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Tag: reflections

  • Burbank Students Shine at Council PTA Reflections Ceremony Celebrating Creativity and Belonging

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    2026 Burbank Council PTA Reflections Ceremony

    The Luther Middle School auditorium was filled with applause, pride, and creative energy this past Saturday as the Burbank Council PTA hosted its annual Reflections Ceremony, honoring student artists from across the Burbank Unified School District (BUSD).

    Burbank Council PTA is a volunteer-led organization that supports and coordinates the PTAs of all 16 Burbank schools, working collaboratively to advocate for and enrich the educational experience of every student in BUSD. One of the many ways they do this is through the nationally recognized PTA Reflections Art Program, which gives students the opportunity to express themselves creatively while receiving meaningful recognition for their work.

    This year’s theme, “I Belong!”, invited students to explore identity, connection, and community through art. The program encourages students of all ages to unleash their creative talents, express themselves imaginatively, experience the joy of making art, tap into critical thinking skills, and gain positive recognition for their original works.

    Reflections submission

    The response across Burbank schools was impressive. A total of 416 student entries were submitted, with 110 advancing to the Council level. From those, 66 students were honored during Saturday’s ceremony for their exceptional work in six artistic categories: dance choreography, film production, literature, music composition, photography, and visual arts.

    Adding to the significance of the afternoon, Dr. Oscar Macias, Interim Superintendent of BUSD, joined Kirsten Morris, Burbank Council PTA President, in presenting awards to the students.

    Before the awards were handed out, Morris offered heartfelt remarks that highlighted the unseen effort behind each piece of art.

    “Many of you just spent the last hour seeing the incredible talent of our students on display. You saw the finished products-the beautiful frames and the polished videos,” Morris said. “But before we begin the awards, I want to talk about what you didn’t see in the gallery. You didn’t see the ‘do-overs.’ You didn’t see the moments of frustration or the hours spent perfecting a single line or a single note. Creating art takes a tremendous amount of grit. It takes courage to look at a blank page and decide that you have something important to say.”

    From the Council level, 27 pieces advanced to District judging, with eight receiving district-level awards. Of those, five have now moved on to State-level judging, continuing Burbank students’ strong representation in the Reflections program.

    Reflections ceremony 2026.

    Below are the students recognized at the Council level ceremony:

    Dance Choreography

    Primary Division

    • Honorable Mention: Harper Hall, Roosevelt
    • Award of Merit: Krithi Nangunoori, Bret Harte
    • Award of Excellence: Nara Messerlian, Jefferson

    Intermediate Division

    • Award of Merit: Aria Whitt, Stevenson
    • Award of Excellence: Melody Bowser, Miller

    Middle School Division

    • Award of Merit: Ruby Webster, Luther
    • Award of Excellence: Myla Russo, Huerta

    Accessible Arts (6–12)

    • Award of Excellence: Timothy J. Mockett, Burroughs

    Film Production

    Primary Division

    • Honorable Mention: Kayla Alberdi, Providencia
    • Award of Merit: James Page, Emerson
    • Award of Excellence: Lucy Bladt, Stevenson

    Intermediate Division

    • Honorable Mention: Violet Loyd, Stevenson
    • Award of Merit: Lila Davoodi, Miller
    • Award of Excellence: Kaelyn Murri, Roosevelt

    Middle School Division

    • Award of Merit: Jake Hlubik, Huerta
    • Award of Excellence: Amara Chidgey, Luther

    High School Division

    • Award of Excellence: Shaylee Osborne, Burroughs

    Literature

    Accessible Arts (Elementary)

    • Award of Merit: Maxwell Simon, Jefferson
    • Award of Excellence: Colton Jue, Edison

    Primary Division

    • Honorable Mention: Matilda Ferullo, Roosevelt
    • Award of Merit: Devon Simon, Jefferson
    • Award of Excellence: Ruby Schwaid, McKinley

    Intermediate Division

    • Honorable Mention (tie): Adeline Fraley, Stevenson; Darsha Pahalawatta, Miller
    • Award of Merit: Corinne Greene, Roosevelt
    • Award of Excellence: Auggie Marshek Gertner, Edison

    Middle School Division

    • Honorable Mention: Ruby Webster, Luther
    • Award of Merit: Olivia Jue, Huerta
    • Award of Excellence: Eillie Tsai, Muir

    Accessible Arts (Secondary)

    • Award of Excellence: Abi Alcheh, Huerta

    High School Division

    • Award of Merit: Johann Hedayati, Burbank High
    • Award of Excellence: Astrid Lindquist Newman, Burroughs

