Nuoyan Zhang, 6, plays the Chinese instrument known in English as the koto during the Festival of Cultures held recently at Challenger Elementary School Photo by Tom Corrigan

The American table had a bag of food from McDonald’s and a Dorothy doll straight out of the movie version of “The Wizard of Oz.”

A Mexican table featured ethnic toys, including a Spanish Monopoly game. The Japanese table had a lot of visitors, perhaps all wanting to try what turned out to be some surprisingly tasty Spam sushi.

“It just opens everybody’s eyes,” Challenger Elementary Principal Sue McPeak said.

She was referring not only to her school’s sixth annual Festival of Cultures, but the diversity that inspired that event.

The festival was held at Challenger Jan. 27. The school cafeteria was packed with tables celebrating 23 countries, many of which are represented by students at Challenger and other Issaquah School District buildings, said Anny Figueroa, one of two co-chairwomen of the Challenger event.

Each festival table featured items from a different country, along with important facts about that country. Most also had food from the country. Figueroa noted some parent volunteers had planned and manned a table at the event for five or six years.

Usually, but not always, the tables reflected the ethnic background of the person manning the table. Parent Erin Turtell said she had put together a table for four years. This year, she did both Switzerland and Ireland.

“I have to have at least one country that has chocolate,” Turtell said.

In addition to the various tables and booths, there was plenty of culturally themed entertainment at the front of the cafeteria, including choirs and various performers. New this year was a costume fashion show, the event’s other co-chairwoman, Bev Sakamoto, said.

The festival is really the culminating event of a series of happenings celebrating the diversity at Challenger and the school district in general, said McPeak, who added that diversity is a good thing in her mind.

“I think it just adds a richness to everything,” she said.

Prior to the festival, students were invited to come to school in costumes representing their national heritage. Children greeted classmates in their country’s language during morning announcements and told a little bit about those countries. Hand-drawn paper flags were hung in the hallways of the school.

“It’s fun,” said fourth-grader Vincent Bennett, who was dressed in an outfit representing his mother’s native country of Belarus, once part of the former Soviet Union.

“It’s interesting,” he added, “to learn about different cultures.”

The presence of large, international firms, such as Microsoft and The Boeing Co., draw people from around the world to this area, McPeak said. The cultural festival is one way of making such people feel they are part of the community while at the same time keeping ethnic traditions alive.

“We are always looking for community-building events,” McPeak said.

Tom Corrigan: 392-6434, ext. 241, or tcorrigan@isspress.com. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.

Creekside Elementary School kindergartners Reagan Mitchell, Caden Culver and Ethan Ball (clockwise from bottom) show off pictures and decorated collection boxes going to Operation Bald Eagle. Contributed

There probably is no doubt that the Sammamish-based organization Operation Bald Eagle has inspired plenty of people to help United States troops and their families here and overseas.

Operation Bald Eagle has definitely touched the students and staff at Creekside Elementary School.

“At Creekside, a goal is to help each child realize that they are a leader and to encourage them to make a positive, meaningful difference in their community,” Creekside teacher Michelle Blake said.

According to both Blake and fellow instructor Katie Tasa, the school has numerous Student Leadership Clubs. Tasa and Blake are the faculty advisors to the clubs. Principles from the well-known book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” are taught at the school, Blake added.

Blake noted that her kindergarten class just happens to include Reagan Mitchell, the son of Operation Bald Eagle president and founder Jeff Mitchell.

Operation Bald Eagle is an official nonprofit that was started as a means to give back to the families of men and woman killed in the service of their country, according to its website. The group undertakes numerous activities, including sending care packages to active duty units and visiting veterans’ hospitals in the area.

At Creekside, Blake and Tasa were inspired to collect items to send to troops, as well as have students decorate collection boxes, draw pictures and write letters to soldiers.

“By being involved in Operation Bald Eagle, the students understand that they are collecting items and giving to our troops,” Blake said. “The end result is knowing that they gave back to the soldiers for protecting our country.”

She and Tasa said collecting items for the soldiers gave students the chance to discuss veterans and the military with their families.

For the collection, Creekside teachers were looking for specific items. Those included baby wipes (used by soldiers to clean themselves,) scented dryer sheets (used for pest control,) gum (important for days when troops may not be able to brush) and toilet tissue. On a flier distributed around Creekside, the tissue issued to troops is described as “like sandpaper.”

The official collection ran at Creekside from Jan. 25 to Feb. 2. Blake said items would be turned over to Operation Bald Eagle shortly after the final day. The classroom with the most items was awarded Creekside’s “Golden Otter” award, described by Blake as a new tradition at the school meant, in this case, to honor the class that showed the most leadership by gathering the most items.

