Kay Sponsorship award

Earlier this month, science teacher Benjamin Kay was awarded a sponsorship award for mentoring some of his students in an International Ocean Advocacy Competition. In 2016, Kay presented his AP Environmental Science students with an opportunity to submit a piece of art or written entry for this competition within the theme of “Making Meaning Out of Ocean Pollution.”“The competition promotes students getting involved in difficult issues like plastic pollution and climate change by doing art work, using prose, poetry and short essays, and that way it’s giving students a chance to express themselves artistically through writing and through art,” Kay said.Funded by the Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Program, a handful of his students took this opportunity and submitted to win either the gold ($5,000 prize), silver ($2,500 prize) or bronze ($1,000 prize) award.“[Last year,] my student Ali Bilat (’17) submitted a piece [of art] called Cosmic Demise where he, in a very visually creative way, portrays a man holding up the planet that is being taken over by corporate interests, specifically big fossil fuel and big plastic [companies],” Kay said. “This man [in the picture] has the whole world on his back and it’s straining because the problems that we’re facing are getting much much dire and bigger and the environmental repercussions are not acted could be severe.”Bilat’s submission was one of a handful that took part in the competition. Although none of Kay’s participating students won, they recommended him for a sponsorship award given out to teachers and mentors that have had large impacts in the environmental community.“I can’t say I really did much. I just told some students about an opportunity to get involved and some students took advantage of that,” Kay said. “And for whatever reason one of my students recommended me for this teacher portion of the competition that I didn’t even know about! So it was a big surprise that I feel very grateful for [even though] I still don’t know who actually nominated me.”In being presented with this award, Kay will receive $750 from the program and will put that money toward school supplies for his current classes.“They sent me an email saying, ‘hey, congratulations, you’ve won an award and we’re sending you $750,’ so I’ll probably put that to school supplies. But more importantly, I’m proud of my students and I really do believe that youth are very powerful and as they become environmentally literate they have big potential to do the right thing for sustainability,” Kay said.Overall, Kay is very grateful for the recognition from his students and hopes to inspire more students to take part in the environmental issues that threaten our society today.“I’m hopeful that as young people engage in such competitions they will be inspired to spread awareness through their art and through oral expression,” Kay said. “Art can be a very powerful medium in communicating the effects of these global crises and to help us think about solutions to mitigating or mediating these issues.”