Students And Teachers

EXPERIENCE IS A powerful teacher, as about 30 Oklahoma Road Middle School pupils realized last week during a schoolwide Disabilities Awareness Week program.The program was led by teachers Lois Dolan, Mary Cavaness, Maggie Grossman and Karen Jablon, and assistants Karen Sirko and Jill Johnson, who make up the school's resource team.Through exercises Wednesday, pupils spent several hours experiencing simulated disabilities to gain insight into what disabled people experience daily.Students experienced simulated disabilities such as blindness, inability to speak, conditions requiring the use of a wheelchair, and the inability to use their dominant hand.

MOSCOW -- It's kids against cops in a standoff in St. Petersburg, and the kids aren't flinching.The police have a court order, the might of the city government and plenty of guns on their side. On their side, the kids have nothing but their determination and the weight of Russian culture, which cherishes children.At stake is possession of a choice piece of real estate that for eight years has been occupied by a private Christian school. The city wants the site, which the school spent about $1.5 million fixing up. The city arranged the law on its side.

STUDENTS AND teachers at the Carroll County Career and Technology Center are taking their programs on the road in spring and they are riding with style.After years of renovations, this school community has launched its Career Mobile Unit (CMU) -- a 40-foot bus equipped with an LCD projector, videos, new furnishings and a wealth of vital career information and exhibits.Soon the CMU will be pulling up to local middle schools and high schools and opening its doors for tours. Administrators hope the mobile unit will lure more students to the school, which trains as many as 800 students a year.

Correction and apologiesThis reporter wishes to apologize for an error in last week's column. Jackie Conarton is the principal at Ilchester Elementary School, not the Baltimore school named.A LINE OF 10 black wheelchairs stretched almost the length of the Dunloggin Middle School gymnasium as Bill Denby explained to seventh-grade students and teachers how to move down-court in a straight line and how to turn -- in a wheelchair."Your center of gravity changes in a wheelchair," Denby said. "If you feel yourself flipping over backward, put your chin on your chest.

While the band tuned up in the background, four Harlem Park Elementary students fidgeted in their auditorium's wooden seats, punching each others' shoulders, arguing about whose legs were fastest."

THIS CHRISTMAS, a group of North Carroll Middle School students is sending a touch of home to all 6,000 crew members of the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier that left Nov. 6 for six months in the Persian Gulf.For 130 of the service men and women, that homestyle touch included gift packages and goody bags of candy and snacks.It's part of a year-long project of corresponding with 130 of the Navy personnel to share ideas and learn about geography, current events and commitment.Of Team 7, or about one-third of the eighth grade at North Carroll and their teachers, 124 are voluntarily participating in the project, donating their study period to compose letters and design fund-raisers.

A group of German students from South Carroll High School will be among 200 students and teachers from around the state attending the first Maryland Organization for German Students convention tomorrow at the University of Maryland College Park.Participants will meet with Germanic Studies faculty, tour the campus and attend a workshop with Uwe Kind, an educator, artist and musician who has developed the "SingLingual" method of teaching foreign languages.Students also can attend workshops on German-American business; the Internet, World Wide Web and German; minority literature in Germany, Austria and Switzerland; and German popular music.

A newly built outdoor classroom at Piney Ridge Elementary School gives students and teachers an opportunity for hands-on learning about wetlands, aquatic life and the environment.The outdoor classroom, the first at a county elementary school, was made possible, in large part, through the efforts of Piney Ridge fifth-graders, who won a $3,000 grant for materials from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and students from South Carroll High School, who contributed labor to the project.The children and the teen-agers spent about six hours Tuesday building bridges, trails, an observation deck and a classroom on 8 acres of wetlands behind the school.

WASHINGTON -- After years of sidestepping a widening controversy, the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to clarify the legal responsibility of school officials when teachers or counselors sexually molest or assault students.The court took on a case from Texas involving a middle school girl who wants to sue a male teacher for damages over a sexual relationship that lasted for more than a year, when she was 14 and 15 years old.The girl, identified in court papers only as "Jane Doe," contends that the school district in Lago Vista, a town of 2,200 people northwest of Austin, was to blame because it gave the teacher "complete authority" over her, even though high-level officials did not know what he did to her.Because he was her teacher, the man "had the power to withhold or grant his favors as a teacher, the power to withhold or grant good grades and to govern every aspect of his students' conduct," the appeal argued.

Longer classes are the last thing Jennifer Banks would have asked for.But that was a year ago.The change to four 90-minute classes a day -- instead of the traditional seven 45-minute periods -- at three Carroll County high schools this year earns a resounding "Yes!" from the Francis Scott Key sophomore."I made honor roll for the first time in my whole life," Jennifer said. "I think I'm learning more and doing better work."She's working harder than ever, she said. And she likes it.Classes are twice as long as they used to be, but so is the honor roll at Key, Westminster and South Carroll high schools.

