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Want fries with your job? The good news: according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics's latest job growth prediction, the US economy will add millions of jobs for Americans with only a high school diploma.
According to the BLS, there will be 20.4 million more jobs in 2020 than there were in 2010. About 12.8 million of those jobs will require a high school degree or less. Many of those will be clustered in services. The country will need more healthcare aides to look after a rapidly aging population. There will be more work in food preparation, retail, and office administration. The graph below depicts the occupations requiring a high school degree or less that are expected to add the most jobs (from left to right).
The bad news? They don't pay well.
There are a few solidly middle-class jobs tucked in here -- a good salesperson for a wholesaler averages $62,000 a year. An administrative support supervisor takes home more than $50,000 a year. A carpenter makes $43,000. But most of these jobs offer between $18,000 and $30,000 a year. The pay for the jobs at the far left, which will generate the most employment growth, is particularly abysmal.
Jordan Weissmann of The Atlantic has more: Link
For the first time ever, Pinckney Community High School in Michigan crowned a homecoming queen they had to summon from the locker room. Brianna Amat received the title while wearing her football uniform, complete with shoulder pads. But that wasn’t the end of the 18-year-old field goal kicker’s big night last Friday. She also won the game.
A short while later, with five minutes to play in the third quarter, Amat was called to the same field to attempt a 31-yard field goal. She split the uprights.
The kick proved decisive as Pinckney held on for a 9-7 victory against a Grand Blanc team that had come into the game ranked seventh in the state in its division. It also earned Amat the nickname the Kicking Queen.
The twin accomplishments were still sinking in Monday, said Amat, a senior who has played soccer since she was 3 but who tried out for the football team only last spring, at her soccer coach’s suggestion.
“It’s just starting to hit me today,” she said in a telephone interview. “The guys were congratulating me, but without them, I wouldn’t even have gotten close” to making the kick.
Amat, who maintains a 4.0 GPA and is active in student government, is the first female to make the school’s varsity football squad. Link -via Breakfast Links
(Image credit: Stephen McGee for The New York Times)
I don’t know about you guys, but I always crack up when I see someone who is obviously over 25 trying to pass themselves off as being a high schooler in a movie or TV show. That being said, I had no idea that Olivia Newton John was 27 when she acted in Grease.
Read about more full-grown adults who played angsty teenagers over at FlavorWire.
If you’re upset about the state of education in America, here’s a ray of hope in the form of a robotic hand. Created by Colorado high school student Easton LaChappelle, this mechanical marvel was ingeniously printed out of paper and fiberglass, and is controlled remotely by Easton via glove control, which allows the young inventor the privilege of congratulating himself. Watch the hand in action over at PopSci.
Link -image by Easton LaChappelle
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The people I know in college always add their favorite professors on Facebook, but if they were still in high school and happened to live in Missouri, that would be completely against the law. Granted, it’s a little questionable for a teacher and minor-aged student to be friends on the internet, but do you guys think it should be illegal?
Link Via Geekosystem
When I was in school, the only things you could do to show off your originality was to switch up your clothes, hair and make up. One Russian school decided to let the kids have a little more fun by allowing each one to draw up their own background on the chalk boards. The results are delightfully fun so be sure to check out the other pics at the link.
Is
it socially acceptable to shame your kid into performing better academically
in school? Here's what one fed-up mom did to her teenage boy:
Ronda Holder is so disappointed with her son's poor academic performance that she's resorted to shaming the 15-year-old on the streets of their Tampa Bay, Florida, neighborhood. Holder said the last straw was when her son, James Mond III, failed even his P.E. class. That's when she made a sign detailing Mond's abysmal grade point average—1.22—and forced the boy to walk up and down a busy street corner for hours on end.
Neither Holder nor her husband graduated high school, but she says she wants better education for her son, who she says seems to have no interest in academic achievement. "You take the phone. You take things from them—it don't work," she said. "So embarrassing is the best thing. He don't like to get embarrassed."
How in the world can you flunk PE anyway? Link
Are you bullied in high school because you’re a geek? Don’t worry, it gets better.
Many popular students approach graduation day with bittersweet nostalgia: excitement for the future is tempered by fear of lost status. But as cap-and-gown season nears, let’s also stop to consider the outcasts, students for whom finishing high school feels like liberation from a state-imposed sentence.
