September 2007 Archives

There's a story about the effects of NCLB on teachers in today's Orange County Register.

Here's the link.

Five years after the NCLB Act, what are the debates going on in your school about potential changes?

Barely a month after a giant tree fronting the school was felled over safety concerns - and despite pleas to save it - El Segundo's Richmond Street Elementary has planted multiple replacements.

In a Friday event that launched the school's participation in districtwide efforts to go green, the 500-member student body planted nearly two-dozen new trees across their sprawling campus.

Here's the link to Shelly's story.

Hundreds of nonprofit youth groups across Los Angeles would have to pay to use the school district's facilities and athletic fields under plans set to launch quietly next year.

The move comes just two years after Los Angeles Unified School District officials abandoned similar efforts after a broad public outcry that it could force youth groups to cancel thousands of worthwhile after-school events.

Here's the link to Naush Boghossian's story.

Teach for America recruit Lauren McCabe -- currently teaching senior English and government at Environmental Charter High School in Lawndale -- has an interesting post about plagiarism on the Los Angeles Times' newest blog, "The Homeroom," where she is a regular contributor.

After discovering several plagiarized essays among her students' latest assignments, McCabe wrote, she expressed her frustration to an administrator and came away with an enlightened view about the possible psychology behind the practice.

Read it here.

Gardena police selected poster artwork from nine elementary students to reproduce and post around town. The winning posters were picked from 250 entries of students illustrating a pedestrian-safety theme. Here are the winners...

* Emani Mack, fourth-grade, Purche Avenue Elementary School
* Ashley Randolph, fifth-grade, Maria Regina School
* Jazmin Paminpuan, fourth-grader, Chapman Elementary School
* Ian May, fifth-grade, 156th Street Elementary School
* Lani Matsumura, fourth-grade, Denker Avenue Elementary School
* Sierra Reynolds, fourth-grade, St. Anthony of Padua School
* Milan Garbutt, fourth-grade, Crossroad Christian Academy
* Isaac Green, fourth-grade, Amestoy Elementary School

Earlier this week, California's Secretary of Education David Long used Bunche Elementary School (a Carson school that's in Compton Unified) to illustrate his point that schools in poorer neighborhoods can stop using that as an excuse for low test scores.

"There are a number of California schools with predominately poor, minority and English learning students that are achieving at high levels, like Ralph Bunche Elementary in Carson and The Preuss School in San Diego," Long said.

Bunche Elementary's students are 99 percent black or Latino, 40 percent English language learners and 95 percent economically disadvantaged. The school has raised its API score from 445 to 846 since 1999. Mikara Solomon is the school's principal.

The first of five scheduled public forums featuring Torrance Unified School District Board of Election candidates revealed what is likely to be the hot topic in this race for two seats: Money.

In a Thursday-night, 90-minute session hosted by the Southeast Torrance Homeowners Association, incumbent Terry Ragins and aspiring first-time trustees Don Lee, Irmi Lake and G. Rick Marshall spent a good chunk of time answering questions about a potential new bond campaign and possible contingency plans for funding if such a measure should fail. (In its 60-year history, Torrance Unified has only passed one bond.)

Brewer will present his long-awaited reform package to the Board of Education in early November. Local Board Member Richard Vladovic is frustrated about the pace of reform...

Read our story here.

Today's the day to get your shy students to ask all their burning questions. At least, that was the idea behind the official designation for Sept. 28 when it was set up by teachers 20 years ago. This story in the Sacramento Bee has a list of actual stupid questions asked by visitors to national parks. It's pretty funny.

In the Ask a Smart Question category, the Breeze Web site has a new feature. We compiled the most frequent "Ask Us" questions into a database. So, if you have a question about something in the South Bay, go here first to see if we've answered it in the past. If not, you will automatically be prompted to send your question to our "Ask Us" writer so we can answer it in the future. Go here.

We're a few weeks into the school year and already it seems the entire newsroom staff has the sniffles, including me. Coincidence? I think not. So I went looking online for ways to prevent yourself from catching every bug those little patient-zeros bring in and out of the classroom.

Here are some cold facts: The National Institute of Health Web site says there are about a billion colds in the U.S. each year and you can expect children to have three to eight of them per year throughout their childhoods. In places like the South Bay where there is no real winter, colds are most common during rainy times of year. People are most contagious in the first two to three days of a cold and their runny nose is teeming with viruses, so don't let them sneeze on you.

Read how to prevent a cold after the jump. And if you have any great tips for avoiding colds in your classrooms or homes, send them, will you?

