Getting people to volunteer can sometimes feel like pulling teeth, unless those people are the students of Youth Leadership America—and the one doing the pulling—is 7 Day Dental’s Dr. Chuck Le.
Dr. Le was recently named “Business Person of the Year” by the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, partly due to his philosophy of “the more you give back, the more you get.”
A few weeks ago, Dr. Le gave back in a big way, with the inaugural “Dentists Pulling from the Heart Day.” 14 oral surgeons teamed up with more than 100 volunteers to provide free tooth extractions to Anaheim residents in need.
Many of the volunteers that day were from Youth Leadership America, a non-profit organization that fosters leadership and networking among high school students with the help of sponsors like the Disneyland Resort.
The students say the event was an eye-opening experience. Hundreds of people, many of whom had been suffering from toothaches for years, showed up to take advantage of the free service. In all, about 500 teeth were removed, a savings to the community of $100,000. Dr. Le hopes next year his team will be able to help even more people.
In the meantime, his efforts have already inspired Youth Leadership America to find new ways to give back, in Anaheim and abroad. YLA has launched a letter outreach project for earthquake and tsunami victims in Anaheim’s Sister City – Mito, Japan. Their goal is to collect 1,000 letters of kindness and support, to help the people of Mito through this difficult time.
Letters should be sent to Anaheim Ciy Hall by May 27, 2011.
Anaheim Sister City Commission
Attn: Kindness Campaign
200 S. Anaheim Blvd., 7th Floor
Anaheim, CA 92805
Watch my education story of Pull from the Heart with Dr. Le on this week’s episode of California Life airing statewide or watch online www.californialifehd.com
An equation on a Birge Hall blackboard at U.C. Berkeley describing the motion of a particle in a harmonic oscillator. Cal ranked No. 4 on a list of the best 100 universities in the world for its teaching and research.
The University of California, Berkeley, ranked No. 4 on a list of the top 100 universities by reputation compiled by Times Higher Education.
Both teaching and research quality were considered in creating the list, which has seven U.S. universities in the top 10 plus two in England and one in Japan. California alone has three schools in the top 10.
Harvard University topped the list, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge University.
Cal fans will be pleased that U.C. Berkeley edged out Stanford University, which ranked fifth. In describing Cal, Times Higher Education wrote: “Vitamin E was identified here, a lost Scarlatti opera found, the flu virus identified and America’s first no-fault divorce law drafted.” It notes that 21 U.C. Berkeley faculty have won Nobel Prizes.
The description of Stanford says the school “is said to be, after Harvard, the US’ most selective university.” Stanford graduates founded both Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).
Oxford University, Princeton, the University of Tokyo, Yale and California Institute of Technology rounded out the top 10.
Besides Todai, Japan has Kyoto University at No. 18 and Osaka University at No. 50, as well as Tohoku University and Tokyo Institute of Technology in the top 100.
Times Higher Education quizzed 13,388 people in academic fields to put together its list.
In a separate ranking, U.C. Berkeley’s Civil and Environmental Engineering programs were ranked No. 1 in U.S. News & World Report’s study of graduate schools this year.
Check out this week’s education story sponsored by the California Lottery about UC Schools on California Life airing Statewide or visit www.californialifehd.com
I took a trip to the Grammy Museum at L.A. LIVE this past week and upon entering I was in awe of the whole set up. After viewing some of the most iconic Grammy performances in the museum’s theater I completely forgot I was there to work. I instantly wanted to see and try everything. The entire museum was interactive. You could jump into a sound booth and mix your own songs. Or grab a mic with friends and harmonize to a classic Beatles song.
The hip hop exhibit was my favorite. It displays hand written song lyrics from rapper Tupac Shakur, Run DMC’s leather jacket from their “Walk this Way” performance with Aerosmith and a hip hop sneaker gallery. The John Lennon exhibit literally gave me chills. It explores his songwriting and his transition from a Beatle to a legendary writer.
The staff at the museum told me their main goal is to provide an education of the arts to students. The staff provides educators with strategies and key resources to show students the power of music. For teachers who successfully integrate music into their classroom the museum offers them the opportunity to win tickets to the Grammy Awards and a free visit to the museum for their students. This place seriously cannot get any better. I heart the Grammy Museum!
