Baltimore Students

As the Newtown, Conn., community looks for comfort in the wake of one of the most deadly school shootings in history, it will be able to tap into the hearts of students in Baltimore City. Students at Dallas F. Nicholas Sr. Elementary School have joined a national movement called "Paper Hearts Across America," an initiative that started over construction paper and scissors in the home of a Billings, Mont., family and has sparked a nationwide effort to send millions of hearts to Connecticut.

Vernissia Tam gulped down half a glass of champagne at noon Friday and prepared to scream. She was about to find out what kind of doctor she would become, and where she would train. "No peeking," a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine official told the Class of 2013. "The diplomas aren't printed yet. " After a countdown from 10 that took all of three seconds, Tam and her classmates broke the seals on letters revealing their fates, jumping into one another's arms for an embrace and congratulations.

Baltimore Freedom Academy students marched along East Fayette Street and in front of City Hall late Thursday afternoon, chanting "Save our schools!" and hoisting placards with such messages as "No Justice, No Peace, No Air, No Heat. " They led a procession of the school's teachers, faculty and parents into the adjacent War Memorial Building, where the group of about 40 joined approximately 200 other residents demanding that elected officials come up with funding to fix the city's deteriorating schools.

As their church's cardinals gathered in Vatican City to select a new pope, Catholic schoolchildren in the Baltimore area joined the worldwide buzz over the secret balloting process in an online chat with a fairly well-placed source: Archbishop William E. Lori. "I'm not going to predict who the Holy Father is going to be," Lori told eighth-grade students at 20 schools in the Baltimore Archdiocese on Monday. "But what we can't miss is that at least two of the American cardinals have been spoken about as possible candidates.

Baltimore's scores on a rigorous national math and reading test were in the bottom third of large urban school districts across the country, though educators highlighted some progress in math and a promising trend of better-than-average results among some low-income black students. Overall achievement was poor on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test Congress mandated be given to a sampling of students across the nation every two years. The results released Wednesday showed that the city's children in fourth and eighth grades are scoring better than those in Detroit, Washington and Cleveland but behind those in New York, Boston and Atlanta.

Touring the silos and fields of a Howard County dairy farm at 20 mph in a wagon hauled by a farm tractor was fun.But the Baltimore middle-school students were more interested in the cows they saw -- and the flies the stench attracted."

The success of Baltimore's summer school seems to prove what common sense has told educators and parents for years: Children learn when they are in a small classroom with a good teacher who has lots of time to plan and expects high standards.In the words of school board president J. Tyson Tildon, "Hard work by people who understand and know the educational process pays off."The success also gives city and state school officials powerful evidence to support their proposals to create tough standards for students to pass from one grade to the next.

Salary: $36,000 Age: 24 Years on the job: Two How she got started: While attending Catholic High School of Baltimore, Schroeder and two friends began a cleaning business. Helping them was mentor Patricia Granata Eisner. Schroeder continued to operate the business while attending what is now Stevenson University, formerly Villa Julie College, as an English major. She approached Granata Eisner, the executive director of the Baltimore affiliate of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE)

You're never too young to set your sights on college, the folks at Baltimore's CollegeBound Foundation say, so the organization's "What College Means to Me" annual contest starts with kids in kindergarten. At 6 years old, MaKayla Westry knows a thing or two about the subject: She sometimes tags along to her mom's forensic accounting classes at Morgan State University. The Leith Walk Elementary first-grader's views on college ("it's fun!") won her a prize in the contest's poetry division.

St. Mary's College of Maryland will announce today a $1.5 million scholarship program for Baltimore City students that college officials hope will boost minority enrollment and the city's future. "As a public institution, we see our mission very much as helping the entire state and one of the most underserved areas is Baltimore City," said college President Jane Margaret O'Brien. About 10 Baltimore students enroll annually at St. Mary's, O'Brien said. School officials have been looking for ways to increase that number for several years.

For some area residents - including students at the John Carroll School, a Catholic high school in Bel Air - the day after the Super Bowl will be observed with a moment of rest. A handful of schools and businesses around the region will close or open later than usual on Monday after the Baltimore Ravens play in the Super Bowl in New Orleans Sunday evening. The reasons range from a desire to build morale - at John Carroll, students got a reprieve from the archbishop of Baltimore - to predictions that no one will really want to work on Monday, anyway.

