Archive for the ‘School Advisory’ Category
Vocab Cafe
November 14th, 2011
The four books in the series are: *The Summer of Saint Nick *I.M. for Murder *Operation High School *Planet Exile
It is important to note this disclaimer from the publisher:
**A WORD ABOUT CONTENT – These books were written with an intended audience of high school teenagers, although many parents find them appropriate for their middle school or younger students. As a family-based company, our goal is to make a quality product that can be enjoyed by everyone. Thus, these stories contain no magic, sorcery, swear words, illicit situations, nor do they encourage negative behaviors. However, we recommend that parents should read every book that they give their children (not just ours) to make sure the messages coincide with their beliefs and standards. The VocabCafé Book Series does contain boy-girl relationships (non-sexual), mild violence, and mature thematic elements.
My Thoughts
I love the idea behind the books. I think teaching vocabulary through a book is a brilliant and effective idea. Sadly, I.M. for Murder had many distracting typos as did a few of the other books. On one or two occasions the vocabulary word was strained to make sense in the sentence. I.M. for Murder and Summer of Saint Nick were entertaining. I did not read the other two, however, my daughter read all four. It is a definite plus to have books available with no magic, sorcery, swear words, and illicit situations. The books do contain some mature themes and as a parent you will have to determine the appropriateness of the books for yourself. I am never fond of murder being used for entertainment purposes; however, I don’t find it immoral to read a murder mystery. The books did not contain any boy/girl content that would be considered inappropriate. However, you may want to determine if that theme is something you are comfortable with. I chose to allow my 8th grader to read the books due to her reading classics with a favorite being Shakespeare which is no stranger to mild violence and relationship themes.
My Middle School Child’s Thoughts
My daughter is 13 years old yet fairly well read. She thought I.M. for Murder and Summer of Saint Nick were slow but entertaining enough to keep her interest until the end. She did not like Planet Exile. She thought the book was elementary and short. She read that one in a day. She was unimpressed with Operation High School. However, she enjoyed learning vocabulary in this manner. She did say that most of the vocabulary was easy to learn most likely due to the format and not intimidating or as boring as workbooks. My daughter was not bothered by the typos or misuse of a few words as her perspective was the books were written around vocabulary words and not written as literature. Interesting perspective. She said they did the best they could with those words. So perhaps if your child learns the words which is the goal then the flaws may not be such an issue?? I’m not convinced; I think the typos need to be cleaned up.
Before Five in a Row
Visual Latin: Makes Latin Easy
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George Will: Vanderbilt Violates Religious Groups’ Right to Association
November 12th, 2011
Influential columnist George F. Will wrote a column last week criticizing Vanderbilt Universitys decision to force student-led religious groups on campus to accept nonbelievers as members in order to stay meeting on campus. His insightful opinions piece explains why the Constitution forbids such actions by public universities, and why it is unwise for private universities, like Vanderbilt, to pursue such ill-conceived policies:
Illustrating an intellectual confusion common on campuses, Vanderbilt University says: To ensure “diversity of thought and opinion” we require certain student groups, including five religious ones, to conform to the university’s policy that forbids the groups from protecting their characteristics that contribute to diversity.
Although a private university is under no obligation to obey the Constitution ( because the Constitution restrains only governmental power), Vanderbilt should take a lead in building diversity in the marketplace of ideas by allowing religious groups to require that their members and officers to agree with the beliefs and advocacy of the organization. That is what most other campus groups regularly do at Vanderbilt and elsewhere. Why should only religious groups be forced to accept people who disagree with the groups beliefs?
Tags: Religious, Religious Groups???
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Younger performers learn from Westlake High dance team
November 5th, 2011
Photo by Richard Quinn, Special to The Star // Buy this photo
Westlake High School dance team member Maddie Olandt (right) takes a group of boys and girls through a routine. The children will perform with the dance team Friday.
The Westlake High School dance team recently led a dance clinic for youths who will perform for halftime at Friday night’s football game against Agoura High.
“The inspiration for our dance clinic was to have our WHS dancers create choreography for specific age groups and teach younger girls in the community,” said Adrienne Steele of Thousand Oaks, president of the dance team’s booster club.
“We also decided it was the best way also to raise money for our competitive dance team to offset the expenses of hiring coaches, choreographers, have costumes made, entry fees for competitions, transportation and hotel rooms,” Steele said.
The clinic, held Sunday at Westlake High, attracted 61 Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village residents from 4 to 13 years old. The high school dance team has 20 members ranging in age from 14 to 17.
“Our dancers have spent the last few weeks creating and teaching each other choreography that was taught to our clinic participants,” Steele said. “Our participants learned an entire dance that will be performed at Friday night’s game.”
Each clinic participant is scheduled to dance. Hosted by Westlake High, the show will have three groups, split by age, that will perform to songs, as well as a finale with all the dancers.
Samantha Pena, 6, of Thousand Oaks said she enjoyed dancing and learning new moves.
