If one were to write a motto to describe Kern County’s Teachers of the Year - Stockdale High health teacher Sloan Holmes and Sunset School music teacher Louis Yuen - it would probably read the same - "Don’t Give Up." Both were selected from a distinguished field of 37 educators in an awards reception on May 6 at the Kern County Museum to represent Kern County in the California Teacher of the Year competition. Carrie Atkin, a preschool special education teacher with the Kern County Superintendent of Schools (KCSOS) Office and Rick Francis, AVID and English teacher at Golden Valley High School were honored as alternates for the award. The California Department of Education (CDE) sponsors the annual California Teacher of the Year program. The county program, sponsored by KCSOS, featured teachers nominated for the award by their schools and districts. A committee of educators and volunteers reviewed all the applications. Recent site visits were made to the top candidates. All 37 nominees received plaques and certificates. Recognizing each of the nominees for their accomplishments, Kern County Superintendent of Schools Larry E. Reider told them, "Education in Kern has many things of which to be proud. To this proud list of accomplishments, we can add our ‘Teachers of the Year’ nominees. They represent the very best of our many fine teachers - those that daily make sure a child learns the skills necessary to succeed in later life." More

Discovery Elementary fourth-grader Rylee Smith, Stockdale Elementary fifth-grader Tiffany Yeh and Endeavour Elementary sixth-grader Andrew Beard emerged as Bank of America Essay and Speech Contest winners among 29 of the best essayist-speakers who competed in the annual event held May 8 at University Square in Bakersfield. Each convinced the judges they should be their grade level champion by delivering a three-to-five minute speech from an essay they had previously written on the topic, "Who Is Your Modern Day Hero." Approximately 600 Kern County students had written classroom essays on the topic. Each county English and language arts region could nominate only one classroom essay per grade level. The top 29 essayists, as determined by a panel of judges from the Kern County Superintendent of Schools’ (KCSOS) Curriculum, Instruction and Accountability department, were picked to compete in the speech portion of the contest. Bank of America’s South Sierra Valley Market and KCSOS sponsor the competition, which awards savings bonds in the amounts of $100 for first place, $75 for second and $50 for third. Smith said priest, Father Craig Harrison, was her hero. A man who Smith characterized as "conducting at least eight funerals a week and at each one he finds a unique way to touch each person and ease their pain. He even adopted seven children when no one else would look after them," Smith said. More

Although it is not scored as a team competition, Wallace Middle School from Lake Isabella distinguished itself with four category winners, while Fruitvale Jr. High and Ollivier Middle schools had three category champions of their own among approximately 950 students from 40 schools who competed at the 38th annual Kern County Middle School Mathematics Field Day held at Ridgeview High School in Bakersfield on May 3. The math talent was spread among many with 14 different schools claiming at least one category champion. Sponsored by the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, Westchester Kiwanis Club, Bakersfield Math Council, California Math Council, Kern County Science Foundation American Petroleum Institute-San Joaquin Valley Chapter and Ridgeview High, the competition is a fun day of problem solving games and events. Some have playful names such as "leap frog" and "mad hatter." Still others offer the flavor of athletic competition with names such as "power relay," "circuit training," "individual medley" and "triathlon games." Some of the cheering, during the outside team relay, math solving events, took on the air of a sporting event with one spirited student spectator shouting out, "Three plus two equals five," for no apparent reason. More

It was almost as if a light bulb came on in teacher Kevin Crosby’s head when he saw that Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) was willing to invest $5,000 in schools that could harness energy to educate students. Crosby, who teaches a severely handicapped class for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools at Sunset School in Lamont, came up with the idea of creating a "solar garden and greenhouse" for his students. After lots of research and planning, Crosby applied for a "Bright Ideas Grant" under PG&E’s "Solar Schools" program in September. Word came back from the energy giant on January 2 that Crosby’s idea, "Project Solar Garden," had been selected and that he would be recipient of the maximum grant award of $5,000. Crosby was excited about the news."Project Solar Garden will provide our students with hands-on scientific experiences," Crosby said. "It will definitely help our students who have developmental delays and struggle with basic academic skills. Our students learn the most from visual and kinesthetic activities. If they can see and feel the plants and dig up the soil with their own hands, they can make the connection between how a seed becomes a plant. If they are able to water the plants everyday and monitor their growth, then they will learn the growth cycle of plants." Crosby got even more ideas when PG&E paid for him to go to Sacramento on March 18 to attend a series of workshops on wind power, solar and hydrogen energy. He also received a National Energy Development Project Science of Energy Kit to supplement his classroom curriculum with measurable experiments. More

No one, other than gang members, wants gangs in their schools and communities. Much has been said about the destructive nature of gangs and how the perception of their power influences at risk children. The Kern County Superintendent of Schools is doing more than talking, having just hired Kevin Keyes and Salvador Arias to join the office as Gang Prevention Specialists. Assigned to the School-Community Partnerships program, Keyes, Arias and their boss, Prevention Programs Coordinator Daryl Thiesen, have begun a county-wide program of gang prevention, collaborating with law enforcement, courts, local service agencies, schools, parents and children to bring it about. The program, called Project 180, arose out of Kern County’s gang prevention funding. You probably could not have hired two people with a greater understanding of gangs than Keyes and Arias. They have lived it. Arias, by his own admission, was a gang member. He was beaten up and urinated on as a kindergartner because his brother was in a gang. The beatings continued through third grade, when he decided the only way to protect himself was by joining a gang. It caused him to miss school from which he was expelled in the sixth grade. Arias remembers being chased across a school campus by gang members wielding guns and chains. His house was the target of a drive by shooting. When his best friend was killed in that manner, a convincing school counselor advised the Arias family to quit their jobs and move to save their own lives. More