High School News

All I want to do is buy a yearbook. I wasnt going to get one this year since I didnt see any of my friends from Shen because of New Visions. And what on earth would they say if I did get one? We had some great times this yearJK! I never saw you!

But when somebody pointed out that there was a picture of me holding an apple and looking like a praying mantas on the front cover, I gave in.Yet buying a yearbook here at Shen has been the most complicated process I have ever encountered. The first day I tried I had a check written for 5 dollars less than the actual price. When I tried to hand them the check AND 5 dollars, the girl told me that they only

Definitely not what my senior year felt like…

took check or money order.

Oh. Ill just come back tomorrow then, I told her and then giggled? I wasperplexed even a little embarrassed, but whatever.

Then I went back today and gave them the check for the right amount. The girl goes, We cant take checks. Only cash or money order. At least this girl was nice.

Well yesterday some girl told me the opposite, I replied. Then nice girl and the teacher standing there gave me a string of apologies. There was nothing they could do and that the girl yesterday shouldnt have said that. I walked away aggravated. Dear Shenendehowa, I just want my yearbook. I also feel like I should get one for free because of what happened on the bus back in September. Just I thought

Maybe Im destined not to buy a yearbook. Honestly I have no memories of Shen during my senior year since I wasnt here to enjoy it. I was too busy working on my journalism career. Someone even asked me if I had moved or something. Isnt that lovely?

Its weird thinking back on ones final year in high school and realizing that you didnt go to any of the games, the parties, things like Irish Fest, or other big events that make senior year great. Its awkward just sitting around at a lunch table with kids youve known in middle school and finding that its juststrange. I didnt see these people for a whole year. I dont even know whats going on in their lives anymore except if they post it on Facebook. Its kind of sad to look through Facebook albums dubbed Senior Year and realizing that youre not in any of the pictures.

Dont get my wrong. I am so glad I got to participate in New Visions! I loved everything that it taught me, but I cant help wondering if I would have had a better senior year without it. I guess I really wont ever know.

Smart phones have exploded in popularity over the last few years, and it seems that almost everyone has one now. These devices enable a whole new way of learning on the go, using apps and games with an educational twist.

A few weeks back, I wrote a blog post that listed several of the best educational Android apps, for those of you who have Android phones (like me)! As promised, I’m back today to share with you my list of the best educational iPhone apps, of which there are many.

Without further ado, here are the iPhone/iOS apps that made my list of favorites:

Disclaimer: As always, please read and understand an app’s descriptions, reviews and permissions before downloading. We cannot be held responsible for any apps downloaded from other developers in iTunes, so please exercise caution when installing new software on your phone or other device. Also, review the content of each app to ensure its appropriate for your childs age. 

All links below will launch an iTunes preview. 

1. SkyView Free (Free)
   Similar to the Google Sky Map app that I shared for Android, SkyView Free uses augmented reality to display information about objects in the sky on your device’s screen. In addition to stars, constellations and planets, SkyView also allows you to view objects like satellites or the International Space Station. I have to admit, the graphics in this app beat Google Sky Map hands down.
    
2. BrainPop Featured Movie (Free)
   BrainPop makes great animated movies about a variety of topics, with a new one coming out every day. Although you can view these on the web as well, you can now take them with you using your iPhone or iPad. Topics include Science, Math, Social Studies, Health and more.
    
3. Math Bingo ($0.99)
   What better way to encourage a child to practice math than to turn it into a game? Math Bingo does just that, by offering addition, subtraction, multiplication and division questions alongside beautiful graphics and fun cartoon avatars.
    
4. Kid Mode by Zoodles (Free)
   I also listed this app for Android, but since it’s free on both platforms I had to recommend it here as well. Kid Mode offers hundreds of fun, educational videos for kids 8 and under. Topics range from colors and animals all the way up to U.S. Presidents and periodic elements. This app really does have something for a wide range of ages.
    
5. Brain Tuner Lite (Free)
   Brain Tuner is a fun math game for all ages. Although there is a free version, there is also a paid version with a global leaderboard, so your child can compare their scores to other Brain Tuner users from around the world.
    
6. ESPN Spelling Bee Lite (Free)
   I’m a big sports fan, so this app caught my attention right away when I saw that it came from ESPN. Don’t let that fool you, though—this app is a real spelling bee which speaks a word out loud (voice provided by ESPN’s Trey Wingo) and can provide a word’s origin, definition, part of speech or have it spoken in a sentence. Another great app with a global leaderboard for the competitive kids out there. 
    
