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Horticulture, life success, California Students First, introverts

Education Roundup

Of the 96 Sonoma Valley High School students heading to a four-year college next fall, two-thirds are girls and one-third are boys, exactly on par with the national average today. This is not great news for the future of young men in America.

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All freshman at Sonoma Valley High School were split into three teams this year. The Olympus team recently named freshmen Alex Gustafson and Stephanie Angulo as their students of the year. 

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What will be different at Sonoma Valley High School next year? Well, in addition to the big news of the new engineering, design and technology pathway, they will be adding courses in floral arranging and advanced dance. They will also be adding additional sections of advanced courses across several disciplines like chemistry, AP calculus and AP statistics. They will be eliminating animal science, business co-op and entrepreneurship.

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Maris Buesser of Glen Ellen, who attended Dunbar, Altimira and Sonoma Valley High, has been accepted into the College To Career program at Santa Rosa Junior College. College to Career is a brand new three-year program designed for students with intellectual disabilities and/or autism. The program includes courses, coaching and job search skills that enable these motivated special needs students to find work in the field of their interest and strengths. Only 20 students are admitted each year all over the county.

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Every local school seems to need help this summer with their garden. Call your school’s office to see what you might be able to do to help in the weeks ahead.

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Last winter, I visited a high school in San Diego when Sonoma was exploring the Pathways option and I was struck by the large percentage of their seniors who graduate a semester early each year.  More school districts are encouraging this practice as it bypasses senior slump, can save parents college tuition (when students spend the spring taking community college courses) and lowers instructional costs. The practice is gaining momentum, 23 states allow it and a handful even provide sizable financial incentives to students. To complete high school coursework in less time, students are taking online courses, evening or summer courses.

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The book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking,” by Susan Cain, centers around the belief that today’s crowded and high stimulation classrooms are a nightmare for quiet kids. Cain cites new research that suggests shy students should not be pressured to be outgoing and that all students would benefit from more time to reflect.  Since the world sometimes views introverts as inferior, teachers frequently try to turn introverts into extroverts. The book explains the important difference between introversion and shyness (the latter includes anxiety that can be outgrown). Introverted children have a hard time thriving in large and conventional classroom settings and the book proposes some solutions.

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If you are headed on vacation this summer, stop by any college campus in or on your way to your destination with your children, no matter what their age. It is never too early to give them a sense of what college is like.  The point isn’t that they will decide to go to the University of Hawaii or Georgetown or U.C. Santa Barbara, just that seeing any college will help them get a sense of their preferences: big, small, urban, rural, etc. You can book a tour in 30 seconds online and they are always free.

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The raceway at Sonoma (the Infineon sponsorship has expired, a new sponsor is being sought) has donated one ticket to the Sunday, June 24 NASCAR race to every Sonoma Valley High School student. Students just need to stop by the front desk to pick it up.

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Congratulations to high school senior Eva Sapper, who is the first student from the county’s special needs program to successfully complete a senior project at Sonoma Valley High School. Principal Dino Battaglini personally manned a panel of judges to hear her presentation and was blown away by her accomplishment and presentation. Sapper had a stroke at birth and doctors said might not walk or talk. She is an inspiration to children with special needs and their families near and far.

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I heard that the horticulture class taught by science teacher Dutch Van Herwynen at Altimira is so popular that it is expected to have 90 students participating next school year.

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According to the June issue of Psychology Today, “Initiative is developed in adolescence, through mastery experiences and through supportive relationships that teenagers form with adults. These experiences and relationships account for more than 75 percent of life success – more than IQ and genes combined.” The author, Marilyn Price-Mitchell, Ph.D., makes the points that adolescents should choose projects or activities because it gives them internal rewards (creativity, dignity, autonomy, or making a difference in other people’s lives). As teens choose activities, those activities should take place in environments that contain rules and challenges that are inherent in the real world. Also, she stresses that adolescents must learn to sustain activities over time, despite the challenges.

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California State Sen. Michael Rubio has proposed the California Students First Act which would prohibit the 10 campuses that make up the U.C. system from enrolling more than 10 percent of non-Californians as members of the freshman class.  My guess is that there is not a chance it will pass, as these schools need the (far higher) out-of-state tuitions to stay afloat.

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Sonoma Valley High School junior Jamie Ballard entered the Northern California “Celebrate America” Creative Writing Contest in fifth grade (topic: Why are you glad that America is a nation of immigrants?) and won second place. The American Immigration Lawyers Association who sponsor the annual contest have just published a “Best of” book containing some of the winning entries over the past 10 years and Ballard’s entry was one of 57 poems, stories and essays chosen from among 4,200 entries. The book was released at a celebration in San Francisco on May 23. You can buy a copy by emailing aicessay10@ailanorcal.com.

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There were way too many interesting senior projects to mention them all, but I loved hearing about senior Lizbeth Cabrera’s spring break camp for teenage girls, ages 11 to 14, centered around such health issues as exercise, nutrition, CPR, confidence, puberty and hygiene. Cabrera’s mentor was Alejandra Cervantes, who is active in the community via her nonprofit Nuestra Voz in Agua Caliente. Her organization offers programs that promote healthy living in the Latin community.

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San Diego eighth-grader Snigdha Nandipati, 14, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee last week by spelling “guetapens,” which means an ambush, snare or trap. Nandipati is the fifth consecutive Indian-American winner. I love the spelling bee and highly recommend the documentary “Spellbound” for students of all ages.

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New hires at Apple are greeted by this on their desk:

There’s work and there’s your life’s work.

The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. The kind of work that you’d never compromise on. That you’d sacrifice a weekend for. You can do that kind of work at Apple. People don’t come here to play it safe. They come here to swim in the deep end. They want their work to add up to something. Something big. Something that couldn’t happen anywhere else. Welcome to Apple.