In seven years of reporting from American middle and high schools, I’ve seen repeatedly that the differences that cause a student to be excluded in high school are often the same traits or skills that will serve him or her well after graduation.
Examples abound: Taylor Swift’s classmates left the lunch table as soon as she sat down because they disdained her taste for country music. Last year, the Grammy winner was the nation’s top-selling recording artist.
Students mocked Tim Gunn’s love of making things; now he is a fashion icon with the recognizable catchphrase "Make it work."
J.K. Rowling, author of the bestselling "Harry Potter" series, has described herself as a bullied child "who lived mostly in books and daydreams." It’s no wonder she went on to write books populated with kids she describes as "outcasts and comfortable with being so."
(Yes, the title is inspired from the It Gets Better Project, which lets LGBT kids and teens know that things will get better … if they can just get through their teen years. Here’s a fascinating story about the project over at NPR)
Gaby Rodriguez of Toppenish High School in Washington state spent most of her senior year pregnant. Except she wasn’t. The 17-year-old wore a bulge of wire mesh and fabric as an experiment to see how other students reacted for her senior project. Read more about this story at NeatoBambino. Link
This production number is called “Millennium Falcon,” a song set to the tune of “Greased Lightning” from Grease. It’s a part of the 1996 high school musical version of Star Wars produced by the students of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School. Other numbers used tunes from Godspell, Les Miserables, and Tommy. The entire production is available (with subtitles) in six video segments posted at Salon. Link -via Metafilter
Jason Pitts asked Lianna to the prom during third period class last week in an romantic way that made me smile from ear to ear. The lyrics are available at the YouTube link. -via Buzzfeed
What’s better than going to music school? How about turning a school into music?
Music student Ben Meyers turned an entire high school into his musical instruments in this clip, titled "Empty School."
Watch the clip over at Laughing Squid: Link
What if social media were a high school? That’s the question Ethan Bloch tries to answer by slotting in the “types” of networks into his “yearbook”. Where would you fit into this system? Link -via Monkeyfilter
Previously: The Cliques of Social Networking
Sharing your chicken nuggets during school lunchtime? I’ve got two words for you: LAW BREAKER!
Adam was accused of stealing chicken nuggets from a $2.60 meal. Those are the nuggets his friend, Gakaree Garner, gave to him. Garner says, "Although that month I was fasting so I couldn’t eat meat, and we had chicken nuggets that day."
Garner gave the nuggets to Adam, who got in the lunch line to get some sauce for them. According to Garner and the police report the cafeteria cashier told the Assistant Principal Adam stole the chicken nuggets. The Assistant Principal then told the police officer in the school, who called a squad car. Garner says, "They actually put him in handcuffs, and actually tried to force him into the car."
Ava Hernandez says, "They were like, ‘Well do you know that friend receives federally free lunch?’, and I said, ‘I do now.’, and they said, ‘Well, it’s illegal to share a free lunch so either way Adam was breaking the law’."
When his son entered high school in Warner Robins, Georgia, little did pastor Donald Crosby know that he would soon be involved in fighting Satan himself, in the form of the high school’s mascot:
The devil is at the center of a fight that seems to start every few years when someone new to Warner Robins realizes that the city’s oldest high school, which has one of the most successful football programs in Georgia, rallies around a green-eyed, pitchfork-carrying demon.
The Warner Robins High School Demons.
A pastor at Kingdom Builders Church of Jesus Christ was shocked when he realized his own son could be among the hundreds of students shouting ‘Go Demons!’ to cheer on the school’s sports teams, but particularly in football, where the Demons have won four state championships over the years.
Link – via Fark (photo: Football Friday Night)
Rueben Ayala of Brighton, Colorado had completed three years of high school when he was drafted to serve in World War II. He didn’t like to talk about the war, and his children didn’t know that he didn’t graduate from high school until recently. Sixty-six years later, he has that diploma.
“I’m just so honored, so very honored to be here today,” he said as he got ready to walk onto the football field of Brighton High School with the rest of the class of 2010.
It is safe to say that Ayala was likely the only graduate of the day with 13 grandkids and 18 great grandkids.
