Education
Kelsey James-Kavanaugh, a prospective graduate student in wildlife conservation who lives in Oakland, aims to return to sub-Saharan Africa to continue working with lions, a project she had begun as an undergraduate. But before realizing her dream, she had to weigh her options for preparing to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), a standardized test that measures verbal and quantitative reasoning, analytical writing, and critical thinking skills for graduate school admission. Instead of choosing one of the traditional test prep…
“Are you enjoying your sex life?” That’s a question sex therapist Isadora Alman would like primary healthcare providers to ask their patients, along with other basic questions often asked of people coming in for a check-up, like inquiries about smoking or drinking. But this doesn’t happen, said Alman, who is also a California licensed marriage and family therapist, because, she believes, a satisfying sex life isn’t considered an important part of health. She addressed this topic last month during a…
Wearing bright shirts that say “Fighting for the Schools that Oakland Students Deserve” and holding supportive posters, nearly 500 parents, students, teachers and community members rallied at San Antonio Park on Tuesday before marching to the Oakland Unified School District headquarters on Broadway. Contract negotiations between the Oakland Education Association (OEA) and the school district have been going on for a year, and after meeting for three days for nearly nine hours each day, the union and district bargaining teams…
It is just shortly after noon on a Saturday, and the sun stands high over the historic Atchison Village in Richmond. Not a single cloud is in the sky. In its northwestern corner, a small crowd has gathered in front of one family home. The housing complex was originally built during World War II to accommodate workers from the nearby shipyards. In a small revolution, it was later sold to its residents and turned into a mutual housing cooperative. Today,…
On an early October morning in 1990, Ralph Spinelli swung open the back door of a large restaurant as he shoved his other hand into the pocket of his lightweight windbreaker, pretending to hold a gun. He had eaten at the restaurant several times before and knew that the door was unlocked around that time for deliveries — it was his habit to notice the weaknesses of an establishment. The three workers in the restaurant stared at Spinelli in bewilderment…
Unlike most of his classmates at Skyline High School in Oakland, Allan Qin, a shy 18-year-old, finishes class at noon and goes straight to work at the Emeryville headquarters of Peet’s Coffee & Tea. His day is just getting started. A high school senior, Qin has been working at Peet’s in technological support for more than five months. Opportunities for low-income students to find work are hard to find, and meaningful work is even more rare.
For one night, dancers at Oakland’s Skyline High School transported the auditorium’s occupants to the shores of West Africa with rhythmic drumming that reverberated through the room. Dancers stomped and moved rapidly across the stage, their energy captivating their audience. Then came the mystical sounds of the Kura, a West African 21-string instrument, which when plucked makes sounds similar to those of a harp and a guitar. This was the 20th Annual Collage des Cultures Africaines (Collage of African Cultures),…
On a Thursday morning just before lunch, 40-year-old Eugene Hamilton is looking at one of the two-year-old boys in his daycare. “You’re going to behave properly and not like a baby if you want to get back in there,” he says. The young boy wears a clean and snazzy orange flannel shirt, but is delivering a cross between a whine and a cry, the specialty of the walking, but not yet articulate, toddler. Eugene, dressed in crisp Nike casual sportswear,…
The museum welcomed in the new year with a fun-filled festival of Chinese and other Asian traditions for the fourteenth year in a row, as hundreds of children and parents learned how to write Chinese characters and watched performances in celebration of the Year of the Sheep.