“I also liked the music and being with all the big girls,” she said. “I will try out for dance team when I’m big.”
Bella Francisco, 8, is on a competition dance team at Agoura Hills Dance.
“I take dance lessons, but I’ve never done these kinds of jazz moves before,” the Westlake Village resident said.
Amanda Francisco, 14, a Westlake High freshman who joined the dance team this year, helped teach jazz and hip-hop performance to 8- and 9-year-olds.
“I hope I taught them a valuable lesson in dance and that they had a lot of fun and made new friends,” she said.
“I didn’t realize so many young people were interested in dance.”
Tags: Dance Team, Team, Westlake High
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2nd annual L.A. Student Media Festival seeks films
October 30th, 2011
Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian today urged high school students across the county to submit films for the second annual Los Angeles Student Media Festival by Jan. 20.
The festival debuted early this year with about 100 submissions, but was limited to students who live in the city. This year it was expanded to include the entire county.
Krekorian said the festival “showcased an immense amount of talent — movies that made us laugh, cry and consider a different cinematic vantage point.” He said the festival is a chance for young filmmakers to grow as artists and “will no doubt play a role in the start of many promising careers.”
The festival will take place in March at the El Portal Theatre in the North Hollywood Arts District.
Films must be limited to seven minutes and fit into one of eight categories: animation, comedy, commercial, drama, documentary, general, newscast/public affairs and narrative series.
The deadline for submitting a film is Jan. 20, 2012. More information can be found at .
Tags: Films, Media Festival, Student Media, Student Media Festival
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Why Cut Muscle When You Can Cut Waste?
October 19th, 2011
We’ve been hearing a lot recently about the “new normal” – the need to do more with less. And across the country, districts are doing it. They are cutting waste, becoming more efficient in a number of ways.
While educators can be loath to admit it, according to American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) founder and chairman Jack Grayson, there is a great deal of waste in education. At the APQC Global Education Roundtables yesterday, he shared a list of over 180 examples of waste he has come across in working with school districts.
Of course, some of the “waste” in the system (which Grayson defines as “anything that adds cost without adding value”) neither can nor should be easily eliminated, fiscally. For example, he lists “inadequate professional development” as waste. The best way to address that situation: Assess staff needs and find meaningful professional development experiences that meet them. Ideally, there is no reduction in the budget, just a more effective use of what is there. But things like “food spoilage” (another example) are clearly a fiscal waste…Schools and districts throw money away when disposing of unused food.
Also on the list: “Copier downtime.” At the roundtables, Montgomery County Public Schools’ Michael Perich shared how his district identified and tackled this issue, bringing copier maintenance in-house and saving over $1.1 million dollars. And combined with new central office copying services, they have saved over 39,600 instructional hours – time teachers are not spending at the copy machine, freeing them to do work more beneficial to students.
Another waste item: “Bus accidents.” In the Aldine Independent School District, officials developed a comprehensive project to address the problem. It saved over $100,000 in the 2009 school year alone (not counting the increases in insurance, medical costs or legal liability that could come with an accident, or the lost instructional hours that impact students affected by a bus accident).
How did Montgomery County and Aldine go about cutting this waste? Through process and performance management, a leadership approach that promotes effectiveness and efficiency by linking process measures to outcomes. The key premise? Educational processes – instructional and operational – must change before outcomes can change. School districts (in this case, but the concept comes from the business community and can be implemented by any entity willing to do it) identify an area of concern and something they do to address it. They then develop process maps of that work, which allows them to take stock of the inputs, outputs and outcomes of the processes used and find ways to do them more efficiently. Process maps may reveal carryovers from old methods that are no longer relevant, duplication of effort, or a middleman that can be bypassed. Once the process has been articulated, it can be better managed.
But is the kind of thing you hear about in discussions of education budgets? I don’t. I hear about across-the-board cuts, staff reductions, and furlough days. A recent report from the Campaign for America’s Future and the National Education Association compiled local news reports from five states – Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania – about cuts to K-12 public education budgets, finding that in all five states critical services such as pre-k, full day kindergarten, technical education, and courses such as art, music, foreign language and physical education have been reduced or eliminated.
The PBS NewsHour recently featured a segment on a district in one of these states – Pennsylvania’s rural Mifflin County, which faced a 12% cut in state funding, combined with a declining enrollment. As a result, the district closed a number of schools. They laid off 11% of staff, which increased class sizes seven to ten students, and reduced course offerings, including 25% of the school’s Advanced Placement courses. They managed to save elementary art and physical education, as well as full day kindergarten, for this year.
These types of cuts are of what Grayson call “muscle.” Clearly, they save money. But are they making a district more efficient? No. Are they likely to improve outcomes? No.
Of course, districts facing budget cuts are caught between a rock and a hard place. They have to cut costs, and they have to do it now. Process and performance management takes time.
If only those making the budgets would take that into consideration. When its possible to cut waste, why put districts in a position where they have to cut muscle?
Tags: Waste
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