STEAM:CODERS Helps Put Kids on Track in Tech
Camper Genesis Montgomery gets help from instructor Michael Dragomir.
At a Norma Coombs Elementary School day camp recently, little hands and fingers flew over Chromebooks, with color puzzle pieces being dragged into place as the campers built a fictional, interactive story through the introductory Scratch coding program.
“You just have to play with it,” Michael Dragomir, a STEAM:CODERS summer camp teacher, told a 3rd-grader, who needed little encouragement as she did just that. She readjusted her headphones and dragged a different piece to see how that might change things up in her virtual-reality fiction, which happened to be a story about two girlfriends chatting in the park. Continue reading “STEAM:CODERS Helps Put Kids on Track in Tech”
Conservancy Awards $42,000 Grant for School Gardens
PCGC-sponsored School Gardens manager Jill McArthur leads a gardening workshop for PUSD 3rd-grade students in the Huntington Library’s citrus orchards; many PUSD school gardens now have their own orchards.
Pasadena Community Gardens Conservancy announced a $42,000 grant to the Pasadena Unified School District to underwrite the 2018-19 salary of a full-time School Gardens manager for the 16 educational food gardens located at PUSD campuses. These award-winning gardens help to improve family health and nutrition, enhance science education, and help increase parental involvement in the public schools.
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Civic League Honors Middle School Girls
Ashley Siebels, McKinley K-8 School; Elizabeth Mazaro, Sierra Madre Middle School; Mariana Cruz, Elliott Arts Magnet Academy; Alejandra Penalosa, Washington STEAM Magnet Academy; Idalina Bonham, John Marshall Fundamental School; Jade Barrera, Blair I.B. Magnet School; and Kayla Mendoza Mejia, Wilson I.B. Magnet School.
The recent Woman’s Civic League’s luncheon was devoted to honoring young women from Pasadena Unified School District middle schools who have shown tremendous growth and tenacity during their middle school years. This Continue reading “Civic League Honors Middle School Girls”
Assistance League of Pasadena Delivers School Supplies
Assistance League of Pasadena is extending its partnership with the Pasadena Unified School District, launching Operation School Bell: School Supplies for Success Program. After meeting with middle school representatives, it became clear that there is great need to provide school supplies to financially underserved students during the second semester.
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Rose City High Paves New Pathways for Success
Rose City High School Principal Brian Stanley has strengthened support services for his students with the help of dedicated, highly trained staff, including teacher Kathleen Saxton.
“We do things differently here.”
That’s not a statement heard often from a public school principal, but then again, Rose City High School Principal Brian Stanley is not a typical school head, nor is Rose City a typical public school. Continue reading “Rose City High Paves New Pathways for Success”
Realtors Read Across Pasadena
Reading Partners’ PUSD Students Need More Volunteers
Reading Partners volunteer Michael Sedano reads to his elementary school reading partner.
Reading Partners would like you to read between the lines: More volunteers are needed to partner with elementary schoolchildren.
The nationwide nonprofit’s local branch has been working with children at seven Pasadena Unified School District elementary schools each week, tutoring them on reading fundamentals and in practice.
But a dire need for more volunteers to read to the children has driven up a wait list of more than 100 young students in Pasadena who are still waiting for a reading partner.
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PUSD’s Math Academy Brimming With Exponentials
The thing about a great idea is nobody knows they need it until it exists.
Such was the case for Math Academy at Pasadena Unified School District, an advanced math program that is guiding its students to complete AP calculus in 8th grade so they can dedicate high school to college-level proof-based mathematics, including investigative research of probabilities and abstract formulas. By the end of high school, in fact, students might finish the equivalent of three quarters of an undergraduate mathematics degree.
Jason and Sandy Roberts, the parent volunteers and founders of Math Academy, know that the success of their great idea lies in its execution. The two are working diligently with the district to build the curriculum capable of incubating as many as 250 math students in one school year — “our own mini-CalTech,” quipped Jason — with 50 graduating each year from Pasadena High School Math Academy.
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$14.5 Million Grant Awarded to PUSD
Brian McDonald
The Pasadena Unified School District has been awarded a $14.5 million Magnet School Assistance Program grant from the U.S. Department of Education to support programs that promote diversity and increase student achievement at three schools located in the district’s northwest neighborhoods: Altadena Elementary, Washington STEAM Magnet and John Muir High School. The grant supports programs that draw diverse students from throughout the community and expands public school choices for parents.
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