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Thursday, February 21, 2013
Volume LXXVII, Number 70
www.mustangdaily.net
The chef and the teacher Lauren Scott is a 24-year-old reality television contestant. Rebecca Mieliwocki is an award-winning California middle school teacher who has met the president. So what do the very different pair have in common? Cal Poly, of course. COURTESY PHOTOS
Lauren Scott, a Cal Poly journalism alumna, first appeared on ABC’s cooking television show “The Taste” on Feb. 12, and since then has wowed the judges with her culinary skills. Now, in her own words, this alumna dishes on how she got the chance for a taste of fame. LAUREN SCOTT
Special to Mustang Daily
The first six months after graduation are terrible. You’ve been warned, so now you can’t act like it’s a surprise when you get there. Even if you happen to land the perfect job in your field immediately after college, those six months will be filled with transition — which, in my opinion is the most difficult phase of life. They say nothing is certain except death and taxes. I say nothing is certain except death, taxes and transition.
I experienced the biggest transition of my life after graduating from the journalism department at Cal Poly in December 2011. Less than a month after shaking President Armstrong’s hand, I was driving to Mississippi in my champagne-colored ‘89 Cadillac DeVille filled with all my earthly possessions. If it wasn’t for “The Hunger Games” series on audiobook, I’m convinced I would’ve fallen asleep at the wheel and that would’ve been the end of my story. I made it to Laurel, Miss.,
and began to embark on my new, exciting journey, degree in hand. I got a job as a restaurant manager making $10 per hour (Whoop! Makin’ big money!). Perhaps it was the fact that I was practically living in another country, or perhaps it was the fact that my job had absolutely nothing to do with my new, crisp, expensive degree; regardless, I was miserable. I felt like my life was heading nowhere fast. While at Cal Poly, I was going to school full-time while working as a cook full-time; my busy schedule had given me a feeling of accomplishment, like I was moving forward. I didn’t realize that stepping off Cal Poly’s campus would feel like stepping off a conveyor belt while attempting to balance an encyclopedia on my head. Right when I started feeling like I had re-established some balance in my life, I was “let go” from my job. In my pit of unemployment, despair and Top Ramen, I decided to do see CHEF, pg. 2
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
JACOB LAUING
It’s like the San Francisco 49ers asking the Oakland Raiders how to play football. But teachers in countries that outscore the United States in standardized tests are looking to American educators for inspiration, 2012 National Teacher of the Year Rebecca Mieliwocki said. Mieliwocki, a 1990 Cal Poly alumna, spent the past year away from teaching, traveling the globe and visiting countries that academically outperform the United States. Mieliwocki said she found that these countries, despite their academic success, still strive to teach the American way. “Everyone wanted to know how we do it and no matter where I went, even at the best school in the entire world, Shanghai No. 4, they wanted to know,” Mieliwocki said. “That blew me away.” Critics dismiss the American education system using comparisons with other nations. But Mieliwocki has seen firsthand that, despite the United States’ relatively low
Tomorrow’s Weather:
The man who makes dreams wearable. ARTS, pg. 4
Last year, seventh grade Luther Burbank Middle School English teacher Rebecca Mieliwocki was picked from a nationwide pool of educators to be honored as National Teacher of the Year. Yesterday, Mieliwocki returned to her alma mater to share her philosophy on teaching.
jacoblauing.md@gmail.com
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international standardized testing rank, American teachers are still doing a good job, she said. “While the rest of the world is looking to just boil kids and teachers down to a number, we are doing incredible things and are just waiting for the rest of the world to see them,” Mieliwocki said. Since being honored by President Barack Obama this past April, Mieliwocki has visited schools in China, Japan and Singapore. She’s also Skyped with classrooms in Uganda and Ukraine.
In the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment test of 15-year-old students in 65 countries, the United States finished 23rd, 17th and 32nd in science, reading and math, respectively. Even so, teachers in other countries are using American approaches to education, Mieliwocki said. “We have areas to improve, but what I saw overseas was teachers teaching the way we teach and teachers using our ideas to educate their children,” see TEACHER, pg. 2
INDEX
Opinions/Editorial..............6 News.............................1-3 ClassifiedsComics..............7 Arts...............................4-5 Sports..................................8
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