Schools

Meet Valley Stream's vals and sals

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North High School

North High School will graduate its class of 2015 next week, and the valediction and salutatory address will be delivered by two students with exceptional academic records and ambitious career goals.

Valedictorian Rubab Malik, 17, and salutatorian Rishi Dutt, 18, each said they received the news of their designation with some surprise.

“At first, I was kind of in shock,” Malik said of the moment her guidance counselor pulled her out of class to tell her. “It’s a great honor. I did work hard, but I didn’t expect it to end so well.”

Dutt was at home with an illness when he got the call from his guidance counselor.

“I was sick, so I couldn’t do anything about it,” he said. “I mean, I was happy, obviously.”

Malik’s academic career began in Pakistan before she moved with her family to Queens, where she attended the Razi School. She entered James A. Dever Elementary School in the fourth grade.

It was at North High School that Malik had two teachers that had an outsized impact on her, she said. Ms. Milazzo and Ms. Schroeder provided encouragement that she said helped keep her going when things got tough.

“Sometimes you kinda lose faith in yourself, and you need that one motivation — someone to tell you that you can do it,” Malik said. “Especially with Ms. Schroeder, she’s almost like a mother figure.”

Schroeder was her chemistry teacher, which will be Malik’s major when she starts at Macaulay Honors College at Brooklyn College in the fall. She will enter as pre-medical, and wants to be either a pathologist or radiologist.

Dutt bounced around elementary schools, attending kindergarten at the Willow Road School, first grade at the Wheeler Avenue School, and then moving east on Long Island before returning to James A. Dever Elementary School for grades 5 and 6.

It was his AP world history teacher at North High School, Mr. Powers, who was also his junior varsity soccer coach, who had the greatest impact on him. They developed a close bond that has remained, Dutt said.

“What I love most about him, whenever I needed advice about something or help with something, I could just go to him,” he said. “He’s really laid back; he’s easy-going. He has this no-B.S. attitude — he’ll just put it straight to you, he’ll tell you how it is.”

Dutt said that one of his best memories from high school was getting his AP scores back and finding out the high mark he got for a video he produced for extra credit. In the project, he converted lyrics from a Drake song into a statistical representation.

“The chorus was, ‘I got a five on the stats AP,’ so I kinda needed to get that five,” he said.

Dutt will attend Macaulay Honors College at Baruch College, where he will enter as a finance major. He hopes to pursue a career on Wall Street, “either as a stockbroker, work at a hedge fund, or something along the lines of that.”

He praised the relationships teachers had with students at North.

“They connect with you on a personal basis, so it’s easier to go to them if you need help with something,” he said. “They’re very approachable and friendly.”

South High School

Valedictorian Jefferson Poserio, 18, was usually nervous on the day before the first day of school, but not this year.

“We were getting hyped up with all our friends, it was just a really cool night,” he said. “I felt so relaxed and just ready to go for senior year. It was like a foreshadowing of what would happen.”

Poserio’s designation was announced over his school’s loudspeaker as he was walking between classes, but he didn’t hear it over the noise in the hallway. “People were yelling and saying congratulations, but we had no idea what for,” he said. “Then they told us and we were like, ‘ok,’ and then we hugged and went down to the main office, where we took a picture.”

Poserio, who started his educational career at the Forest Road School, will attend Cornell University’s School of Human Ecology, where he will enter the human biology, health and society program. He wants to be a cardiologist.

He said that the school’s motto, “Small acts of kindness make a big difference,” was a big aspect of his high school experience. Its message was particularly apparent, he said, when the school’s students came together to support classmate Chris Schroeder, who battled leukemia for two years before he died in 2013. “All the things we did for his memory and his family, it really felt like a real community at South, and all of Valley Stream,” he said.

He praised Spanish teacher Laura Pokorny, who he admired for her extensive experience traveling around the world, including climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, as an inspiration. “She’s really just living life, and that’s something that I aspire to do,” Poserio said.

