Introducing the New "Contests and Opportunities" Board!

by Hannah Fineman, SSLI '25

As the 2024-2025 school year is just beginning, we are finding out about new improvements made over the summer every day. Recently, there has been a new bulletin board installed in the hallway, and it's known as the Contests and Opportunities board.

“So at Schechter, we're always looking for the next thing we can do for our students,” explained Mr. Thorgersen, the Upper School Assistant Principal and organizer of the Contests and Opportunities board. “I know that there's a world of opportunities out there for kids. It's just that, you know, you can get lost in the details. There's so many opportunities out there, it's hard to know where to start, so I asked each of the department chairs to … look for opportunities that we can overtly present to the kids.”

The head of the mathematics department, Mr. Garcia, shared, “Every once in a while, some math contests and some scholarship opportunities and that sort of thing do come up on my radar, but I tend to not know what to do with them, so hopefully I’ll be able to publish or post more things on that board as they come up.” He added, “I think it’s great in the fact that it presents a bunch of opportunities for students and makes it easily accessible since they walk past it every day.”

Sign up for contests and read about opportunities on the board located outside the counseling suite! (R. Rogers)

Not only does this board allow teachers to present opportunities they come across to their students, but it also saves students’ time. Thorgersen elaborated, “Our students are typically involved in any number of activities, and so between homework, academics, and all their extracurriculars, sometimes they just run out of time to look for that other thing that they can also do that would bring them a new achievement.” He continued, “Our goal is to get kids to have fantastic resumes for college and then to celebrate them for their achievements.”

What is very important, though, is what the student body believes. Senior Samuel Palter has attended Schechter High School since his freshman year. He has not had the Contests and Opportunities board for the majority of his high school career but is now being presented with various opportunities. Palter shared, “I think it’s just a way to see different opportunities that might interest us in a more centralized location and to just compare different options we have all at once. Honestly, I think in the past if you wanted to pursue an opportunity like that, you would maybe have to go search it out yourself [and] talk to some faculty, and it’s nice to be able to look and see what’s being offered.”

Already, the board has been in action. Garcia said, “I added a sign-up sheet for the AMC, also known as the American Mathematics Competition coming up in October.” Thorgersen added the Bennington College award. He explained, “This is a very prestigious award. A lot of New York Times bestseller writers have [participated in] it in the past.”

The Contests and Opportunities board is there to aid Schechter students and catalyze their success. Thorgersen concluded, “We know our kids are brilliant. We want more people to know that our kids are brilliant.”

Hannah Fineman is a writer for Paw Print Now and has been published on the site since November 2021. Hannah is currently a senior at the Schechter School of Long Island and can be reached at the following email address: hfineman25@schechterli.org