“It’s amazing to see how involved the students are getting,” Blake said.

Tom Corrigan: 392-6434, ext. 241, or tcorrigan@isspress.com. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.

In December, the school was certified a Level One King County Green School. Along with only three other schools in King County, Briarwood’s efforts were formally recognized Jan. 31.

“Each of these four schools can be proud of how they have involved their students and staff in learning about conservation and improving conservation practices,” said Dale Alekel, King County Green Schools Program manager.

Level One programs focus on waste reduction and recycling. There are several criteria schools must meet. The schools must reach a recycling rate of at least 40 percent; establish at least one paper reduction practice; one lunch waste reduction practice; and, one practice involving durable products. Alekel said many participating schools sliced garbage disposal costs by reducing waste and recycling.

Briarwood staff and students took several steps in order to reach Level One status, said Jennifer Mitchell, a program assistant at the school. First, the school created a Green Team of students, third-graders who helped train other students how to sort lunch waste into recyclable materials, compostable materials and garbage. There are now about 35 third-graders trained to help younger students sort their lunch leftovers.

On other fronts, two fourth-graders put together a PowerPoint presentation about recycling in the school, a presentation Mitchell said was shown to students in much of the building. Presently, Briarwood’s cafeteria has two refuse-sorting stations, one for those who bring their lunch and one for those who eat a school-prepared meal. Mitchell said Briarwood’s head custodian, Steve Fischer, has been very helpful in making sure things run smoothly.

Outside of the lunchroom, Briarwood staff and students have taken other steps to reduce and recycle. School administrators are encouraged to cut paper use by making two-sided copies, use email for communication, and send newsletters and other materials to parents and others electronically. A crayon-recycling bin is kept in the staff workroom. Once a month, a Briarwod parent collects the scraps and transforms them into new crayons.

According to the Green School Program, Briarwood recycles 55 percent of its solid waste through its schoolwide program. In 2010, with help from the city of Issaquah, Briarwood students began setting aside food scraps and food soiled paper that is delivered to the Cedar Grove compositing facility. Mitchell noted Briarwood has gone from needing one garbage pickup per week to needing a pickup only every other week. And the school now uses smaller trash baskets.

For the future, Mitchell said Briarwood very much has its sights set on Green Schools Level Two status. Level Two concentrates on energy conservation along with building on the recycling measures instituted to meet Level One requirements. Mitchell admitted Briarwood will have a leg up in obtaining Level Two. Next year, Briarwood will move into a new building that is presently under construction. That building is being built with energy efficiency in mind, she said.

Countywide, the Green Schools program provides assistance, recycling containers and stickers, along with ongoing support to help schools and districts maintain effective conservation practices. Since 2008, when program levels were launched, 121 schools have completed Level One, while 62 have completed Level Two and 25 schools have reached Level Three.

In the Issaquah School District, Briarwood is not alone in earning Green Schools honors. In all, 21 district schools have earned at least Level One status.

Tom Corrigan: 392-6434, ext. 241, or tcorrigan@isspress.com. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.

Hall Monitor Maddie Wiley Skyline High School

More than 75 percent of Skyline High School girls polled said they have intentionally posted a status on Facebook with the intent of aggravating someone; 85 percent of boys polled said they find “Facebook drama” funny.

Online, some boys “like” the mean comments girls send to each other, essentially giving them a false sense of support and confidence in what they write.

Facebook, because it is on the Internet and not in person, can give people a false sense of security in what they say. Conversations are able to spin out of control while people write things they possibly would never say to someone’s face.

The biggest reason why drama on the Internet is hard to stop may be because no one wants to be embarrassed for “losing” a fight in front of their peers. It is also expected of friends to step in and protect the people arguing, often causing more issues.

Another way to prove someone is wrong is to invalidate him or her; in the world of Facebook, this usually means insulting them. Insults and arguments lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings, while without Facebook, it is highly likely none of them would have happened.

The only way to avoid the drama is to simply not get involved. It may be funny to “like” someone’s comments, but in the end nothing good comes out of it.

“It is truly sad how some girls find it OK to be mean and bully over the Internet, and in the end it only hurts and embarrasses the one who started it,” one anonymous senior said.

Students often forget that online bullying can lead to discipline from school administration if it makes another student uncomfortable at school.

Many Spartans find the drama funny, but a total of 92 percent found it to also be annoying.

Students in Marta Ramos’ first-level Spanish class take a make-believe shopping trip to Spain for an educational game to help them with clothing vocabulary. By Celina Kareiva

Students riffle through articles of clothing in “La Tienda de Ropa,” a make-believe clothing store in a first-level Spanish class.

“La bufanda!” and “El vestido!” they shout as their teacher instructs them to repeat after her.

