HIGH LIFE : Thirteen Adults Receive ‘Golden Touch’ Awards

Thirteen Orange County high schools honored a special person in their community with the Golden Touch award, presented recently at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach.

Those honored were selected for significant contributions to the development of young people and were chosen by each school’s student government.

The winners are: Raymond Dune, activities director (Canyon); Dudley Pfaff, athletic booster (Corona del Mar); Rex Tompkins, water polo booster club president (Costa Mesa); Ron Gardon, activities director (El Modena); Fran Ursini, soccer booster club president (Estancia); Peter Feher, teacher-soccer coach (Foothill); Bruce Baron, teacher (Irvine); Mary Ann Archbold, activities director (Newport Harbor); Paul Woods, teacher (Orange); Carl Sims, teacher (Tustin); Barbara Yeager, teacher (University); Dottie Lofaro, parent (Villa Park), and Elaine Goodman, parent (Woodbridge).

The awards program, in its fourth year, is sponsored by the Assessment and Treatment Services Center, a private, nonprofit juvenile counseling program that has served Orange County for more than 12 years.

Nadia Davis, a 17-year-old junior at Villa Park High School, is one of 16 regional semifinalists for the month of May for Teen Magazine’s “1988 Model Discovery of the Year.”

On July 1, California’s minimum wage will increase 27% to $4.25 an hour, making it the highest minimum wage in the nation.

The California Industrial Welfare Commission, an independent state agency, voted in December to raise the state’s minimum wage from $3.35 an hour.

The move to increase the minimum wage was strongly protested by farm and restaurant employers, who warn of layoffs and increased prices for their products.

Children’s ability news to spell correctly may be less dependent on diligence than on genes.

That’s the word from Kenneth G. Wilson, English professor at the University of Connecticut, as reported in the April issue of NEA Today, the journal of the National Education Assn.

Wilson said spelling ability is neuromuscular--like a natural golf swing or a violinist’s touch. Some have it, some don’t. Spelling virtuosity, he said, is likely the product not of repetitive drill but of innate, genetically transmitted ability.

“We teach the child to be logical, and this works out in most of life,” Wilson said. “But not in spelling. A great deal of time and work in education would be saved if we could spell the way we speak.”

“Every generation laughs at the old fashions but religiously follows the new.”

--Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)