News

June 2, 2016

Brown School Students Win First Place Awards from the Daily Gazette

Brown School Students Olivia and Will McLeron have earned awards from the Daily Gazette for their photography. The brother and sister, who live in Schenectady, NY, both earned first place for their age categories. The Student Gazette will be published on May 28th and will include their work.

Olivia also earned a second place title in the news category where she wrote about Goldie Hawn’s MindUP program that teaches the importance of social emotional learning. Her school participates in the program and it has positively impacted her education and her life overall.

The siblings were very honored to receive this acknowledgement from the Daily Gazette. “I love photography because I can take pictures of things that only happen once in a lifetime, and then I can savor them for a long time. This is the first photography contest I ever entered, and it is a great feeling when you win…and I must admit the prize is cool too!” said Will who is currently a 5th grade student.

Olivia said, “With photography, you can express feeling and emotion in a way that you can’t in any other form. By taking a picture, you can capture a memory, a certain event, a single moment in time that might otherwise be forgotten. Photographs can preserve something special forever.”

Olivia was also excited about the idea of being published in a newspaper that has a wide variety of readers consuming her work. “I love that, even as a teenager, I have this amazing opportunity to get my work into a real newspaper that actual people read in the morning with their coffee and breakfast! It’s just so cool to know that I have the potential to do things I never thought I could at my age. It’s just a matter of trying hard, and I can do it!”

Both students feel as though their current education has provided them with the type of confidence they need to enter contests, such as this one. “Brown School has given me the basic writing skills, you know, the correct formatting and grammar, but they have also provided me with confidence. At our school, they don’t care how old you are. Whatever you want to do, they will go to the ends of the world to make sure you will accomplish what you want to achieve. We may be kids, but we can still get things done, and Brown School has taught me that,” said Olivia.

Olivia also recently won first place in the “One County, One Book” poetry contest at the Schenectady County Public Library.