ASTEP’s Michelle Ziadie wins Florida’s Miami Herald Silver Knight Award!
The Miami Herald Silver Knight Awards is one of the nation’s most highly regarded student awards programs. The purpose of the Silver Knight Awards program is to recognize outstanding students who have not only maintained good grades but have also unselfishly applied their special knowledge and talents to contribute significant service to their schools and communities.
The program is open to high school seniors, with a minimum 3.0 GPA in public, private, and parochial schools in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Students may be nominated in 15 categories: Art, Athletics, Business, Drama, English & Literature, Foreign Language, General Scholarship, Journalism, Mathematics, Music, New Media, Science, Social Science, Speech, and Vocational-Technical. Each school may nominate one student per category.
Nominees from all schools appear on a designated day to be interviewed by a panel of independent judges. Each panel of judges selects one Silver Knight and three Honorable Mentions in that category. Names are not revealed until the Silver Knight Awards ceremony. Silver Knights receive $1,500, a Silver Knight statue and a medallion presented by American Airlines. The three Honorable Mentions are presented $500 and an engraved plaque.
The awards aim to recognize recipients' "record of service to school and community. The Silver Knight Awards have been recognized as one of the top student achievement award programs in the United States and this year ASTEP’s Michelle Ziadie won an Honorable Mention in the Art category for her work with ASTEP!
The awards ceremony was held on May 20th 2008 and Michelle was not the only ASTEP participant present. Ximena Salgado was also nominated for her work with ASTEP in the Music category.
Michelle and Ximena began their ASTEP experience as Middle School campers in 2004. Once in high school they became active participants in the year round Group Leadership Program at enFamilia and both returned to camp last summer as High School camp participants and middle school teacher’s assistants.
Michelle is currently working her first summer job and will begin a new collaborative visual art project in the next two weeks. She will be attending Miami-Dade College next year, expanding on her portfolio, before she continues on to New World School of the Arts.
Here is a short story written by Michelle about her experiences with ASTEP:
“My name is Michelle Ziadie. I am a daughter, a sister, a student, a friend, an artist. I was first exposed to the ASTEP experience four years ago, in the summer of 2004. As a camper, I immediately fell in love with the program. The teachers were welcoming and friendly with us, making us feel that we belong, the classes were high-energy and a joy to be apart of, friends were easy to make and friendships last forever, above all else I felt at home.
I knew I was somewhere that was meant to be. When I returned this past summer to be a teacher’s assistant, I was very pleased to discover nothing had changed. The satisfaction of teaching an eager group of kids was only superseded by the satisfaction of transforming a not-so eager group of kids into confident, independent, and creative individuals. I went into the program with the knowledge and experience I had gained and was anxious to give back to the campers. I came out of the program realizing how much I learned from the kids, about life, about friendship, about myself. This year I felt especially lucky.
I was fortunate enough to be among the first to experience the ASTEP High School camp. With my main focus in Visual Art, the subject to which I have decided to devote my life, I learned and grew as an individual and an artist. Experiencing the program as both a giver and a receiver, I have nothing but praise for the program that has taught me more about what is just as important as any textbook. I now feel more secure about every role that defines who I am. I am a daughter, a sister, a student, a friend. I am an artist.”
Congratulations Michelle, we are all extremely proud of you!