RICHMOND — Something special happened today in the yellow building tucked amid commercial space in the city’s Hilltop District.

While it’s true that special things happen every day at Making Waves Academy, a public charter school serving 600 middle and high school students, today’s events culminating in Literacy Night were on a different level.

The acclaimed charter school hosted a community assembly, book fair and evening events with local dignitaries to launch a new partnership with the My Very Own Library (MVOL) initiative and Scholastic books, who donated more than $30,000 in books to the student body.

“This is our first partnership outside of New Jersey, and we are happy to help build on the excitement and energy around literacy here,” said Shannon Boehmer, a spokeswoman for New Jersey After 3, a nonprofit created in 2004 to expand learning time through high-quality, cost-effective afterschool programs across urban, suburban and rural communities. 

More than 2,400 books were on display Wednesday, from popular titles like “Hunger Games” to classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird.” 

After a morning ”Kick-Off” ceremony, students entered the MVOL book fair to select three new books each. Students also got meet and get their books signed by award winning Children’s Author – Emma Clayton, who chatted with the students about being an author.

Making Waves was founded in 1989 by John Scully, a computer software executive, and the late Rev. Eugene Farlough, pastor of Sojourner Truth Presbyterian Church. That year, the program adopted 46 fifth-graders from two elementary schools in Richmond and proceeded to mentor them for eight years. In 1997, Making Waveswatched its first group graduate from high school. In 2001, the program expanded to schools in San Francisco.

Waves mentors its students, called Wave-Makers, by building upon skills learned in its middle school, high school, and college programs. All students are exposed to benefits such as nutrition education, cultural activities and health care assistance. To date, the program serves more than 1,000 in the Bay Area.

In an adiminstration room at the school, dozens of student-written letters were on display, addressed to Dimarea Young, a 19-year-old who was shot and killed in central Richmond earlier this month.

Later in the evening, MakingWavesAcademy hosted a Family Literacy Event, which included workshops and reading activities for parents and students.

Making Waves was founded in 1989 by John Scully, a computer software executive, and the late Rev. Eugene Farlough, pastor of Sojourner Truth Presbyterian Church. That year, the program adopted 46 fifth-graders from two elementary schools in Richmond and proceeded to mentor them for eight years. In 1997, Making Waveswatched its first group graduate from high school. In 2001, the program expanded to schools in San Francisco.

The Contra Costa County Board of Education in 2007 approved Making Waves Education Program’s petition to open a school in Richmond’s Hilltop neighborhood.

Waves mentors its students, called Wave-Makers, by building on skills learned in its middle school, high school, and college programs. All students receive nutrition education, cultural activities and health care assistance. The principal, called “Head of School” in Making Waves parlance, is Irene St. Roseman.

The event was for 5th through 10th graders in the Making Waves Middle School. Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and Schools Superintendent Bruce Harter also attended.

More about the partners:

My Very Own Library (MVOL), proudly supported by the Family & Friends of the late, Anne Feeley (MVOL Originator), in partnership with NJ After 3, and Scholastic Book Fairs, is a literacy initiative aimed at increasing book ownership for thousands of students in Newark, NJ for the past two years. MVOL is proud to make its way across the country –on Wednesday, April 24, so that 600 students at Making Waves Academy in Richmond, California, will walk away with 4 FREE NEW BOOKS to take home to help build their own home libraries!

Madeleine Rogin has again made it into the next round of the Great American Teach-off, meaning she is still in the running for a $10,000 grant she can use for her kindergarten class at Prospect Sierra School in El Cerrito.
Read below about what she and the class plan to do with the grant and then take a moment to vote for her at http://kto6gato.maker.good.is/projects/7998?sort=623.

Thank you again for spreading the word about this contest – and for voting!
If you are able to update your readers about the contest this week, I would love people to know that our project is about teaching our students how to be global citizens by engaging in service projects both locally and globally.
The local project is the restoration of the Pacific Chorus Frog Habitat at Canyon Trail Park. Many people have been working for years to restore this habitat, a group of all volunteer El Cerrito residents meet there every Saturday morning to plant or weed or pick up trash. The Kindergarten at my school has a history of helping with this project. Every spring we raise tadpoles in our classroom and release them into the small pond at Canyon Trail Park. If we win the $10,000 grant we would be able to support this work on a much deeper level.