Schools are always looking for ways to get parents more involved – especially in low income areas where parents often have to work 2 or 3 jobs. The Coachella Valley Unified School District, in Thermal, California, has an innovative program that actually teaches parents – to teach other parents. It’s called P-E-P, or Parents Empowering Parents. The district has hired a full time instructor to give a series of eight workshops to parents on a variety of subjects: math and reading, of course, but also self esteem, discipline, and the best way to approach a parent-teacher conference. Those parents then fan out to each school site, and give workshops in English and Spanish to big crowds of parents. Some meetings have seen more than a hundred parents crammed into the gym, learning how to take an active role in their kids’ schooling. They learn to teach the basics of the numbers and letters, for example, while playing educational games. Over the past seven years more than 1100 families have benefitted from the program. A study is underway to track the academic performance of the kids from those families. But parents say that once they start attending these workshops, it shows their kids how much they value a good education. And that attitude rubs off on the kids, who start to focus more on their schoolwork.
Heading South on the 101 at 6am on a Saturday I couldn’t silence my mind as I made the trek from SF to SB. My restless brain was occupied with racing thoughts ranging from wondering if I was coming down with walking pneumonia to whether or not I was brave enough to ask Nicole Kidman about her time married to the big TC. However, never once did I stop to think about what must have been going through the minds of the students set to steal the spotlight from the celebs at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Each year students take center stage participating in the 10-10-10 student film making competition and this year one 14 year old budding screenwriter was a sure fire show stopper. When I interviewed Aija Mayrock on the red carpet I could literally feel her excitement, she was radiating brighter than the best chemical peel money could buy. This high school screenwriter might be pint sized but her subject is larger than life tackling the tough topic of teenage suicide and social justice. The Laguna Blanca High School student was the youngest competitor and she shocked the competition when walked away with the high school screen writing award.
As I made my way North on Sunday my mind was no longer racing but focused on one thought for the next six hours. Inspire a child and you change the world. Aija and the rest of the future filmmakers of America are using their voice to make a difference. My ten minutes with Aija was more inspiring than the past 10 years I’ve spent gathering celebrity soundbites.
California is in the midst of a major outbreak of pertussis, also known as whooping cough. The state Department of Public Health says more than 8,000 people have fallen ill and ten infants have died from the preventable disease in 2010 alone. Infants too young to have received the vaccine are the most vulnerable. Whooping cough is named for the characteristic “whooping” sound patients make as they gasp for breath. The violent wracking cough can last for months and can even cause broken ribs. But if it is caught early and the victim is not a newborn, patients can recover after being treated with antibiotics.
Right now all parents must show proof of vaccination in order to enroll their child in kindergarten – so most kids get the series of five shots before age six. But the immunity wears off in five to ten years.
In the wake of the recent pertussis outbreak, the Governor signed legislation last fall mandating a booster shot for all children entering 7th through 12th grades. The shot is called a T-Dap, which stands for tetanus, diptheria and pertussis. It is available at your child’s pediatrician’s office. The local county Public Health Departments will also be offering free or low-cost shots.
Authorities estimate that as much as 50% of 7th -12th graders will need to get the booster shot. If your child has received a tetanus shot in the past few years, it may have been a T-dap. Parents are advised to check with their pediatrician to verify that the child received a T-dap and just a tetanus shot.
School nurse Gennette Furtado of Palm Springs Unified School District says parents will have to bring in the immunization card to their school site. If they don’t, the child will not be allowed to attend school. Parents who are opposed to vaccinations do have the option of requesting a PBE – a personal belief exemption. Or they can get a letter from the doctor stating that the shot is contraindicated for their child. But in recent years tens of thousands of parents have opted out, and this is thought to play a role in the recent outbreak. So public health officials hope parents will consider the public good. They are urging families to get this booster shot for their children ASAP to avoid the mad rush in the weeks before school starts in the fall.
The Centers for Disease Control recommends that all adults get the pertussis booster as well, especially parents and grandparents of newborns, and child care workers. Some colleges are also now asking for the booster. The CDC recommends incoming freshmen be vaccinated for Hepatitis B, Meningitis, Chicken Pox and the flu, and a number of states are requiring college students to get the vaccine that protects against meningococcal meningitis. (It is recommended but not required in California)
Change is word that we have heard a lot of lately. It quickly caught on during the 2008 elections and has been spreading like a video gone viral ever since. While the six letter word is simple to say it’s not always so easy to implement. In the words of one of my best friend’s “Change is hard but change is necessary.” This week’s story on California Life affected me in more ways than I care to share on the world wide web but let’s just say I can relate. Summer Search’s goal “is to find resilient low-income high school students and inspire them to become responsible and altruistic leaders by providing year-round mentoring, life-changing summer experiences, college advising, and a lasting support network.”
