Eric Liu: Freestyle Academy Student of the Year

Congratulations to Freestyle Academy's 2012-13 Student of the Year, Eric Liu. The Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District honors a student each month at their board meetings and provides the text of this honor to Patch.

The following statements from Liu's teachers support his selection as student of the year.

Leslie Parkinson Academy Design Teacher:

"I nominated Eric Lui as the Design Student of the Month for many reasons. First off, Eric's dedication to his work. He's never satisfied with "good enough" and many times has stayed up all night to either entirely redo a project or tweak it until it's as perfect as he wants it to be. Secondly, Eric's work is top-notch. He has an artist's eye and great design skills. Third, his attitude is impeccable. He's always in a good mood, always strives to do what's right, and is dedicated to his studies. He helps others in class when needed and is always encouraging. In short, he's a great kid!"

From Jason Greco, Freestyle Academy English Teacher:

"To give you an initial image of Eric Liu in the classroom, imagine looking through a teacher’s eyes at a clean-cut young man perched attentively on the edge of his seat. You can see he is ready and eager to engage in the task at hand, for his materials are organized before him and there is a gleam of intellectual curiosity in his smiling eyes. He receives your instruction with several slight yet enthusiastic nods before raising his hand respectfully to ask for a finer point of clarification.

This was not only my first impression of Eric, but it has been my daily experience since August 2011. One of the finest compliments I can pay our Freestyle Student of the Year is that his presence enhances the educational experiences of those around him. He sincerely cares about interacting at the highest level with his peers and teachers alike. If you were to walk into our class on any given day, you would sense on an even deeper level why he is so deserving of this award. If we were debating as a class an issue from our reading, you would see him actively participating for the duration of the discussion: listening carefully to his peers, recognizing different points of view, and asserting his own perspective with confidence and urgency. If he were giving a presentation, you would be immediately impressed with his professional attire, just one sign of his thorough preparation and respect for his audience. And if you were to stand in my shoes on the last day of the semester, you would experience the thrill of reading Eric’s completely voluntary letter to you: a typed, several-paragraph personal reflection on our Existentialism unit for English Honors.

I know, it sounds too good to be true, but it’s Eric Liu!"

From Leo Florendo, Freestyle Academy WebAudio Teacher:

At Freestyle, we believe that passion and skills make a person successful. We believe that students should be excited about school. We also believe that if you can communicate your ideas and passion to the larger community, you will be successful in anything you choose to do. Everyday at Freestyle, Eric is everything that has already been said about him previously. And everyday at Freestyle, Eric is passionate, excited about school, learning and applying artistic and technical skills to express his point of view about this world to the world. He has been wildly successful at Freestyle and more importantly, we can be confident he will continue to be successful beyond Freestyle. We teachers at Freestyle Academy consider ourselves quite lucky to do what we do and if every student were like Eric—our model student, then we would be the luckiest teachers anywhere.

Freestyle Alumni often come back and tell stories about what they have accomplished. We can't wait to have him come back in the future and share with us what will no doubt be many success stories. If you know Eric, you perhaps already know that the world is and will be a better place because of him.

 

Links to Eric Liu's Freestyle Academy websites which include much of his English, Design and WebAudio projects:

• Links to all of his project websites
• Project 1: Junior Self-Portrait Website
• Project 2: Junior Narrative Website
• Project 3: Junior Documentary Website
• Project 4: Junior Experimental Website
• Project 5: Senior Profile Website
• Project 6: Senior Music Video Website
• Project 7: Senior Narrative Website UNDER CONSTRUCTION
• Project 8: Senior Explorations Website UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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