MS Wins Award at Future Cities Competition

“The Future Cities Competition challenges middle school students to imagine a city one hundred years in the future and make it come to life through a virtual simulation, an essay, and a scale model with a presentation,” explained Middle School Technology teacher Jeffrey Goodman. “The theme of this year's challenge was resilience. The students were tasked with not only designing a future, but also ensuring it could handle any stress that was presented by the population, time, or natural disasters.”

 Mr. Goodman and Mrs. Loscalzo’s STEM class worked together in specialized roles to prepare for the competition. The students collaborated and “devised a plan,” Goodman said, “to make their city’s most vulnerable stress—storm surges—into their solution.”

“Their city would be protected by a breakwater wall,” Loscalzo continued, “that redirected the water hitting the shore through a series of aqua tubes that would help capture kinetic energy to be converted into electricity while protecting the shore. The same system could draw in water to be desalinated and purified into drinking water in a underground system, totally invisible to the population enjoying the beach.”

After months of planning, the Middle School team, led by the three presenting  students:  Sasha Gagnon, Sammy Hmelovsky, and Tim Zelinski, along with their advisors and accompanied by a handful of classmates as supporters, attended the Future Cities Competition in New York City and presented their future city model to a panel of judges. The judges awarded the Sayville team—for a third time in as many years—with a special area award for “Best Solution for Sustainable Water System.”

“Only time will tell,” Mr. Goodman and Mrs. Loscalzo noted, “if their creative ideas for solving problems in the future will become a reality.”

“The Future Cities Competition challenges middle school students to imagine a city one hundred years in the future and make it come to life through a virtual simulation, an essay, and a scale model with a presentation,” explained Middle School Technology teacher Jeffrey Goodman. “The theme of this year's challenge was resilience. The students were tasked with not only designing a future, but also ensuring it could handle any stress that was presented by the population, time, or natural disasters.”

 Mr. Goodman and Mrs. Loscalzo’s STEM class worked together in specialized roles to prepare for the competition. The students collaborated and “devised a plan,” Goodman said, “to make their city’s most vulnerable stress—storm surges—into their solution.”

“Their city would be protected by a breakwater wall,” Loscalzo continued, “that redirected the water hitting the shore through a series of aqua tubes that would help capture kinetic energy to be converted into electricity while protecting the shore. The same system could draw in water to be desalinated and purified into drinking water in a underground system, totally invisible to the population enjoying the beach.”

After months of planning, the Middle School team, led by the three presenting  students:  Sasha Gagnon, Sammy Hmelovsky, and Tim Zelinski, along with their advisors and accompanied by a handful of classmates as supporters, attended the Future Cities Competition in New York City and presented their future city model to a panel of judges. The judges awarded the Sayville team—for a third time in as many years—with a special area award for “Best Solution for Sustainable Water System.”

“Only time will tell,” Mr. Goodman and Mrs. Loscalzo noted, “if their creative ideas for solving problems in the future will become a reality.”