Here are our Alief Points of Pride this week:

Alief ISD was awarded 17 Gold Keys, 25 Silver Keys and 33 Honorable Mentions for entries in the 2017 Scholastic Art Awards Program. Students from Albright Middle School, Elsik High School, Hastings High School, Kerr High School and Taylor High School were selected. All Gold and Silver Key winners’ artwork will be on exhibit March 11-30 at Spring Street Studio and at Texas Art Supply. All Gold Key students will advance to the national level and will be competing for a National Medal, which is awarded at a ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York in June.

Mata Intermediate students swept the competition at the Alief ISD 6th Grade District Science Fair. Daniela Cabello, Christine Nguyen-Tran and Tyler Nguyen placed first, second and third respectively.

Wilson Huang (Holub), Arian Sharig (O’ Donnell) and Moses Morolani (Holub) took first, second and third place respectively at the Alief ISD Chess Tournament.

Alief ISD teachers Adriana Hernandez (Albright), T. Khytt Lawrey (Albright), Melyssa McBryde (Taylor) and Shalini Sarkar (Hastings) have been invited to participate in the 2017 Centropa Summer Academy. They will be attending a workshop in Baltimore in February as well as the Academy in Budapest and Belgrade in July. At the Academy, they will be collaborating with teachers worldwide to create interactive and engaging lessons to teach the Holocaust to 21st century, multicultural students.

Miller Intermediate and Sneed Elementary were selected to participate in Read Nation events. These events were sponsored by the Houston Rockets and Whataburger and encourage reading throughout the Greater Houston Area. The students enjoyed an interactive bilingual performance of the Aztec Princess by a storyteller from Express Children’s Theatre. Each student received seven books, Rockets memorabilia, a Whataburger Read Nation t-shirt and a reading bag.

Two Alief ISD graduates will be a part of the Super Bowl festivities this weekend. Alief ISD graduate Martellus Bennett will be playing in the NFL Super Bowl this Sunday at NRG Stadium. Bennett, who plays for the New England Patriots, graduated from Alief Taylor High School in 2005 and also attended Mahanay Elementary, Rees Elementary and Albright Middle School. Alief ISD graduate Melissa Jefferson will be performing tonight at Discovery Green under the stage name Lizzo. She graduated from Elsik High School in 2006 and also attended Hicks Elementary, Youngblood Intermediate and Albright Middle School.