WFHA Students Receive Gruss Foundation Award
Several of WFHA's middle schoolers received a prestigious award from the Gruss Foundation last month, recognizing their second place win in an international math competition.
The students took part in the challenging contest last year as part of Excellence 2000, or E2K, an innovative enrichment program developed in Israel as a method to teach math and science to gifted students.
E2K is administered through the Gruss Foundation in the United States, and three times a year the foundation runs contests for participating schools. Last year WFHA's 5th and 6th grade team took second place in their very first international competition.
The team answered all but the last question correctly in the exciting three-hour math contest, said Science Teacher Rhonda Ginsberg, who heads E2K at WFHA and guides the students to use logic, analysis, creativity and team work to approach science and math problems.
"I was so proud of my students' enthusiasm as they solved interesting, but difficult math problems. They worked as a team to solve very challenging problems and defended their answers when there were disagreements. These contests prove that math can be entertaining as well as educational," Ginsberg said.
At the Gruss Foundation Annual Dinner on November 9, Ginsberg and Head of School Nora Anderson accepted the Gruss Foundation award and trophy in front of more than 900 Jewish educators from the metropolitan area.