The folks at the Thomas Fordham Institute are handicapping President-elect Barack Obama's pick for secretary of Education. If they're right, it looks like Obama might be looking for a big-city schools chief, someone like Arne Duncan of Chicago or Joel Klein of New York.
Notice who's missing from that list?
That's right -- of the nation's Big Three school superintendents, only David L. Brewer of Los Angeles is NOT considered to be in the running for the Cabinet post.
In some ways, Brewer might seem the perfect pick. After all, he has a home in Virginia, just across the Potomac from Washington. As a retired Navy vice admiral, he knows the federal bureaucracy. And, well, unlike Duncan or Klein, he might soon be available.
Not surprisingly, Duncan -- who's not only from Obama's hometown but regularly plays basketball with the incoming gym-rat in chief -- leads the list. Most interesting addition: Caroline Kennedy. Most of the rest are governors, including Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Tim Kaine of Virginia. For the entire list, with odds, check out Fordham's Flypaper Blog here.
--Mitchell Landsberg
Photo: Arne Duncan. Credit: Milbert O. Brown / Chicago Tribune
Parents are protesting this morning outside  Condit Elementary School in Claremont, the site Tuesday of a decades-old tradition involving kindergartners dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a Thanksgiving feast.
After a handful of parents objected to the children's hand-made construction-paper head-dresses and bonnets, district officials decided to eliminate the costumes and go forward with the meal and the songs. Parents are not pleased. To read more, click here.
-- Seema Mehta
Photo provided by Kathleen Lucas
Does your school charge for road trips?
A national school administrators group says it's worried about what it sees as a growing trend of "pay for play" trips that effectively discriminate against the poor -- a trend, it believes, that will only be exacerbated by the country's economic problems.
In a position statement issued Monday, the National Association of Secondary School Principals wrote: "The pay-for-play trend has triggered a legal, philosophical, and educational equity debate. The question centers on whether co-curricular activities are part of the free public school system to which everyone is entitled by law." The activities it has in mind include athletics, music, drama, clubs and so on. The statement says that California is among four states that require that any "school sponsored curricular or co-curricular activity be offered free of charge."
Is anybody seeing otherwise?
-- Mitchell Landsberg
Rachael Warecki, an English teacher at Locke Launch to College Academy, writes:
There’s no denying that it’s that time of year: October and November are the toughest months for teachers, mostly because the honeymoon phase between students and teachers has officially ended. Even my most well-behaved classes are beginning to push back a little bit, whining whenever they’re asked to move to a new task.
Group work? "Miss, I don’t like working in groups."
Silent reading? "Miss, I hate reading."
Note-taking? "Oh, no, Miss! Not notes! Notes are so boring!"
I feel like I’ve aged about eight years over the last five weeks. Yet, over these same last five weeks, many of my students seem to have firmly bought into a school culture of achievement. More important, they seem to have bought into the idea that they can individually achieve. My 12th-graders were genuinely excited to sign tutoring contracts, which, in turn, genuinely surprised me — I’d never have guessed they wanted to stay after school to do work. My football players were the most eager of the bunch. They came at 3 p.m., insisting that they had to leave at 3:45 for practice, but stayed until well after 4 p.m. to finish their personal statements. (I even gave them a two-minute warning at 3:43; they just nodded their heads and kept writing.)
Students are also holding one another accountable for success. Every week, the football players bring me an academic eligibility sheet to sign — if they’re passing their classes, they’re allowed to play. A few weeks ago, one of my second-period 10th-graders stopped me in the hall so I could sign his sheet. One of my third-period 10th-graders chimed in to say that he needed his sheet signed, too, and asked what his grade was. I told him it was a D, since he hadn’t completed his classwork.
Before I could say another word, my second-period 10th-grader — an A student — stepped in. “What are you doing, getting a D in Ms. Warecki’s class?” he asked. “Work harder. Get your grade up.”
The other day, some of my second-period students gave their classmate a hard time for not participating in group work. “Next time, participate sooner, OK?” they told him. “Even gangsters need to know English!”
Peer pressure: it’s a wonderful thing.
In all seriousness, when I hear these conversations, I know the October exhaustion was worth it. Who cares if I have to occasionally send a student to the office for yelling sexually explicit remarks during an exam? I’m winning some of my daily battles, and, if my students want each other to achieve, I might just win the yearlong war.
Rachael Warecki, an English teacher at Locke Launch to College Academy 1, writes:
If I had to pick the most difficult lesson I’ve tried to teach -- aside from the daily "no, you may not use your cellphone/iPod/electronic gadget in class" lecture -- I’d have to choose the lesson of tolerance.
All of my 10th graders, like most teenagers, believe that they are the most important thing in the world. For half my 10th graders, however, this excess of ego also means that they abhor the idea of anyone who might be different from them invading their world. This manifests itself in various types of intolerance.
These students are homophobes, if one can be homophobic without truly understanding the nature of homophobia. They think nothing of using the word “gay” as an insult and don’t understand why straight people might be offended. They are also racist. Even though they say they’re “just playin’,” I’ve heard black students firmly assert that all their Latino classmates “don’t understand a word you’re saying, Miss,” and Latino students call their black classmates “stupid [N-word].” While I wait, silently, for my fifth period to calm down so that I can continue instruction, the student repartee usually consists of this:
Student 1: Shut up already! Can’t you see she wants to talk? You’re so immature.
Student 2: You shut up! Shut your big black mouth!
Student 1: Shut up, beaner! Go eat a taco or something! Go eat some beans!
Student 2: Well, you go eat some fried chicken! You’re just a black whore...
At which, point they’re usually on their way out the door with a referral in hand, because I’ve tried the tolerance lesson about three times and it hasn’t worked yet.
