Eight seventh grade students represented The Kinkaid School at the PSIA District Middle School Speech Tournament at the Lutheran South Academy on Saturday, March 1st, 2014. In the three speaking events, Kinkaid won 1st place in all events. 

In Modern Oratory, Kinkaid had two entries: Marynell Ward and Cade Mouton won the top two awards. Marynell placed 1st, and Cade placed 2nd. Both will advance to State.

In Poetry Reading, Kinkaid had three entries: Caroline Moseley, Helena Johnson and Jennifer Sekili. Caroline Moseley and Helena Johnson advanced to finals. Caroline won 1st place in Poetry Reading and Helena won 3rd place. Caroline will advance to State.

In Impromptu Speaking, Kinkaid had three entries: Farise Cravens, Cameron Rudin and Caroline Totz. All three students advanced to finals. Caroline Totz won 1st place and will advance to State.

The State Tournament is Saturday, April 26, at TCU, in Ft. Worth. Over 300 Middle School students will be competing. Congratulations to all of the students who competed on Saturday and good luck to students who will be representing Kinkaid at the State Tournament.

Kinkaid faculty members Leslie Lovett and Harlan Howe recently shared some of the projects from their interim term class Gaming the Past.  The students studied periods of history and made video games telling an interactive story set in that time. (These are text-based games, like Zork, where one types actions for the character in the game.)  Students used the Inform 7 software to create the games.

The Kinkaid debate team competed at the Texas Forensics Association (TFA) State tournament hosted by Cypress Creek High School in Houston.  TFA State is truly the state championship tournament.  Unlike UIL or SPC, TFA State includes public and private schools.  It is truly statewide in its scope as schools from just about every area in Texas compete.  This year, there were 216 schools in attendance.

Students must qualify to attend based upon consistent success in the late elimination rounds at TFA qualifying tournaments.  Needless to say, Texas is one of the most competitive states in the country for speech and debate competition, and the quality of competition is a reflection of the student’s talents and dedication. 

In policy debate, there were 116 teams (232 individual students).  In Lincoln-Douglas, there were approximately 190 competitors.  Only the best 32 teams/debaters reach the elimination rounds. 

Kinkaid had 11 students qualified to attend, close to being on par with the biggest Kinkaid debate teams in recent history.  This year’s crew is unique in that there were no seniors qualified, and the team hopes to return the entire group next year.  

These students represented the school remarkably well as Kinkaid was only one of two schools (the other being Greenhill) to have participants in the late elimination rounds of both policy and Lincoln-Douglas debate.   Of the 11 Kinkaid students at the tournament, 8 reached the elimination rounds.  Of those 8 students, two were first years and two were sophomores. 

 Kinkaid debate team’s successes included:

• In Lincoln-Douglas, Kinkaid had two students reach the elimination rounds. 

• Junior Nina Kalluri placed in the top 8 by reaching the quarterfinals.  She lost a close quarterfinals debate, on a 2-1 decision, to Greenhill.  Nina found success against the best from Strake Jesuit, Flower Mound HS (Dallas), Woodlands HS, and more. 

• Junior Michael Sands placed in the top 32 in Lincoln-Douglas.  Michael was awarded the 4th overall speaker of the tournament, and he was seeded 5th coming out of preliminary rounds.  He was upset in his first elimination round by the top debater from Taylor HS (Katy) who eventually placed 2nd overall. 

• In policy debate, Kinkaid brought three teams and all three teams reached the elimination rounds.  No school other than Kinkaid had more teams in the elimination rounds. 

• The junior team of Reece Rosenthal and Rikki Bleiweiss placed in the top 8 (quarterfinals) losing a close round, on a 2-1 decision, to the eventual winner from Austin’s Stephen F. Austin High School.  Reece and Rikki found success against the best teams from Bellaire High School, Clear Lake High School, Midway High School, and more.

• Kinkaid had two more teams -- Sita Yerramsetti (sophomore), & Sabrina Bajwa (first year), and Arjun Reddy (sophomore) & Sam Richey (first year) – reach the top 32.  Both teams lost their first elimination round.

• Reece Rosenthal was also awarded a speaker award.  He received the 18th overall speaker, out of over 200 students.  

Overall, the team had a successful weekend.  Please congratulate these students on their successes.  Most of the debaters were tireless in their preparation, and they were tired as the tournament was both taxing and time consuming.  

