WISE Student Leadership

David Spidal, Ph.D., WISE Staff Whether it is developing, expanding or enriching leadership skills, WISE programs offer great opportunities which are often overlooked.  Recognizing this, WISE Services has been encouraging the use of student coordinators in the schools with WISE programs. … Continue reading

WISE GROWTH

Karen Spidal, WISE Task Force Monument Mountain High School We first read his journal in February of his senior year. Sentences were short, lacked creativity; punctuation was lacking and spelling was . . . “you know”. He had eleven and a half … Continue reading

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Antigone Revisited

On May 3rd, 2012 I was lucky to be an audience member for Somers’ WISE student, Erika Panzarino’s one act version of Sophocles’ Antigone. I had previously witnessed her model presentation where she told of her dream to rewrite Antigone as her WISE project ever since she read it while in her ninth grade English class. In fact she even chose her ninth grade English teacher, Mr. Anthony Di Fabbio to be her mentor.

After spending several weeks of writing, editing, rewriting and doing even more editing right up to the day before the scheduled performance Erika, Anthony, and co-coordinators John Murphy and Ann Ferraro were all tears of joy during and after both Erika’s presentation and the performance of her version of Antigone.

A postscript: Erika had applied to Adelphi University’s honors program. She was accepted as a direct result of her interview, which was all about…. Antigone.