    Music Composition

    Primary Division

    • Honorable Mention: Emilia Aghamalian, Miller
    • Award of Merit: Cate Yusah, Bret Harte
    • Award of Excellence: Devon Simon, Jefferson

    Intermediate Division

    • Honorable Mention: Nate Maoz, Roosevelt
    • Award of Merit: Max Isler, Stevenson
    • Award of Excellence: Vivienne Staggs, Edison

    Middle School Division

    • Award of Merit: Amara Chidgey, Luther
    • Award of Excellence: Jasper Johnson, Huerta

    Photography

    Accessible Arts (Elementary)

    • Honorable Mention: Noah Garibaldi, Edison
    • Award of Merit: Maxwell Simon, Jefferson
    • Award of Excellence: Jordan Todd, Providencia

    Primary Division

    • Honorable Mention: Soren Epstein, Emerson
    • Award of Merit: Richie Morales, Bret Harte
    • Award of Excellence: Sanya Bera, Miller

    Intermediate Division

    • Honorable Mention: Jovanne Everette Equila, Bret Harte
    • Award of Merit: Kian Patel, Emerson
    • Award of Excellence: Emery Russo, Stevenson

    Middle School Division

    • Award of Merit: Lucy Rubiner, Huerta
    • Award of Excellence: Amara Chidgey, Luther

    High School Division

    • Award of Excellence: Emma Stricker, Burroughs

    Visual Arts

    Accessible Arts (Elementary)

    • Honorable Mention: Ciaran Chidgey, Roosevelt
    • Award of Merit: Maxwell Simon, Jefferson
    • Award of Excellence: José Drake, Providencia

    Primary Division

    • Honorable Mention: Leo Aquino, Disney
    • Award of Merit: Anukasan Clifford-Navas, McKinley
    • Award of Excellence: Isabella WuGee, Roosevelt

    Intermediate Division

    • Honorable Mention: Eiree Tsai, Jefferson
    • Award of Merit: Ani Khachatryan, Emerson
    • Award of Excellence: Nathan Andrade, Stevenson

    Middle School Division

    • Honorable Mention: Sydney Chavey, Luther
    • Award of Merit: Maia Page, Muir
    • Award of Excellence: Eleonore Gomez, Huerta

    High School Division

    • Award of Merit: Esther Jun, Burbank High
    • Award of Excellence: Vita Mireles, Burroughs

    The Reflections Ceremony was more than an awards presentation, it was a celebration of student voices, perseverance, and the powerful ways art helps young people express who they are and where they belong. For families, educators, and volunteers in attendance, the afternoon served as a reminder that creativity thrives when students are supported, encouraged, and seen.

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    Ashley Erikson

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  • REFLECTIONS Loses Two Members Due To “ICE Apologist” Vocalist – Metal Injection

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    The progressive metalcore group Reflections just lost both their bassist and their guitarist in one fell swoop. The now ex-bassist Francis Xayana and now ex-guitarist Patrick “Patty” Somoulay individually made public statements on social media about their departures, but both shared the same reason for leaving – vocalist “Jake [Wolf] is an ICE apologist and I will not fuck with someone like that,” Xayana writes in his stories on Instagram.

    With the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement running rampant throughout the state of Minnesota and causing havoc, and taking the lives of two civilians in the last two weeks, tensions were bound to rise within bands who may have differing opinions, and it feels like a Minnesota-based band would definitely be susceptible to the chaos occurring around them.

    Bassist Xayana wrote in his stories on Instagram: “Jake [Wolf] has always had control of the band. There’s a reason Patty [Somoulay] left even though he is the primary writer. Jake is an ICE apologist and I will not fuck with someone like that.

    “I don’t give a flying fuck what we’ve been through. I cannot trust a person who thinks this is necessary. And honestly fuck you if you support this ICE shit. You’re a fucking bitch. And instead of getting into your fucking feelings y’all should have been listening to Black voices this entire time.

    “Now when a white person is killed in the same form they’ve experienced for centuries, we are at end game. There is no going back. This is the beginning of the end if people continue to turn a blind eye. He’s going to kill anyone who opposes him.”

    Courtesy of thePRP
    REFLECTIONS Loses Two Members Due To "ICE Apologist" Vocalist

    Somoulay had a statement of his own, instead posting it to his main grid – with a picture of his cat wearing an American-themed tie in the background:

    “I am no longer a part of Reflections.

    A lot of stuff happening in life lately where it just does not feel okay to continue on with this myself.

    Also f**k ICE.

    This isn’t the country my family wanted to risk their lives to come to.”

