School Notebook

Here are some education-twinged headlines that appeared over the weekend, in case you want to start your work week with some reading:

1. My front-page story in Saturday's Daily Breeze detailed the inauguration of CSUDH President Mildred Garcia, which is historical for the fact she's the school's first female leader and the CSU system's first Latina campus chief.

2. On Sunday we ran my centerpiece on an important, impactful but sadly slow-growing school trend known as entrepreneurship education.

3. The Los Angeles Times' Steve Lopez had an interesting column Sunday about what he calls the "convoluted and costly" design of LA Unified's new "arts-oriented public high school."

4. The New York Times has a story about a growing technology sector that allows parents almost up-to-the-minute insight on how their kids are faring at school, by allowing teachers to post -- and parents to access -- daily attendance and grade reports. This will sound familiar to folks in El Segundo, Hawthorne and some others in the area that use PowerSchool (one of many companies to provide such a service).

5. Lastly (for now anyway), USA Today just today ran this piece about a downward trend in attendance resulting from text message-driven threats of impending on-campus violence. Anyone noticed this happening here?

That should get you started. Happy Monday. Hahahaha.

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This story is from Monday's Washington Post, but I just now came across it and, as per my headline, all I can say is OMG.

It's about young teachers with provocative Facebook pages and the related implications. As reporter Ian Shapira writes, "In states including Florida, Colorado, Tennessee and Massachusetts, teachers have been removed or suspended for MySpace postings, and some teachers unions have begun warning members about racy personal Web sites. But as Facebook, with 70 million members, and other social networking sites continue to grow, scrutiny will no doubt spread locally."

It's intriguing and not a little cringe-inducing. Enjoy.

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our blogs were disabled for a while yesterday for some fixing, so I'm still ramping back up from the weekend. My apologies.

Our environmental reporter, Kristin Agostoni, had a piece in Monday's paper about a Manhattan Beach-based effort, Planet Pals, to launch eco initiatives such as composting at local schools.

Check it out. The green movement marches on. Yay!

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our sister paper, the Long Beach Press-Telegram has a story today (which also appears in the Breeze) about students at Cal State Long Beach getting pretty p.o.'d yesterday when an apparently extremely right-leaning religious group came on campus to express their polarizing opinions, which included "large signs warning of God's "anger" and "judgment" for groups like gays and lesbians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, "unsubmissive wives," adulterers and "people that talk to their pets more than God," Kevin Butler reports.

Oh boy.

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Leave it to MTV, great exploiter of adolescent angst and drama, erego disguised under a veil of "reality," vis a vis shows such as "Laguna Beach" and "Newport Harbor" and "My Super Sweet Sixteen," which all combined would have you think that today's teens are all about partying, hooking up, complaining to their parents and going to Cabo. They certainly, apparently, wouldn't be caught dead actually studying on camera.

Not that I would know, because of course I only watch PBS and C-SPAN (wink, wink). But enough about my viewing habits.

The network that more or less originated reality TV with its landmark series "The Real World" is finally taking one of its teen-centered shows on campus. Premiering next week, "The Paper" puports to documents the inner workings of Florida-based Cypress Bay High School's newspaper, The Circuit, focusing especially on competition among juniors seeking to become the next editor-in-chief.

Find a show summary on MTV's website.

Cypress Bay High, FYI, is said to be the largest high school in the country, with some 5,300 students.

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)