ICE 2014

On February 26th, Mr. Markey gave me the opportunity to accompany him along with another student, Stephanie Castro, a Leyden graduate, Jeremy Mercado, and Mr. Manola to ICE.

I knew what I was getting into; speaking publicly in front of many people, but that didn't stop me from going. Of course I was nervous, but with a little bit of practice of what I was going to present, I believed I would be okay.

We had one presentation divided into five parts where each of us got to speak a little bit of. Mr. Markey did an amazing job on presenting about how Leyden developed and keeps going on 1:1. Jeremy Mercado did an INCREDIBLE on his slides about student voice. He came up with his own acronym  of how he got inspired and was able to do new things when he finally spoke and said what he wanted. Stephanie also did a marvelous job on student choice talking about her experience with Taste of Teaching and Mr. Manola really emphasized how student leadership can improve our school's environment and our student's lives.

My part of the presentation was student empowerment. As a TSI student, I am able to relate to the type of empowerment the school gave me when Leyden decided to go 1:1. I briefly talked about TSI and our opportunities and choices the class grants us with. 

I really hope our presentation influenced the people in our audience to consider going 1:1. Leyden has changed since my freshmen year when they decided to go 1:1. I personally think it has benefited our school academically and socially. Being 1:1 gave us opportunities that other schools don't have.

Thank you to Mr. Markey for inviting me and good job to everyone that went!

Women in Tech

Last week on February 26th, Ms. Gorzynski gave me the opportunity to be the moderator for the Women in Technology Panel. I automatically said yes.

Five amazing women came to East Leyden to talk to females about their career. The panel ladies were:

• Jordan Pedraza: Program Manager at Google for Education
• Salma Saad: President and Founder of Schoolishness LLC
• Nichole Baiel: User Interface Developer at Adage Technologies
• Nichole Buckle: Web Developer at Performance Trust Capital Partners
• Katie Harington: Social Media and PR Lead for Land of Nod

All these women were very inspiring. They gave us many helpful advice when pursuing our career. This was a great opportunity to any ladies who are interested in the technology field. Sometimes they may feel intimidated because it is often times dominated mostly by men. Women do get discriminated when it comes to this type of career. These ladies talked about their experiences about working with men and how it feels to be one of the very few females in their career.

Tech was not always their first choice when majoring. Mostly all of them went to college thinking they were going to major in a different field. They ended up graduating doing something completely different. This gave the students and I the chance to see that we don't necessarily have to have a major or career in mind by the time we go to college. This is good because we won't feel rushed once we graduate from high school.

All these women inspired me so much. There was one specific panelists that shared a sort of theory or experiment: A ceramics class was divided into two groups. One group was to create a one great sculpture by the end of the semester and however it turned out would be their final grade for the class. The second group was to create several pieces throughout the class. It turns out that the group that created more than one piece got a better grade. Why is that? They had more opportunities to make mistakes while in the process and when you make mistakes you learn. You don't succeed until you struggle or fail with something.

I really enjoyed this experience. It opened up my eyes to the world. I realized I can do anything I desire with my life and that I don't need to have a solid choice when it comes to choosing a career. I still have a lot of time to think about what I want to do and there's also different careers that I don't even know of that I could be interested in. The good thing about technology is that it's always changing so there's always going to be more jobs opening.

The Women in Tech went very well. It not only provided information about tech careers for women, but it also inspired us and that's what females need sometimes.

Thank you to everyone that contributed on making it happen and a BIG thank you to Ms. Gorzynski for organizing everything. She did a marvelous job.

Ms. G, the panelists, and I.