Class notes

Schumaker, who liked creating portraits himself, came up with the idea of asking talented art students in the United States to paint portraits of children who were living in difficult circumstances, so that the orphans would have a memento of their early years. Building on the concept of his Guatemalan colleague, Schumaker contacted orphanages overseas and art teachers in the United States and thus began the Memory Project in 2004. To date, he has provided 25,000 portraits for orphans, but hopes to expand that number — many times over.

For the past three years, Mercy High School honors art 3 students have completed portraits for the Memory Project. This year, students created portraits for children in an orphanage in Ecuador. The goal of the project is to inspire caring, global friendship, and a positive sense of self. For more information visit www.memoryproject.org.

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San Mateo Middle College High School, an alternative education program for juniors and seniors in the San Mateo Union High School District, is accepting applications for Fall 2012. There are openings for incoming juniors.

Students and parents interested in the program can contact the Middle College office. Applications are available on-line or in the SMUSHD counseling offices and career centers.

Middle College, located at College of San Mateo, includes 60 students who take a combination of high school and college classes. These classes are intended to help the student meet high school graduation requirements and college general education requirements.

The students, who prefer not to attend a traditional high school campus, demonstrate the potential maturity to cope with the relative freedom of the college environment. Current MCHS students will be attending University of San Francisco, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Berkeley, San Jose State and College of San Mateo in the fall.

Students are recommended for admission by parents, teachers, guidance counselors and administrators. Other application procedures include student testing for reading and writing, an information meeting with parents and interviews with students and parents.

For more information contact Principal Greg Quigley at 574-6101 or middlecollege@smuhsd.org or visit www.collegeofsanmateo.edu/middlecollege.

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The San Mateo-Foster City School District recently announced that two teams of students representing Bowditch Middle School recently won highest honors in the WordMasters Challenge — a national language arts competition entered by approximately 220,000 students annually, which consists of three separate meets held at intervals during the school year.

Coached by Bowditch Middle School teachers Maggie Markham, Debbie Freesmeier, Lisa Bravo and Amelia Hollingsworth, the school’s sixth graders tied for second place in the nation in this year’s first meet, held in December, among 403 school teams competing in the difficult Blue Division Challenge. At the same time, the school’s seventh graders, coached by Tyler Webb, placed fifth in the nation among 294 competing teams.

The WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words (considerably harder than grade level), and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships. Working to solve the challenge analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically.

The students will participate in two more meets during the coming months, and medals and certificates will be awarded in June to those who achieve and/or improve the most in the course of the year.

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Four low-income teenagers told stories of persevering against hardship in a "Youth of the Year” speech competition held in January at the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula.

High school senior Ruben Ruvalcaba of East Palo Alto said he learned the value of hard work from his father, a sanitation worker, who "has endured many trials, misfortunes and difficult conditions.”

Ruvalcaba, a student at Eastside College Prep, was chosen by a group of five judges to represent the local Boys & Girls Club as the competition advances to northern California, and later to the national level.

The local club served more than 1,600 children last year in 12 venues, including nine school sites in East Palo Alto, eastern Menlo Park and Redwood City.

Class notes is a column dedicated to school news. It is compiled by education reporter Heather Murtagh. You can contact her at (650) 344-5200, ext. 105 or at heather@smdailyjournal.com.