A new reading garden at 156th Street Elementary School in Gardena will be unveiled Friday.
Using a $5,000 grant from Lowe’s, the school designed and built the garden, which includes five benches, a canopied table and shade trees.
Principal Esther Kim said the garden is a nice addition to the school’s library, which opened two years ago.
“Sometimes the library gets crowded and some students want to read outside,” Kim said.
Fifth-grade teacher Leslie Nehring led parents and teachers in the development of the garden during the summer.
A plaque in the garden honors veteran fifth-grade teacher Patricia Murphy, who died of cancer in December.
At 5:30 p.m. the school will host a ceremony and show the garden to the community. The school is at 2100 W. 156th St. Call 310-324-6639.

Richard and Melanie Lundquist, who live in Palos Verdes Estates, have given the largest private donation ever to LAUSD, a princely sum of $50 million. Both attended LAUSD schools. Richard is a local product, attending Dodson Middle in San Pedro and Narbonne High in Harbor City.

Here's the story.

The first of several candidate forums featuring Torrance Unified School District Board of Education hopefuls is being held tonight at John Adams Elementary School.

Hosted by the Southeast Torrance Homeowners Association, the event will invite each candidate to discuss their goals and objectives and answer audience questions. (SETHA members will get priority in the Q&A portion.)

Aspiring first-time trustees Irmi Lake, Don Lee and G. Rick Marshall will all attend, along with incumbent Terry Ragins.

The event runs from 7-8:30 p.m., in the cafeteria at Adams, which is located at 2121 238th St., in Torrance.

Nigerian-born playwright and peace activist Wole Soyinka has accepted a teaching position at the Westchester university. Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986. He's the first African to receive the honor.

Soyinka has published more than 20 literary works and taught at Harvard, Cambridge and Cornell universities. He was imprisoned in solitary confinement from 1967 to 1969 for writing an article that called for a cease-fire in Nigeria.

"Through his words and actions, Mr. Soyinka has transformed the world and embodies our university's mission," said President Robert Lawton. "It is an honor to have Mr. Soyinka at LMU."

As an LMU professor, Soyinka will be "interacting with students, faculty, staff and the community through a variety of events, ranging from small-group classroom visits to campus-wide discussions," according to a statment from LMU.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The mother of a habitually truant school age kid was ordered to attend a year of parenting classes and make sure her son gets to school each day. The boy missed 278 days from kindergarten to the seventh grade. Besides the parenting classes and orders to get her son to class, the mother was placed Tuesday on three years’ probation.
City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo’s anti-truancy program, Operation Bright Future, has prosecuted 16 cases involving parents of habitually truant students since 2002.

A Web service founded by a Hermosa Beach resident lets people outsource their chores. This has nothing to do with schools, really, except that I bet people with school-age kids are among the busiest on the planet and there's a few things we'd "outsource" if we could.

Here's an excerpt:

Tell me some of the posts on DoMyStuff.
We got a woman who posted a task saying, "Catch my husband cheating and I will pay you per photo." We've had stranger ones than this.

Like what?
We had one guy from New York say, "Help me clean my ears." I was going to delete it, but then I saw three people bid on it. I had one post that was, "Teach me how to be girly." She grew up a tomboy and never felt comfortable in dresses.

Did anyone bid on that?
Yeah. It was just really simple stuff like how to wear makeup or what colors to wear.

Here's the link to the story.

A San Francisco-based publisher's book that labeled four Torrance schools as underperformers sparked a quick rebuke from Torrance educators and a spirited debate on the Breeze Web site.

Here's our story.

There are some new tools to help with college selection, developed by various groups in response to a request from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings' commission about a year ago. USA Today has a story comparing some of the pros and cons of the new sites:

College Navigator enables users to search for colleges based on location and program of study. But the new site requires fewer steps “to produce the same results and allows users to factor more criteria into their initial searches, including tuition and SAT or ACT scores. Users also can build and save a list of favorites, tweak criteria without having to start anew and view side-by-side comparisons of up to four institutions. In a nod to adult and working students, users can search for schools that offer distance learning, weekend and evening courses, and credit for life experience. The site design, based on feedback from 90 people in 11 focus groups nationwide, remains a work in progress. Improvements are ongoing, and plans call for a Spanish-language version and campus crime statistics.

Here's the USA Today story.

About 50 students were involved in a lunchtime brawl, in which students threw full soda bottles at each other, according to Hawthorne police.

Here's the link.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The vast majority of American parents talk to their children about how to be safe and ethical on the Internet, according to a survey published today.
Researchers for San Francisco-based nonprofit Common Sense Media and Washington-based education foundation Cable in the Classroom found that 85 percent of parents and legal guardians of children who go online say they have talked to their child in the past year about how to behave on the Internet.
More than 93 percent say they have taken action to make sure the Web sites their children visit meets parental standards, according to the poll, conducted by Harris Interactive. Results were based on phone interviews in mid-August with 411 parents of 6- to 18-year-olds whose kids were online.