As the Newtown, Conn., community looks for comfort in the wake of one of the most deadly school shootings in history, it will be able to tap into the hearts of students in Baltimore City. Students at Dallas F. Nicholas Sr. Elementary School have joined a national movement called "Paper Hearts Across America," an initiative that started over construction paper and scissors in the home of a Billings, Mont., family and has sparked a nationwide effort to send millions of hearts to Connecticut.

Americans think we live in a meritocracy where hard work can take you from rags to riches. Access to a great education can be an escape from the cyclical poverty found in Baltimore and other major cites. Attending an elite university is particularly helpful. Studies show that graduates of elite institutions - and Ivy League schools in particular - are more successful than graduates from other institutions. Admission into the Ivy League and other top schools is also considered to be meritocratic.

The father of a Baltimore elementary school student is facing kidnapping and other charges after police said he locked his son's 11-year-old classmate in his car, and drove around cursing at him after learning the two boys had been in an altercation that day. Donald Shields Sr., 33, was charged with kidnapping, second-degree assault and false imprisonment in the Nov. 5 incident, which occurred at Yorkwood Elementary School, according to charging documents...

Don't get into business to make money. The temptation to quit will be strongest just before you succeed. And take big risks — even if that means angering a ruler-wielding, 6-foot-tall nun. Those were among the lessons billionaire Bob Parsons, the founder of GoDaddy.com, shared with students at his alma mater, University of Baltimore, on Monday evening. Parsons, a 1975 graduate of the university, gave $1 million last summer to endow a professorship in digital communication, which blends computer programming, Web design and writing, among other skills.

Seven student-athletes from Baltimore-area schools were among 20 statewide named Maryland finalists for the 19th annual Wendy's High School Heisman Award on Thursday. Samantha Bingaman, South Carroll; Kristen Douglas, Carroll Christian; Adam Greene, Broadneck; Kyle Hawkins, Liberty; Cole Rosenberg, Hammond; Cristiana Salvatori, Notre Dame Prep; and Abby Smucker, C. Milton Wright were chosen because they “embody the Heisman spirit of hard work and dedication through their outstanding achievements in athletics, academics and community/school leadership,” according to a news release.

Louise Muse, a dance instructor who taught ballet to hundreds of Baltimore students for nearly five decades, died Friday at Keswick Multi-Care Center. She was 91. Raised in Dundalk, Ms. Muse began teaching at Estelle Dennis' dance studio in the 1950s after spending several years as a student under the legendary instructor. Ms. Muse taught girls from nearby St. Peter's school at the studio's original site in Towson as well as adults, according to Joan Shnipper, a former student. The studio moved to 13 W. Mount Vernon Place in 1966, where Ms. Shnipper said Ms. Muse kept teaching until she was 85. Many of the day-to-day operations of the studio were handled by Ms. Muse, and she took over entirely after Ms. Dennis died in 1996.

HOW ARE you spending your summer vacation? In March, the question seems ridiculously premature. Yet within the next few weeks the Maryland legislature will decide whether hundreds of struggling Baltimore students will spend next summer getting the reading help they need to bolster their lagging reading skills.Gov. Parris N. Glendening has proposed spending $1 million in state funds to send an extra 1,000 low-performing Baltimore students to SuperKids Camp. This eight-week program combines intensive reading instruction with the swimming, crafts classes and zoo trips found at more traditional camps.

The physical needs of Baltimore City schools seem overwhelming. Leaky roofs, faulty boilers, boarded-over windows, broken or non-existent air conditioning, unusable water fountains and outmoded science labs. Baltimore has the oldest inventory of schools in the state, and thanks to years of disinvestment, mismanagement and a reluctance to reduce the system's physical capacity to meet a historic decline in enrollment, they have been allowed to deteriorate to a point where proper instruction and learning are difficult if not impossible.

A 16-year-old student was cut by an unknown suspect outside Milford Mill Academy on Monday, a Baltimore County police spokeswoman said. The teen suffered a cut to his leg just before noon behind the high school in the 3800 block of Washington Avenue, in northwest Baltimore County. "We believe it was an attempted robbery," police spokeswoman Detective Cathy Batton said. She said the incident remains under investigation and could not say whether another student was involved.