I could be a great critic of school systems, especially in the light of all the battles we have fought during the past 20 years to dismantle the structures in the system that foster disproportionality and a number of disparities affecting impoverished students of all colors. However, educators are not the only ones responsible for educating students in a given community.
Today, Friday, Nov. 18, marks a significant milestone in my life: my daughter, Lyla, turns 2 years old.
I was sitting in the car at the bus stop the other morning with my youngest daughter. She’s fourteen and dresses herself and everything.I say that because she had her foot on the dashboard, her shoe untied and was pulling up her sock that had slid into her shoe. When she re-tied her shoe I had a flashback.
This past week the National Assessment of Educational Progress put out its annual report on the achievement levels of fourth and eighth graders in this nation. This assessment is done by taking a random sample of students from each state; local school districts have been involved in the past, comparing them to previous year’s achievemen
Rachel’s Challenge, which Black Diamond Elementary is currently participating in through the Enumclaw School District, is a program designed to encourage kindness among students and parents. Every time a child or teacher does a kind act, they create a paper link to a chain they hope will extend two miles.
Washington, like nearly every other state in the country, is still feeling the economic drag that’s resulted from the worst recession our nation has seen since the 1930’s. Heading into the 2011 session last January, the legislature faced a $5.1 billion budget hole for 2011-13 biennium.
Name a sport. What’s the first thing you think of? Maybe soccer, baseball, or football.
Let’s just get the white electronic elephant out of the room… My husband cannot hook up electronics properly. I am usually the electronics hook up person.
Following the Tahoma and Kent school district cross country teams has been a great experience for me.
I ran cross country all four years at Sammamish High School, so it is fun for me to write about it, having once shared their perspective.
Name a sport. What’s the first thing you think of? Maybe soccer, baseball, or football. While those are popular and talented sports, what many of you probably didn’t think of is dance.
Five measures are on the ballot this November, three initiatives and two referendums from the Legislature to the public.
I spotted a white elephant roaming around Black Diamond the other day. Its name is rescind the ordinances.
There are a few trying to ignore it, but, elephants are tough to deny.
But, these are things that are more typical for teens to complain about.
I suspect there will always be some discord between adults and students because of what grown ups want teens to do while they’re at school. The kind of stuff that’s reasonable for adults to expect and equally reasonable for kids to find unreasonable because they want to be treated like adults even if they can’t seem to act like it all the time.
Free market businesses and the government are not even remotely similar, except both need money, which is really what the candidate is usually trying to say. They will rein in government or spend less money or be fiscally responsible or some other sentence along the same line.
We are about to start a new series of enterprise reporting written by TJ Martinell who works out of the Covington-Maple Valley-Black Diamond Reporter office.
The subject is online dating.
Recently, President Obama ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to delay implementation of a new rule that further reduces industrial ozone emissions —smog — under the Clean Air Act (CAA).
It is always a source of amusement for me when I hear kids talk about what they are going to do when they “grow up.” Or, better yet, when parents mingle and discuss their child’s future career with absolutely certainty, as though it is something which should be determined at the tender age of 7.
It’s no secret that I hate the color pink.
True, I have come to see it as a neutral color since my daughter Lyla arrived almost two years ago, but still it’s not a color I have in abundance in my wardrobe.
But, on Sept. 16 my Facebook feed was filled with pink as friends and professional contacts posted photos from the Susan G. Komen 3 Day Walk for the Cure.
I grabbed a few books from my overstuffed shelves the other night while lying in bed. On the wall next to my bed is a book shelf that extends from the floor to the ceiling and it is stuffed with every book I can get on it.
OK, I admit it – I am out of control when it comes to books.
This week I received the news that our sports reporter, Erick Walker, is leaving to become a teacher for the Kent School District.
As the editor of this newspaper, Erick leaving is a loss for us and a loss to sports reporting in this state.
