Education
A gymnasium full of teachers, teenagers and community members are sitting around small tables and jotting down the names of their favorite teachers on blue Post-It notes at Edna Brewer Middle School. Stephanie Benjamin, a 17-year-old peer educator with Youth Uprising, met her favorite teacher during elementary school in Oakland. She reads from her Post-It: “Ms. Wallis knew what was going on with us. She wouldn’t just get on you for not doing your work, she’d try to figure out…
Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and a number of famous African Americans ancestors made an appearance at an elementary school in East Oakland on the final day of Black History Month. Ancestor Day 2013 at Ile Omode, a pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school in East Oakland, consisted of four and five year-old students dressing up as notable historical figures and delivering their most memorable quotes to a room full of parents and teachers. The audience cheered as students dressed as Dr….
On behalf of Oakland’s family literacy programs, student Malak Alsabahi stood at the podium and asked the school board not to cut adult education. Fellow supporters held paintings of Yemeni women while Alsabahi spoke, representing classmates who could not be there at the school board meeting Wednesday.
About three dozen American Indian Model Schools (AIMS) students and parents took turns Wednesday, each speaking for one minute, hoping to convince the Oakland school board that their three schools shouldn’t be shut down. The board voted in January to give the AIMS administration a “notice of intent to revoke” the schools’ charters after alleging fraud and financial mismanagement at the schools.
In the quiet of La Escuelita Elementary’s cafeteria on Saturday morning, one by one, parents took turns telling stories of their frustrations with special education in Oakland public schools. Saturday’s meeting was the sixth of eight community meetings OUSD has held since December.
It is easy to think of hackers as criminals. It’s intuitive, maybe because of Hollywood’s depiction of hackers as invasive, ninja-like evil geniuses, who can download all of your personal data in a few minutes and ruin your life.
The children and youth who participate in health and education programs at the East Oakland Boxing Association got the chance to meet Golden State Warriors forward Carl Landry on Thursday afternoon. The NBA star joined representatives from Good Sports, a national nonprofit that donates sports equipment to kids, in gifting the community organization $10,000 for new equipment.
“My last trip in the penitentiary, I had to make a decision on what I wanted to do with my life,” said Reggie Bailey, sitting in the swiveling barber chair in his small shop in the heart of downtown Oakland. “I just decided to go to barber college.”
The Oakland Asian Cultural Center welcomed the Year of the Snake at its annual Lunar New Year event in downtown Oakland on Saturday. The 2013 festival showcased dance and musical performances from groups throughout the Bay Area’s Asian community, including the Rising Dragon Culture Center Lion Dance Troupe, who opened the show with dragons prancing around. Students of Seibi Lee, the center’s artist-in-residence preformed Kathak, a classical dance from India, while Winnie Wong and Diana Rowan played the harp and the piano. Throughout…