This year…and next, SGHY has added more enrichment
Implementing Sophie Gerson’s vision, SGHY’s unique, effective program model is identifying more enrichment with the best program providers and camps to our schools. This effort brings teachers from the schools alongside the coaches and instructors to assure complete for each student’s needs.
Over the past two years SGHY has supported or brought to our schools sports programs in the form of tennis, badminton, volleyball, basketball, running, field hockey, swimming, sailing and soccer. Our outstanding athletic program partners have included our schools’ physical education departments, the Columbia University Department of Athletics, New York Junior Tennis & Learning, the United States Field Hockey Association, Manhattan Yacht Club and Manhattan Youth.
In Dance, SGHY partners with the acclaimed National Dance Institute (NDI) founded by the renowned Jacques D’Amboise. We bring students to NDI’s professional dance studios to receive instruction from their outstanding dance and music teachers. . This year NDI selected six of our kids to receive scholarships for their advanced ballet and modern dance classes – an opportunity these young people would never have without the SGHY NDI program. In music, we have launched a collaboration with the renowned New York Conservancy of Music. Four of our middle school students have enrolled in folk guitar.
More enrichment includes our expanding STEM programs. Our Comprehensive Aviation, Aerospace, & Engineering program, and our Earth Science/Ecology program, under the auspices of our schools’ science and math departments are a popular addition. This year our students flew simulated airplanes, navigated a probe to Mars, engaged in robotics, created objects through a 3D printer at the NYC Center for Aerospace & Applied Mathematics; peered through a research telescope at Columbia’s rooftop observatory; navigated the cosmos at the famous Hayden Planetarium dome, and received inspiration from former Astronaut Columbia Engineering professor Mike Massimino, zero gravity activities with the students of the Columbia Space Initiative, and visits to Engineering School labs . Or students also undertook Earth science and climate experiments at Columbia’s Lamont-Dohert Earth Observatory, the Wave Hill Public Gardens and visited the Math Museum.
SGHY continues to team up with the Sierra Club. The Club’s Inspiring Connections Outdoors project, with their talented wilderness leaders, takes our students on hiking and exploring trips, with seasonal activites, four times during the year.
We have also partnered with Communities Rising, which does truly amazing work with young people in rural India, for more enrichment – internationally. With this initiative SGHY has linked NYC middle school students with others in South Tamil, India and Haifa, Israel, to share and then discuss videos they have made – and in the process to develop international awareness and friendships! Libreville, Gabon is set to join in and we hope to bring online other locations around the globe. The outstanding film instructors from Downtown Community TV will assist our NYC students with film making and editing techniques.