The global project is a partnership with Basic Services Primary School in Takoradi, Ghana, a school I’ve visited in the summer to volunteer. My daughters attended Kindergarten there this past summer. The school is in need of all the school supplies you can think of (from workbooks to pencil sharpeners to markers, etc.) With part of the money from the grant we could donate these supplies. They do have a computer center and we would use a portion of the grant to set them up with Skype so that our students could communicate with their students. Too often our children still think of Africa as the land with all the wild animals. They are shocked to learn that there are taxis and big buildings and elevators and schools a lot like ours. The focus of this project is on cross cultural communication and on building our students’ cultural competency skills – the ability to communicate across difference. Cultural competency is a skill set that is essential to educating our children in the 21st century, when they will be expected to be able to communicate with people from all around the globe.
Thank you again!
Madeleine

The West Contra Costa Science Fair has announced the results of this year’s competition:

The West Contra Costa Science Fair held an Awards Ceremony on Thursday, February 28, in the Knox Performing Arts Center. Dr. Donna Floyd, Interim Vice President of Contra Costa College, told the audience the first WCCSF was held 55 years ago on this site. Dr. Bruce Harter, Superintendent of the West Contra Costa Unified School District and former secondary science teacher, described some of the projects that caught his eye such as the one about texting on a keyboard vs. a flat screen and another on how to shut down WiFi. Dr. Mayra Padilla, Direct of STEM & METAS Program at Contra Costa College encouraged the students to look into the opportunities for high school students at CCC.
A total of 96 awards were presented to 85 students in grades 7 through 12 from eight West Contra Costa Unified schools: Crespi, DeJean, Helms, and Portola Junior High Schools; Mira Vista and Stewart K-8 Schools; as well as El Cerrito and Pinole Valley High Schools.
Of the 152 projects on display in the Gym Annex Room 40 from Monday, February 25, until just after the Awards Ceremony, 90% came from 7th and 8th graders. However, of the 10% that came from the high schools, 93% were winners of first- through fourth-places and special awards while only 51% of the 7th and 8th grade projects won the awards. There were no 9th grade projects.
Of the four categories, 57% of the projects were in Physical Science; 24% were in Biological Science; 16% in Behavioral Science and only 3% in Mathematics.
Portola Junior High students won the most awards with 29 garnered from the 32 projects submitted. Their awards included two 1st places, six 2nd places, eight 3rd places, ten 4th places and three special awards.
Overall there were 6 first-place winners, 14 second-place winners, 23 third-place winners, 42 fourth-place winners and 11 special awards.
The first-place winners also each received a Bio-Rad cash award: seventh-grader Colm Hayden (“Can Redwood Absorb and Release Fog?”) from Portola; seventh-grader Nicole Stokowski (“How Do Differences in Mass Affect Conservation of Angular Momentum?”) from Mira Vista; eighth-grader Jacqueline Rojas (“What Abilities Does Your Brain Have?”) from Helms; eighth-grader Nora Gest (“Which Nuts Have the Most Calories?”) from Portola; tenth-grader Andrew Brodsky (“The Effects of Barrel Size on Projectile Velocity”) from El Cerrito High;and eleventh-grader Sydney Gallion (“Natural Frequency and Length”) from El Cerrito High.
Other special awards included math puzzle books Dennis Claudio presented to the seventh-graders Minahil Khan (“Reverse the Multiplication”) and Paulo Del Rosario (“Switch or Stay?”) both from Crespi; as well as a book on graph theory presented to Mark Ohlmann (“Can You Run Out of Luck?”) from Pinole Valley High, The Hal Magarian Memorial Award went to seventh-grader Julia Walker (“Rosemary’s pH Preference”) from Portola Junior High. The Bill Tobin Award was given to Mark Ohlmann from Pinole Valley High.
Read the rest of this entry »

The city is offering a basket of youth summer programs at recreation centers all over the city for low prices.

Check the flier attached to see if the programs and services are a good fit for you:

Richmond Recreation Summer Camp

For more info click here

For Immediate Release

Fuel Your School Program Benefits 111,925 Students in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties

Chevron-DonorsChoose.org program funded $958,739 for 960 classroom projects

based on 8+ gallon fuel purchases and online project postings

san ramon, Calif., Jan. 16, 2013 – Chevron U.S.A. Inc. and DonorsChoose.org today announced that its 2012 Fuel Your School program funded $958,739, benefitting 960 local public school classroom projects and impacting 111,925 students in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Through Chevron’s 2012 Fuel Your School program, teachers at 344 public schools in Alameda and Contra Costa counties received critical classroom resources. Linda Townsend Bryson, a first-grade teacher at Peres Elementary School in Richmond, received hands-on science materials, including a Big Screen Microscope and slides, as well as books on forces and motion, to help increase her students’ scientific awareness.

“Despite coming from economically challenging environments, my students can shine when given the right opportunities,” Townsend Bryson said. “With the tools received through Fuel Your School, my students have better and more exciting opportunities to learn about the world around them.”

Through the Fuel Your School program, Chevron contributed $1 for purchases of eight or more gallons, up to $1 million, from Oct. 1 to Oct. 31 at participating Chevron and Texaco stations in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, adding up to a total contribution of $958,739 to benefit public school classroom projects posted on DonorsChoose.org.