Most recently, I asked my fifth period to write the most hurtful thing anyone ever said to them on a piece of paper and put it in a box. I then gave every student a second piece of paper. I told them I was going to read the slips of paper aloud, one by one. For every painful remark that someone had ever said to them, regardless of whether it was the one they had written themselves, they were to fold their second piece of paper. I told them we’d finish the activity by crumpling up our papers, throwing them away and agreeing to treat one another with respect from then on.
I’d gotten the activity from a first-year colleague who said she’d had great success with it, but I should have known that my fifth period would be too immature to handle it. The “insult” I came across most frequently while reading those slips of paper? “Gay.” The sad thing was that my students actually believed that being called gay was the worst insult they could possibly suffer.
What’s even sadder is that when I tried to explain that using the word “gay” as an insult would be like making the words “black” and “Latino” derogatory terms, my students said they were used to the racial slurs. They honestly didn’t care if they were called beaners or N-words; they’d heard it so many times that it had ceased to affect them. Of course my students are going to use racist and homophobic language: An environment in which your own identity is so casually devalued is hardly an environment conducive to breeding tolerance of others.
Read more High school students speak with intolerance »
Anum Khan, a student at Whitney High School in Cerritos, writes:
In less than two months, I will have applied to all my colleges.
Meaning no more writing essays. No more agonizing over short answers. No more wondering which activity to put and which to leave out. No more analyzing my chances of getting in.
In other words, no more stressing.
From now until the end of December is the high point of senior stress. UC applications are due Nov. 30, and USC's is due Dec. 1 (for scholarship consideration).
After lots of speculation and serious consideration, but mostly because our counselor required us to finalize our colleges two weeks ago, I’ve finally finalized my list, which includes UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, USC, as well as my out-of-state schools (more on that later).
Forms, forms, forms
First, I had to submit all my forms for recommendation letters to my teachers, as well as a secondary school transcript request to my counselor.
Our school also had a workshop on how to get these forms, when to submit them, how to prepare them, etc. We were even given a mock envelope that told us where to write our name and address, the school’s name and address, and most important, where to affix the stamps (because there are just too many seniors who don’t know that stamps go in the upper right-hand corner of anything that has to be mailed).
After staying up until 3 a.m. finishing my activity resume and autobiographical sketch for my counselor and teachers (to help with filling out the letters of recommendation) came the actual application.
The actual application
It seems kind of weird that it’s in the fourth part of my series on applying to college that I’m talking about the actual application.
That’s because the term "college application" ought to be synonymous with confusion. It seemed easy enough when I started on my UC and USC applications. I made an account, and slowly started filling out all the information needed.
I started with the things I couldn’t change (bio data, grades, test scores), then got into the short answers, and finally the essay (which unfortunately hasn’t been finalized yet).
Though looking through a drop-down list to find the classes that I took may seem easy enough, it’s not.
In the USC application, for example, there’s the option for Spanish 2 H and Spanish II H, which seem to be the same class. But this doesn’t even stay consistent, as the level three choices are Spanish III Honors and Spanish III H.
After chatting with some of my friends, we decided to just choose the class that looks the best. Spanish II H and Spanish III Honors it is.
Next came the problem of my classes not all fitting in the space provided. Because journalism and Model United Nations are once a week at our school, we get graded for them, but they don’t take up extra space in our schedule. The USC application, however, only has two spaces for electives (which are filled by ceramics and PE for me).
Side note: if you’re a USC admissions officer, please don’t hate me for bagging on your app. I’m sure the other private school ones are more confusing, but I haven’t started on them yet!
Read more College applications are really confusing »
(L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina reads to children at the East Los Angeles Library to launch a reading campaign.)
First 5 LA, a child advocacy organization, recently launched “Read Early, Read Aloud,” a month-long public awareness campaign to promote early literacy among Los Angeles County children ages 5 and younger.
“Even before children can read themselves they need to be exposed to books, and when they listen to stories, they gain crucial language skills,” said Evelyn V. Martinez, executive director of First 5 LA.
She also offered some tips:
--Read to your child every day for at least 30 minutes. Try reading for a few minutes at a time if the children can only sit for a short time for a story.
--Make stories come alive by, for example, singing about the pictures.
--Ask questions about the story and let your child ask and answer questions.
--For infants, choose simple and colorful cloth and vinyl books.
--For preschoolers, choose books with repetition and rhyme.
Martinez also encouraged parents to take advantage of the year-round children's activities at the libraries. For more information on the “Read Early, Read Aloud” schedule of activities in November, call the First 5 LA Parent Helpline at (888) FIRST5-LA.
First 5 LA was created by California voters to invest Proposition 10 tobacco tax money in programs for L.A. County children.
-- Mary MacVean
Photo credit: Ben Gibbs
Jacqueline Mendoza, an eighth-grader at Florence Nightingale Middle School in Los Angeles, is going to attend the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.
Jacqueline was one of several students selected by the Congressional Youth Leadership Conference as a result of her participation last year. Her four-day trip includes watching the Obamas walk to the White House next January.
Jacqueline will be honored by the Los Angeles City Council on Nov. 18 at her school.
-- Mary MacVean
Photo by Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times
Sarah Miller went from her home in Westlake Village to Nepal, where she made a video comparing her life with that of people she met there, finding different definitions of necessity, wealth and happiness.
Her work won her a Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize for Excellence in International Education. The award is given to high school students who demonstrate an in-depth understanding of key issues in international affairs and the global economy.
Miller’s video included footage she shot while with a media team documenting human rights issues and the recent elections. She filmed an interview with the rebel leader at the time, Prachanda, who has since become the prime minister. Watch her video.
A recent graduate of Westlake High School, she has also made a video of her local orchestra.
-- Mary MacVean
Photo courtesy of Asia Society
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