Lincoln High School Students Selected for Genomatica Paid Summer Internship Program

CCTE has partnered with Genomatica to provide eight Lincoln High School students paid summer internships in the field of biotechnology. These students will be given the opportunity to work alongside scientists in the lab to gain experience capturing and analyzing relevant experimental data to derive valid conclusions, weighing precisely and pipetting properly to attain real results, and implementing sterile technique to avoid contamination when growing microbial culture. Students applied for these positions by submitting applications that included personal essays and then went through the formal interview process. Genomatica is a leader in bioengineering, developing biobased processes to make widely used chemicals that enable better, more sustainable everyday products.

MBHS CTE Engineering Students Design Improvements for the Campus Fence

Students in David West’s CTE Honors Engineering Design and Development class at Mission Bay High School recently participated in a school fence beautification project. The students worked in collaborative groups to create an original design that would improve the aesthetics of the tall metal fencing that currently surrounds the school, while at the same time promote school spirit. Considerations had to be given for safety, ease of installation and removal, environmental sustainability, durability and cost. Students prepared presentations in which they shared design drawings, justified their choice of materials and discussed their build schedules and budgets. These presentations were given before a panel of judges consisting of school and district staff, senior students, parents and community members. The winning project will be built and installed on the school fencing by the students.

 

Patrick Henry High's Benjamin Broudy Receives 2020 Congressional App Challenge Award

 Patrick Henry sophomore Benjamin Broudy was awarded top honors for the 2020 Congressional App Challenge hosted by the House of Representatives for the purpose of encouraging students to learn to code and inspire them to pursue careers in computer science. Ben represented District 53 which was under Susan Davis and now represented by Sarah Jacobs for his submission. Middle and High School students from all over the US submitted over 3,000 functioning apps representing 308 members of Congress making the competition extremely competitive. Ben’s app called “Train A Brain” dealt with neural networks that used artificial intelligence that takes arbitrary data and converts it to linear data. Ben will be invited to an Awards Ceremony hosted by the House of Representatives on April 8th. In addition to being in the Engineering/Computer Science pathways at Patrick Henry, he also is a member of Henry’s FIRST Robotics team where he likes to contribute by helping with coding the robot. When Ben is not doing his school work he enjoys gardening both inside and out and developing codes for automatic watering systems. Let’s congratulate Ben for his amazing accomplishments and success!

Meet Our SDUSD CCTE Counselors

Did you know that SDUSD school counselors provide services to students & families in three domains? They are: academic, social-emotional & career counseling. Our SDUSD College & Career Technical Education Department (CCTE) currently has two school counselors that help students & families plan & prepare for the world of work. Both Alissa Tuter & Andreanna Murphy have been meeting with many students & families via Zoom this school year. The focus of these meetings is to support students with their CCTE class pathway sequences and completion. In addition, support has been provided to students & families in the College & Career Access Pathway Program (CCAP) and Credit By Exam Program (CBE). This school year alone, over 5,000 high school students have participated in either of these program, which award college credit from our partnership agreement with the San Diego Community College District. For more information about either of these programs, please contact Andreanna Murphy (amurphy@sandi.net) and/or Alissa Tuter (Atuter@sandi.net).

CTE Biomedical Students Present Innovative Emergency Department Designs

 University City High School students in Janellel Aleksic’s CTE Biomedical Innovations course recently participated in the second round of Emergency Department Design Presentations. During the past several weeks, these students worked in groups to research a variety of emergency department facilities and identify existing challenges. The students then developed innovations to address one or more of these issues and designed their own emergency departments that incorporated their innovations. The students addressed physical layout, staffing considerations and patient care, including safety and privacy, in their designs. Each group then presented their final projects to a panel of local healthcare professionals and district educators. Biomedical Innovations is a capstone course within the CTE Health Science and Medical Technology Industry Sector Patient Care Career Pathway.

Five SDUSD Students Among 2021 YoungArts Award Winners

National YoungArts Foundation (YoungArts) announces the 2021 YoungArts award winners—659 of the most accomplished young visual, literary and performing artists from across the country. Selected through the organization’s prestigious competition, YoungArts award winners are chosen for their caliber of artistic achievement by esteemed discipline-specific panels of artists through a rigorous blind adjudication process. Students must be 15–18 years old or in grades 10–12 to be eligible for the program, and compete within artistic disciplines of Classical Music, Dance, Design Arts, Film, Jazz, Photography, Theater, Visual Arts, Voice and Writing.

Of the 659 national awards winners, five are from San Diego Unified. YoungArts awards are given in three categories: Finalist, Honorable Mention and Merit. Finalists from SDUSD: • Malvyn Lai, Classical Music/Piano-Mount Everest Academy • Luc Simpson, Dance/Modern-Contemporary-San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts • John Murray, Jazz/Double Bass-San Diego School of Creative & Performing Arts (iHigh Virtual Academy) Honorable Mentions from SDUSD: • Nick Caldwell, Jazz/Saxophone Tenor-San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts • Brenda Greggio, Jazz.Composition-San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts YoungArts award winners gain access to one of the most comprehensive programs for artists in the United States in which they will have opportunities for financial, creative and professional development support throughout their entire careers. This year, YoungArts award winners at all levels will receive: • Cash prizes between $100 and $10,000 • Opportunities to learn from leading artists such as Debbie Allen, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Frank Gehry, Wynton Marsalis, Salman Rushdie and Mickalene Thomas. • Exclusive creative and professional development support including a wide range of fellowships, residencies and awards • Access to YoungArts Post, a free, private digital network for YoungArts artists to connect, collaborate and learn about additional opportunities. YoungArts award winners at the Finalist level are invited to participate in National YoungArts Week + in January 2021 featuring virtual classes, workshops and mentorship from leading artists in their fields as well as virtual performances and an exhibition for the public. In addition, every year YoungArts nominates 60 artists to the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. The Commission then selects the 20 U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts, one of the highest honors given high school seniors bestowed by the President of the United States. Published at https://sites.google.com/sandi.net/vapanews/12820

Arts Integration Residencies at Ibarra and Sequoia Elementary

VAPA is happy to continue supporting arts integration residencies at both Ibarra and Sequoia Elementary schools in 2020-21. This work is an outgrowth of the collaboration between VAPA and professional arts organizations in our community. These partnerships between the San Diego Unified and Guitars in the Classroom and Arts for Learning, San Diego have their roots in SDUSD’s pioneering Title I initiative, Learning Through the Arts (LTA), launched in 2015.