“We’re proud to give back to our local communities through working with specialized and innovative nonprofits, such as DonorsChoose.org,” said Andrea Bailey, community engagement manager at Chevron. “The Fuel Your School program exemplifies Chevron’s commitment to supporting teachers, students and schools by helping them receive the resources and tools they need in their classrooms.”

The purpose of the Fuel Your School program is to help support and improve critical education programming and resources, particularly in the STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and math – to help prepare students for the growing number of technical jobs in the modern economy, including possible engineering positions at Chevron.

“Teachers spend on average more than $350 of their own money every year on materials for their students,” said Charles Best, CEO of DonorsChoose.org. “This incredible demand explains why the Fuel Your School program with Chevron has grown to impact nearly 112,000 students this year in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.”

In 2012, the Fuel Your School program expanded from two markets, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and Salt Lake and Davis counties, Utah, to seven additional markets, including Sacramento County, Kern County and Orange County in Calif.; Multnomah County, Ore.; Harris County, Texas; St. Tammany, Orleans and Plaquemines parishes, La.; and Jackson County, Miss. A total of $4.49 million was generated at participating Chevron and Texaco stations in October 2012, benefitting 5,673 classroom projects at 1,733 K-12 public schools in the nine U.S. markets. Since its inception in 2010, Fuel Your School has benefitted a total of 8,915 classroom projects.

An infographic showing the impact of the 2012 Fuel Your School program and top most requested STEM resources for classrooms is available at http://www.fuelyourschool.com. Portions of projects were funded by other third-party donations.

About Chevron

Chevron is one of the world’s leading integrated energy companies, with subsidiaries that conduct business worldwide. The company is involved in virtually every facet of the energy industry. Chevron explores for, produces and transports crude oil and natural gas; refines, markets and distributes transportation fuels and lubricants; manufactures and sells petrochemical products; generates power and produces geothermal energy; provides energy efficiency solutions; and develops the energy resources of the future, including biofuels. Chevron is based in San Ramon, Calif. More information about Chevron is available at www.chevron.com.

About DonorsChoose.org

                Founded in 2000, DonorsChoose.org is an online charity that makes it easy for anyone to help students in need. Public school teachers from every corner of America post requests, and individuals can give directly to the ones that inspire them. To date, 250,000 public and charter school teachers have used DonorsChoose.org to secure $165 million in books, art supplies, technology, and other resources that their students need to learn.

# # #

Contact: Brent Tippen, Chevron Corporation

Brent.Tippen@Chevron.com,  

Brent Tippen
Media & External Communications

Chevron Spokesman

Policy, Government and Public Affairs 
Chevron Corporation

press release:

CHEVRON RICHMOND PRESENTS

The 7th Annual Evening of Remembrance-Holiday Party

HEALING

CIRCLES OF HOPE-MASK

Veterans Memorial Hall

968 23rd Street Richmond CA. 94804

Friday, December 21, 2012. 6:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m.

Please bring a Scarf or Hat set for Babies & Toddlers

for full flier click:2012 7th Annual Evening of Remembrance-Holiday Parrty & Toy Giveaway[3]

Take you kids out today for Christmas celebration and giveaway:

PRESS RELEASE FROM CHEVRON:

News Advisory

For Immediate Release

Chevron to Announce $1 Million Investment to Support Education and Economic Development Programs in Richmond

Special Community Event Will Announce Six Grants to Improve Education, Prepare Residents for Jobs

WHAT:                       Chevron will unveil its selection of six Richmond-area nonprofit organizations picked to receive a share of $1 million as a grant from the company’s California Partnership Program, an initiative that invests in education and economic development in California.

WHO:                         Leaders from the recipient organizations will join representatives from Chevron Richmond, elected Richmond and West Contra County officials, nonprofit organizations and other community leaders to hear a brief overview of the selected grant programs and how they will make an impact in our community.

WHEN:                       Wednesday, December 19, 2012

10:00 – 11:00 a.m.

WHERE:                    Lovonya DeJean Middle School, Multi-Purpose Room

3400 Macdonald Ave., Richmond

WHY:                         Chevron launched its California Partnership initiative in 2009 and each year since has invested funds to help nonprofit organizations geared toward economic development and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education in California. These investments have benefitted more than half a million students and 6,600 teachers, provided 13,000 new STEM resources for students, helped train more than 10,000 people through job training programs, benefited 2,500 small business, and enabled 2,700 people to secure employment.

MEDIA RSVP:           Please RSVP Brent Tippen, Chevron policy, government and public affairs

510-242-4700 or Brent.Tippen@chevron.com.

**Note to Reporters      Breakfast will be available from 9:30-10:00 a.m. and any camera set up is requested to be completed before event begins.

The city’s parks and rec department offers Winter Tennis and CandyCane Basketball for local kids.

These are great, low-cost opportunities for local kids to get involved in some healthy sports during the rainy season.

Click below for the sign-up sheets and more information.

Winter Tennis 2013 flyer

Candy Cane Classics 2012