4/8/10 Local teen news

March for in-state tuition for illegal immigrants – About 50 walkers joined 3 students 1,500 miles Trail of Dreams to protest educational inequalities for illegal immigrants.  Story compares two DPS students, one who was born in LA and can attend four years of college in-state for $20,000 while her friend who was born in Mexico will have to pay over $100,000. “Change doesn’t come from the president.  It doesn’t come from the Congress. It doesn’t come from people up high. It comes from people like you and me.” (Durham News)

Youth hockey exploding in NC – Junior Hurricanes hockey team is competing in the national championships for the first time this week in Chicago.  “Ten years ago there might have been 200 kids in Raleigh playing hockey,” said Paul Strand, coordinator of youth and amateur programs for the Carolina Hurricanes. “There are 1,500 now in Wake County and more than 6,000 in North and South Carolina.” (N&O)

Forsythe’s college search continues – After blinded by a tiger attack at age 3, Tyler Forsythe wrestled and maintained a 3.0 GPA but didn’t get 1000 on the SATs.  He wasn’t accepted at NC State, UNC or Ap State but he is now applying to all of the colleges in NC through a special feather on the College Fund of NC’s website.  When given a shot on the wrestling mat, Forsythe didn’t disappoint as he earned more than 80 wins in his four-year career. Now, he just needs one institution to do the same. (Cary News)

Teens are ideal consumer – As remainder of economy remains sluggish, the teen market has started to show gains.  “You’ve seen teens come back pretty aggressively in terms of spending,” retail analyst Chen said. “Teenagers are not a savings-oriented bunch. They spend every dollar they get.” (N&O)

2/10/09 Teen news: local(∆) and national

Teen cellphone novelist earns $600,000 – 15-year-old ‘Bunny’ has sold over 100,000 copies of her three volume novel ‘Wolf Boy x Natural Girl,’ which she wrote on her cellphone.  Over the course of several months, Bunny tapped away in her bedroom, in between homework assignments. “Wolf Boy” ended up as a high-school love story between shy, pretty Miku and tall, handsome Shun, who is generally a gentlemen except when Miku is around (thus the name “Wolf Boy”).(LA TIMES)

(∆)Duke student lives in a van - Ken Ilgunas explains why and how he lived an entire year in a van while attending classes at Duke University.Living on the cheap wasn’t merely a way to save money and stave off debt; I wanted to live adventurously. I wanted to test my limits. I wanted to find the line between my wants and my needs. I wanted, as Thoreau put it, “to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life … to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.” (Salon)

Teen sneaks into Super Bowl – Despite $6 million in security, a Miami teen snuck into and watched the Super Bowl.  He has also successfully snuck into: ’09 BCS National Championship Game, Three Orange Bowls, ’10 Pro Bowl, March Madness, Sony Ericsson Open, Over 50 Miami Heat, Florida Marlins, Florida Panthers, and Miami Dolphins’ games, Dave Matthews Band Concert, and a Smashing Pumpkins Concert. (Bleacher Report)

Middle school collects jeans for Haiti – After reading about the Teens for Jeans campaign on the dosomething.org website, students and teachers began collecting jeans for Haiti.  Every donor gets 25% off new jeans at Aeropostale.  ”Blue jeans are really good, because they hold up,” said Mazie Sullivan, 13-year-old president of the Builders Club. “It helps other people, and that’s what our club’s about.” (FayObserver)

U.S. History class could change in NC (WRAL), Durham schools get $1.25 million to close achievement gap (N&O)

Monday’s teen news – local(∆) and national

Profile of Jamie Tworkowski – He is the founder of To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA), a non-profit which provides spiritual guidance to trouble teenagers and also earns $3 million annually in merchandise sales. “Self-injury and depression are on the rise statistically,” says Tworkowski. “Kids have always suffered — the difference now is that you hear about these things in the media, and it gives kids ideas. You’re depressed, and you read about Angelina Jolie cutting herself, and you think, ‘Maybe that could work for me.’ Kids are trying to figure all this stuff out on their own. They are confronting this pain alone.”(Rolling Stone) photo by Peter Yang

Is cheerleading a sport? – Title IX requires that universities provide sports representation by gender that is proportional to enrollment.  With the proportion at US colleges 57% females, colleges want to count cheerleading as a sport rather than an activity, but is it? On the other hand, as Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a former head of the Women’s Sports Foundation, told me: “We can’t allow schools to recast cheerleading as a sport in name only so as to allow schools to provide fewer athletic opportunities for girls.” (NPR.com)

(∆) Football players mentor 5th graders – Carrboro High School football players mentor 5th grade males at Frank Porter Graham to get them excited about school. “[The football players] are superheroes in the eyes of the fifth graders,” says a teacher. (Carrboro Citizen)

More graduates moving back home – Melissa Meyer was the top student in her high school, interned for a US Senator, and graduated from a $200,000 college, but when she applied to 30 jobs and heard nothing, she moved back in with her parents. “My triumphant return!” Melissa whispers sarcastically. (Herald Sun)

Friday’s teen news – local(∆) and national

The girl who called 911 – While dozens of teens videotaped and laughed at a 15-year-old girl getting gang raped outside a homecoming dance, 18-year-old Margarita Vargas was the only one to call the police.”I’m like ‘We should call the cops because that’s the right thing to do.’ I didn’t think about it twice,” she said. “I think people are scared, especially in a community like this where ‘snitching’ is a big thing to people.” (CBS)

Texas district bans skinny pants – School said skinny pants are a disruption to class. “We’re going to home schooling,” the boy’s mother, Cindy Pope, said Wednesday. “He can learn more without the distraction of what to wear.” (Dallas News)

Review of New Moon - Better than the first with superior special effects and better dialogue than in the book. (Chicago Tribune)

Students arrested in tuition protests – 52 students were arrested at the University of California Davis after they refused to vacate an administration building in protest of the state’s 32% tuition increase for all state colleges.”We’re fired up. Can’t take it no more,” students chanted as they marched and waved signs at UCLA. “Education only for the rich,” one sign read. (CNN)

Thursday’s teen news – local(∆) and national

(∆) Cash-for-grades fundraiser shut down – School district stopped Goldsboro’s fundraiser of offering extra credit points on any two tests in exchange for a $20 donation by parents.“Our intentions were not to sell grades,” a parent said. “Our intention is to help our school raise money, which every school has to do. We were just trying to be creative.” (N&O)

25 Chicago students arrested for food fight - Parents are question whether their children should have been removed from school and arrested for a food fight after the school’s officer requested back-up from the Chicago Police.  “They’re all scared,” Ms. Russell said of the two dozen arrested students. “You never know how children will be impacted by that. I was all for some other kind of punishment, but not jail. Who hasn’t had a food fight?” (NY Times)

Is Jazz dead? – A profile of 19-year-old alto saxophonist Hailey Niswanger. “What sets Hailey apart, even from some players already in the business,” Mr. Odgren told me, “is that she is a musician—not an apprentice. She’s really playing—really focusing on—what she is feeling. Telling her own stories. And she does it with such authority that if you played her recording for an established jazz musician during a blindfold test, he’d never guess her age.” (Wall Street Journal)