Special thanks go to Claire McKinney and Jishnu Guha Majumdar, the two assistant coaches who were instrumental to our success.  Also, many thanks to the parents, especially team mom’s Kim Rosenthal and Brigitte Kalai, who provided a cornucopia of snacks and endless support.

-- Debate Coach Eric Emerson

Nine Kinkaid students (Zaid, Selim, Dylan, Kaveh, Dean, Katie, Jeel, Aliza and Neeshali) attended the Model United Nations conference earlier in March and did extremely well. These students had some of the highest scores at the conference on their position papers, and The Kinkaid School is very proud of their effort.

Berkeley Model United Nations is a student run organization on the UC Berkeley campus dedicated to planning and hosting the biggest Model United Nations conference on the West Coast. Over 1,500 high school students from all over the world came to Berkeley to participate in Berkeley Model United Nations.

Since 1992 the Alumni Association has awarded an outstanding senior boy and outstanding senior girl who best represent dedication to Kinkaid through academic, extra-curricular and volunteer activities. On Friday, April 4th, 2014, Eva Nip and Rohan Naik were awarded the Alumni Association awards. 

Eva entered Kinkaid in kindergarten and she is admired for her genuine kindness, patience and positive attitude. Rohan entered Kinkaid in the sixth grade and he has distinguished himself as a scholar and leader.

Congratulations to both Eva and Rohan!

The Boniuk Institute at Rice University held its fourth annual Embracing Tolerance Essay Contest, which attracted more than 175 students’ entries, representing some 20 different high schools throughout greater Houston. As usual, the quality was consistently high, as writers wrestled to address the question of what practicing religious tolerance truly means.

This year two upper school students' essays were selected. Vidya Sivaramakrishnan's essay titled, "Religious Tolerance - An Achievable Utopia?" and Halle Brazda's essay titled, "Tolerance Through Tennis" tied for second place in the 9th and 10th Grade Section.

Links to the student works are below.

Halle Brazda's "Tolerance Through Tennis"

Vidya Sivaramakrishnan's "Religious Tolerance - An Achievable Utopia?"

Pictured with the two students above is the Boniuk's Associate Director for Community Engagement and former Director of Character Education at Kinkaid Mike Pardee, who served on the 12-member selection committee for the Boniuk Institute Essay Contest. 

The Kinkaid School 2014 Spring Magazine issue features: 

• A message from the Headmaster
• Feature article: “Separating Work from Life”
• From the Archives
• Around Campus:
  • Lower, Middle, and Upper School
  • Staff Spotlight on Shelly Read
• Athletics News
• Fine Arts News
• Peace by Piece: A Partnership with Habitat for Humanity
• Class Notes & Alumni News 

Please visit the magazine webpage at:

kinkaid.org/magazine

Julian Meyers, Daniel Mirzai, Graham Parsons, Seb Seager and Andrew Yang were all selected by Duke TIP (Talent Identification Program) for state-level recognition for their SAT or ACT scores. Congratulations to all the Duke TIP students!

Yearbook 2013

Yearbook 2014

Newspaper 2014  

The Kinkaid Lower School third graders and their parents gathered in the Lower School Library for Pioneer Hour to view the students’ iBooks and various work samples created during their Westward Expansion unit of study.  Each third grade class had a presentation day in the library during the week of April 21-24th, 2014.

During this unit, third graders learned about all aspects of the life along the Oregon Trail. Each student chose special areas of interest to study closely such as hardships along the trail, food and entertainment, and the famous forts and stops on the trail. 

The students shared their new learning by creating class iBooks! The iBooks were created using iBook Author and then proudly uploaded onto iPads for viewing. The e-book projects also contained student made interactive quizzes, short videos and photo galleries called “widgets” to support their text within the chapters of the book.

Students also used all their learning by writing creative journals written from the point of view of a pioneer child traveling along the Oregon Trail. The children loved trying their hand at historical fiction writing and creatively weaving the facts into their action-packed story lines.

The students dressed in pioneer clothing for their presentation.  The gathering also featured staple food from the frontier such as beef jerky, biscuits, and hand-made butter.

Congratulations to all of the Kinkaid students who received special recognition for their performance on the national Spanish foreign language exams!  These students are listed below.

