2017 HOSA Spring Leadership Conference

The 2017 HOSA spring leadership conference is in the books. Once again, the students of Paradise Valley High School were the pillars of leadership and kindness. I am lucky and proud to be one of their teachers.

See below for the list of accomplishments!

1. State President Lizzie Church
2. Secretary Gregory Carnesi
3. Parliamentarian Ryan O'Hara
4. Historian/Reporter Alexandra Rolfness
5. Gold Chapter Award
6. Gold HOSA Happenings Award
7. Gold Medalists:
8. Medical Spelling - Mason Hendrix
9. Public Service Announcement - Genevieve Craven, Luke Meyer, Morgan Fox, Jessica Willis
10. HOSA Bowl - Hannah Butler, Andrew Raby, Erick Eszertazi,
11. Silver Medalists:
12. Extemporaneous Poster - Josie Dahir
13. Medical Math - David Klein
14. Forensics - Brian Mecinas, Isolde Tristan
15. Bronze Medalists:
16. Extemporaneous Writing - Mariah Johnson
17. Transcultural Health - Julia Groman
18. Fourth - Extemporaneous Writing - Zoe Lesher
19. Fifth - Nutrition - Ramya Rameshkumar
20. Membership awards
21. Platinum (only 6 in the state!): Lizzie Church, Josie Dahir, Geneveive Craven, Kyle Kline
22. Barbara James Volunteer Service award: Gold - Brittany Franke, Silver - Nicholas Boria, Morgan Fox, Bronze - Prati Lodha
23. Healthcare issues exam national qualifiers: Matthew Morales, Genevieve Craven

 

At the corner of Pauling and Nobel

As far as invitations go how could I possibly have passed this one up? Along with 7 other educators from across the United States, I was asked to participate in the Bio-Rad Explorers  Fellowship Program this summer. As a team we were trained  on many of the educational kits Bio-Rad offers and asked for our feedback on their implementation. We had the opportunity to work with the R&D team who probed us for feedback on their equipment as well. We all geeked out for a solid week having one-on-one conversations with their scientists, getting a private tour of the manufacturing and research labs, and being treated as professionals having ideas worthy  contribution to the scientific community. Thank you Bio-Rad for valuing quality science education for K-12 students.
 http://www.bio-rad.com/en-us/education 

Houston, We Have a Problem

I am at the #100kin10 conference at Johnson Space Center; a convergence of industry, government, non profit, and higher education professionals. Ten percent of the attendees are hand selected classroom teachers and this is the first time teachers are attending.
The "moonshot goal" is to produce 100k highly trained STEM teachers in 10 years.
We spent the day digging around the root causes that are standing in the way of effective STEM integration. I came here hoping for solutions and wound up standing in the gaping maw of this beastly dilemma. It is always darkest before the dawn, right?

At least I got to meet astronaut Nancy Currie and stand in the space shuttle.

 100kin10.org 

Woke up in El Paso

On my way to the 100kin10 symposium to work on the grand challenges facing education. How best to integrate STEM across all curricula and provide meaningful STEM training for all teachers is indeed a grand challenge. The conference is in Houston, at NASA, but I am not there. I fell asleep on the flight, which unbeknownst to me had a stopover in El Paso.  https://100kin10.org 

Leadership and Cheezy Poofs

On March 30th CREST Biotech HOSA embarked on a 3 day road trip to Tucson to attend the 11th annual Spring Leadership Conference. It was a whirlwind adventure of campaigning, competing, and junk food consumption.

 
 As always, our students practiced PV PRIDE and made me incredibly proud. Not only does our chapter boast the first Arizona, Female, International President elect, we now also have three state board members on a panel of seven; President, Region II VP, and Parliamentarian.

In addition our students brought home a pile of prizes! Thank you to all of our members for supporting HOSA and each other to make this a successful conference.

Biotechnology	Gold	Ramya
	Silver	Noah
	Bronze	Brandon
	4th	Prati
Biomedical Debate	Bronze	Elizabeth
		Dylan
		Brianne
		Ben
State Officer	President	Kyle
	VP Region II	Elizabeth
	Parliamentarian	Gregory
Platinum Membership		Kyle & Elizabeth
Extemporaneous Health Poster	Bronze	Josie
Extemporaneous Writing	Gold	Ryan
Public Health	Gold	Kyle & Morgan
PSA	Silver	Rishika Genevieve Jessica
Prepared Speech	4th	Britanny
	5th	Ameer
Health Care Issues	ILC qualifier	Rene
HOSA Happenings	Gold	Chapter scrapbook
Gold Membership		Rene Brittany Frederick Gregory  Josie
Silver Membership		Connor Morgan  Ryan
Bronze Membership		Ameer  Dara   Devyash David  Esha Genevieve  Joseph Puglisi Mac   Mariah  Nicholas  Prati   Ramya  Susan
Gold Chapter Award
Barbara James Service Award	Gold 300 hours	Brittany

Medical Spelling  Gold                       Mason

A Letter Volley

I arrived home from Morocco at 12:30 a.m. this morning. Excited to be home but sad to be separated from my new friends.

The students of Assaada High School were thrilled to receive the letters from our students and couldn't wait to learn more about them. The response was overwhelming and I think I received more letters in return than I brought over. Many of the letters I received included drawings and small gifts, WhatsApp numbers, Facebook contacts, Instagram and many other ways to get in touch. The students are hungry for communication, to learn about America, and to share themselves with America.

Moved to Tears

We have spent the week in several classrooms at Essaada High School in Ait Melloul. Rotating through classes, students were a bit shy about asking us a lot of questions. Today we were with one class for a second time and they were a little more open to discussion.
My partner Stacey asked them what they wanted us to tell our students about Moroccan students, two sentiments were repeated many times.

1. We LOVE America and Americans.
2. We are not terrorists. Islam does not = terrorism.

We were able to have a deep discussion about the power of media driven by advertisement, and how the terrible deeds or offensive words said by a few are used to represent many.

Near the end of class a young man asked if he could perform a recitation of the Holy Quran. His beautiful voice moved me to tears, as well as Stacey and several other students. I am crying now as recall the experience and write this post.

The bracelet on my wrist in the picture above was slipped on my wrist by a girl at the end of class. They call the symbol Hamsa (the hand of Fatima) and is meant to protect against evil.

If there is an evil in this world, I think it is  in forming stereotypes about individual people we have not yet met.