Last February, Parkway Northeast Middle School student Aerin Leigh Lammers, did something she's done since she was 3 or 4 years old. Inspired by a television program about a young person who asked for donations to a zoo instead of birthday presents, Lammers has followed the same course of action since her toddler days. Now 11, Lammers asks for help for local food pantries instead of Hanukkah and birthday presents. A new trend Last year, Lammers said she noticed something that disturbed her as she made the February delivery: how empty pantries can get after food drives focused around Christmas…

Members of Ladue High School's Habitat for Humanity charter learned over the holiday recess that they finished as runners-up in a contest sponsored by Subway to spotlight High School Heroes. The contest, dubbed High School Heroes II, doled out one $20,000 prize and three $10,000 prizes. Ladue's entry received one of the $10,000 awards. In a district press release, Ladue administrators said the Habitat for Humanity squad is the only one sponsored by a school district in Missouri and one of only a few nationally. Ladue's chartered unit includes more than 60 participants and works on 10-12 build…

The 15-year-old was jamming with other musicians at a music festival, when a stranger carrying an old fiddle approached his mother, Robin Netherton.“He said, ‘I got this at auction and came here to sell it, but I heard your kid play and I want him to have it.’ He stuck it in my hands and vanished,” said Robin, of Creve Coeur. “He didn’t care that I didn’t even know who he was."Roger, a junior at Pattonville High School, has been playing fiddle barely four years, but people assume he's an old pro.“People all think he’s played since he was 6 or 7 years old,” Robin said. “I hear from the other …

  Every Child’s Hope (ECH) is a non-profit organization that works with children who are wards of the court by assisting them and their families in their "individual quest for health and wholeness through quality, faithful, professional services," according to the agency's mission statement. A key part of the process in finding a home for the child are supervised visits done on site at the St. Louis campus on St. Charles Rock Road. Emily Esther, a 16 year-old student at Whitfield School, noticed that the visitation room at ECH did not encourage communication or bonding between the parents and…

"Freedom from bullying is a human right. It is a human right because everyone is equal no matter what. It is also a human right because no one has to fit in or be like others to be treated the same way." You probably won't find these words in a universal treatise on human rights anywhere. At least not yet. But Parkway Northeast Middle School 8th grade student Merna Youssef is well on her way. Youssef, 13, has been recognized by the St. Louis Coalition of Human Rights as the first place winner of the Missouri Human Rights Essay Contest. Entitled, "How Does Bullying Affect the Right to Personal…

Creve Coeur area school children are used to having their art on display in the halls of their school, but now, artists in the Parkway School district can show their work to the world.Through a cooperative effort between the district's fine arts coordinator and technology staff, the website, ParkwayArt.net, was designed to help give positive exposure to students' creative works and act as a resource for local teachers and students, Parkway staff said. The site recently went online. "This type of gallery is unique and one of the first of its kind among school districts," Parkway spokesperson …

The Parkway School District announced this week that a pair of Creve Coeur area high school students have been named National Merit Scholarship Achievement scholarship semifinalists. Parkway Central's Ahmed Eltahir, and Parkway North's Paa Imbeah are among a pool of approximately 16,000 students nationwide to have reached this stage, thanks to performance on standardized testing. The field will be winnowed down to 15,000 students nationwide who have demonstrated strong academic performance throughout high school and will have been recommended and endorsed by their principal. The students will…

Editor's note: Information provided by the communications staff at Ronald McDonald House Charities. Seventh-grader Jacob Cytron of Ladue Middle School spent a recent day standing outside the Schnuck’s store at Ladue Crossing, collecting items in support of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Metro St. Louis—but this was no ordinary can collection. With the help of his parents, Jacob organized an efficient, foolproof system of accumulating a specific set of goods, which totaled more than 30 bags in just four hours. But before he stationed himself outside of the store asking for donations, …

For a teenager, being responsible for your own alarm clock can be a tough enough challenge. But how would you handle the task if you were responsible for an entire congregation? If you have questions, you should ask Parkway North High School sophomore Ben Packman. Now at the ripe old age of 15, Packman has been blowing the shofar at Temple Israel for five years. "The shofar is an instrument that comes from the Torah," Temple Israel Rabbi Amy Feder said. "During Rosh Hashana, it serves as a wake-up call to change your life for the better. It's literally supposed to be an alarm." Ben's father, …

MICDS eighth-grader Sydney Lefton turned a school field trip to North Side Community School into a charitable project. “When I first saw the school my impression was I was lucky because they didn’t have any books. It’s really small there; they don’t have a lot of supplies in their classrooms,” Sydney said. So she decided to start a book drive to help the students. This collection drive for books for kindergarteners through second-graders became Sydney’s project for her bat mitzvah. “I made flyers and told my friends about it. And I invited everyone who I invited to my bat mitzvah; I sent a …