Spanish

Level 2

Tiffany Ajumobi

Sabrina Bajwa

Aine Carolan

Eloise Detmering

Ashley Deutser

William Ducharme

Margaret Durning

Thomas Ereli

Anna Glickman

Hamilton Gray

Brighton Huynh

Emmy Hyser

Alyssa Karchmer

Nicolas Key

Zubair Mukhi

Chinaza Ndee

Rebecca Noel

Ben Padon

Marie Parra

Salman Popatia

Amir Razavi

Zach Roubein

Sophia Solé

Tarun Srinivasan

Level 2 (native speaker)

Sofía González

Oscar Meléndez

Level 3

Jackson Baur

Kendyl Bree

Horatiu Calin

Grant Carmain

Amy Drews

Alex Goeringer

Aliza Kajani

Jeel Mehta

Grace Nevil

Stuart Raty

Faizan Razak

Arjun Reddy

Ryan Smith

Q Tabarestani

SitaYerramsetti

Level 4

Alexis Allen

Stephanie Bell

Will Gaus

Nicholas Ho

Ravi Inamdar

Nina Kalluri

Rachael Levy

Sarah Lewis

Grant Martin

Linnea Mcauley

Mathew Morico

Emily Paul

Phoebe Zipper

Level 4 (native speaker)

Andrés Mata-Santellano

Level 5

Nazie Amjadi

Sam Schwager

Bronze Medalist

Hale Baerenstecher

Kris Brolan

Caleigh Doran

Kennedy Gamble

Alec Gibson

Basil Iftikhar

Robert McHenry

Mary Grey McLeroy

Colin Monteith

Karen Morey

Ashley Murchison

Addison Spier

Silver Medalist

Emily Arcidiacono

Jack Beaver

Ava Finger

Jared Edelman

Adam Harter

Taqi Hasnain

Anna Maria Johnson

Austin Koort

Will Kunetka

Ashton Lambert

Zachary Lewitton

Ava Lubetkin

Lauren Nip

Anish Odhav

Kami Ruiz Rodriguez

Lillian Rosenfield

Sam Segal

Sarah Stukalin

Minhhy Truong

Zoya Virani

Georgia Williams

Melanie Kate Yeager

Gold Medalist

Zachary Bell

Sara Burpeau

Woodley Burrow

Jiya Ghei

Will Langford

Collin Lawrence

Isabella Rivero

Hayden Rome

Haley Schwager

Mary Claire Stevenson

Nina Wells

Outside Experience Awards

Channing Allshouse - Bronze

Arman Badrei - Bronze

Reagan Newton - Silver

Ryan Sanchez - Bronze

Anna Thomas - Gold

Merritt Tilney - Silver

Congratulations to all of the Kinkaid students who received special recognition for their performance on the national French foreign language exams!  These students are listed below.

French

Level 01A, Grade 7

Reeves Cameron

Kate Carmain

Gleith Cozby

Merritt Cozby

Charlie Finch

Timothy Hickman

Karnett Huynh

Daniel King

Danielle Knobloch

Daniel Mirzai

Marynell Ward

Level 1B, Grade 8

Alya Abbassian

Edward Chamblee

Raiya Goodman

Rodrigo Guerra-Leroux

Caroline Hanan

Laure N Ho

Christos Papandreou

Amanda Roff

Level 1 B, Grade 9

Magie Wallis

Level 2 A

Nicho Sidler

Level 2 B

Bryn Anderson

Christina Choi

Sofia Gonzalez

Robert Lahourcade

Ryland Maksoud

Kaylie Mings

Isabel Parsons

Noah Pintar

Mitali Sharma

Kerry Sullivan

Saskia Veldkamp

Kristine Yang

Level 3 A

Kaveh Badrei

Fernanda Gonzalez-Blanco

Mason Mings

Elise Peters

Vidya Sivaramakrishnan

Alexandra Szeto-Joe

Clara Tian

Level 4

Carolyn Bell

Ashley Davis

Emily Grinstead

John Pederson

Caroline Powers

Sydnie Swanson

Lauren Siegel

Harriet Tieh

Level 5

Taylor Daniel

Charlotte Raty

Rachel Soderstrom

Caroline Talbert

Alicia Yefimenko

Congratulations to all of the Kinkaid students who received special recognition for their performance on the national Latin foreign language exams!  These students are listed below.

