A Samoan football drumline, Smackle speaks and school equity: HS Insider reports

Oct. 30, 2015 3:03 PM PT

Every week we bring you a roundup of student stories from High School Insider. Students from more than 60 Southern California schools contribute to High School Insider and post their stories on latimes.com. If you – or your students – have stories to tell and would like to participate, check out this link for all the details.

A drumline infused with Samoan culture: Mater Dei High School senior football player Tupua Seanoa carries his Samoan heritage with him on the field every week through his family and their music. Since Seanoa was a freshman, his family has been playing traditional Polynesian drums and conch shells with their group Tupua Productions. “Football is a team sport and you just need to get that rhythm," said Seanoa’s sister Kalea Seanoa. "And so we give them that bass to just keep going. You see them as we're playing and all of their heads are just going dum, dum."
Meet the high school freshman who plays Smackle on Disney Channel’s 'Girl Meets World': Ceci Balagot is a ninth-grader at the Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) in the Musical Theatre Conservatory. "There are people who just want to be friends with you because you’re on TV — I’ve met those people,” Balagot told Cassandra Hsiao (OCSA). "So when people come up to me for that, I’m wary, but I don’t think I’ve come across that too much.”
Students speak out about school equity: Around 150 students from high schools in East and South Los Angeles attended a United Way-sponsored event to give their input on new school funding allocations, Miriam Antonio (Fairfax) reports. The students were English learners, foster youth and from low-income families who will benefit from this new funding. “You have the right for full engagement in this process because it affects you,” Los Angeles School Board President Steve Zimmer told them.

California

Daniela Gerson

Daniela Gerson was a community engagement editor at the Los Angeles Times. She left in 2016. As a journalist and educator, her work focuses on multiethnic communities and innovations in participatory media. She was previously the director of the Civic Engagement and Journalism Initiative at USC’s Annenberg School. Gerson was the founding editor of Alhambra Source, a research-based site investigating how local news can foster civic engagement. She also developed Reporter Corps, a program to train young adults to report on their own communities. Gerson has contributed to the Financial Times Magazine, the New York Times, PRI’s The World, Der Spiegel, WNYC, and was a staff immigration reporter for the New York Sun. Daniela is the recipient of Alexander von Humboldt and Arthur F. Burns fellowships. A graduate of Brown University and USC Annenberg, she speaks Spanish and Portuguese, and can get by in German and Hebrew.

A Samoan football drumline, Smackle speaks and school equity: HS Insider reports

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