There are a few items for your information here, especially useful to know if you are a parent home on Wednesday, or getting home early that day and thought you might get a some extra rest before Thanksgiving Day. Be advised. This is the customary "minimum day" that means your child or children at Lincoln High will be getting out of school at 12:24 p.m.
If you happen to have very ambitious children who have that wonderlust spirit, this news might help you to manage a little closer attention to those parental responsibilities. For some students, getting an early start on vacation just gets them home sooner to help or just lounge around. For others, more free time could just be more uninvolved or undirected time for them to find a way that makes their day more interesting. Sometimes they are invovled in productive things, and sometimes the choice is more things that may include bad decisions of assorted types. Just something to think about while you still have an influence and before time passes you by on these situations.
But for teachers, the short school day allows an early out that helps those who did not already manage to use any other reason to head out sooner for the holiday travel. Even teachers for just going home, as usual , the short day is welcome. They might get a break in their daily trip since there are more teachers who have longer commutes than did the teachers of my Lincoln years, and there are a few more cars on the freeway now, too, if you have noticed.
Second "heads up" announcement- more time allowed here, though, is that Representative Linda Sanchez, the sister of Representative Loretta Sanchez, announced last week that she is pregnant- and, "No," she is not married. The 39-year-old elected official is not married yet, but said that she is "unofficially engaged." Usually, that phrase means "no ring, no date." The due date for her baby is May 21, 2009. Well, it looks like unplanned pregnancies don't just happen to high school teens. Latina teens have a rate twice the national average, and teaching in high school would demonstrate that this doesn't help teens get the most of their educational opportunities.
Rep. Sanchez is an adult, and the topic is covered very well by Patt Morrison's column in the L.A. Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morrison20-2008nov20,0,2576813.column . As a role model, this one fall far short of what we would like in our elected officials (with so many being major dissappointments for other reasons).
Teen pregnancy has always been a problem, and over the years it has become worse for Latinas, while the rate has dropped for African-Americans. What changes because of teen pregnancy, anyway, or, what is the big deal? Well check a number of angles on this topic at the home page for "The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy," at http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/resources/reports.aspx
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