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Gratefulness, super seniors, swimming, forensics, SRJC

Education Roundup

High school seniors and their parents interested in learning more about the junior college option should show up at Santa Rosa Junior College Night, at 6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 6, in Sonoma Valley High’s Pavilion. Some quick facts about SRJC: the college has 53,000 students enrolled each year on its two campuses (100 acres in Santa Rosa and 40 in Petaluma). SRJC also operates a regional Public Safety Training Center in Windsor, the 365-acre self-supporting Shone Farm near Forestville, a Culinary Arts Center in downtown Santa Rosa and a Technology Academy on the Petaluma Campus. It offers 175 career skills certificate programs. SRJC is the 10th oldest of California’s 109 publicly funded two-year colleges.

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Science Daily reports that happy adolescents are likely to earn more money as adults, even allowing for other influences. The study (conducted by the University College of London) followed 15,000 Americans and found that, even in children growing up in the same family, happier teens went on to earn more money. One main reason, they found, was that happy people are more likely to complete their schooling, to get offered a job and to get promoted than their less happy peers (even peers of the same socio-economic background, location, health and IQ).

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Sonoma Valley High Schools’s forensics team competed at Pinole Valley High School in mid-November in two different formats, on topics of domestic and international current events. Under the direction of Janet Hansen, the debaters competed in this Golden Gate Speech Association event in partnerships and Sonoma’s teams of sophomores Adam Curry/Colin Kemp and seniors Sean Hall/Eric Webber both went undefeated with a 4-0 record. Sonoma Valley High also hosted a recent forensics tournament on its campus that drew more than 400 young debaters from throughout the Bay Area.

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A study in Australia has found that children who are taught to swim at a very young age (2 to 5 years old), regardless of their socio-economic level, achieve physical milestones faster and exhibit significantly better fine motor, math skills and oral expression (Science Daily).

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The Boys & Girls Club is holding its annual Christmas Tree Lighting and Open House from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 8. There will be holiday arts and crafts, food and caroling and its climbing wall will be open to all. I also just heard that the club’s Sweetheart Auction on Saturday, Feb. 9, is sold out already. If you want to attend, it is important that you call 938-8544 to get on the wait list right away.

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The Puppet Playhouse series returns with the family-friendly puppet show “Aladdin” at 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 9 at the Sonoma Community Center. Tickets are $10 and available at the Sonoma Valley Box Office.

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The Presentation School’s fall middle-school drama production, “Selected Shorts: The Christmas Edition,” will play on Thursday, Dec. 6 and Friday, Dec. 7 at the school. This is a full-length production, appropriate for all ages. Tickets are available in the school office for $20 and $10 for students.

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Speaking of events, I just learned about a new website that lists events for kids in Sonoma County. Particularly as the holidays draw near, it is a great resource for ideas to keep your children amused, enriched and entertained. grapejuicekids.com

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In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I was interested to read about a study, conducted by researchers at Hofstra University and UC Davis, that found that children who are able to acknowledge and appreciate their good fortune are more likely to be happy and experience lower levels of depression, envy and materialism. Researcher Jeffrey Froh said, “a grateful child feels more connected and loved. After all, if he’s able to understand that many others care enough to make an effort for him, his life is improved.” Girls are thought to be somewhat more grateful in general than boys, and the belief is that understanding the concept of gratitude doesn’t usually kick in until age 10 or 11. Is it too late if your child seems less than appropriately grateful for all that they do have? Froh said that when encouraged by parents to be more conscious of life’s bounties, children can indeed become more grateful.

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Undergraduates who have taken many more classes than needed to earn a degree are dubbed “super seniors.” School officials at the California state schools are saying that the system can’t afford to let students linger without collecting their diplomas, and are debating charging high fees (almost triple the normal cost) to students who have completed five years of full-time undergraduate work. State schools in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and North Carolina have already done so. Fox News did a piece on the students recently, explaining that Cal State hopes the fees will improve grad rates in the CSU system, from which only 16 percent of freshmen graduate within four years and only 52 percent graduate within six years.

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If your child’s obsession with video games is driving you crazy, here is a small silver lining … High school and college students who are particularly skilled at video games recently went head-to-head with physicians in robotic surgery simulations and the results were presented at a global medical congress. It was found that high school and college students who played two-to-four hours of video games daily matched, and in some cases exceeded, the skills of the medical residents. The competition came about when the lead researcher, Dr. Sami Kilic, saw her son, an avid video game player, wow onlookers on a robotic surgery simulator at a medical convention.

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Save the date for Save our Sports’ next fundraiser. SOS, in conjunction with the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation, is hosting its winter fundraiser at 6 p.m. Saturday, March 9, at the Sonoma Valley Veterans Memorial Building. The night features a Cajun boil dinner, a raffle and music from Backtrax. Tickets, which are $45 each, are being sold in the school offices at Adele and Altimira middle schools. The money raised will support the 2013-14 school year sports programs.

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Teacher evaluations are a hot topic. Most parents I know wish that their school was interested in their feedback concerning specific teachers and their child’s classroom experience. Woodland Star does an annual teacher evaluation using Survey Monkey to gain insight from parents. It uses the feedback as a component of its teacher support and mentoring. All responses are confidential and are destroyed after they are reviewed.

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Payscale, a salary website, recently ran a list of the fields of study (majors) in which students felt best about the impact they were making on the world around them. The results were: 1. nursing, 2. special education, 3. medical technology, 4. biomedical engineering, 5. athletic training, 6. social work, 7. child and family studies, 8. dietetics, 9. biblical studies and 10. health-care administration.

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This is old news, but anyone who has moved to Sonoma in the past 10 years might be interested to know about Napa’s school funding situation. In 2002, Napa voters passed Measure M, which brought in $95 million for the schools and four years later, voters approved Measure G, providing Napa Valley Unified School District with another $183 million. The money was spent on the building of American Canyon High School, modernizing the Napa High science building, creating swimming pools at Vintage High School and Harvest Middle School and installing solar at New Tech and American Canyon high schools. I visited American Canyon recently and was truly stunned by the facility. I read recently that Napa expects to soon construct new elementary and middle schools in American Canyon and an elementary school on the town’s south side, but I didn’t get the sense they had the money in hand for that construction. Sonoma’s Measure H by comparison was $40 million.