When his name was finally read, it is also safe to say that Ayala was the only member of the class to receive a standing ovation from the entire crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to present to you Mr. Rueben Ayala, 2010 graduate of Brighton High School,” the speaker said.
Ayala slowly walked to the front grinning as wide as is humanly possible. His daughter, Susan Meador, wiped away a few tears.
“I really think this is a dream come true to him, something that he waited his entire life for,” Meador said.
Ayala graduated with the help of Operation Recognition – Veterans Diploma Project, which helps veterans whose education was interrupted by the war service. Link
Eighteen-year-old Connor Olson of Tonganoxie, Kansas spent the past year fighting bone cancer. Earlier this month, he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on one side. But he also achieved the rank of Eagle Scout and was looking forward to graduating from high school. Last week, Tonganoxie High School held an early graduation ceremony for Connor in which he was the only graduate.
The high school let out early Thursday so that Connor’s friends could watch him get his diploma.
So by the time he made his way into the auditorium, more than 500 people — classmates, neighbors, school board members, people who have raised money for his medical bills — were waiting for him.
Connor’s teachers, wearing black graduation gowns, stood in a big semicircle in front of the stage, most of them blinking back and wiping tears from their eyes.
Even though the stage has a lift, Connor’s friends carried his wheelchair to the stage where he received his diploma. Speakers included the senior class president and a representative of the University of Kansas football team. The school band played the national anthem and a slide show of Connor’s school days was shown. After he received his diploma, he went home with his parents and hospice nurse. Link (with video) -via Fark
Connor died a week later. Link
(image credit: John Sleezer)
Doyle Geddes, a teacher at Sky View High School in Smithfield, Utah, led 150 students through the construction of the world’s largest recreation of Van Gogh’s masterpiece Starry Night. The finished product was 72 feet by 90 feet on the gym floor, and an inch deep in breakfast cereal! A Malt-O-Meal factory donated two tons of Tootie Fruities, Cocoa Dyno-Bites and Frosted Mini Spooners for the project.
“To the best of our knowledge it is the largest re-creation of a Van Gogh work of art in any medium,” he said. The re-creation – made with blue, purple, red, green, yellow and brown cereals – was displayed in a gym at Sky View.
As he looked at the completed project Saturday, Geddes said, “I think it’s better than we even expected or dreamed that it could be.” He thinks Van Gogh would be happy with the re-creation, too.
The work was displayed to the public for four hours on Saturday, then the cereal was collected and given to a farmer to feed his pigs. The Herald Journal details the process of making the recreation. Link to story. Link to time-lapse video.
(image credit: Alan Murray/Herald Journal)
Some of these stories will cause outrage or sadness, and some will make you cringe at how important the prom is for high school students. Then there are a few stories to warm your heart, like that of 84-year-old Kenneth Smith. Smith was called up to serve in World War II and didn’t finish high school or attend the prom. The Chester High School class of 2008 invited Smith to their prom.
A friend arranged for him to receive an honorary diploma from Chester High School, just outside Philadelphia, and finally go to the prom. He did – at the Springfield Country Club. Smith said this prom wasn’t just for him. He said it was also for all the other soldiers who couldn’t make it to their own.
See all ten prom stories at Oddee. Link -via Unique Daily
Jordan Breindel of Urlesque compiled thirteen student-made music videos about Advanced Placement courses and tests available in many American high schools. Those subjects featured are: calculus, chemistry, economics, European history, U.S. history, English, statistics, Spanish, art history, government, psychology, world history, and physics.
The video above was created by students of Ms. Seckar-Martinez of McCallum High School in Austin, Texas.
Shorewood High School made a lip dub video to Hall and Oates’ song “You Make My Dreams Come True”. That’s quite an accomplishment in itself, and might remind you of the “I Gotta Feeling” video (seen here) …but wait, there’s something not quite right about this video. It won’t take you long to figure it out! -via reddit
It’s a common belief in America these days that without a high school diploma, you have no future. This opinion may be true to some extent, but it’s certainly not a hard and fast rule. There are a lot of highly successful people in this world who never even completed high school.
One of these successful people is Flava Flav, who dropped out of school when he was only 13, although, admittedly, it shows. He’s now planning to return to school to get his G.E.D., and the ordeal may even become a reality show on VH1. He’s not the only celebrity that dropped out of high school and still did well though. In fact, some high school dropouts are actually pretty brilliant.
