Welcome to the weekend!
There are three young men I’d like to recognize as we close out the week.
This young man has been featured before, but deserves another shout out for that PERFECT SAT SCORE!
Cameron Clarke
Cameron Clarke, a senior at Germantown Academy in Philadelphia scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT.
That’s right. A perfect score. That hardly ever happens.
Although more than 1.66 million students took the SAT in 2012, only 360 test takers nationwide achieved a spotless 2400, according to SAT officials.
It was Cameron’s second try. The first time, he received a fist-pumping 2190 – better than 98.5 percent of all test-takers. But deep down inside, he knew he could do better.
He was notified of his perfect 2400 last spring, and I didn’t want the calendar year to end without giving this young, unassuming scholar a well-deserved shout-out.
No shortcuts here
“I put in a lot of work,” 18-year-old Cameron told me when I visited his house in Mount Airy. “I took a prep class with some of my friends, and I did a lot of practice tests from a book.
“But that only prepares you so much,” he explained. “The difference between getting, like, a 2400 and a couple of points lower is just focus.
“You can screw up or mess up on the smallest of things,” he said. “And I just feel like on that particular day, I was focused and I got kind of lucky, I guess, that I didn’t make any mistakes.”
You’ve got that right. Especially since Cameron had at first answered some questions in the wrong spaces. “So, in the last five minutes of the test, I had to go back and erase like 36 bubbles,” he said, still sounding relieved that he caught his error.
Brainiac in training
Cameron has been a student at Germantown Academy since preschool, and his parents had an inkling early on that their son was gifted. On an IQ test at age 4, he scored a 151, which is way, way up there.
His mother, Mary Jones, teaches Spanish at Father Judge High School. His dad, Peter Clarke, owns the Reef Restaurant and Lounge at Third and South streets.
They did everything they could to nurture that gift – even if they do sometimes come down hard on him for staying up into the wee hours night after night studying.
Cameron is musically accomplished, too. A principal cellist for the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, he performed last summer at the prestigious Aspen Music Festival in Colorado.
A four-page resume that he handed me when I met him lists his other interests: He writes for his school paper, participates in a math club, tutors other students, is a senator in his school’s student government and has run cross country. He was a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist. His dream school for college would be Princeton.
“He and his friends are very driven, so I think they feed off of one another,” his mom told me. Now, that’s the kind of peer pressure I’m happy to endorse.
(From philly.com)
Who can forget our Teen Jeopardy Champion Leonard Cooper?
Leonard Cooper is a senior at eStem Plubic Charter School that you need to keep your eyes on in many ways. Leonard was one of three AC seniors (and one of 13 in Arkansas) selected as a National Achievement Scholar Semi-finalist, and he has always challenged himself in all aspects of life. Leonard has participated in various summer youth and science programs, is part of the Duke TIP program, an Eagle Scout, involved at St. Mark Baptist Church, a candidate for the Gates Millennium Scholarship, and has won numerous Robotics and Quiz Bowl Competitions.
Leonard’s academic prowess earned him a spot among the 15 students nationwide competing in the upcoming Jeopardy Teen Tournament being aired on January 30. The winner of the tournament could win up to $75,000 in prizes. (which he did win! See video below!)
This third young man is a South African youth with an absolutely beautiful voice.
Mteto Maphoyi was only four-years-old when his father walked out on the family, leaving behind a Pavarotti CD. As Mteto tells it, the CD was to be his salvation, inspiring a purpose and career in the young boy…and forging a connection between him and his father forever.
“It was all I had of my father,” he says. Mteto didn’t understand the lyrics, but he “could feel my own emotions in it”.
At nine, he formed a group called the Six Tenors, and taught the others how to sing by coaching them to “shout as high as you can and remember that feeling”.
Their practice sessions paid off, and soon they were singing to tourists and earning “money to help our parents”.
Today, at 22-years-old, Mteto is grateful for how much music has helped him to bring in money, to have self-worth and because “it reminds me of my father a lot. Music is my connection to him”.
Mteto’s father passed away 11 years after he abandoned his family, and Mteto only saw him once in that time.
Mteto also credits one other special person in his life for turning things around for him — film-maker Laura Gamse who cast him as one of the subjects in her 2011 documentary ‘The Creators‘, a move that has opened doors for him and helped him escape the gang life he had immersed himself in after his mother died of HIV/AIDS.
He says that Gamse had “heard rumors about me” when she was making her documentary, and came to Hermanus looking for “the singer with a scar” (a knife-scar he received during his crime-ridden days).
When she started asking him questions for her documentary, he realized he needed to make something of his life.
Today the world is his oyster. He’s receiving formal training at South Africa’s prestigious Black Tie Ensemble at the State Theatre in Pretoria, singing in New York and featuring in a documentary that’s being shown around the world!
The video below is Mteto performing “Marechiare” at the 2012 TEDxTeen conference in New York City. His performance is simply breathtaking.