From Naush Boghossian, staff writer

Los Angeles Unified Superintendent David Brewer, board President Monica Garcia, board member Yolie Flores Aguilar and other district officials will brief members of Congress Thursday on the impact of the No Child Left Behind law on English Language Learners. They'll pop by for a chat with Rep. Laura Richardson, who took office Sept. 4, after winning a special election in August to replace Juanita Millender-McDonald representing Carson, Long Beach and Compton.

They will also recommend improvements to the law and outline the federal commitment necessary to fully address the needs of English learners.

Between five and six million English Language Learners are enrolled in public schools in the United States. NCLB was designed to guarantee that schools and districts were held accountable for teaching these students English and measuring their academic progress with tests they could understand.

They'll boycott after-school faculty meetings starting today until problems with payroll are resolved, union members say.

Here's the link to the story in today's Daily Breeze.

To encourage parents to read to their children every day, Kuman Math and Reading Centers will open their centers during October (beginning Monday) and offer advice to tailor books from a 350-title catalogue to the specific child. Kumon, an after-school math and reading program, is a private turtoring company that employs a structured approach to math and reading to help build "a solid command of math and reading skills," the New Jersey-based company stated.
Information about the 10 Kumon centers in the local area (in Torrance, Rancho Palos Verdes, Carson and other areas) can be found on the Kumon Web site.

The Cartoon Network wants you to help them in their "rescuing recess" campaign. Students and adults can sign up for a chance to win $25,000 for their elementary school. Go to the Web site; download a pledge card; and begin volunteering at your local school as a recess monitor. From the site...

Experts say fresh air and play give kids an edge in their school work. Yet, only 8 state school boards of education have a policy that ensures daily recess. Further, 55% of PTA leaders feel their school’s recess is in jeopardy.

It's all part of National Recess Week that started Monday.

CHICAGO (AP) - A woman who helps students go to college with their "posse" is among the 24 winners of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius grants."

The $500,000 fellowships were announced today by the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Recipients can use the money however they wish.

"It's an incredible gift," said Deborah Bial, 42, founder and president of the Posse Foundation, which helps form social networks that college students can turn to for support. "It will change my life and I hope it will change Posse's life."

Want to get a jump on your holiday shopping and help out a less-fortunate kid at the same time? The One Laptop Per Child people are hoping so. From Nov. 12 to Nov. 26, they'll sell $188 laptops to Americans for $400 and use the profit to buy another one for a child in a developing nation. Only the first 25,000 buyers will be promised delivery of their XOs by Christmas. Everyone else will likely get theirs in January.

The computers have some quirky, kid-friendly features, according to The Associated Press:

It has a homegrown user interface designed for children, boasts built-in wireless networking, uses very little power and can be recharged by hand with a pulley or a crank. Its display has separate indoor and outdoor settings so it can be read in full sunlight. The machines use the Linux open-source system and don’t run Windows; the program director expects that to be possible soon, but Microsoft Corp. insists it can’t guarantee that, given the machine’s idiosyncratic specs.

Sales: http://www.xogiving.com
One Laptop Per Child: http://www.laptop.org

Here's an excerpt from Shelly's story about the inspiring students of Lawndale High's new music program:

What a difference a year makes. A dozen months after a handful of enterprising, passionate students started their own band at then band-less Lawndale High - teaching themselves, coaching each other, choosing their own music and sharing instruments purchased at pawn shops - the school has launched a full-scale music program. “You sit in this classroom and just go, ‘Look what we did,’” said senior Glenda Mendoza, 17, an alto saxophonist who was part of last year’s remarkable startup effort.

» Read the story here.

Over the weekend we reported on a San Pedro charter high school's difficulties nailing down a building and a generous gift to The Hill's private Chadwick School.

The Port of Los Angeles High School, a two-year-old charter has made academic strides, but struggled to pin down an agreement to lease a former shipping company's headquarters. » Read the story here.

Roger MacFarlane, a Palos Verdes Estates shipping executive, has established a $1 million endowment to Chadwick for promising students who qualify for financial aid. » Read the story here.

Patti Sponaugle is a Torrance High grad who is attending Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Here's a snippet of this week's column:

I rushed out into the hall, only to find it completely empty, and immediately (and absurdly) concluded the worst-case scenario: I was the only surviving victim of the Drone of Terror!

But a few seconds into my bout of paranoia, out strolled one of my hall mates from his room, cool and leisurely like, looking about as perturbed as a ball of yarn.

Hadn’t he heard that awful noise? I asked, to which he nonchalantly replied that it was “only a tornado warning,” and that we “probably” weren’t in danger.

Probably.

Needless to say, I spent the remainder of that day suspiciously glancing toward the sky, wary should a huge vortex swoop down and swallow me away.

And here's the link to the rest of it.

And previously in Freshmanland:
» Lana Buu 09/03/07: A new Hoya
» Patti Sponaugle 09/10/07: It's Ohio, not Africa
» Lana Buu 09/17/07: Learning outside the classroom