We don't know if these kids like tennis or not, but according to a press release from the Parkway School District, some students are definitely fans of aces. The district said Parkway Central's Thomas Hack (Chesterfield), Parkway North's Timothy Tai (unincorporated St. Louis County), Parkway West's Keerthi Bandi (Manchester) and Andrew Kuehnle (Ballwin) all achieved perfect scores of 36 on the ACT, an important measure of their development and potential for success at the college level. For perspective, consider this: According to the district, more than 1.6 million students took the exam in …

Since this is Creve Coeur Patch's first week of back to school coverage, we thought it might be a good time to explain how you can spotlight a great student making a difference in your classroom, in your school or in our community. Each Wednesday, we nominate the week's Whiz Kid. Maybe they've done a community service project, like Andrew Brown did for his Eagle Scout badge. Or, what about winning a writing contest. In many cases, like Joe and Cecilia Detwiler or Kirsten Lawson, the fight to survive and thrive has been an inspiration to others, well worth sharing. And those are just some of …

October 14 is World Food Day. It will be a day for the world to pause and reflect on the challenges facing the world food supply and feeding the hungry. In Creve Coeur, the day will take on added meaning because of the research done at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. And on that day, the center plans on taking action to fight world hunger, by inviting community members to come in and pack meals which will help feed the hungry half a world away. An event of this magnitude doesn't happen by accident. Danforth Center staff are aided by a group of student volunteers from schools around …

Whiz Kid: Andrew Clark Age:17 School: St. Louis University High School On Monday, Clark, who will be a senior at SLUH in the fall, completed the community service project portion of his work to become an Eagle Scout, and he helped a Creve Coeur charity in the process. Earlier this month, Clark sent letters to more than 1,500 people in the area asking if they would donate new cleaning supplies to HavenHouse, which provides a home away from home for families from out of town who are seeking medical care at local hospitals. Families also receive a variety of support services on site. Clark is …

Each week, Creve Coeur Patch will seek suggestions from readers for individual kids, youth groups, teens, and even sports teams that wow us with their accomplishments. We want to hear about these amazing children and teens and select one each week to highlight. This Week's Whiz Kid: Kelly Marra Age: 17 School: MICDS Key To Awesomeness: Kelly Marra has discovered she loves volunteering around St. Louis because it widens her horizons. She thinks she might like to go into nursing, and is currently in a program at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur. There, with other teens, she …

Pam and Mark Lawson, like most parents, enjoy bragging about their kids."Did I tell you about her MAP scores?” Pam says as she talks about Kirsten, her 10-year old daughter. “She scored in the top one percent in the nation." Kirsten is smart. She also has long, dark hair, a soft voice, big cheeks when she smiles and a face that is the epitome of innocence.But what makes Kirsten truly special is that as a 10-year old, she has overcome a disease which nearly half of all men and one-third of all women in the U.S. will battle within their lifetime. When Kirsten was 9 months old, she was diagnosed…

In this space each Wednesday, we highlight Whiz Kids, students in our area who are making a difference by excelling in the classroom or in the community. To call Oakville residents Joe and Cecilia Detwiler whiz kids just doesn’t seem to do them justice. After what has happened throughout the last 10 months of their lives, we might call Joe, who just graduated from De Smet and Cecilia, a junior to be at Cor Jesu, miracle kids. Every year, the Detwiler extended family gathers at a country home in St. James, MO for the July Fourth holiday. The same was true in 2010. On Independence Day, Joe and …

The arrival of summer, albeit not officially for another few weeks, does not prevent us from honoring those bright students doing good work in the classroom and recognizing them in the community as Whiz Kids. This week, we're recognizing two Creve Coeur area students who finished in first place among their classmates in a Creve Coeur-Olivette Chamber of Commerce essay contest. The topic: What is leadership, and how can it have an impact on the larger community? It looks like this pair, Dariya Khojasteh, a 6th grade student at Andrews Academy and Juliann Bi, an 8th grade student at Parkway …

You may have noticed the young men in uniform who helped make sure there were few hiccups with this year's Creve Coeur Days events. We're not talking about the Creve Coeur Police, or Fire Protection District members, who also did their part, to be sure. We're talking about the dozen or so members of the Boy Scout Troop 572, based out of Craig Elementary School, who rotated in hours long shifts to help out wherever they were needed. They picked up litter, changed trash bags, and also helped secure booths as high winds knocked over several other booths Sunday afternoon. The students didn't earn…

As part of its ongoing conversations series of panel discussions, The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center hosted a talk on Tuesday night called “The Frontlines of the Battle Against Malnutrition.” The conversation covered topics of malnutrition and the causes of extreme hunger in the developing world. In a first for the series, a high school student, Hannah Hightower, was a member of the panel. She joined Dr. Mark Manary, a physician and activist, in the discussion. Hightower is a junior at Visitation Academy. As a member of the Junior Board for the Plant Center’s World Food Day …