Two Centennial High School students have been named semifinalists in a prestigious science competition dubbed the "junior Nobel Prize." Seniors Peter Kamel and Henry Zheng are two of 300 students nationwide who are semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search. The students learned of their honors in the pre-college contest on Jan. 14. Each student earned a $1,000 prize and $2,000 for the school. Zheng's research focuses on the application of data fusion for prosthetic systems. Kamel's research addresses artificial tissue design.

A three-year plan for improving math curricula and teaching in Carroll County schools would ease students' transitions from elementary through high school, encourage the use of test data in instructional decision-making and place a math-resource teacher at every school. The draft plan, expected to cost more than $2 million to implement, is the second of three designed for different skill areas. The school system recently launched a two-year, comprehensive reading improvement plan that calls for more frequent assessments of students, among other reforms.

Findings this spring by state inspectors that repairs and maintenance of Baltimore schools have been badly managed expose a level of disrespect for students and teachers that should not be tolerated. School system officials must be more aggressive in fixing the problems, and Mayor Sheila Dixon's call for an audit of school construction and renovation funds should be conducted as quickly as possible. In addition to having some of the oldest school buildings in the state, Baltimore has a history of not managing its facilities very well.

The Gettysburg Address. The 50 states and capitals. The Preamble to the Constitution. The fifth-graders at Forest Hill Elementary School can recite them all. And it's not just the fifth-graders. For the first time, the entire student body at Forest Hill Elementary memorized political speeches and documents to become patriots, as defined by the school's Patriot Program. And they did it for their teacher, Adam Lawall, a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve who was deployed to Iraq in November.

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- From a distance, they looked like any other family members at a graduation. Mothers in crisp dresses clasped their husbands' hands. Younger children walked awkwardly behind them. But these families were different. They were not accompanied by a young adult wearing a cap and gown. They came to Virginia Tech's Lane Stadium yesterday in the names of their dead children. Among the nearly 4,800 degrees awarded at yesterday's commencement ceremonies were 27 given posthumously to students who were killed during a shooting rampage April 16. "While we are saddened by the loss of those who cannot be here today, I believe that they would want this ceremony to commemorate both the tragedy of yesterday and the promise of tomorrow," said keynote speaker Gen. John Philip Abizaid, the former commander of the United States Central Command.

One of three Howard County teachers accused in separate incidents of having inappropriate sexual contact with students is scheduled make his first appearance tomorrow in Circuit Court. Alan Meade Beier, 52, a chemistry and physics teacher at River Hill High School, was arrested Jan. 12 after he was accused of undressing and photographing a 16-year-old boy in his classroom. Police also have charged him with fondling a 17-year-old female student on two occasions, most recently in the fall.

As the 11th-grader tried to solve the algebra problem posted on the board, the teacher watched intently and occasionally chimed in with suggestions. When the boy seemed stumped, the teacher solicited help from a classmate. Eventually, the right answer became obvious. "Now check your work on your calculator," Linda Novak instructed the students in her college algebra course. "Your skills are getting good." The student-teacher exchange might seem typical, but at the Baltimore County school system's Home and Hospital Center in Bare Hills, the encounters occur by phone - and over the Internet.

WHEN THE nation's governors join business executives and education leaders at the National Education Summit on High Schools in Washington tomorrow, they'll be tackling one of education's toughest challenges - the troubling performance of the nation's secondary schools. The governors and their allies should recognize that both sides in the national debate hold part of the solution to high school reform. There's a lot of buzz in education about shrinking the size of high schools. Philadelphia recently became the latest big-city school system to announce plans to break its large, "comprehensive" schools into smaller, more personal places, a reform often associated with liberal educators.

For Lauren Whittington and Caralyn Welliver, their adviser at Winters Mill High School is one of the most important adults in their lives. Health teacher Sal Picataggi has advised the two juniors since ninth grade, helping them sort through such issues as college planning, job interviews and class schedules. Above all, Picataggi and the students say, lasting relationships have developed during the three years of daily 20- minute advisory sessions. "He plays an important role in our lives," Welliver, 16, of Westminster, said Thursday morning during an advisory period.

AS THE FATHER of two girls under age 3, I find that sleep is hard to come by. The ongoing crisis in the Baltimore City school system, of which I am a part, has made a good night's rest still more difficult. Even in the best of times -- and the last several months have been far from that -- being a principal in the city is a difficult challenge. Yes, the work is rewarding and full of joy. But it is always bone-tiring work. I have for three years been the principal at Waverly Elementary/Middle School, which is across the street from where Memorial Stadium was. By any measure, Waverly has been a success.