Latin

Summa Cum Laude

Jack Beaver

Zachary Bell

Woodley Burrow

Jiya Ghei

Will Kunetka

Collin Lawrence

Hayden Rome

Sam Segal

Anna Thomas

 Merritt Tilney* perfect score

Maxima Cum Laude

Alya Abbassian

Ellie Bolin

Edward Chamblee

Alec Gibson

Taqi Hasnain

Lauren Ho

Will Langford

Zachary Lewitton

Reagan Newton

Amanda Roff

Haley Schwager

Tarun Srinivasan

Katherine Summerlin

Magna Cum Laude

Arman Badrei

Rodrigo Guerra-Leroux

Caroline Hanan

Basil Iftikhar

Anna Maria Johnson

Austin Koort

Ashton Lambert

Robert McHenry

Colin Monteith

Christos Papandreou

Isabella Rivero

Antonio Salman

Minhhy Truong

Nina Wells

Cum Laude

Kris Brolan

Sara Burpeau

Binz DeWalch

Caleigh Doran

J.D. Dyer

Jared Edelman

Mac Friday

Culley Harper

TX Harris

Adam Harter

David Liang

McKenna Light

Belle Martire

Karen Morey

Lauren Nip

Anish Odhav

Ryan Sanchez

Ellie Smith

Mary Claire Stevenson

Melanie Kate Yeager

The Kinkaid debate team officially began its debate season at Foster High School. There were 48 schools competing, and Kinkaid sent a small group of three debaters to this tournament.  

Senior Nina Kalluri placed in the top 8 out of over 80 competitors.  She lost a close quarterfinal round to cross town rivals Strake Jesuit on a 2-1 decision.  

In addition, twenty Kinkaid debaters spent their summers researching and preparing for this year's debate season at various summer workshops sponsored by major debating universities.  Many of them found significant success including:

• University of Michigan hosted one of the most competitive policy debate camps in the United States.
• University of Texas hosted the largest debate camp in America.
• Victory Briefs Institute sponsored by UCLA hosted the largest and most competitive LD camp
• Senior Tyler Gamble attended the National Symposium on Debate (NSD), another top LD camp.  He placed in the top 32 out of hundreds of students.
• Sophomore Anvi Nandish reached the quarterfinals of Champions Brief Institute in Florida.

• Sophomore Sabrina Bajwa placed in the semi-finals.
• Senior Rikki Bleiweiss placed in the quarterfinals. Rikki was further awarded a Senior Fellowship, recognizing her as amongst the best in the country.  
• Senior Reece Rosenthal placed in the top 32.

• Junior Sita Yerramsetti was the 2nd overall top speaker and a quarterfinalist.  
• Junior Arjun Reddy was awarded 6th overall speaker and he placed in the top 16.

• Senior Nina Kalluri placed in the top 32
• Sophomore Emma Hanan placed in the top 64 out of over 300 students.

The debate team begins the year debating three different topics.  They include:

• In Lincoln-Douglas - Resolved:  a just society ought to presume consent for organ procurement from the deceased.
• In policy debate - Resolved:  The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its non-military exploration and/or development of the Earth's oceans.
• In public forum - Resolved:  On balance, public subsidies for professional athletic organizations in the United States benefit their local communities.   

The Kinkaid debate team is looking forward to another fun and enjoyable season!

-- Upper School Debate Team Coach, Eric Emerson

The Kinkaid debate team recently had an eventful weekend of competition.  The team split up to compete at the season opener for national competition sponsored by Grapevine High School (Dallas) and to compete locally at Elkins High School. 

At Grapevine High School, there were 103 schools in attendance representing 14 states and the District of Columbia.  The Grapevine Classic was a qualifying tournament for the Tournament of Champions, sponsored by the University of Kentucky.  Kinkaid took seven students and five returned with shiny trophies.  Kinkaid debate team’s success included:

•    In Lincoln-Douglas debate, senior Nina Kalluri placed in the top 16 (octo-finals).  She lost her octo-final round to the eventual tournament champion from Westwood High School. 

•    Senior Tyler Gamble and junior Emma Hanan placed in the top 32.  Tyler was also awarded the 13th overall speaker out of 111 competitors. 

•    In policy debate, Kinkaid sent the sophomore team of Sabrina Bajwa and Sam Richey.  Sam and Sabrina placed in the top 16 out of 72 teams, losing a close 2-1 decision.  

•    Sabrina Bajwa was also awarded the 16th overall speaker out of 144 individuals, a remarkable accomplishment for a sophomore. 

•    Michael Sands, senior, and Jason Yang, sophomore, had the record to reach the elimination rounds in Lincoln-Douglas debate, but they failed to advance based upon speaker points.  

Locally, Elkins HS hosted a strong local tournament.  There were 23 schools from throughout Houston in attendance.  Kinkaid had twelve students representing the debate team and Kinkaid found significant success.

•    In novice Congressional debate, first year Collin Lawrence was the winner!

