C6
Life&Times Sy
Synergy
Local news, local teens
Pennsylvania
School day,
year could
lengthen
Report: U.S. students in class
less than in other countries
BY KARAMAGI RUJUMBA
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
PITTSBURGH — As yet another school
year unfolds, some students may bemoan the
end of a long summer break.
But students at City High Charter School,
in downtown Pittsburgh, have had to adjust
to a shorter break — just one month — be-
cause the school operates on a year-round
calendar.
“I wasn’t used to being in school that long,
but I got used to it,” said Angelo Carr, a jun-
ior.
Rick Wertheimer, principal and co-founder
of the school that opened in 2002, said, “We
just don’t think it’s healthy for a student to
spend 11 weeks out of their academic routine.
That’s when they develop bad habits again.”
City High is part of a movement to lengthen
the time students spend in school and use it
strategically.
Its calendar includes 186 days of instruction
— longer than many other public schools —
and about a month off three times a year.
The push for more time in school has won
supporters as prominent as President Barack
Obama, who last year said the typical Amer-
ican school day puts the nation at a compet-
itive disadvantage over countries where
students spend more time in school.
“We can no longer afford an academic cal-
endar designed when America was a nation
of farmers who needed their children at home
plowing the land at the end of each day,”
Obama said.
The comparison has been a repeated re-
frain since 1983, when a U.S. Department of
Education report, “A Nation at Risk,” con-
cluded that the lackluster amount of time —
and poor use of it — in American schools is
one of a number of factors that contribute to
“a rising tide of mediocrity” in the U.S. edu-
cation system.
The report found that American students
spend about six hours a day for 180 days a
year in school compared to their peers in
some other countries who spend at least eight
hours a day for 220 days a year in class.
In Pennsylvania, the norm is around
180 days.
Adding time has been a tough sell, given the
economics of paying teachers more to teach a
longer day and the practical realities of win-
ning support for shorter summers or less
time for after-school activities and jobs.
ALA. SCHOOL ADDS CLASS
OXFORD, Ala. — White Plains High
School has found a way at add an extra
hour to the day.
This year, White Plains began its
school year with an eight-period sched-
ule. The school day isn’t any longer, but
the school shaved off a few minutes
each period in its earlier seven-period
schedule, and added an extra, 35-
minute class period to the school day.
Principal Todd Chandler said teachers
can use the extra period for remedia-
tion. For most students, he said, it will
be a time to focus on reading.
While many schools in other areas
have only four class periods per day,
most schools in Calhoun County
have stuck with traditional schedules
that put kids in six or seven classes per
day.
— Associated Press
Konner Carr, foreground left, flips cue cards as Brett Bostick,
center, and Savannah Shapley rehearse for the five- minute
morning show broadcast at Heritage Elementary School in
Grapevine, Texas, Sept. 3.
Culinary writer Angela Sagabaen, left, helps high school culinary student Victoria Farmer check on her rabbit stock
while creating a meal in chef Emeril Lagasse’s test kitchen in New Orleans Sept. 10. Farmer is one of three high
school students whose dish will be served in Lagasse’s restaurants in October, with proceeds from the dishes’ sales
going toward a culinary arts teaching kitchen at a local arts-intensive high school.
Stars of
the menu
Emeril helps teen
chefs raise money
for cooking school
BY MARY FOSTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS — Chayil Johnson
was thinking of applying to the New Or-
leans Center for Creative Arts for the
music program. After all, the 13-year- old
plays the saxophone and piano, and
NOCCA has turned out such noted mu-
sicians as Harry Connick Jr., Trombone
Shorty and the Marsalis brothers.
But a three-week culinary camp spon-
sored by the school this summer put
Johnson on a different career path. He
decided hot dishes suited him more than
cool rhythms.
“I love jazz,” Johnson said. “But I just
feel I’m more creative in the kitchen.”
Music’s loss may be the gourmet’s gain.
Johnson, along with Victoria Farmer, 14,
and Janee Taylor, 17, dreamed up dishes
that will appear in all of Emeril Lagasse’s
restaurants in October.