These 10 boys and girls, all between the ages of 6 and 11, are a part of a growing program in Issaquah. Foreign Language for Youth, or FLY as it is also known, is an after-school series that equips elementary school students with foundational language skills in Arabic, French, Spanish, Chinese and Mandarin. Featured in 15 of the state’s school districts, the program uses games, conversation and activities to engage young pupils who are otherwise not exposed to foreign languages until later in their school careers.

“Students are like sponges at this early age,” Konni Barich, founder and director of FLY, said. “Their brains are so malleable that they just take in information.”

FLY is unaffiliated with any formal curriculum, although lessons are often held in a district’s schools to make for a more conducive learning environment. The students in one first-level Spanish course, for example, practiced their clothing vocabulary in an empty classroom after hours at Cascade Ridge Elementary School.

The teacher asked them to pretend they were shopping at a clothing boutique in Barcelona. To place something in their shopping basket, they would first have to order in Spanish. The student with the biggest pile of loot at the end of the game was named the winner.

“When you have these fun activities, kids don’t even realize they’re absorbing the information,” parent Anne Freeman said.

Freeman enrolled her son in the course at Cascade Ridge because she remembers struggling with languages as a young girl. Learning early on, she hoped, would better equip her son for the future.

“You have to be able to understand other cultures, it’s not just about language alone,” Freeman said.

Barich first got the idea for FLY when her three children, now in their late 20s, were enrolled in elementary school. While volunteering in the classroom, she realized the students lacked any substantial foreign language curriculum.

“I was frustrated,” she recalled. “I thought, well that’s great, they make tortillas or whatever dish. But what I wanted is for them to actually learn the language.”

Talking to fellow parents revealed that she was not alone in her frustration. And so Barich, a former nurse, took the initiative. In 1995, she opened FLY. In the coming years, she researched, grew and fine-tuned her curriculum, until she felt she’d developed a set of courses that was both engaging and effective.

Barich admits that it can be difficult to retain students because the program isn’t formally recognized as a part of their school curriculum. Even one year of language, though, she said, is beneficial. Since the inception of FLY, she has witnessed a range of success stories. She has seen students graduate from the program, master several languages at once, even return to teach. Her own daughter, Karli Barich, is one such success story.

Karli is now assistant director of the program after majoring in Spanish and honing her skills abroad for a year.

“It encourages cultural empathy,” Karli said of FLY. “We have native speakers teaching these classes and they get to learn all about their culture and their country.”

Karli can remember stepping into a taxi in Spain, after spending years studying the language and realizing how little of it she actually understood. It’s this understanding, that conversation and dialogue are the crux of any foreign language program, that has inspired FLY’s curriculum.

Karli added that peer pressure and the shame of making a mistake often discourages students from fully practicing a language. Starting children at an earlier age, when they’re still too young to be unsettled by peer pressure, gives them the building blocks to confidently study another language in the future.

In a region as diverse as the Pacific Northwest, Konni Barich said, linguistic aptitude is becoming recognized as a critical skill-set.

“I think it is one of the most important things we teach our children today,” she said of foreign language.

Learn more about FLY, including tuition information, at www.foreignlanguageforyouth.org/wp/category/walanguage.

Celina Kareiva is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.

Colby Vuong, a Newcastle Elementary School fifth-grade student, waits to reveal his answer to a written question during the final round of the school’s Jan. 13 National Geographic Bee. By Christina Lords

Just slightly and not at all.

That’s how much runner-up Bridget Ury and first-place winner Colby Vuong said they studied for Newcastle Elementary School’s National Geographic Bee — which concluded in a showdown of 14 contestants vying for the top spot in front of their instructors, classmates and family members.

Newcastle Mayor Rich Crispo and Deputy Mayor Lisa Jensen served as official judges at the Jan. 13 event.

Each fourth- and fifth-grade class held a geography bee of its own — sending two representatives of each class to go head to head with their peers for the school’s National Geography Bee.

“These questions were a lot harder than the ones in class,” Ury said. “Then we had multiple choice answers of A, B, C, D … here you just pretty much had to know them.”

Because Newcastle Elementary’s bee is a part of the National Geographic Bee, Vuong will have the opportunity to take a written test to qualify for the state bee.

Vuong and Ury, both residents of Newcastle, represented the top-two qualifiers from Mariel Hanna’s fifth-grade class.

The other 12 participants were Olivia Lesnik, Andre Wax, Brooke Ury, Dillon Gyotoku, Joey Eigo, Trisha Jaggi, Tristan Brecht, Jacob Robblee, David Heyward, Toshin Rao, Tommy Todderud and Nathan Jackson.

