Teaching excellence
Burnaby South Secondary math teacher Amos Lee got an enthusiastic pat on the back from the school board last week after winning a certificate of achievement and $1,000 for the Prime Minister’s Awards for Teaching Excellence in October.
Lee, who teaches grades 8 to 12 math and calculus, was one of 25 winners across Canada to earn the regional-level award.
Nominees highlighted his gift for making math “a fun learning experience instead of a burden.”
His principal, Lee Anne Kristmanson, told trustees that he excels at helping both gifted and struggling students succeed.
As part of her presentation, Kristmanson read out a letter from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that stated Lee had been named by one of their first-year students as a teacher who was especially influential in her development.
“It is a remarkable achievement and a great honour to change a life, so we congratulate you …,” stated the letter.
Lee said he felt honoured.
“In our job we don’t get much recognition, whether it be financial or otherwise,” he said, “so it’s just nice to know the work that you do does help and pay off in the end for some students.”
Top students
The Burnaby school district’s academic crème de la crème took centre stage at a school board meeting last week as eight 2014 grads were recognized for winning the Governor General’s Academic Medal.
Joining the ranks of more than 50,000 past winners across Canada since 1873, including Pierre Trudeau, Tommy Douglas, Kim Campbell and Gabrielle Roy, the grads with the highest average at each of Burnaby’s high school were honoured.
The winners were Alpha Secondary’s Mohammad Asadi Lari, now at UBC in the faculty of medicine; Byrne Creek’s Justin Lin, now studying engineering at the University of Toronto; Burnaby South’s Anna Ye, also studying engineering at U of T; Burnaby North’s Nancy Lum, now studying kinesiology at SFU; Burnaby Mountain’s Zahra Rajwani, now studying sciences at UBC; Moscrop’s Jenny Zhang, now studying life sciences at McGill University; Cariboo Hill’s Natasha Williams, now in international education at UBC and Burnaby Central’s Pasindu Muthukuda, now studying engineering at UBC.
Science mind
An award-winning student innovation to reduce the power consumed by idle electronic devices has a Burnaby connection.
Alberta Kragl, who lives in Burnaby but attends Stratford Hall School in Vancouver, was part of a team that tied for the top award in the 2014 SHAD Entrepreneurship Cup.
Kragl attended SHAD’s Canada-wide summer science and entrepreneurship program at Dalhousie University.
As part of the program, student teams create simulated startups, developing products and creating prototypes, as well as marketing, business plans and websites.
This year students were challenged with the theme of “Living large with a small footprint.”
Kragl’s team developed a way to use radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to automatically limit power to idle devices, saving electricity and money.
Kragl’s team also placed first for the best application of scientific principles.