While that mission statement might not be meaningful to you it’s life changing for the students it’s looking to uplift. Thanks to this Non Profit “Change” is a word these kids can finally believe in.
The State of California Department of Education recently released its annual report on dropout and graduation rates in California. The numbers do not look good: the overall dropout rate in California for the school year 2008-2009 went up to 21.7 percent. That is up from 18.9% in the 2007-2008 school year. This puts California in the middle of the pack, nationwide. Nevada has the highest dropout rate in the nation, at just over 50 percent.
Some school administrators say those numbers can be deceiving. Jane Mills of Palm Springs Unified School district says part of the problem could be inadequate data collection – because some students move out of the school district and receive a second state identification number when they re-enroll in another district, and thus get counted as a dropout because of the snafu. In addition, some students move out of state or out of the country, and re-enroll elsewhere without notifying their previous school where they went.
Nonetheless, Mills says, the dropout numbers are too high, and many schools are attacking the problem in innovative ways. Palm Springs Unified School District has ten Community Liaisons whose job it is to track down students who have stopped coming to school, find out where their difficulties lie, and offer them counseling, etc. to bring them back into the fold. PSUSD also did a study of exactly who their dropouts were, and found that most of them had a common trait: excessive absences and poor academic performance in English and Math in 7th and 8th grades. They also interviewed students who met those criteria but nonetheless did go on to graduate. They found that those students who stayed in school despite difficulties early on did so because someone (like a teacher, coach or counselor) took a special interest in them, or they found a passion for an extracurricular activity, like sports, band or art class. So the district targets at-risk middle schoolers with extra counseling and tutoring to catch them before they get to the point of dropping out. It’s called the Essential Student program.
The Coachella Valley Unified School District struggles with a 28.5 percent dropout rate, in part because of high poverty rates and because so many students’ families move often. They have a special program called Operation Graduation. It’s a partnership with Dell Computers that allows the district to purchase netbooks for $300 apiece. They distribute the laptops to 9th graders who excel at the four A’s: good attendance, strong academics, extracurricular activities, and good attitude. It’s been in place for one year, so it will be a few years before the end of those students’ senior year. At that point it will be clear whether “Operation Graduation” has led to a higher graduation rate and lower dropout rate. You can see the State of California’s report on dropouts and graduation rates at: http://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr10/yr10rel140.asp.
I don’t want to toot my own tech horn..but when it comes to gadgets, gizmos and all things digital I like to think I’m dialed in. My generation didn’t grow up with the world wide web, we didn’t have a computer in the classroom let alone one per student and social networking was something you did cruising the local galleria or specifically the Glendale Galleria in my case. So for me walking the halls of this Bay Area High School wasn’t a flashback it was a flash forward. Talk about Fast Times at New Tech High…these kids aren’t just learning the three R’s they are redefining what the R’s are. But more importantly, they are not your typical teens these kids are actually giddy about going to school. Excited about education and taking on tough topics like 1984 (the timing couldn’t be more appropriate), genetics and a few other subjects that were clearly over my head. If Big Brother is watching he will see these kids could outsmart Orwell and if they keep up this 40 gigabits per second connection they might even make Zuckerberg look sooooooo 2010.
Local anti-bullying programs like the Ambassadors for Compassion, Empathy and Tolerance Symposium operate on the principal that bullies can be stopped with zero tolerance policies and a commitment by students to report the abuse when they see it. The kids try to raise awareness so that victims and witnesses will come forward – and bullies will be put on notice.
Bullying is an entrenched problem that’s been brought back into the spotlight after high profile cases where students have committed suicide in recent years. The National Insititute of Child Health and Human Development says the problem is very complex – and that anyone involved (bully and victim) are at risk for depression. Victims are more likely to be lonely and anxious and have low self-esteem, headaches and stomachaches, and sometimes even try to commit suicide.
A 2007 study found 1 in 3 students reported being the victim of a bully. And 1 in 9 reported being pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on during the last school year.
And now with the rise of the internet and social networking, cyberbullying has taken root.
Last summer the Department of Education held the first-ever Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit in Washington, D.C. The NIHCD is sponsoring research on the problem.
Getting people to volunteer can sometimes feel like pulling teeth, unless those people are the students of Youth Leadership America—and the one doing the pulling—is 7 Day Dental’s Dr. Chuck Le.
