By Katy Murphy
Thursday, January 27th, 2011 at 6:00 pm in elementary schools, history
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I was in second grade when the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated off the Florida Coast on Jan. 28, 1986. My teacher could barely get the words out. She wheeled in a television set, turned on the news, and we watched that now-iconic clip, which was played over and over for days.
In the mid-1980s — at least, before that day — if you asked a little kid at my school or on my block about his or her career aspirations, there was a good chance you’d hear they wanted to be an astronaut. I wonder if the Challenger changed that. It certainly complicated my notions of space travel.
Pete Cuddyre, a retired Oakland principal, was at Joaquin Miller Elementary School at the time. He said his faculty saw the event as a teachable moment.
By Katy Murphy
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 at 8:24 pm in high schools, students, teachers
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At the Oakland school board meeting tonight, Oakland International High School Principal Carmelita Reyes shared a story about one of her students, Tjay, who is now 18. I thought it might resonate with some of you. So here it is, in my words:
Tjay was abandoned in Mongolia and sent to the United States when he was in eighth grade. He was alone in Oakland, without any family. An “unaccompanied minor.” The high school he went to didn’t know it. His first year, he earned a 0.05 GPA. “He cut class constantly and drove his teachers crazy,” Reyes said. In the spring of his freshman year, he decided he needed a change. He enrolled at Oakland International, a small school for recently arrived immigrant and refugee students.
