An unlikely group of young teens clamor around a bushel of corn stalks in an organic garden they helped cultivate in the heart of West Berkeley.
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Growing Leaders and Healthy Food in West Berkeley
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Category Archives: Education
Parent-Students Deal with Textbooks and Diapers
BERKELEY—Two-year–old Palomi murmurs quietly as dad Daniel Schacht pushes her stroller down the bumpy Berkeley sidewalk. With both hands busy maneuvering past cracks and divots, Schacht cups a cell phone between his ear and shoulder, occasionally interrupting his conversation to reply to Palomi’s requests. It’s Saturday morning and he’s on the way to the grocery store.
Multitasking is something that comes naturally to Schacht, 33. He’s a student at UC Berkeley’s prestigious Boalt School of Law, a dad and a husband. Continue reading
For One Teacher, Class Is the World
BERKELEY—For Anne Takefuji, her class is the world: 30 students, 15 countries, four continents and 12 languages. Through them, she can watch the ebb and flow of the economy, social strife and wars. Through her, they learn English and the idiosyncrasies of American culture. Continue reading
Study: Lack of Sleep Impacts Emotional Health
BERKELEY — A good night’s sleep can ruin Michael Joo’s whole week. The University of California at Berkeley freshman says that he normally gets about three hours of sleep each night. But if he indulges himself with the recommended eight hours a night on the weekend, it can throw him out of his normal pattern, and make him feel even worse on Monday. Continue reading
Early Successes of School for Immigrants Celebrated
Students from 18 countries who speak 22 languages started at Oakland International High School this year.
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School Volunteers Urged to Take Fingerprints
Parent volunteers must pay for fingerprinting costs, which some say is a burden in low income areas. Continue reading
After Graduation, Students Continue Taking Exit Exam
Successful students still face obstacles when they can’t pass the exit exam, which was required for the first time last year to get a diploma. Continue reading
Parents and Teachers Concerned About Intern Educators
OAKLAND — Approximately 10,000 other interns working in California’s public schools are at the center of a controversy over whether college graduates should teach before they become certified. The debate landed in court on August 21 in a lawsuit filed by teachers and parents seeking to prevent California from using intern teachers to fulfill the federal requirement that all teachers be “highly qualified.” Continue reading
Bay Area Social Service Agencies Brace for Undergrad Volunteers
BERKELEY — Each fall, Bay Area social and public service agencies brace for a flood of inquiries from undergraduates who have returned to Berkeley after the summer holiday and are interested in volunteering.
“A flood? That’s putting it mildly,” said Rayedelle McCauley, coordinator of student volunteers at Alta Bates Hospital. Continue reading
Students Walk Their Way to Fitness, School
Several Berkeley schools encouraged students to hoof it to classes on International walk to School Day. Continue reading
New National Scores Hit Berkeley
BERKELEY — Claire Haug finds standardized tests boring. As a fourth grader at Rosa Parks Elementary, Claire is hardly alone. Her mother, Lynn, doesn’t like the tests either.
“The school has a choice: they could teach to that test, or they could teach what the kids need to learn,” she said. “I’m grateful that the teachers at Rosa Parks are teaching in a holistic way.”
Claire and her mother echoed the reaction of other parents and teachers in Berkeley on Wednesday who said the recently released state’s results in national tests failed to bother them. Continue reading
One Effect of Tuition Increase is Certain – Better Education
BERKELEY — After regents approved a dramatic increase in University of California-Berkeley professional school tuitions last week, reaction was muted Monday among students, faculty, and administrators – most of whom agreed that higher tuition will increase the quality of the schools.
But some said they’re concerned that the higher fees will make it hard to attract a wide range of students.
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School Points Kids Towards College, Improves Test Scores
OAKLAND–Julie Dulay has her first-grade class’s undivided attention.
Thirty-eight eyes follow her hand as she draws six squiggly lines on a white board.
“What’s those?” one student says.
“Worms,” Shogan says with a smile.
Animal Rights Protesters Criticize Researchers
Advocates against animal testing convened outside a Berkeley building while faculty of the university’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute celebrated a decade of research inside. Continue reading
Ramadan Increasingly Familiar to Non-Muslims
Muslim parents and students in the Bay Area help classmates better understand Ramadan, the month-long holiday of fasting and refraining from sexual contact during daylight hours. College students say people are more aware of the holiday than when they were in grade school. Continue reading
School Bus Drivers Fast Becoming a San Francisco Rarity
SAN FRANCISCO — They’ve been called terrorists, child molesters and drunk drivers. Rocks have been thrown at their rides, spitballs hurled at their heads and balled-up paper tossed out of their kids’ windows into convertible sports cars whizzing by. And if anything goes wrong on the road amid blind spots, bloody noses, bathroom pit stops, and the tortuous San Francisco terrain, they’re the first to be blamed. Continue reading
Getting Schooled in Alternatives
A School’s Beginnings in East Oakland
OAKLAND—In a school district like Oakland’s, where the dropout rate is staggeringly high, new schools with encouraging names and attractive student-to-teacher ratios have sprouted like mushrooms in recent years, each vowing to combat the problem.
Yet at no school is the ratio quite as attractive as at the Alternative Learning Community, a brand-new middle school in East Oakland. Continue reading
New Bill Funds, Liberates Charter Schools
BERKELEY—Charter school enthusiasts breathed a sigh of relief today as the state senate approved a compromise bill that preserves $18 million for low-income charter schools.
The legislation, which Governor Schwarzenegger is expected to sign swiftly, replaces an earlier draft that tied the money to more restrictive rules on charter school expansion. Continue reading
The Backdoor to College Admission
BERKELEY – Getting into college can be tricky business. UC Berkeley freshman Daren Blevins is a math major, but he’s known since high school that he wanted to study engineering at Cal. That’s what he intends to do, but it never would have happened if he had not employed some subterfuge.
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Teaching Toddlers to Take Care
SAN FRANCISCO — The 18-month-old refused to give the giant toothbrush back. She grabbed it and swept the floor clean. Her mother tried to convince her it wasn’t a broom, but a prop for mentors here at the Mission Neighborhoods Centers preschool to teach children about health care and hygiene.
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SchoolTime Kicks of With Acoustic Africa
BERKELEY- More than 1,000 students, ages 5 to 18, clapped and swayed to the resonating beats of African singers and dancers in UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall Wednesday morning.
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Students tardy in protesting UC tuition increase
BERKELEY – A few hundred students were hoping to stop the Regents of the University of California from imposing yet another tuition increase at a meeting in Berkeley this week. They arrived a day too late.
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Voters Mull Over Parcel Tax Debate
ALBANY – On November 8, Albany voters will head to the polls to decide whether they’re willing to dig into their own pockets for another $2 million a year for public schools. It’s officially called Measure A on the ballot, but people in Albany know it more commonly as a parcel tax – the third parcel tax in Albany in the last 18 years.
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High School Cell Towers Bring On the Heat
RICHMOND – Talk of cellphone towers and high school soccer drew a crowd tonight, as the West Contra Costa County School Board held its regularly scheduled end-of-October meeting. El Cerrito residents lined up one after another to urge the board to break its current cell tower contracts and prohibit the building of any new towers on school district sites.
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Baseball Teaches Story of Japanese-American Internment
In the fall of 1942, Kenso “Howard” Zenimura helped his father build a baseball diamond in the Sonoran Desert of southwest Arizona.
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