•    In novice policy debate, first year Taqi Hasnain and sophomore Rahul Popat placed 2nd. 

•    In LD debate, first year Sam Segal placed in the top 16 out of 85 entries.

•    In policy debate, the team of sophomore Zubair Mukhi & first year Anna Thomas had the record to reach the elimination rounds but they failed to advance based upon speaker points

Overall, the team had a successful weekend.  As always, many thanks to the Kinkaid parents and faculty for their support.  Special thanks go to co-coaches Jason Courville and Sydney Van berg for their time and effort. 

-- Kinkaid Upper School Debate Coach, Eric Emerson

In technology, Kinkaid’s youngest learners have been working on navigation skills with programs such as KidMouse and KidPix.  Third graders recently participated in a Mystery Skype project with another class somewhere in the United States. 

In science class, first grade students have been working on various science skills and will be soon observing earthworms, making graphs and constructing play-dough models.  Second grade science students started the year with “matter and molecules” activities.  Third graders have been studying the science of nutrition and fourth graders have been busy working on the scientific method.

For a full description of these Lower School classroom activities, please visit The Kinkaid Lower School Weebly webpage.

Special guest Michael Kelling, a beekeeper and retired teacher from Brenham, Texas, recently visited the Kayem Library in the Middle School to talk to 5th graders about bees.  He talked about the different kinds of bees, their behavior around the hive, and the important role that bees play in our lives.  Mr. Keller quoted Albert Einstein to help illustrate the importance of bees in our lives: 

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”
― Albert Einstein

During the presentation, the students were quizzed on honey bee terminology that they had learned in class.  After Mr. Kelling’s talk, the students asked some questions, and then visited three centers around the library.  One center had a sampling of honey made from the bees.  In the second center, students tried on a full beekeeper suit complete with coveralls, long gloves, hat and veil.  The third center allowed the students an up-close view of a working hive of over 2,500 bees.

Kinkaid pre-K teachers recently invited Assistant Headmaster Dr. Ed Trusty to read to the entire group of pre-K students. Ed read the story "Knuffle Bunny Too" by Mo Willems in The Lower School Forum and surprised them at the end of the visit by reading a poem he wrote entitled “Just Like You.”

The Kinkaid debate team recently split up, yet again, to compete at a nationally competitive tournament in Dallas and to compete locally.

The Greenhill debate tournament, in Dallas, is widely considered to be a 'major' of high school debate. One hundred schools from 17 states attended. The Greenhill tournament is unique in that it limits entries and only allows the most competitive top teams/debaters to attend.

This year, Kinkaid had the biggest squad in recent history, a testament to the depth of quality competitors that the team has this year. There were 11 students who attended (three policy teams and 5 Lincoln-Douglas debaters). In addition, prior to the open tournament, Greenhill invited Sita Yerramsetti and Rikki Bleiweiss to compete at their round robin tournament reserved for the top 16 debate teams in the country.

The Kinkaid debate team found significant success including:

• Senior Rikki Bleiweiss and Sita Yerramsetti placed in the quarterfinals (top 8 out of 120 teams). They lost a VERY close 2-1 decision to the eventual tournament winner from the Caddo Magnet school (Shreveport). Rikki and Sita bested some outstanding teams on their way to the quarterfinals including Niles North (Chicago), Stephen F. Austin high school (Austin), McDonough (Baltimore), and more.
• Senior Rikki Bleiweiss was also awarded the 6th overall speaker award out of 240 individual speakers. Sita was also the 22nd speaker of the tournament.
• Senior Tyler Gamble placed in the top 32 (double-octofinals) in Lincoln-Douglas debate. Unfortunately, he drew the top speaker and top seed from Harker (San Jose) and he lost a close round.
• The policy team of Sam Richey and Sabrina Bajwa narrowly missed reaching the elimination rounds. They were the 34th seed and only the top 32 debaters advance. They missed by .4 speaker points, a remarkable accomplishment for a sophomore team.

Locally, the Kinkaid team competed at the local sponsored by Memorial High School. Thirty schools from throughout the Houston area attended. Kinkaid had one student reach the elimination rounds. First year Jiya Ghei reached the octo-finals (top 16) in Lincoln-Douglas debate.

Overall, it was a successful, if not exhausting, weekend.

Thanks to the parents who chaperoned the local tournament at Memorial High School. Also, thanks to the co-coaches who worked with the debaters in Dallas.

- Debate Coach Eric Emerson