congress began the Veterans Oral History Project in 2000. The library is dependent on volunteers to identify and record the stories of men and women who have served their country. The Library of Congress describes the project as one that “ collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war.”
Above: Beaufort Academy Lower School Head CarolAnn Richards, left, poses with students, from left, Amorette Chapman, Parker Doscher, Raynor Gault, Lorelei Vasquez, and Ella Bekemeyer.