The top 100 students in the state, who are selected based on qualifying test scores, go on to represent their schools and compete at the state level March 30. Children in the fourth through eighth grades are eligible to compete each year.

State winners are then invited in late May to the National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., to compete in the national finals for scholarships in the amount of $25,000, $15,000 and $10,000.

This is the first year Newcastle Elementary has joined thousands of schools across the country in the national test for geographic knowledge using materials from the National Geographic Society, event organizer and Newcastle PTSA member Stina Fluegge said.

“We’re hoping to give an opportunity to create a sense of excitement and knowledge for these kids to learn about the world we live in,” she said. “We try to give students an arena for recognition at the school outside of athletics … There aren’t always those opportunities for students to shine academically.”

But make no mistake, Fluegge said, the questions are far from easy.

“These are some really tough questions on here,” she said. “It’s not as simple as you might think.”

“I really like my robot,” Alison Chiu said.

Both age 16 and juniors at Skyline High School, Schiefelbein and Chiu are just two of five Issaquah School District students taking part in this year’s Washington Aerospace Scholars program. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say, they hope to take part in the program scheduled for this summer at The Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Starting near the end of December, students accepted into the first round of the program have been completing essay, math and graphics projects every other week, said Melissa Edwards, WAS director.

The program invites students who score well on those assignments to take part in the summer residency at The Museum of Flight. Guided by professional engineers and educators, residency students will help design a human mission to Mars. According to a press release, the qualifying curriculum was designed by NASA and consists of 10 lessons and a final project.

For the space shuttle project, students had some choices to make, such as the destination for their machine. Schiefelbein picked the International Space Station. Students did a lot of reading prior to setting some specifications for their own shuttle and didn’t have to start from scratch. Still, Schiefelbein said the assignment was worthwhile.

“You get a feel for design,” he said.

The current assignment revolves around student-designed robots, according to Chiu. She said there are no set designs or stipulations.

“I think imagination is important here,” she said.

Chiu wants her robot to work outside the International Space Station while the astronaut controlling it stays inside.

Another assignment that got Chiu’s attention was about spin-off technology. For example, NASA initially developed the technology that went into sunglasses that block UV rays. The current assignment is the fourth, Schiefelbein said. Both he and Chiu said the reading assignments probably take the longest. Students were split on the difficulty of the math problems. Skyline’s Alex Liu said one problem was easy once he figured out to discard a bunch of superfluous information presented as part of the problem.

“It was just working smart,” was how he described his approach to the problem. Like the others, he hopes to go into engineering or some closely related field.

To get involved in the first portion of the WAS program, students fill out an application and complete an essay about why they want to be involved.

“I heard about it in ninth grade,” Chiu said of the program. “I thought it was interesting.”

Looking toward the future, Chiu expressed an interest in bioengineering. Schiefelbein hopes to gain a doctoral degree in astrophysics.

“I’ve always been interested in space and science,” he said. “I want to push the boundaries of what we know.”

As you might expect, one stated goal of the WAS program is to address the perceived lack of college students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM programs.

“Because Washington and the Northwest are central to so many high technology businesses and educational centers, it is hoped that this program will help to provide a solution to a much larger national imperative,” former NASA astronaut and space shuttle pilot Bonnie Dunbar said in a WAS press release. Dunbar serves on the board of directors for the WAS Foundation.

Since 2006, some 1,400 juniors from across Washington have taken part in the phase one qualifying curriculum. Of those, about 700 completed summer residencies at The Museum of Flight. The program is free to participants. Edwards said there are 160 slots open in the residency program this year.

Tom Corrigan: 392-6434, ext. 241, or tcorrigan@isspress.com. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.

Hall Monitor Michael Payant Liberty High School

As a senior at Liberty High School this year, I often feel I have experienced about everything there is to experience in high school.

I have seen nearly every school sports team play, seen multiple school drama productions, participated in numerous band concerts, attended numerous school dances, taken many of the most difficult classes Liberty has to offer and seen many things I could never have imagined.

Yet a couple weeks ago, as semester finals were set to begin, it started snowing. After having Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr. day, the snow gave us Tuesday off, and then Wednesday, and then Thursday and then Friday. A whole week off, during finals no less.

Suddenly, teenagers around Issaquah turned back the clock. As snow built up, student stress everywhere melted away, and we were all little kids again.

Cramming for social studies became “Snowman-building 101.” Cramming for physics became a real-life application of physics — sledding down snow-covered hills.

Though many of my senior peers are counting down the days until they get to fly away and start their post-high school lives, the snowstorm a few weeks ago brought us all back.

In a world of ever-mounting pressure, college applications, job interviews and a fast-approaching future, the early January snowstorm gave us all one last chance to turn back the clock and be kids again at least one more time before we have to grow up.