School Science News for Kids

George Harwood Phillips, a scholar known for his significant research on Southern California Indians, will speak at UC Riverside on Tuesday, Nov. 29, from 2 to 3 p.m.

Phillips’ lecture, “Labor and Survival Among Southern California Indians,” is part of the continuing Rupert Costo Lecture series and will focus on Indian labor in 18th and 19th centuries. The event is free and open to the public, and will be held in the Costo Library on the fourth floor of the Tomás Rivera Library. Parking costs $6.

Phillips is professor emeritus of history at the University of Colorado and previously taught at UC Riverside, where he was the second scholar named to the endowed Rupert Costo Chair in American Indian Affairs in the late 1980s.

“George Harwood Phillips is considered to be the most important historian of the Indians of Southern California,” said Cliff Trafzer, UCR professor of history and Rupert Costo Chair in American Indian Affairs. “We are pleased to welcome him back to the campus.”

Among the books Phillips has written are “Vineyards and Vaqueros: Indian Labor and the Economic Expansion of Southern California, 1771-1877,” “Chiefs and Challengers: Indian Resistance and Cooperation in Southern California,” and “Indians and Indian Agents: The Origins of the Reservation System in California, 1849-1852.”

The lecture is sponsored by the Rupert Costo Endowment, California Center for Native Nations, and the UCR Department of History.

As a phlebotomist, it is your primary responsibility to extract blood from a patient for different purposes, such as analyzing the blood samples, storing and delivering them to laboratories. More often than not, the wage is very competitive ranging from $15 to $19 depending on the state in which you are employed. Consider that large medical institutions tend to pay more than those involved in private practice. In addition, there are always opportunities for advancement for each sampler in order to qualify for the salary improvement. There are a lot of phlebotomist jobs available in hospitals, private clinics, labs and blood banks.

In addition, if a phlebotomist earn several years of experience he or she can choose freelance contracting with higher salary despite the fact that these alternatives do not offer traditional benefits. Wages can also be increased if the person is going to win another four-year medical course and then move to a better position. In addition, by gaining superiority, moving to another health care organization or big city, salary of phlebotomist may be increased. There are even some who gain experience, working as laboratory experts or perhaps getting one of administrative positions.

The average benefits of phlebotomist include health care and retirement rewards, refunds for education, time off which are paid, sick leave, bonuses, insurance and all taxes. Since medical institutions usually set up pay scales for phlebotomists, there will be little options for wage increases. As a result, wage negotiations can be difficult. Do not expect that the employers are willing to offer a high salary only due to your request. What you need to do is prepare a justification to be documented such as additional diploma until you have the chance to get your targeted increase in wages.

A sampler can have the ability to negotiate salary because of different factors. Try to check several hospitals, government health agencies, hospitals, universities and various private organizations. Moreover, get information from salary centers, staffing and recruitment agencies. At times, when you consider the statistical salary in the local market, you get the opportunity to provide a reason for wage increase. With a growing demand for health professionals, phlebotomy is certainly a rewarding professional preference and can also be a huge step when you want to venture in the field of health care.

Phlebotomists are medical workers drawing blood for analysis and these tasks require special training, which includes the completion of phlebotomist classes and passing a certification exam.

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Donning red T-shirts, chanting slogans and pumping picket signs, hundreds of faculty members converged Thursday at California State University, Dominguez Hills, in Carson to stage the first union strike in the history of the CSU system.

The one-day strike – which also occurred at one other campus, East Bay in Hayward – was a response to stalled pay negotiations, and led to myriad class cancellations at both campuses.

“I hope this will persuade the chancellor to stop pursuing such a destructive relationship with the staff and students,” said David Bradfield, campus union president near the main campus’ entrance.

Organizers sought to tie Thursday’s event with larger issues. Leaders from other unions and local politicians delivered oratories that adopted much of the language used by the widespread Occupy Wall Street movement.

“The economic crisis that is crushing California is not caused by the students, it’s not caused by the faculty members, it’s not caused by the workers,” shouted Josh Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers, into a microphone before a cheering crowd. “It’s caused by the bankers and the investment brokers on Wall Street, and yet we’re having to pay!”

Despite the heated rhetoric, the scene had a festive feel, complete with a professional jazz quintet and the honking horns

James May, a professor at Valencia College who teaches students how to speak English, has been chosen as the Florida 2011 Professor of the Year by two well-recognized education organizations.

He was honored yesterday at a reception in Washington D.C. by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

My son, who is in eighth grade, will be entering high school next year. He and I have been touring public and private schools, an experience that is, at best, schizophrenic.

One day, we’ll be walking through the hallways of a run-down public high school that looks like East Berlin, circa 1972; the next, we’re being led through expensively carpeted, LEED-certified buildings featuring exquisite multi-million-dollar auditoriums while were told that each student gets an IPad. At most public schools, we learn that there may be 30 or more kids in a class; at many privates, we’re told most classes exceed no more than 15 students.

Its when were wandering through the private schools’ hallowed highways that I find myself wondering what will happen if my son ends up going public – which he most likely will given the $30,000 (give or take a few thousand) a year private school price tag. Will he steer academically off-course and have little shot after four years of entering a top college?

Public or private: May not matter

According to Jay Matthews of the Washington Post, no. In a recent revelatory post, Matthew argues that whether attending a public, private, or parochial high school has little bearing on where a student will continue onto college – at least in a certain socio-economic bracket with “children of college-focused parents and excellent achievement results.”

Incredibly, notes Matthews, until recently no solid data existed that looked at whether staying in public school after elementary school helped, or hindered, a student’s chances of admittance into a quality college.

Then in 2007, health-care technology analyst Leonard Jewler did a small study of the grduating class of 200 at Lafayette Elementary, a large public elementary located in an affluent Washington D.C. neighborhood. About a third of the Lafayette students attend private high schools, a third public, a third couldn’t be reached.

Did going to a public high school or a private one affect what kind of college the students attended? Jewler found that the Lafayette kids who went to top state universities were just as likely to have graduated from public as private high school. What’s more, whether the Lafayette graduates went on to private high school or attended public high school, an equal number wound up at U.S.News top universities such as Yale, Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Georgetown.

The perk of going public

In fact, going to a public high school could even proof advantageous, writes Matthews. Selective universities have a leveling mechanism so if a student has “straight A’s, a solid SAT score of 2200, and good activities and recommendations, your chances of getting into an Ivy League school are better if you are attending an average public high school than a competitive private one.”

And in a more recent study Jewler conducted with a larger sampling of students (336) from Lafayette and Murch, another high-achieving D.C. elementary, Jeweler has arrived at pretty much the same conclusion: That attending a top-achieving private high school doesn’t give students a notable edge when it came to college acceptance. (Jewlers website: evernowchronicles.org, gives the full report.)

It’s beyond reassuring that if my son attends public high school for the next four years, as long as he gets the grades, he’ll have as fair a shot as the private school kids at a great college. (How we afford that is a whole new worry.)