Salutatorian Vanesa Salinas, 18, a former Brooklyn Avenue School student, said South High School English teacher Deirdre Gordon stood out for her due to Gordon’s demonstration of confidence and mental toughness. Salinas was “freaking out” about college at one point, and Gordon hugged her and reassured her that everything would be fine. “She’s a tank,” Salinas said. “She could just get through anything.”

Her most standout memory was when the school held fundraisers to help her family as her older sister battled cancer, and students wore bracelets and participated in a charity basketball game in support. The experience had a lasting impact. “I was only in eighth grade, but already just felt a sense of community at my school, and it really helped me just love the school even more,” she said.

Salinas learned of her designation over the school’s loudspeaker, and went to the main office, where she hugged Poserio.

She will study civil engineering at Ohio State University, “probably to help the environment, to try and not be a really jerky engineer… I want to minor in environmental science, so I want to build buildings that are environmentally friendly.”

Salinas said she expects her school’s diversity to serve her well. “When I go out into the real world, into my job, I’m not going to be surrounded by just one race,” she said. “It’s going to be all ages, all races, and I think that I might be better prepared to face different cultures than other people.”

Central High School

Ronald Pritipaul’s scores put him well ahead of the rest of the students at the academic top of the class at Central, so his designation as valedictorian didn’t come as much of a surprise, he said. His excitement was for Kayla Didrick, who was designated salutatorian.

“I felt really happy for Kayla because I knew she really deserved it,” Pritipaul said. “It really came down to, like, .01 [percentage points] and I was really happy that even though it was so competitive, everyone was still friends.”

Didrick said that everyone’s attitude about the rankings showed her that their friendships were stronger than their personal ambitions. “Once they found out, they were all congratulating me instead of being upset,” she said, “which showed me that people actually care about each other instead of being cutthroat.”

Pritipaul, who attended the Howell Road School, said that his most influential teacher was Mario Bakalov, who teaches art and serves as advisor of the Future Business Leaders of America club. He said Bakalov had a knack for sensing when he wasn’t performing to his potential, and would say so.

Pritipaul said that Memorial Junior High School science teacher Ben Tangney also had a major impact on him, igniting his love of science and engineering. Pritipaul wanted to be a science teacher too, but expanded his thinking about the field. “I hadn’t even really considered STEM [science, engineering, technology and mathematics] before taking earth science with him, and now I’m totally full-blown going into engineering, and it’s really crazy to think that one teacher could totally change my mind like that.”

Pritipaul’s most memorable moment at Central was when he entered the school’s library on the first day back after Hurricane Sandy closed school for two weeks. “Just seeing other humans my age, I was just like, ‘woah,’ and I ran and gave everyone a hug.”

Pritipaul will attend Stanford University, where he will begin in the fall as an undecided engineering major. He said he’s interested in aerospace and material science, and thinks it would be “really dope” to work on spacecraft that would be sent to Mars.

He said that being able to identify with so many of his classmates helped him feel comfortable through high school. “Lots of the kids there were just like me — they came from immigrant families, and I really never felt out of place,” he said, adding that he would get stares when he visited other schools that were less diverse.

Didrick, who attended the Shaw Avenue School when she was younger, also cited the school’s culture of acceptance as an important part of her experience there. “There really isn’t anyone in our school who is an outcast,” she said.

She noted her world history teacher and volleyball coach, Mary Parisi, for teaching her how to balance success with imperfection, which Didrick had struggled with. She also named AP biology teacher Patrick Tirino as influential, saying that he was the only science teacher who she felt “actually taught me biology, instead of just what I needed to do well on the [exam].” Didrick also credited him with helping her to get out of her shell when she was in a school musical that he was directing.

Didrick plans to attend the University of Pennsylvania as a biology major on a pre-med track, but she is considering changing it to one that mixes biology, psychology and neurology. The latter is more in line with her goal of working in some medical capacity at St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, where she wants to serve patients who couldn’t otherwise afford medical care. “I really want to help those who can’t afford medical care,” she said. “The severe problems — brain cancer and stuff like that.”

Central High School’s graduation ceremony will be held on June 24 at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts in Greenvale. North High School’s ceremony will be held at the school on June 25 at 5:30 p.m. The ceremony at South High School will be held at the same time.