By Stefanie Gutierrez

The recent Aquinas Expositions conducted by the Diocesan Schools Office in Queens and Brooklyn brought together advanced students to display projects they have worked on throughout the 2007-08 school year

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Stefanie Gutierrez Photos 

ST. ROSE OF LIMA, ROCKAWAY BEACH: Students studied life on the Rockaway Peninsula.

Sponsored by the Aquinas Society, the expositions took place on Tuesday, May 6 at Our Lady of Hope, Middle Village, and Thursday, May 8, at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Sunset Park.

Fourteen schools participated in the Queens Expo, and another 16 participated in Brooklyn.

“The Aquinas Program began in the early-90s, and its purpose is to give students a chance to work beyond the curriculum and engage in more advanced learning opportunities,” said Anthony Biscione, associate superintendent for instruction and curriculum development.

“The Aquinas Society’s committee has also been working to try to encourage more schools to participate, and looking at fostering relationships with St. John’s University (Jamaica) and other colleges.”

OUR LadY OF GUADALUpE, BENSONHURST: Coney Island redevelopment was the topic for the Aquinas Club.

The committee began hosting the Aquinas Circle in the fall two years ago, where they “invite more schools and coordinators to participate, to describe what Aquinas is. It is basically a sharing of ideas. Little by little we are getting more schools involved,” Biscione said. In fact, “Schools who are interested in starting their own groups next year visited the Expos this year.”

Biscione and others involved with the Aquinas Society are “trying to continually improve the quality of the projects” and believe that working with local colleges will provide the students the opportunity to do more advanced work through use of their libraries or computer facilities.

The expositions go over very well, Biscione said, observing that the students “are very creative” and it is interesting to see how “they run with their ideas.”

Each student at the expo was given a “passport to learning,” where students were given an opportunity to visit other groups’ exhibits and describe it in their own words, as well as identify new points of information they had gained from visiting the exhibit. Students were also given time to interview their peers and decide what they found most interesting about others’ exhibits. “The students share what they have learned and also learn from their peers,” Biscione said.

“I am so impressed by the level of knowledge and awareness of both political and global issues,” said Pat O’Connor, associate superintendent for schools in Queens South.

One school at the Brooklyn Expo decided to research and physically create its own concept of Coney Island, something they called “CIA: Coney Island Aquinas.” Alessandro Cirafici and Michael Waltzer, eighth-graders at Our Lady of Guadalupe, Bensonhurst, explained, “We see Coney Island as a place we all grew up in and then we saw that a lot of business was going on there… We wanted to develop a solution for Coney Island.”

St. Patrick’s, Bay Ridge: Aquinas students researched the candidates for President of the United States.

Their project was born out of the fact that every time they saw a newspaper, listened to the news, or surfed the Internet, there was information on all of the “new ideas” and “developers’ dreams” for Coney Island. Many of the students saw Coney Island as a part of their families’ histories and lives. Instead of Coney Island resembling a “deserted wasteland with projects begun and dropped,” they wanted to approach the landmark so that it may be a place that reflects the diversity of the population of New York City.

Patie Ventre, the group coordinator and technology teacher at the school, was nearby as her students offered their solution: “Keep the amusement park, and build houses for the rich, the poor and the middle class. Build multi-faith centers that will aim to bring everyone together.”

Another school in Brooklyn, St. Patrick’s, Bay Ridge, decided to research this year’s presidential candidates. The students constructed three poster-size boards with pictures of the candidates, their education, experience, campaign milestones and researched all of their positions on major issues. Klodiana Kastrati, a sixth-grader, explained the exhibit as “something current in our lives” that can “make a big difference (depending on) which candidate wins.”

ST. ATHANASIUS, bensonhurst: Students did their project on peer pressure.

At Our Lady of Hope, Michele Krebs, the assistant principal and the school’s Aquinas coordinator, said that her students “love the group.” This year’s Queens Expo had a “wide variety of topics.” It is good for the students, she explained, “to see and experience what other groups find interesting and how they go about investigating their topics and how they present their physical projects.”

The morning expositions ended with liturgy and lunch. The Aquinas Expo is made possible by the Office of the Superintendent for Catholic School Support Services, Futures in Education, and Alive in Hope.