News & Events
High School Student in ‘College Now’ Program at City Tech Awarded Prestigious Spirit of New York Scholarship
by Al Vargas
When Kieshorne Dennie of Crown Heights/Brooklyn, a participant in the College Now program at City Tech, became a peer helper in his high school’s peer mentoring program, he knew he would be helping others, but didn’t know he’d be helping himself, too.
In the SPARK (Supportive Peers as Resources for Knowledge) program at Brooklyn High School of the Arts, Dennie was one of the students who led discussions and made presentations on topics such as relationships, drugs and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.
When he was 10 years old, Dennie lost his father to AIDS. He hadn’t talked about it much until he became a peer mentor and began supporting other students in what they wanted to talk about. In that environment, he was able to open up and share his experiences, which in turn helped classmates who were dealing with the loss of a parent or some other difficulty to do the same.
Dennie’s involvement with SPARK and other efforts to improve his school had a second, unintended outcome. His volunteerism – along with good grades, extra-curricular activities and an essay on civic responsibility – earned him a $2,500 Spirit of New York Scholarship to The City University of New York (CUNY) school of his choice in the 2008 Myself Third competition.
Made possible through a generous gift by CUNY alumnus Robert Friedman, the scholarship program was established in 2002 as a tribute to the idealism and spirit of those who participated in the rescue effort following the 9/11 tragedy. It seeks to encourage and reward civic involvement on the part of high school students.
It was through SPARK that Dennie became involved in the annual AIDS Walk, in which he has participated for the last two years. “I knew I was not only doing it for my father, but for other people who were affected by the AIDS epidemic,” Dennie wrote in his scholarship essay. “I also walked to raise awareness of sex education within public schools.” He believes that the current practice of teaching health in high schools for only one grading period is not enough.
SPARK is just one way in which Dennie has given back to his school and mentored younger students. He is a trombonist with his school’s concert, symphonic and jazz bands and also plays the flute. He mastered these instruments by the seventh grade through the Brooklyn Music and Arts Program, and later volunteered to assist in teaching the trombone to other youngsters during the summers.
“It was my duty to return and share my knowledge and experience of music with the future,” Dennis also wrote in his essay. “I did not only foster their musicianship, but I also apprised them about the past musicians who have left an influence on our era.”
Dennie also served as a community service coordinator for the National Honor Society (NHS). With the help of his NHS club advisor, he connected other members with the public library’s READ program, through which they sat one-on-one with children in kindergarten and first and second grades to help them improve their reading skills.
“The READ program has served as a vivid flashback of my past in the sense that I was once a student like them, who sat in the classroom baffled by the complexity of the work,” Dennie wrote. “The program taught me that children learn at their own pace and it is up to us as adults and young adults to foster their academic, social and personal growth.”
As a participant in the College Now program at City Tech, Dennie has been exposed to what college will be like and says that he now knows what to expect next fall, when he plans to enroll in the Honors Program at Kingsborough Community College. He also plans to go on to earn a PhD in physics, to do research and to teach. And while pursuing these aspirations, he will continue to make time to tutor children in the READ program and to join in other volunteer efforts.
“I want to be a teacher who is able to communicate well with my students,” he says. “A good teacher listens to students’ ideas, is able to relate the topic to students and apply the topic to the real world.”
According to Ivonne Barreras, director of Collaborative Programs at City Tech, “While many students face overwhelming odds as they work toward achieving academic and personal goals, Kieshorne Dennie is truly an inspirational young man. Faced with significant hardship, he has consistently sought to better himself and assist others with their own challenges. That is the spirit of New York that the Myself Third scholarships honor.”
College Now is a free program offered through 17 CUNY schools to help New York City public high school students prepare for college and earn college credit in advance of admission. Last year, City Tech’s Office of Collaborative Programs provided direct services to more than 1,250 students in partner high schools city-wide.
06/23/08
