Three students are semifinalists for award
September 26, 2008
By Laura Geggel
Valley home-school students recognized in National Merit program
Kyle Clark, left, and John McDevitt, two home-schooled students who are enrolled in Bellevue Community College’s Running Start Program, are National Merit Semifinalists.
Last week, the SnoValley Star recognized two Valley students as semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship program. In fact, there are three — Mount Si High School senior Francis Gill and home school students Kyle Clark of Snoqualmie and John McDevitt of North Bend.
Clark and McDevitt, who were not interviewed for the Sept. 11 article, are good friends and both received PSAT training from Clark’s mother, Alexandra.
Alexandra Clark taught 16 students for 32 weeks in hour-long, weekly sessions. In class, students completed practice exams — writing essays, calculating math exercises and quizzing each other on vocabulary.
McDevitt said he favored preparing for the math section.
“For me, math has always been something I like to figure out for myself,” McDevitt said. “I feel like home-schooling gives kids an opportunity to figure things out for themselves.
“There were things on the test I hadn’t seen before, but I was able to use my critical skills to figure them out for myself.”
By the time he took the PSAT, 18-year-old McDevitt had finished 10 to 15 practice tests. He scored a similar high score on the SAT, one of the requirements for becoming a National Merit Scholar.
Despite his success with standardized tests, McDevitt said he took issue with the SAT’s 3-year-old writing portion.
“The entire point of the test is that it’s completely objective,” McDevitt said. “The essay has to be graded by a different person. It takes a test that used to be standardized and makes it random on how you’re going to score because there are different graders.”
Standardized concerns aside, McDevitt said he loves to write scripts.
“I want to become a professional actor and director,” he said, reeling off places he’s worked, including Issaquah’s Village Theatre, Kirkland Performance Center and Kirkland’s StudioEast. He produced and directed the 2006 show “Much Ado a Buccaneering” at North Bend’s Grange, a play he described as a dark comedy about a group of people who are trapped on an island.
He wants “the stories I write and the stories I tell to change individual lives.”
Becoming a National Merit Scholar could help change his.
His mother, Marianne McDevitt said her son is in the process of applying to college.
“This will open some doors,” Marianne said. “He is a very bright boy; he’s full of ideas and he’s a deep thinker.”
Both mothers said they chose to home-school their children because it gave them more of a more hands-on approach to their children’s education.
Alexandra Clark, who taught the PSAT course, said she started home-schooling her children when the family lived in Seattle and learned their children would be bused a long distance to attend school.
Capitalizing on her four children’s interests, Alexandra encouraged them to investigate subjects intriguing them.
“Kyle was really interested in little animals,” Alexandra said. “So we got an aquarium with tadpoles and raised them into frogs.”
The Clarks mated fruit flies for the tadpole food supply. Kyle’s proclivity for animals continues today.
“I keep bees in my backyard,” Clark said.
He said the honey he collects is “a little different from store bought honey,” just like his home-schooled education. Like McDevitt, Clark is 18, in Running Start and applying for university this fall. Both students are in the process of finishing their applications for a $2,500 National Merit Scholarship, an award granted to only 15,000 students nationwide.
Reach reporter Laura Geggel at 392-6434 .221 or lgeggel@snovalleystar.com
Comments
Got something to say?
