Kansas University football coach Turner Gill helped honor 11 students and one paraeducator with special awards Thursday during New York School’s monthly Character Counts assembly.
Gill, the assembly’s guest speaker, urged the more than 200 students, teachers, staffers and parents in attendance to work hard, perservere and enter each day with a good attitude.
“Don’t give up,” he told the crowd, noting that he’d struggled with math while in school.
Here are this month’s award winners, including some of the words from teachers’ nomination letters read by Principal Nancy DeGarmo:
• Benjamin Buller, a kindergartener honored for his fairness, “who is always positive and does the right thing.”
• Ilyana Douglas, a kindergartener who “cooperates with others, obeys the rules and works hard to make things around them better,” thus displaying the character trait of citizenship.
• Josiah Nash, a first-grader who displays trustworthiness by making “an effort to encourage every member of our class to follow directions and work hard. Josiah is a wonderful student who makes me proud every day.”
• Cosmo Clock, a first-grader honored for his fairness as he “notices the situations around him and is concerned that things be done fairly. … Cosmo’s sense of justice and fairness will certainly help him as he makes his way in the future.”
• Chloe Gulotta, a “caring” and “warm-hearted” second-grader who “seems to know when any of us need a a helping hand, encouragement or a smile. She is always eager to help anyone in any way.”
• Isabel Esselstyn, whose “repsonsibility” as a third-grader is clear as she “puts forth her best work and her best effort at all times.”
• Chance Branson, a fourth-grader who “takes responsibility for his learning, his successes and his mistakes. Whatever goals he chooses in life, he has the strength of character to achieve them.”
• Destini Howard, a fourth-grader and “model student” whose actions embodying responsibility and good citizenship “make it easy to be her teacher.”
• Cris Moland, a “caring” fourth-grader who “is a kind and compassionate person who has shown me that he likes to help others.”
• Sam Greene, a fifth-grader, who “often shows compassion and caring for others in class by making sure everyone is included and by helping those in need.”
• Annie Olson, a sixth-grader whose actions fill the many traits of “responsibility,” and she “is someone you can watch as an example of doing the right thing.”
Rose Rylko, a paraeducator, was honored for citizenship by being “caring, fair, responsible, respectful and trustworthy” and “a great example for students and staff.”