This is the archive for November 2007
By Rick LaPlante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer
More than 50 people - including students, parents, teachers, classified employees and administrators - heard presentations and exchanged ideas about “Middle School Changes for 2008-09,” the topic of the November meeting of the New Haven Community Forum, held at Cesar Chavez Middle School.
Following the closure of Barnard-White Middle School (BWMS) at the end of the current school, new boundaries will go into effect to determine whether students attend Cesar Chavez (CCMS) or Alvarado Middle School (AMS), Chief Business Officer Carol Gregorich said. The new boundaries were drawn in an effort to meet the Board of Education’s request to minimize disruption for students and families. Starting in 2008-09, most of the students who would have attended BWMS will go to CCMS, and some students who would have attended CCMS (primarily those coming from Pioneer Elementary) will go to AMS.
Posted by courier at 10:32 AM. Filed under: News
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By Jennifer Torres, Courier Staff Writer
Hope Connections continues to uphold their slogan "Giving without Expecting in Return," as they start their 8th annual Winter Drive. The winter drive is an opportunity for the Logan staff and students to aid struggling families within the New Haven Unified School District by donating money, toys, canned foods, and gifts.
Posted by courier at 09:49 AM. Filed under: News
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Courier Staff Report
At the dawn of the last day of its biggest month ever, The Courier received its 100,000th visitor since its relaunch 20 months ago as what may be the world's only daily, 365-day-per-year, student-produced high school news source and set new daily readership records for itself.
The Courier's visitor counter at the bottom of its main page clicked over to 100,000 at around 5:30 a.m. this morning, said Patrick Hannigan, staff advisor to The Courier. The counter started at zero on March 5, 2006.
Posted by courier at 08:12 AM. Filed under: News
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Perri Darweesh
Pepper Moto/Courier Photo
Knowing that the first steps are always the most pivotal in any learning experience has motivated Logan teacher Perri Darweesh to take action and focus on helping freshmen take their first steps toward success in high school.
This large undertaking began last year, when administrators approached Darweesh and asked her to form four groups who met casually in order to provide academic assistance to any students who felt they needed it. As the year carried on, Darweesh began to realize this system was not benefiting those who truly needed the help, and the sporadic meetings did little to make an impact. She also realized that she would not be able to single‑handedly tutor them.
Posted by courier at 08:02 AM. Filed under: News
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By Rick LaPlante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer
“Middle School Changes for 2008-09” will be the topic Tuesday night (Nov. 27) when the New Haven Community Forum meets at Cesar Chavez Middle School.
The meeting will be from 6 to 8 p.m. The school is at 2801 Hop Ranch Road.
The closure of Barnard-White Middle School at the end of the 2007-08 school year has provided an opportunity to accelerate the long-awaited modernization of Cesar Chavez Middle School and minimize the effect on student learning. Moving Cesar Chavez to the Barnard-White campus for 2008-09 will allow the modernization to be completed in one year, instead of the multiple years that it could take with students on campus. More important, students will not be attending class at a site where construction is taking place.
Posted by courier at 03:24 PM. Filed under: News
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From left: Artemio Zambrano, 9,
Julie Panebianco, Carlo Warren, 9.
Debbie Ly/Courier Photo,
Courier Staff Writer
Garden Club is one of the new additions to James Logan High School’s growing variety of clubs.
The club was created due to a suggestion from Julie Panebianco’s former students, Joseph Rodriguez and Krystal Macaraeg, now both sophomores. The students wanted to improve the look of the campus, making it a nicer place. They were also interested in improving the area near the staff lounge, allowing teachers to enjoy their breaks surrounded by beautiful plants.
Posted by courier at 12:19 PM. Filed under: News
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Joe Kennedy
wikipedia image
Oakland A's and others are mourning the death ofJoe Kennedy, a former member of the Oakland Athletics, who passed away after collapsing in his in‑law’s house on Friday.
Kennedy awoke at approximately 1:15 AM to leave the bedroom before falling to the floor, according to reports. The Hillsborough County Fire Rescue brought Kennedy to Brandon Hospital. He was pronounced dead when he arrived.
The left‑hander was 28.
Posted by courier at 08:41 AM. Filed under: News
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A man is chained to a bed frame at
a mental hospital in Mogadishu,
Somalia, October 6.
(Kuni Takahashi/Chicago Tribune/MCT)
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Abdulrahman Habeb was a man with problems, the most pressing of which involved a barrel of tranquilizer pills.
