CALVIN: Let’s try this path over here! HOBBES I don’t see a path CALVIN: We’ll make a path!! 2006 LEADERSHIP NEWS by Nancy Tuhtan FLASH! Our ALL-SCHOOL PROM will be on SUNDAY, MARCH 18 at the Stone Tree Golf Club. Parents are needed for chaperones and on the decoration committee.

Great start: Tamiscal’s Leadership class is off to a busy start. We have 13 students this year: Chris Hanson, Phill Legnito, Caroline Mulroy, Sarah Nelson, Jackson Phillips, Katy Rosenberg, Angelica Santana, Anthony Siotos, Oscar Steiner, Tori Swift, Maryam Taheri, and Lisa Vitale. Our accomplishments so far include: participation in Big Brothers/Big Sisters for a second year of the Youth Mentor program. Ten of the thirteen students are working, playing, listening, one to two hours per week with their “Littles” at Edna Maguire School, and MIYO in San Rafael. One student continues his second year at MLK Middle School and the two remaining students are participating in community service projects with SPAWN a salmon restoration project in Marin and working with the homeless in the Haight Ashbury area of SF. We are also participating in the YouthGive Program. Our students have interviewed and written profiles on four non-profits which will be published in a brochure making the Bay Area community aware of each organization’s purpose and need for financial support.

Cabs with Tabs: We are continuing our Cabs With Tabs program started last year. We are hoping to get a grant and/or parent support to print and laminate cards with every taxi company in Marin. We will be speaking to leadership classes at the other high schools to advocate the use of a cab (or a call to parents) whenever students might be under the influence of alcohol, instead of driving themselves or getting into a car with someone else who may be under the influence. We have had an excellent response from our own students and hope to give a card to as many students throughout the district age of 16 or over, as we can. The main goal of this program is to curtail as much as possible, driving while under the influence. [get Cabs with Tabs card to print (pdf)]

All-School Dance: Our class is planning an all school dance in March and several fundraisers to finance this event and hopefully our 4th trip to the Museum of Tolerance in LA later in the year. Look for more details on these fundraising activities in future emails. Our first field trip of the year will be to the Exploratorium and the Tactile Dome. If any of you have experienced crawling through a pitch black maze, you know what an amazing experience it is and as we go through as a group, it becomes a metaphor for how we navigate our lives. More on that after our trip.

Support Group: Leadership students are expressing concerns for the increasing amounts of stress most are feeling in their lives. Seniors especially, but other grades as well. To help students deal with this stress which manifests in numerous ways, we have started a support group facilitated by our Bay Area Resources counselor Tiarre Welsh. This group is open to all Tamiscal students and will meet weekly for the semester. Our class continues to explore the causes of and how to deal with stress and other teen issues through our weekly check-ins.

At our Back to School Night in September, several students gave parents an authentic idea of the challenges and benefits of being a Tamiscal student. This gave these students some practice in public speaking, an important skill for any leader. We will be starting our unit on how to speak in public this week. We also voted for our first mascot “The Tamiscal Phoenix”. The students liked the visual of this ultimate symbol of resiliency! We are working on the design with the help of Anthony Siotos. Three Leadership students Katie Rosenberg, Natalie Cuseo and Lisa Vitale serve on our school site council and Maryam Taheri continues to serve as our Student Trustee at the District Board meetings.

So, we continue to fulfill our Leadership class motto: “Small But Mighty!”.

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Tamiscal Independent Study High School
Tel: (415) 945-3750 • Fax: (415) 945-3752
email: tamiscal@marin.k12.ca.us

updated December 6, 2006