Huntington Scores on National Spanish Exam
Huntington High School students earned numerous awards in this year’s National Spanish Exam competition. More than 20 teenagers were recognized, including seven who garnered gold, silver or bronze medals, placing them among the elite nationally.
The NSE is a series of exams for those on various levels of study. The tests, which are sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, are voluntarily administered to students in grades 6-12 across the country.
Huntington’s honorees are enrolled in classes taught by world language teachers Mercy Peña and Lorena Hickey.
Students with outstanding scores on the National Spanish Examinations are recognized as follows:
• Gold medal: students scoring at or above the 95th percentile.
• Silver medal: students scoring from the 85th through the 94th percentiles.
• Bronze medal: students scoring from the 75th through the 84th percentiles.
• Honorable mention: students scoring from the 50th through the 74th percentiles
Mrs. Peña’s students turned in a very impressive performance with Jacob Strieb and Santos Garcia winning silver medals and Yoselin Gaitan claiming a bronze medal. Rachel Carpenter, Camille Stafford, Sofia Suarez, Steve Yeh, Manyara Cuadra, Osvaldo Moreira, Naomi Ponce and Karla Reyes all garnered honorable mention recognition.
“I am so proud of every single one of my students because the National Spanish Exam is a very difficult language and culture exam,” Mrs. Peña said.
Among Mrs. Hickey’s students, Morely Gomez, Jonathan Guevara and Patricia Lizama captured bronze medals while Cesar Guevara, Kenneth Nuñez, Cristian Garay, Ana Reyes Pineda, Peter Ciccone, Aidan Forbes, Ethan Garcia, Rachel Moss and Tyara Hernandez qualified for honorable mention recognition.
“Attaining a medal or honorable mention recognition for any student on the National Spanish Examination is very prestigious because the exams are the largest of their kind in the United States with over 160,000 students participating in 2016,” said Kevin Cessna-Buscemi, national director of the exams.
The NSE was administered in a paper form from 1957-2005 before moving to an online format. Nearly 4,000 teachers across the country participate annually in the NSE with their students who are studying Spanish as a second language.