The barrel — containing 50,000 capsules of fluphenazine hydrochloride, a potent anti-psychotic drug ordered from America — was boosting his patients' appetites. This was not good. Patients at the Habeb Public Mental Hospital were scaling the facility's mud walls to scavenge for food outside, in the war-pocked streets of Mogadishu. One had been shot.
"They don't stop when sentries say `Halt!'" said Habeb, the director of the only mental health clinic in Somalia's capital. "How could they? They are mentally ill."
Posted by courier at 08:17 PM. Filed under: News
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Dr. David Birnbach in a simulation operating
room used to teach how to react to
emergencies. at the UM/JMH Center
for Patient Safety. (Al Diaz/Miami Herald/MCT)
MIAMI — The patient's on the operating room table. His upper body is punctured with stab wounds. He's kept alive via snaking tubes infiltrating the gashes.
The lights go out. Power failure. The ventilator, inoperable. The doctors, nurses and anesthesiologists are in the dark; a senior surgeon barks orders.
Thankfully, the victim is a "model patient." A mannequin.
Posted by courier at 06:02 PM. Filed under: News
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By Olivia Winslow
Newsday (MCT)
Presidents of 81 private colleges across the nation made more than $500,000 each in total compensation in fiscal year 2006, up 200 percent from five years ago, while salaries for presidents of public colleges rose rapidly as well, with eight institutions paying their presidents at least $700,000 in 2007, compared with just two the year before.
These are among the findings reported in an annual survey released Monday by the publication the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Posted by courier at 09:55 AM. Filed under: News
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Adults used MySpace to drive
teen Megan Meier to suicide
CHICAGO — A bizarre and cruel Internet hoax that ended with the suicide of a 13-year-old girl has bitterly divided a western St. Louis suburb, provoked a firestorm in the blogosphere and raised troubling questions about how to police traffic on popular social networking sites like MySpace.com.
The death of Megan Meier in Dardenne Prairie, Mo., went beyond the growing phenomenon of cyber-bullying because the alleged instigators of the hoax were not only adults, but parents of a classmate of Megan's, who lived just down the street from her.
No charges have been filed. A local newspaper's decision not to publish the names of the parents involved has fanned a furious public response.
Posted by courier at 09:42 AM. Filed under: News
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Administrators Mistee Hightower (left),
Roxana Mohammed and Don Montoya
dish up breakfast to Ramiro and Lorrie
Barrera. Courier Photo
School administrators kicked off Thanksgiving early by cooking breakfast for the school staff in gratitude for their work this year.
Principal Don Montoya came on the school's public address system just before zero period started to invite school staff members to the Staff Lounge, where he and the rest of the school's adminstrators had cooked up a meal of pancakes, eggs, bacon, fruit and more and were dishing it out. Some breakfasts were delivered to zero period teachers who couldn't attend.
Posted by courier at 10:34 AM. Filed under: News
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These chairs replaced
the contentious table.
Courier Photo,
Courier News Editor
School administrators have moved a lunch table that spurred conflict between groups of students contending the use of it, ending the conflict for the time being, at least.
The table, formerly in the Senior Patio area along the outside wall of the Student Union, was the regular eating site of a closely associated group of students who used it regularly for several years. The table was (before its relocation) a lunchtime eating area for students, and a hang-out spot after school.
Posted by courier at 12:51 PM. Filed under: News
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By Rick LaPlante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer
The Board of Education on Tuesday night received a report on how academic interventions are being incorporated into the instructional program to meet student needs.
Alvarado Middle School Principal Yvonne Hull and teacher Sarah Graff told the Board how the Voyager program is being used to support students with skill needs in language arts. Voyager, which also is being piloted at Barnard-White and Cesar Chavez middle schools, is a mandatory class for “below basic” and “far below basic” students. It focuses on improving vocabulary, fluency and comprehension skills.
The Board also discussed the possibility of bringing a bond measure before New Haven voters in 2008.
Posted by courier at 12:41 PM. Filed under: News
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By Jennifer Torres,
Courier Staff Writer
On Saturday, The Hope Connections Club delivered and distributed their hygiene baskets to the Sunrise Homeless Shelter located in Fremont. Throughout the month of October, Hope Connections had been collecting items such as toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoos, soaps, wash cloths, towels and various other hygienic products from Logan students and staff.
With these everyday commodities the Hope Connections Club created 40 hygiene baskets to be donated to the Sunrise Shelter.
"Many people take these items for granted and do not truly appreciate the comforts it offers people." said Linda Rodriguez, the club's faculty advisor.
Posted by courier at 11:47 AM. Filed under: News
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By Audrey Hoffer
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MCT)
MILWAUKEE — Women and minorities are significantly underrepresented as professors in science and engineering departments at the top research universities across the country.
