Manchester 5th Grader Honored With National Academic Award

MANCHESTER, NJ — A Manchester Township fifth grader has been honored with a national award for his academic achievements.

Blake Cortez, a student at Whiting Elementary School, won the Academic Award for grades 3-5 from the National Association of Gifted Children.

Blake, 11, participates in the Manchester Schools' gifted and talented program and was involved in the passion projects during the gifted and talented class period, where students were challenged to find a project that they were passionate about and demonstrate it to their classmates.

Blake created a Lego robot with a motor and created code to allow the robot to communicate with him in real-time, do mathematical equations on command, and was able to recognize color through code thanks to a sensor. Blake even made the robot dance, school officials said.

His teacher submitted him for the award and recognition, officials said.

His family said that in addition to learning about coding and engineering, Blake enjoys playing baseball, hanging out with his friends, visiting Puerto Rico, and traveling to different places around the world. He is always looking to make a new friend and loves to study and learn as many new things as possible.

His parents said Blake wanted to become a brain surgeon when he was younger, and learned all of the parts of the brain by 6 years old. Now he wants to learn how to build different types of technology and create artificial intelligence. He maintains amazing grades while participating in sports and having a ton of friends. He aspires to go to college and become an engineer and use those skills to create something revolutionary and become an entrepreneur, his parents said.