Enthusiasm Bubbles At Roosevelt Event

Recent classes at Roosevelt Elementary School - bubblology, origami, tessellations - seem right out of Pee Wee Herman’s Playhouse.

Actually, they’re a way to make learning math fun, say school officials.

Over the past month, teachers have been showing students how math is related to art and creativity during Roosevelt’s observance of Imagination Celebration, a national school theme for the month of March.

“We’re kind of inundating kids with math ideas to show how math is present in everyday life,” said coordinator Phyllis Meyer.

Throughout March, students were treated to fun activities and events that were in some way related to math, such as the Syringa String Quartet, which played music and talked about math in music.

“Bubblologist” Jennifer Hampton, education director for the Children’s Museum, made giant bubbles as a way to demonstrate physics and math.

The director of the local Young Astronaut Program, Dave Howe, aka Commander Dave, showed kids how to make rubber band-propelled drinking-straw rockets.

Students also learned about origami, fractals and repeating-pattern drawings called tessellations.

“Basically, we wanted the kids to look at math in a creative way,” Meyer said.

Chase Youth Award winners named

Colleen Melody has a passion for helping people get along.

The Ferris High School student learned peer mediation and victim offender mediation from the Inland Mediation Center and works on a mediation team involving young offenders.

Now, Melody volunteers her time holding youth conflict-management skills workshops throughout Spokane.

That might have been enough for other teens, but not Melody. During the 1997-1998 school year, she participated in the Youth Leadership Spokane program, which prepares high school students for leadership in responsible community involvement.

Melody learned her lessons well.

Since participating, she has become an active member of the Spokane County Community Network Board, a group that allocates public funding for human services needs in the Spokane region.

She was selected to represent the board in Seattle, where she was invited to introduce Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson.

When people describe Melody, they use terms like “self-motivated,” “dynamic” and “trailblazer.” She is a 4.0 grade-point student, active in sports, volunteers her time extensively and even works part time.

Melody, who won this year’s Chase Youth Award for Teen Citizenship, was one of many youth and teens honored Tuesday by the Chase Youth Commission.

Other South Side winners include:

Franklin Elementary students Sean McComb and Charlie Plourde have a special relationship. Charlie is developmentally disabled, and his parents say that he can at times be difficult or unwittingly embarrassing.

Sean, who sat by Charlie in class, helped him unconditionally and was his friend in and out of the classroom, even when it wasn’t “cool.”

For his unselfish devotion and self-assurance, Sean was awarded the Chase Youth Award for Youth Courage.

Jessica Cummings, a gifted student at Odyssey School, is famous for saying, “No, I can do that.”

It’s not that she’s willful, however. It’s just that she feels that her blindness does not preclude her from being able to do, well, anything.

Cummings, 13, uses a computer with ease, bicycles, skis, teaches Braille to sighted children and even started her own chorus group that performs at nursing homes.

She manages all this because she is always willing to put in extra effort and time.

Cummings received the Chase Youth Award for Youth Personal Achievement.

Explorer Post 59 has a unique partnership with the Spokane Fire Department that has enabled the youths to help make the city a safer place to live.

For eight years, firefighters have helped Explorers develop skills related to a career in firefighting. In turn, the Explorers have taken those skills and used them in the community.

In 1999, Post 59 taught fire prevention and fire escape planning to Cub Scouts, created a fire prevention video, raised $1,300 for burn prevention education and staffed the Special Olympics, Bloomsday and Hoopfest.

Explorer Post 59 received the Chase Youth Award for Teen Citizenship. Members include Alex Hamilton, Lois Kelly, Jason Appleton, Zach Wiens, Darin DeBolt, Ryan Oscarson, Kevin Konestes, Elisha Green, Amy Van Essen, Robert Williams, Tony Leonetti and Max Taylor.

The Deep Creek Equestrian 4-H Club has volunteered time and effort to Eastern State Hospital for the past six years. Last year, the club spent a whopping 170 hours there helping out.

Projects have included decorating patient wards, pet visitations, wrapping gifts for patients and setting up a petting farm area and minihorse cart rides for a summer carnival at the hospital.

The Deep Creek Equestrian 4-H Club received the Chase Youth Award for Community Service.

Members include Nancy Drinkard, Rebekah McIntire, Amber Passinetti, Heather Passinetti, Laura Whallen, Anna Wing, Lindsey Wing and Christina Wing.