At the Awards Assembly on June 6, 2007, the Plainview-Old Bethpage Congress of Teachers awarded its Paul Rubin Memorial Scholarship to Kennedy High School students Jenna Katz (AT LEFT)and Michal Shilor( AT RIGHT). While our union usually gives only one Rubin Scholarship each year, the committee that evaluates the candidates felt so strongly about these two young people that with additional contributions to the fund by Mrs. Rubin and the PCT, two $2000 scholarships have been provided.
Unlike more conventional scholarships, the PCT Paul Rubin Scholarship is not awarded solely on the basis of academic accomplishments. Paul Rubin was a President of the PCT and an activist who lent his enormous energies in the ongoing struggle to improve the lives of ordinary people. He believed that the greatest pleasures in life come from helping others help themselves, and that it is only by engaging others in the common good that we live authentically. The scholarship that bears his name is intended to reward young people who share this vision - to inspire youth to live lives of social conscience and to encourage them to see one's fate as inextricably tied to the others in one's society.
In addition to their very considerable academic responsibilities and accomplishments, Jenna and Michal have met the challenge of being able to see beyond themselves.
Since she was a middle school student, Michal has been organizing young people around important social issues. Imagine, a middle school student with the nerve to start a gay-straight alliance to address the needs of young people struggling with sexual identity issues. At Kennedy high school she has run drives to help the needy, staged presentations and led discussions on issues from homelessness to Darfur, all in the spirit of trying to make the world a better place.
Jenna's sense of responsibility to others is every bit as strong as Michal's, although her contributions have taken a different direction. Jenna has become interested in working with severely learning disabled children and has contributed hours of her private time to coaching them to do things that most children are able to take for granted. Her work with these children has had such a powerful effect on her that she has been drawn to attend the University of Pennsylvania next year in part because of the studies of autism being undertaken at that school.
There were a number of outstanding candidates for the PCT Paul Rubin memorial scholarship this year. These two young women are the outstanding winners from an unusually good group of candidates.