Arts integration is a research based strategy that supports the achievement of Title I goals targeting both academic achievement and school climate, as well as student and parent engagement. In an arts-integrated lesson, students learn both arts and non-arts content simultaneously. LTA’s approach to arts integration was unique in SDUSD in that the curriculum was co-created and co-taught in collaboration between professional teaching artists and classroom teachers. One of the goals of this collaboration was the pedagogical growth of the artists reciprocated by the arts content growth of the classroom teachers. VAPA continues to innovate new approaches to meeting Title I goals through the arts. As a vehicle for both accessing and expressing learning in any content, the arts are a universal language that support multi-literacy and engage students in new, personal and creative ways. Originally published at https://sites.google.com/sandi.net/vapanews/12220

Social Entrepreneurship Challenge and Career Conference

“Challenging, awesome, amazing, and fun experience!” “Great opportunity to learn design thinking!” “Enjoyed meeting and working with new people”. “Excited to use this knowledge!” These were some of the words San Diego Unified High School students used to describe their experience as participants in Entrepreneurship Week. The event was designed in partnership by SDUSD College & Career Technical Education and Intuit, designers of Turbotax, Quickbooks, and Mint. Over three days 500+ SDUSD students participated in a Social Entrepreneurship Challenge and a Career Readiness Conference. The Social Entrepreneurship Challenge on November 17th and 18th connected students across all of the SDUSD high schools. During the two-day challenge, students selected a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to focus on, learned Intuit's own design thinking process, and worked together with a team to think of possible solutions to global and local needs. Through this real-world experience students' use of the skills companies believe are essential were on full display. Students were assigned to random breakout rooms. They had to communicate and get their team organized. Using Intuit’s Design for Delight design thinking process, and Mural, the application they would collaborate in, was all new to the students. They adapted to using this new process and tool quickly which allowed them to dive into researching their SDG and use critical thinking skills to identify the global and local needs. Students then brainstormed potential solutions, narrowed their focus and moved to consensus on a specific idea for which they created a solution. They then designed a plan and test. The last step was presenting their idea and plan. Students were asked to submit a video in which they pitched their solution. In the end, all 81 teams made the submission deadline. The Career Readiness Conference hosted by Intuit on November 19th was the culminating event. The conference began with the announcement of the teams recognized by the Intuit Innovation Catalysts as the top three finalists (see below) from the Social Entrepreneurship Challenge. The audience watched each of their videos and was asked to vote for their top design solution. This event featured keynote speaker, Daymond John, the Star of ABC’s Shark Tank. He spoke honestly and shared stories of success and failure as he discussed his SHARK Points, Set a Goal, Homework - do yours, Amor (love) what you do, Remember, you are the brand, and Keep swimming. Sessions gave the students an opportunity to learn about finding their why and they had an opportunity to choose career sessions and meet Intuit young professionals in the career. After the keynote, students attended a session on “Find My Why”. The Intuit Innovation Catalyst guided students through questions to help them land on a career to explore. During the last segment of the conference, students chose to learn more about marketing/web design/social media, project management, product design, software engineer/programming, business/finance analyst, or sales. After the career focused sessions, all participants were invited for the closing announcements and to learn which student team would be recognized as the winner of the Social Entrepreneurship Challenge. And the winner was … Team 5 from SDG 3 Good Health and Well Being, whose solution was to address the need of youth and family undernourishment. Their plan was to work with farms to acquire food that might go unused due to grocery stores not accepting it due to appearance, not quality of taste. In addition they created a system to distribute the food to youth and families in need. This was definitely an experience students, educators, and Intuit team members will remember. For students it was resume worthy, offered an opportunity to gain essential skills, and something they may want to share on future college applications or job interviews. For educators, it was reenergizing to see students voluntarily participating in a real world experience. For the Intuit team, it was a large scale experiment that was a success and impacted 500+ students.

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Pop Artist Alumni Visit Dingeman Class

In Garner Saguil’s 4th grade Seminar class at Dingeman Elementary, music is part of the curriculum. In just the first two weeks of school this year, the students had learned to tune their ukuleles and play three chords. Recently, the students of Room B9 have had some special visitors that inspired their music-making: two recording artists who are alumni of Dingeman Elementary. In fact, during their time at Dingeman, the two were Seminar students of Mr. Saguil’s, performing in classroom musicals as well as the Dingeman Choir.

The first alum to visit virtually was Daniel Jay Woods, who also attended SDSCPA. He has been releasing music on Spotify since 2016. A few weeks later, the class had a second guest - Elyssa Camerino, who Zoomed in all the way from Germany. Her first mini-album was in 2019 under the name Elyssa Isaac. Both artists played guitar and sang for the class. Bringing in the guest artists was integral to ‘motivate my kids to keep practicing their music through distance learning,’ says teacher Garner Saguil, also noting that ‘both have incredible voices and are passionate with their music.’ He looks forward to having others musicians come in - not necessarily just those who have produced albums, but former students who are just enjoying music for fun.