Image Via Jeremy Farmer Photography [Flickr]
The founder of Wendy’s, Dave Thomas started working in the restaurant industry at only 12 years old. His family was constantly on the move and at age 15, he refused to keep moving with his parents. He was working part time at the Hobby House restaurant in Fort Wayne and dropped out of high school to start working at the business full time.
After working as a mess sergeant during the Korean War, he began working for KFC, where he was able to help turn several of their failing franchises around. In 1969, he sold of the KFC franchises he owned and opened his own restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. He named the restaurant after his daughter, who was actually called Melinda, but was nicknamed Wendy. These days, Wendy’s is the third largest burger chain in America.
In 1993, Dave decided that he didn’t want to set a bad example for any youngsters out there, so he enrolled at Coconut Creek High School and earned his GED.
Famed Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw held an outright animosity towards schooling that he maintained throughout his life. He was quoted as saying, “schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.” Not surprisingly, the writer never completed his own education, having dropped out of the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School.
His main complaints about schooling was the standardization of the curriculum, which he believed deadened the spirit and stifled the intellect. He also deplored the corporal punishment being used in schools, although most modern teachers and parents would agree with him on this issue.
Source Public Domain Image Via Wikipedia
Creator of the Kodak Camera Company, George Eastman, was forced to drop out of school due to financial circumstances. At only 14, his father died and the only way George could keep his two sisters and mother alive was to quit school and begin working as an office boy full time. By the age of 26, Eastman found his true calling and began working to improve the emulsion process involved in photography. He thought the liquid emulsions proved quite a problem as they were excessively sticky and had to be used quickly before they dried. In only three years, Eastman had perfected his dry emulsion plates and he started his own photographic business in 1880.
Source Public Domain Image Via U.S. Library Of Congress
While a lot of famous directors hone their skills during college, Quentin Tarantino built up his film knowledge by working in a video rental store in Manhattan Beach, California.
He not only never went to college, but he quit going to Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California in his freshman year. He started learning the acting craft in acting school at the James Best Theatre Company in Toluca Lake, but it really wasn’t until he started working at Video Archives with Roger Avery, also a director these days, that he really began sharpening his future skills. Some people complain about Tarantino’s movies having too much focus on the dialogue, but for a high school dropout, I’d say that’s not such a bad thing.
Source Image Via pinguino [Flickr]
If comedy really is born from tragedy, then it is only logical that Richard Pryor became one of the top comedians of the seventies. Pryor had anything but an easy life.
He was raised in his grandmother’s brothel, where his mother “worked” and his father served as her pimp. At only ten, his mother abandoned him and his strict grandmother took over his care, beating him whenever she thought he was acting “eccentric.” With a home life like this, it’s not all to surprising that he ended up being expelled from high school at 14.
In the end, Pryor ended up proving the adage that “whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” and his comedy career was one of the longest lasting and most successful of the last fifty years.
Source Image Via Alan Light [Flickr]
Peter Jennings started broadcasting when he was only nine years old. He followed the footsteps of his father, a respected radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and operated as the host of a CBC children’s program called “Peter’s People.” Surprisingly, his father was out on assignment when Jennings was chosen for the gig and he was furious at the network for hiring his son solely because he was the son of a broadcaster.
When it came to schooling, Jennings was a great athlete, but a terrible student, which he said was due to “pure boredom.” He failed to pass the 10th grade and dropped out as a result. He tried to attend Carleton University, but “lasted about 10 minutes” before he dropped out there.
After school, he started working at The Royal Bank of Canada, but he dreamed of being a professional broadcaster. I’d say did pretty well at meeting those goals, wouldn’t you?
Before he directed the Lord of The Rings, or even his cult classics like Meet The Feebles, Peter Jackson was just a film-obsessed kid. He was trying to make his own film by age of nine, complete with the special effects he loved to see in shows like “Thunderbirds.” After he saw the original King Kong, he started trying to mimic the stop-motion from the film. He spent his entire childhood and all of his teenage years making short films and developing his own special effect techniques, which even included making his own minuscule models.