7. Stack the Countries Lite (Free)
   I’m a huge geography nut; it was always a favorite subject of mine. Stack the Countries Lite is a fun app that teaches country capitals, landmarks, locations and more. With more than 1,000 unique questions and awesome graphics, this is one of my favorite educational iOS apps. There is also a paid version for $1.99 with additional features like flash cards and additional bonus games.

This is just a sampling of the thousands of educational apps available in iTunes. If you have found other apps, I would love to hear your recommendations in the comments below!

David Snook, 27, Gresham, will graduate from Portland State University this month with a degree in chemistry, but first he must pass finals in ecology, biology and philosophy. He’s not worried and never dreams about the exams. But he did dream — more than once — about instrumental analysis last term. You sit in a classroom and your teacher puts an exam on your desk. English History during the Middle Ages?

You know nothing about it. You forgot you ever signed up for this course. You’ve not cracked a single book. You’ve skipped every class. And if you don’t pass this exam, you don’t get your degree. You reel between dread and panic.  

And then you wake. Sometimes sweating.

Seniors in Oregon’s public universities cramming for final exams next week may never have had the exam dream. But chances are they will. In earning a college degree, they’ve become prime candidates for the nightmare for decades to come.

It is among the most common anxiety dreams, says Dr. Alfred Lewy,  professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, probably because everyone spends a chunk of life in school.

The exam is a symbol of a test in waking life, maybe a presentation, job interview, relationship or performance. Lewy says the dream also raises the question, “Is there something that I have overlooked in my life that I should be prepared for that I haven’t prepared for today?”

David Snook, 27,  Gresham, will graduate from Portland State University this month with a degree in chemistry, but first he must pass finals in ecology, biology and philosophy. He’s not worried and never dreams about the exams.

But he did dream — more than once — about instrumental analysis last term.

“It was the hardest lab I’ve ever done,” he says.

He had a 15-page lab report packed with tedious measurements of ion concentrations in various solutions. If he didn’t complete it, he wouldn’t complete the lab, and without the lab, he wouldn’t graduate.

In his dream, he finishes, but turns the lab report in a few minutes late. The lab assistant refuses to accept it.

He’s ruined.

Dreams for decades
People have the exam dream or a variation of it long after they take their last final.

“I left law school more than 40 years ago, and I still have that dream and not infrequently, as recently as the last couple of months,” says Paul Kelly, president of the State Board of Higher Education. In his dream, Kelly says, “I realize the week before the exam that I’ve never gone to class. I have no idea what has been covered. I have to read the whole textbook.”

State Sen. Mark Hass of Beaverton,  chair of the Senate education committee, connects his exam dream to a persistent fear of flunking when he juggled work and school during his years at the University of Oregon.

“I guess I kept that fear with me,” he says. “I can see an old professor’s face in my dream, and I’m walking into class and everyone is taking this test, and I don’t have a backpack, and I don’t have any paper. I ask, ‘What’s going on?’”

Jim Francesconi,  an attorney, vice president of the higher education board and former Portland commissioner, says he has had the exam dream 10 to 15 times over the years, including once in the last year. In his dream, he panics that he’ll disappoint his parents because failing will leave him shy of credits needed to graduate from Stanford University. He also has a dream he’s unprepared to take the state bar exam for his license to practice law.

Richard Lariviere, president of the University of Oregon,  says he had a flip version of the exam dream as a young professor. He’s teaching a class, but he can’t find the classroom. “The harder you look, the more confused you get,” he says.

Alyssa Diamond, 22,  about to graduate from the University of Oregon, says she’s dreamed the dream: “I wake up way too late and have already slept through half the exam.”

Another variation: Lauren Morency, 25,  a junior majoring in psychology and biology at Portland State University, gets the day of the test wrong.

“I also have a dream where I get stuck in traffic and can’t get to my test,” she says.

Freud’s interpretation
The exam dream might return years after class because the body and brain remember the pressure to perform well on tests and use it as a metaphor for fear of failure in waking life, says Patricia Garfield, psychologist, author of 11 books on dreams and co-founder and former president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

The dream comes in many versions. Sometimes people show up for an exam naked. Or they might dream they’re unprepared for a part in a play or for a musical recital. It might return when people face a challenge and are unsure how they will perform, says Garfield, who lives near San Francisco.

If the dream recurs, it suggests the dreamer faces an unresolved problem.

The famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud interpreted the exam dream as an expression of a sexual test for men worried “they were not going to make the grade,” Garfield says.

The psychologist surveyed 1,000 dreamers around the world for her book, “The Universal Dream Key,” and found 40 percent had the exam dream, making it among the top seven in her survey. Number one was being chased or attacked, followed by falling or drowning.