“This is really
i n c r e d i b l e ,”
Lagasse
said, after
he, Leah
Chase
a n d
Poppy
T o -
oker
spent
lunch
Children go live on newscasts
Fifth-graders create
daily TV program
BY SHIRLEY JINKINS
FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
GRAPEVINE, Texas — It’s
lights, camera, action every week-
day morning in a corner of the
Heritage Elementary School li-
brary.
The KHES “studio” is the nerve
center of the 450- student K-5
campus; it’s community journal-
ism in its earliest stage.
“Let’s go from our poppin’ fresh
lunch to our poppin’ anchors,”
said fifth- grade chef Alexandria
Nault during a recent Friday
AP PHOTO
show, smoothly transitioning to
the campus news after announc-
ing the day’s lunch menu of pop-
corn chicken or pinto beans and
brown rice.
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AP PHOTOS
trying to select one of the youngsters’
creations to go on Lagasse’s menus.
“These are dishes that are well- re-
searched, beautifully cooked and pre-
sented, and that we will prepare and
serve just as you see them.”
The three were finalists in a contest to
see who could come up with the one
dish Lagasse would serve. But the judges
were stumped after tasting Farmer’s
Creole rabbit with roasted butternut
squash & spicy corncakes; Johnson’s
apricot glazed roasted duck with butter-
nut squash risotto; and Taylor’s
Louisiana surf and turf and grilled rib-
eye, seafood mashed potatoes featuring
Cajun crab boiled asparagus.
All three dishes will be served next
month.
High school culinary student Chayil
“They are original ideas and excellent
dishes,” Lagasse said after declaring the Johnson samples food while prepar-
contest a three- way tie. “We’re putting ing a meal in chef Emeril Lagasse’s
all three on the menu.” test kitchen in New Orleans Sept. 10.
Lagasse says the dishes will make a dif-
ference. Each time he sells one of them, “What we do here has a strong rela-
$10 will go to Lagasse’s foundation to tionship with the culture of the area
around us,” said Kyle Wedberg, Presi-
help fund a new culinary arts kitchen at
NOCCA. dent and CEO of NOCCA.
Lagasse also announced that he will And our food and its preparation —
donate $100,000 to funding a four-year just like our music — is a big part of our
culinary arts program at the school. His culture.”
foundation has already donated more Indeed, all three of the budding chefs
than $500,000 to that cause. cooking in Emeril’s test kitchen grew up
“This is what I want to do, get these cooking with family members.
young kids and show them a wonderful “I always cook with my grandmother
world that is waiting for them,” Lagasse and my parents,” Farmer said. “Since I
said. was about 5 or 6, we’re in the kitchen to-
NOCCA, a high school devoted to the gether all the time.”
creative arts, offers intensive training NOCCA has offered culinary camps in
in dance, music, writing, theater, the summer for the past four years.
visual arts, and beginning next year, culi- Four students apply for each slot,
nary crafts. Wedberg said.
“It’s fun, and I get to say some- with science words of the day,
thing crazy at the end,” she said wise quotations and character
later. tips on good manners.
Each of the Grapevine- Col- O.C. Taylor Elementary’s TTN
leyville district’s 11 elementary (Taylor Tiger News) airs each
schools offers a student-produced morning at 8 a.m.
morning news telecast at least a Bransford Elementary students
few days a week. watch KBEST for their morning
Fifth- graders fill the roles of an- updates. At Cannon Elementary,
chors, reporters, editors, photog- the format is a little different.
raphers and technicians, “For five years, it was produced
replacing old- style faculty an- live just like the other elementary
nouncements with style and en- schools,” faculty adviser Cindy
ergy. Walling said. “Last year we
“It promotes leadership, makes changed the format to an after-
them poised and articulate in school club where the students
public speaking, and when they
plan, film, edit, and create each
write out their cue cards, they
have to be grammatically correct,” episode of the morning an-
said Heritage Principal Stacey nouncements electronically.”
Voigt, who brought the idea with Each episode takes the cast of
her 10 years ago from Timberline 15 to 20 students about two hours
Elementary. Classroom an- to complete. Once the episodes
nouncements, meeting notices, are created and saved, the stu-
football ticket prices and birthday dents upload them onto teachers'
shout- outs are given equal time classroom computers.