    Jake Wolf has yet to comment on the situation himself.

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    Isabella Ambrosio

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  • Trump and the Presidency That Wouldn’t Shut Up

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    The list of figures in American history with whom Donald J. Trump has been compared since he announced his bid for the Presidency a decade ago is longer than his trademark necktie, as red as a gash. It’s taller than Trump Tower, gleaming like a blade. It has a higher turnover than his beleaguered first Cabinet. It includes even more goons, toadies, and peacocks than his current Administration. And yet the comparisons keep coming, in the daily papers, in the nightly podcasts, online, online, online. Is Trump more of a liar than Joseph McCarthy; is he slicker than Huey Long? Is he as mean-spirited as Father Charles Coughlin, more sinister than George Wallace? Is he as much of a fraud as P. T. Barnum, even more of an isolationist than Charles Lindbergh? He is trickier than Richard (Tricky Dick) Nixon, but to what degree?

    Trump plays this game, too. He loves it, and why not? It only ever helps him, inflates, magnifies, and amplifies him, the drumbeat deafening, ceaseless, Trump, Trump, Trump. He’s Andrew Jackson (or is he more like Andrew Johnson?); he’s Ronald Reagan. He thinks only Abraham Lincoln has been treated as unfairly as he has—or, no, “I believe I am treated worse.” Shall we compare him to a summer’s day?

    Everything that has happened in the furor, disarray, and murderous violence of American politics over the past decade has led the commentariat to scramble for antecedents. That includes me. Is this unprecedented? This is the question journalists have been asking historians for a decade now. It arrives by text and voice mail. It arrives by post and e-mail. It knocks on the door and all but raps on the windowpane, tap, tap, tapping. I have been asked this question in the dog park, at the drugstore, in a hayfield, by my mailman, during a snowstorm, while knitting in my kitchen, and in every last blasted Zoom room. And historians—or most of us, anyway—answer, meekly, bleakly, dutifully, hauling out of the archives the disputed election of 1876, the 1970 shooting at Kent State, the parents’-rights movement of the nineteen-twenties, the impeachment of the Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. Compared to x, Trump is y. But why? On the upcoming fifth anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, might it not be best, at this point, simply to stop? Very little in human history is altogether without precedent if you look at it long enough. And what of it? If U.S. history is a map, we are off the grid, over a cliff, lost at sea without a compass. Can anyone honestly maintain that the caning of Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate, in 1856, or the shots fired by four Puerto Rican nationalists from the balcony of the Capitol, in 1954, offer meaningful points of comparison to the assassination of Charlie Kirk or the events of January 6th?

    I don’t mean to suggest that there’s no reason to study history, to write and to read history. There’s every reason, even more so in tempestuous times than in quieter ones. Learning to code turns out to have been a terrible call; how much more precious to have studied the past, the mystery of iniquity, the chaos of strife, the messy, gripping, blood-drenched record of yearning that is the twisted and magnificent course of human events. Nor do I mean to suggest that this is the worst moment in the history of the United States. It is not. I mean only to warn that the false analogy offers false comfort. Analogies are tempting because they can be helpful, a flashlight on a moonless night. “The many uses of analogy,” the historian David Hackett Fischer wrote in a 1970 book called “Historians’ Fallacies,” are “balanced by the mischief which arises from its abuse.” A flashlight is not the same as daylight. With a flashlight, you see only what you’re pointing it at, and yet, cheered by its warm glow, you might forget that you are, in fact, in the dark.

    Peer into the dark. Earlier this fall, Trump reposted on Truth Social a four-minute news clip generated by A.I. The clip purported to be a segment from Lara Trump’s Fox News show, reporting on Trump’s announcement of the launch of “medbeds . . . designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength” at special hospitals about to open all over the country. Medbeds, which can cure all ailments and reverse aging, appear regularly in science fiction. (Think of the “biobeds” in the “Star Trek” sick bay.) They began featuring in online conspiracy theories in the early twenty-twenties; QAnoners claim that medbeds exist, and have existed for years, and that the rich and powerful use them (and that J.F.K. himself is on one, still alive), and that soon Trump will liberate them for use by the rest of us, as if Trump were Jesus opening the gates of Heaven and medbeds eternal life.

    Take out your flashlight and ask the inevitable question: Is there any precedent for a President of the United States doing such a thing? Is American history any guide to understanding why Trump, or someone on his staff, posted (and soon afterward deleted) a fake video about a nonexistent news report concerning a fictional miracle cure, an episode whose political significance strikes me as asymptotically approaching zero?

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    Jill Lepore

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