As a result, tenured positions in those departments are primarily the realm of white men, according to a recent study.
The study, conducted by Donna J. Nelson, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, looks at all faculty in the top 100 university science, technology, engineering and mathematics departments in the nation, counting the number of tenured and tenure-track professors by gender, race and ethnicity.
Posted by courier at 04:48 PM. Filed under: News
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Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (center) jokes during
the Democratic presidential debate at Drexel
University in Philadelphia, October 30. From left
are Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, Delaware Sen. Joe
Biden, John Edwards, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton,
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Ohio Rep. Dennis
Kucinich, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
Michael Perez/Philadelphia Inquirer/MCT
Another week, another debate. If it's early November, this must be the Republicans in Cedar Falls, Iowa, as opposed to the Democrats gathering in Philadelphia last week, or Nov. 17 when the same crew assembles in Las Vegas.
What happens in Vegas, won't stay in Vegas. The Democrats travel on to Des Moines, Los Angeles and Boston, while the Republicans duke it out in St. Petersburg and twice in two days in Des Moines, the Paris of presidential politics.
Is this any way to elect a leader, through a two-ring traveling circus of gabfests?
Posted by courier at 04:39 PM. Filed under: News
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Title page of the Ostrih Bible, a 16th
century Ukrainian Bible in the collection
of the Library of Congress.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham reprimanded the Chinese ambassador to the United States on Wednesday over reports that Bibles are on a list of prohibited items for athletes who stay in the Olympic village during next year's Beijing Games.
Graham, a longtime critic of China over its currency manipulation and trade tariffs, said he called Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong and complained about the reported Bible ban.
"This would be contrary to the Olympic spirit," Graham said in an interview after speaking with the envoy. "It would be a totalitarian move that would create problems between China and the United States far beyond what we have today."
Posted by courier at 02:47 AM. Filed under: News
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By Kim Barker
Chicago Tribune (MCT)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A massive security clampdown by President Pervez Musharraf snuffed out a planned opposition rally by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Friday but left the country facing more days of tense standoff as Bhutto was released from temporary house arrest and called for a rally next week.
Musharraf's dispatch of thousands of police and soldiers to surround Bhutto's home and seal off the planned site for the event drew international criticism and led the opposition to step up its demands that he retract the state of emergency through which he suspended the constitution last week.
Posted by courier at 08:45 AM. Filed under: News
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Oliver Goldsmith (November 10, 1730 or 1728 – April 4, 1774) was an Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician known for his novel
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem
The Deserted Village (1770) (written in memory of his brother), and his plays
The Good-natur'd Man (1768) and
She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). (He is also thought to have written the classic children's tale,
The History of Little Goody Two Shoes, giving the world that familiar phrase.)
Read She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith, one of
seven of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 07:01 AM. Filed under: News
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Courier Staff Report
The Courier, James Logan's online, blog-style student news publication, has won the Best Education Weblog Award in the 2007 Weblog Awards competition.
The Courier beat nine other finalists in the category to be named winner of the award last night at Blogworld and New Media Expo, a weblog industry convention and trade show held in Las Vegas through tonight.
The Courier garnered 1,371 votes in the balloting that determined the winner. The second place website, IvyGate, which serves the colleges and the universities of the Ivy League, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, received 690 votes. Third place Education Week received 166 votes.
Posted by courier at 03:29 PM. Filed under: News
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Note: Each week, The Courier spotlights books newly arrived, or expected to arrive, in the James Logan Media Center.
It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Miramax (March 21, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0786851961
ISBN-13: 978-0786851966
From the publisher:
Like many smart, ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner seeks entry into Manhattan’s most prestigious school, Executive Pre-Professional High School. With single-minded determination, he works night and day to ace the entrance exam and gets in. That’s when everything starts to unravel.
Posted by courier at 10:37 AM. Filed under: News
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Map of the Democratic Republic
of Congo.
U.S. State Department image
RUTSHURU, Congo — Peace wasn't sweet — it tasted like soggy crackers — when a warlord surrendered in Congo's lawless east October 27.
Kasereka Kabamba, the shaved-headed chief of a militia known for dressing in animal pelts and invoking magical powers in battle, gave himself up "for the good of the people" at a United Nations military base. Indian peacekeepers in short pants offered bowls of cookies and saltines to the 29 sulky gunmen and one wide-eyed boy, aged about 9, who joined in Kasereka's capitulation.
Posted by courier at 10:13 AM. Filed under: News
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Courier Staff Report
A get-out-the-vote campaign by The Courier, the James Logan administration and the New Haven school district have helped online school news blog build a substantial lead over its closest rival, IvyGate, a blog serving the Ivy League universities.
