Eight students from The Wheatley School have been awarded gold status for their performance on this year’s National Spanish Exam. This academic competition tests skills in listening and reading comprehension, vocabulary and structure.
This year’s gold winners include eighth-graders Khavi Ahmed, John Scudero, Mana Shukla, Vedant Singh and Brandon Zhu, freshmen Adeel Anwar and Sana Haroon, and junior Jaclyn Stroud. The students’ scores placed within the top 5 percent of all students who took the exams in their respective levels.
The National Spanish Exam is sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. The Long Island Chapter of the organization will honor these students at a special awards ceremony on May 29 at North Shore High School.
In addition to the gold winners, Wheatley students were awarded 17 silver, 17 bronze and 54 honorable mention certificates. “Attaining a medal or honorable mention for any student on the National Spanish Examinations is very prestigious,” said Kevin Cessna-Buscemi, national director of the exams, “because the exams are the largest of their kind in the United States with over 157,000 students participating in 2015.”
Joan Anderson, chairperson of the world language department in the East Williston School District added, “I am grateful to the dedicated teachers who continue to encourage our students to challenge themselves beyond the classroom. Our students have proven to be very competitive in both local and national language competitions. We are very proud of their accomplishments.”