Dr. Judy Willis, a physician, writes in Psychology Today that the exam dream is common to the past two to three generations in the United States and countries with education systems that use tests with high stakes affecting future opportunities. Argentina does not use such tests, she writes, and of 40 people ages 16 to 66 she interviewed, not one had the exam dream.

In the U.S., the exam dream is most common among adults, and until recently has shown up as early as high school. But with public schools testing more for accountability, Willis writes, parents and teachers report some first graders have disturbing dreams about poor school performance.

Most people never faced in waking lives the disasters they find in the exam dream. So why are circumstances in the dream so dire?

“Dreams are like grand operas,” says Garfield. “Dreams exaggerate dramatically. Part of that is the language of pictures, and it surely gets our attention, which may be the purpose of it. We wouldn’t have dreams unless it serves some biological advantage.

“This is a warning, something that can help guide us to better behavior and more success in our waking life.”

So Oregon college seniors who think you will be seeing your last finals next week
dream on.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday sidestepped an important test of whether in-school interviews of students by the police and other authorities require a warrant, ruling that the case—involving the questioning of an Oregon girl by authorities who believed she was a victim of sexual abuse at home—was moot.

However, without deciding the merits of the issue, the court set aside part of a federal appeals court ruling that the Fourth Amendment required investigators to have a warrant or parental consent before interviewing students in school.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority in Camreta v. Greene , said that because the young woman at the center of the case no longer lived in Oregon and would soon graduate from high school, she no longer faced the prospect of a warrantless police interview in school.

“When subsequent events make it absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur, we have no live controversy to review,” Justice Kagan said in an opinion joined by four of her colleagues. The overall judgment was 7-2.

The case was prompted by the ordeal of a girl identified in court papers as S.G. In 2003, 9-year-old S.G. was pulled from her Bend, Ore., classroom, taken to a school office, and interviewed by a state child-protective-services caseworker and a deputy sheriff.

The authorities suspected the girl was being sexually abused at home. After lengthy questioning, the girl told the investigators that she had been touched inappropriately by her father. The girl and her sister were briefly removed from their home, but criminal charges against the father were later dismissed. The father accepted a plea agreement over abuse charges involving another child.

S.G.’s mother sued not only the investigators who questioned her daughter, but also the Bend-La Pine school district and the school counselor who had removed the girl from class. The school defendants were dismissed early in the case. The mother said in court papers that only after two hours of denying any abuse did S.G. tell the investigators what the girl believed they wanted to hear—that her father had touched her improperly.

The suit led to a 2009 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, that S.G.’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated because she had been seized in the absence of a warrant, parental consent, or other special circumstances.

This led to a procedurally messy appeal to the Supreme Court by the investigators, a state child-abuse caseworker and a deputy sheriffs, who were granted qualified immunity from liability in this case but said they would be hampered by the rule requiring a warrant or parental consent in future school interviews of suspected abuse victims.

In her May 26 opinion, Justice Kagan said the high court could review a lower court’s ruling on a constitutional issue even when the appeal was brought by officials who were deemed to have qualified immunity in the case. That issue alone is important in the field of public education, in which many suits challenging school policies and actions are resolved on immunity grounds but often also involve a ruling on the merits of a constitutional issue.

Justice Kagan said the court was bending its usual rule that bars prevailing parties, such as the officials who won immunity in this case, from appealing to the high court. She said qualified-immunity rulings in cases in which lower courts also rule on constitutional issues “have a significant future effect on the conduct of public officials—both the prevailing parties and their co-workers—and the policies of the government units to which they belong.”

Kagan said that after granting review of the case, the court learned that S.G. had moved to Florida. The teenager is now approaching her 18th birthday and presumably about to graduate from high school, Kagan said.

“S.G. therefore cannot be affected by the Court of Appeals’ ruling,” Kagan said. “She faces not the slightest possibility of being seized in a school in the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction as part of a child abuse investigation.”

Kagan said the mootness of S.G.’s underlying case in turn has frustrated the appeal rights of the investigators to challenge the 9th Circuit’s constitutional ruling.

The majority vacated that part of the 9th Circuit ruling, which is significant in that it removes, for now, the requirement that warrants or parental consent are required for in-school interviews.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Justice Kagan’s opinion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed an opinion, joined by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, saying she agreed the case was moot, but she would not have reached the issue of whether the officials granted immunity in this case had the right to appeal.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, in a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said that clarification of the court’s principles on qualified immunity and constitutional rulings was in order, but that in this case he would have dismissed the appeal.

“It is most doubtful that Article III [of the Constitution] permits appeals by any officer to whom the reasoning of a judicial decision might be applied in a later suit,” Justice Kennedy said. “Yet that appears to be the implication of the court’s holding.”