The results as of about 3:30 p.m. show that The Courier has received more than 1,000 votes, while IvyGate has garnered just over 600.
Click "Read More" to see the latest totals.
Posted by courier at 03:50 PM. Filed under: News
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Principal Don Montoya
Courier Photo
Logan Principal Don Montoya apologized to the school staff Monday for what many describe as the worst opening of school in memory.
At the school-wide staff meeting, held in the Little Theater after school, Montoya took the blame for the "Perfect Storm" of problems that have plagued teachers and students since August 29, the first day of school, even as he acknowledged that some of the problems are still ongoing.
Posted by courier at 12:54 PM. Filed under: News
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The eagle with lit dynamite
and a macuahuitl is part of
the symbol of MECha.
Though it is well into a new school year, the clubs of James Logan continue to demonstrate their willingness to aid in charities and events in order to better the community.
As a prime example, the Logan M.E.Ch.A. club, an organization to help further the inclusion of Latino culture and history in school settings, is doing its part. M.E.Ch.A. is an acronym for Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan Instead of an individual event, the club has started a year‑round recycling event in order to raise money for various causes.
Posted by courier at 08:02 AM. Filed under: News
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich answers a question during
the Democratic presidential debate at Drexel
University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania October 30.
Michael Perez/Philadelphia Inquirer/MCT
PHILADELPHIA — On the day after the Democratic debate here, the tempest generated by Hillary Rodham Clinton's handling of the issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants refused to go away.
Democratic and Republican presidential candidates alike joined in criticizing her Wednesday — even as several Republicans used the occasion to go after one another.
And the Clinton campaign, hoping the episode will not become a metaphor for evasiveness, clarified her position on the issue and put out a web video mocking her opponents for "piling on."
Posted by courier at 07:00 PM. Filed under: News
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South Seattle Community College student
Denise Andrews pumps crushed grapes
into a fermenting tank. Alan Robertson
sprinkles oak chips, and winemaking
instructor Peter Bos, center, checks the tank's
level at North Seattle Community College.
John Lok/Seattle Times/MCT
After high school, Melissa Pederson yearned for a traditional college experience. So she moved into campus housing with roommates from around the world and immersed herself in her wooded, secluded school.
Yet Pederson's move was far from typical: She was among the first students in King County to live on a community-college campus. Now finishing her sophomore studies at Green River Community College in Auburn, Wash., Pederson, 20, is one of a growing number of students taking advantage of shifts in the mission and approach of two-year colleges.
Posted by courier at 05:50 PM. Filed under: News
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By Debbie Ly, Courier Staff Writer
The ban on candy sales at school is costing students who join the California Scholarship Federation more in dues.
Membership in the CSF, which recognizes students' academic achievements, now costs $3, up from two.
Teacher and CSF advisor Dean Cozine said the raise in dues is because the club can't sell candy anymore due to a statewide ban on junk food sales that went into effect this year. Until a fundraiser that replaces the lost revenue is found, the dues will remain at $3, he said.
Posted by courier at 08:12 AM. Filed under: News
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Those who try to vote from school
might get a message stating that
they already voted, even if they
haven't.
Voting for the 2007 Weblog Awards began last night, and The Courier, a finalist in the Best Education Blog category, trails in early polling.
As of 7:30 a.m., The Miss Rumphius Effect blog lead with six votes out of the twenty. The Courier had two votes, trailing Frumteacher and Education Week, which both had three. Teaching ...Multiple Special Needs was tied with the Courier.
Click here to vote for The Courier.
Posted by courier at 07:56 AM. Filed under: News
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Courier Staff Report
The James Logan Courier is a finalist a 2007 Weblog award for Best Education Blog.
Organizers of the event, an annual recognition of outstanding blog-style websites, made the announcement last night. The Courier is among ten finalists in the category, which include the websites Education Week and NYC Educator.
Posted by courier at 10:13 AM. Filed under: News
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By Karen Mui, Courier Staff Writer
Testing dates for the first administration of the critically important California High School Exit Exam to this year's sophomores have been rescheduled earlier than the previous years in an attempt to streamline the busy spring testing season and provide students a better chance to pass it.
Juniors and seniors who haven't yet passed it get another crack at it next week.
Sophomores will have to wait until February to take it for the first time, which is about a month earlier than in previous years. During the 2007‑2008 school year, sophomores will test on February 5th and 6th. The earlier dates means that sophomores who miss the test will be able to make it up on March 5th and 6th, when the juniors and seniors get another crack at it.
Posted by courier at 09:11 AM. Filed under: News
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