When he was 16, he dropped out of high school and started working as an apprentice engraver in a newspaper photography department. He kept living with his parents so he could save money for film-making supplies, which he soon used to begin production on what would become his first full-length film, Bad Taste. When you know that your future is film you don’t have a real need for the three Rs of “reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic.”
Source Image Via Natasha Baucas [Flickr]
There’s a video clip making the rounds on the Net about a supposed school answering machine.
The story goes like this: When administrators of the Maroochydore High School in Queensland, Australia, implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for attendance and homework, parents of children with failing grades sued. The staff of the school recorded this answering message as a response:
The video clip is going viral, perhaps it strikes a chord, but unfortunately, it’s a hoax. Old Internet hands will remember a similar clip circulating back in 2002 with a different school name, the Pacific Palisades High School.
Snopes said:
In 1998 the sole high school in the Palisades Charter Schools group, the 2,400-student Charter High School, instituted an attendance policy mandating that any student absent without a valid excuse ten or more days per semester be failed, regardless of his academic achievements. One of the results of this policy was that in February 2002 forty Palisades High teachers assigned a total of 130 failing grades to students whose classwork would otherwise have merited passing grades, because those students recorded absences and tardiness in excess of the school’s stated attendance policy.
After vociferous complaints (and threats of lawsuits) from parents who contended they were unaware of, or didn’t agree with, Palisades High’s attendance policy (even though every student and parent had been informed of it), LAUSD officials said the failing marks might have to be voided because the attendance policy was not submitted to and approved by the school board. Without board approval, the school must follow the policies of the LAUSD, which states that students must be graded on the work they do and attendance may not be used as a reason to fail
them.
The staff of the Pacific Palisades High School did make the answering machine recording though it was never put on the school’s system.
Still. It’s funny. Thanks alientango!
Remember our post about boy scouts trained in anti-terrorism? In one high school in Maryland, you can even take courses in domestic security – but before you cry foul, consider this: it may simply be a good career move for the kids.
Meade High School, where Edler teaches, made its own history this year. The long-troubled public high school become one of the first in the nation to offer a four-year course in domestic security. The goal: to help graduates build careers in one of America’s few growth industries.
"This course will help me get a top-secret security clearance," said Darryl Bagley, an eager 15-year-old. "That way I can always get a job."
Meade offers its 2,150 students a standard high school curriculum, including electives like advanced calculus and carpentry. But the 90 ninth-graders who chose the new homeland security program this last school year focused on topics torn from the headlines: Islamic jihadism, nuclear arms, cyber-crime, domestic militias and the like.
New themes even were added to their science, social studies and English classes.
"There’s a lot of homeland security issues in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ " said Bill Sheppard, the program coordinator. "Like, how do you deal with infiltration in your own family?"
Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times has the story of agents in the making: Link (Photo: Chris Usher / LA Times)
Putting a man on the moon, solving Fermat’s Last Theorem, or firing a tenured teacher because of incompetence or even criminal behaviors: which is harder?
While most teachers are good, decent people with the thankless jobs of teaching unruly kids with dwindling resources and ever-increasing class sizes, there are a few bad apples that really ruined school for a lot of children. But why is it so difficult to fire them?
Jason Song of the Los Angeles Times investigates:
Joseph Walker, a former principal of Grant High School in Van Nuys, was sued by a special education teacher whom he tried to dismiss for alleged repeated sexual harassment. A civil jury sided with Walker — but the review commission decided the teacher shouldn’t be fired. The case, now in the courts, has dragged on seven years.
Confronting uphill battles like this, Walker said: "You’re not going to fire someone who’s not doing their job. And if you have someone who’s done something really egregious, there’s only a 50-50 chance that you can fire them."
Walker is now principal of Discovery Charter Preparatory Academy in Pacoima, where he said he had fired three teachers so far this year. None were fired during his three years as head of Grant. The difference: His school’s teachers are not unionized and can be fired at will.
(Photo: Joseph Walker. Photo credit: Liz O. Baylen / LA Times)
Who hasn’t hesitated about going back to their high school reunion? Andrea Wachner decided that she’s going to do something different. Instead of going herself, she sent a stripper to go as her!
Even better, she set up filmed the event for all of us to enjoy …
– via nontt
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by non.
