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# WISE IN THE WORKS: Simon Says….

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Ellen Nodelman

Somers High School has a long proud history of involved WISE students, innovative WISE projects and intense community support for it all. This year it has combined all three with unmistakable pizzazz.

A WISE ALUMNUS AMBASSADOR How do you do that? Take one deeply involved former WISE student, now successfully graduated and embarking on a career out there in the outside world, who got a head start on that career in his WISE project, take his innovative approach to his WISE journal, an approach which dovetailed neatly with his subject, and bring him back to Somers to meet with current WISE students – a WISE alumnus ambassador.

A PROJECT, A VLOG, A CAREER That’s what WISE coordinator, John Murphy, did on March 1st, when he brought 2011 graduate Simon O’Keefe back to school to share his experiences with the current crew of WISE students. In the spring of his senior year, Simon wrote, produced, directed, and starred in his film, A Tree Grows in Liechtenstein. Not content with merely (and triumphantly) carrying off this ambitious and demanding project, Simon upped the ante by choosing to make his journal a vehicle for yet more immersion in film: he chronicled the whole process in a video blog — Somers first vlog – and turned out to be a pioneer in the field of WISE journaling.

Simon O’Keefe and Ann Ferraro

SHARING WISDOM GLEANED FROM WISE What did Simon do upon his return to “The Old Stand”? He met with some of his old mentors/supporters on the faculty, including Somers High School WISE Co-Coordinator, Ann Ferraro. Then he returned to the WISE classroom, this time as a professional in the field that he had explored as a WISE student. He regaled the students with anecdotes about his own WISE project – the highs, the lows, the in-betweens – and about the passion he had developed for film, both then and thereafter. WISE was instrumental in helping him prepare for success – in college AND afterwards –he is now a freelance filmmaker, pursuing, as a vocation, the passion that he was first allowed to explore through WISE.

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