A Press Democrat Blog

Teen Life

News and opinion from local teens

Americans falling behind in foreign language skills

Sunday, at 3:15 by

By ARTHUR MORGAN SONOMA VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL, SENIOR, 17 Whenever I call my cousin in France I’m always taken aback at her English rhetoric — not only is it grammatically and linguistically fluid but, rather, her confidence in her speech resonates through her steady pronunciation and ever so often rhetorical flourish. How did she learn to be so confident in her speech, I ask. Her answer: She has taken English since our equivalent to sixth grade. It always leaves me… Read More »

Is ignorance really bliss?

Monday, at 2:19 by

By Arianna Maysonave Wall Street is crumbling on the brink of budgetary crisis, more than a million American children fall asleep with an insatiable ache for sustenance, and over 1.4 million individuals filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009. With 7.2 million dollars spent daily on the foreign war effort and 4.2 million U.S. citizens facing a full year of unemployment, the political and economic climate of our nation churns in a state of chaotic flux. But for adolescents blessed to… Read More »

Teen Face: Caity Tremblay

Monday, at 1:04 by

By PAUL PAYNE THE PRESS DEMOCRAT Caity Tremblay wears many hats at Sonoma Valley High School: Newspaper editor, honors student, thespian. But she’s mostly identified by an unofficial role. “People know me as that singing girl,” said Tremblay, a senior who will attend UC Davis this fall. “I walk around singing out loud. It’s something I’ve been doing since preschool. People get highly annoyed.” Tremblay doesn’t put a lot of stock into what other people think. In three years at… Read More »

Bound books us. the Kindle

Friday, at 10:34 by

Bound Books By Caity Tremblay Technology is redefining what it means to communicate. Reading a book is a physical and mental experience, an experience uniquely human, but the tradition of reading in a book is now contending with a new cyber-competitor. Will Amazon’s launch of an e-book reader, the Kindle, replace the classical form of a book? Should it? There is a conceptual dichotomy between the e-book and a physical book, a division more feeling than fact. Physical books have… Read More »

Art with heart: SVHS to India

Friday, at 10:33 by

By Caity Tremblay In our career-driven world art is often disregarded as a trivial practice, but as 25 SVHS artists and 25 orphans in India know, art can be life-changing. “It’s hard to say who got the most enjoyment out of it, the kids or my students,” mused Owen Tuttle, art teacher who promoted the project. Portraits were made by 25 individualized study students (advanced art students), along with select other participants, as an act of kindness towards children on… Read More »

Cheers and jeers

Friday, at 10:32 by

By KC Jeppesen Heckling has long been a part of sports, and will not be quickly removed from the sports world. Both cheering and booing are essential to the spirit of competition. Other SCL schools’ fans make the SVHS players into victims of verbal harassment in the form of heckling, but when those teams come to visit Sonoma they experience no such phenomenon. “The fans from Analy seem to be yelling at us throughout the entire game,” said Dylan Severson,… Read More »

New coach floats into SVHS

Wednesday, at 10:53 by

By Jamie Ballard The future of the swim program at SVHS was unclear up until recently, due to the fact that there was no swim coach available, and potential applicants were having trouble finding the job posting. In the past, the SVHS swim team has begun practices in early Feb.  Due to lack of a coach, students began to worry that the swim team would be nonexistent.  Swimmers who had been on the team in previous years were caught up… Read More »

Moll gives big buck donation to SVHS

Wednesday, at 10:51 by

By  KC Jeppesen Adam Kohut Tony Moll, an alumnus of the Dragon football program and current professional football player for the Baltimore Ravens organization, recently made a generous donation of $5,000 to the SVHS football program. Moll graduated from SVHS in 2001 and continued on to play football at University of Nevada, Reno.  Moll was drafted by the Green Bay Packers in 2006, then traded to the Baltimore Ravens in 2009. “Tony Moll is tremendously generous for providing us with… Read More »

A-G for graduation a misstep

Wednesday, at 10:47 by

By Samantha Salek SVUSD has instated a new policy that will require every student at the SVHS to meet the A-G requirements in order to graduate. This change is set to come into effect for next year’s incoming freshman. A-G requires students to complete courses up through certain levels in each subject. The system is limited to courses that meet the requirements for admission at UC and CSU campuses. A-G minimum requirements differ from the current SVHS graduation requirements in… Read More »

Who’s to blame for bullying teens?

Friday, at 10:08 by

By Samantha Salek In response to several gay teen suicides at the start of the school year, journalist Dan Savage stepped up to attempt to make a difference in the lives of LGBT teenagers who may be suffering at the hands of bullies in school. He did this with his new project, called “It Gets Better”(IGB). IGB uses the personal accounts of supportive celebrities as well as everyday people to show gay teens that life can get better for them… Read More »