The Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District will hold an information session for parents of preschoolers on Oct. 14 at Gearity Professional Development School, 2323 Wrenford Road. At "Fall into the Heights" preschool night parents and their children can learn more about  the district’s preschool and elementary school programs and meet a district kindergarten teacher, elementary school principals and Kindernet representatives. Call 216-371-7356 for more information.

Fairmount Cooperative Preschool is currently enrolling students for the 2010–2011 school year.

The school, celebrating its 28th year, offers programs for children two-and-a-half to five years of age, providing exposure to art, music, science and dramatic play. Professional teachers guide their intellectual growth and physical development, in a controlled atmosphere that provides space and equipment scaled to the students’ size and capabilities.

After months of hard work, Heights Youth Club martial arts students produced impressive results at the Millennium Invitational Martial Arts Tournament, which took place May 2 at Orange High School.

The tournament attracts competitors of all ages, from several states and various countries. Events included demonstrations in self-defense, sparring and both musical and nonmusical forms.

Competitors included Bryce Swoope, a sixth grader at Monticello Middle School; Alexus Carson and Antoinette Bennett, both third graders at Canterbury Elementary School; Simone Beard, a second grader at Fairfax Elementary School; and Nia Primm, a second grader at Canterbury Elementary School.

When I was a teenager, my most anticipated moment was entering Heights High. I was active in the school’s a cappella choir, volleyball team and National Honors Society.

In 2004 I graduated from Heights and left home to attend Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. After graduating in 2007, I returned home to begin graduate studies in social work at Cleveland State University. For my internship I chose the Heights Youth Club. 

The Heights Youth Club boys’ basketball team is on fire and in first place, out of six teams, in the City of Cleveland Recreation League. Led by club director and coach, Roscoe Morgan, the team consists of high school seniors in the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District and members of HYC. The team spends several afternoons a week practicing and perfecting their skills. Games are played on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. The young men have put this team high on their priority list and are determined to bring home a victory. 

While parents look for quality programs at the right price, kids care more about fun and friends. Cleveland Heights teacher and soccer coach Sean Sullivan covers all those bases.

After running the city’s Community Services Camp for 12 years, Sullivan created the Heights United Soccer Academy Summer Camp in 2005. Camp sessions are held at Oxford Elementary School for boys and girls ages 5–14. The camp has grown from 12 campers the first year to more than 150 in 2009. "Even at the beginning stages, kids can see instant success in soccer," says Sullivan. "You don’t have to be the strongest or the fastest. Everybody works together in soccer."

The Jewish Family Service Association is helping ease the burden of college tuition by offering financial aid to qualified students.

The requirements are: 

• Jewish undergraduate, graduate or vocational student,
• Full or part-time student,
• Resident of Cuyahoga or contiguous counties,
• Need additional finances to complete an education, and
  
• Have family income $85,000 or under. 

The Heights Youth Club’s (HYC) Girls Volleyball team is taking on all comers. Compared with last year’s statistics, this team has made dramatic improvement. Its current record is 6:3 compared with last year's record of 1:6. The team is in second place going into the finals in the Boys and Girls Clubs of Cleveland Girls Volleyball League.

The team’s success has not come by accident. Teamwork, leadership and coaching have helped the girls achieve their winning season. Coach Eboni Daniels, a Heights High alum and master’s degree student at Cleveland State’s School of Social Work, put the emphasis on teamwork, training and practice. The growth and development of the girls is evidence that her dedication to the team is paying off.

Jewish Family Service Association is accepting applications for the Jack W. and Shirley J. Berger Scholarship. The fund was established in 1988 by two former Clevelanders to help and encourage students entering college to attain academic excellence in a secular institution.

You would be impressed, as I was, to meet Clayton Harris, this year’s Youth of the Year at the Heights Youth Club.

Sound character, leadership and the willingness to serve are the qualities that make a Youth of the Year; qualities young people need in order to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens. 

Seventeen-year-old Clayton, a senior from Cleveland Heights High School, has been attending the HYC since it opened in 2007.  Back then, he thought the brick building with the white steeple at Lee Road and Washington Boulevard was a church, but a friend mentioned that the space had been converted into a great place for kids.

In October, nine-year-old Riley O'Neill of Cleveland Heights welcomed Jingle, a service dog from 4 Paws For Ability, to help her with her Asperger's syndrome.

Riley and her family traveled to the 4 Paws headquarters in Xenia, Ohio, to receive training with Jingle. The family spent 10 days receiving full-day training. While in Xenia, they learned commands for Jingle and how to walk her, among other things.

Jingle's training began long before she met the O'Neill family. The one-year-old dog, part Australian shepherd, and part boxer, is now in her fifth home. After being rescued at a Kentucky shelter and taken to 4 Paws, Jingle was placed with a foster family, where she learned basic obedience.

I'll have that hot lunch with a side of school work and a helping of self-esteem! Heights Youth Club continued its mission of providing a positive place for kids in a December packed with learning, special projects, and core attention to academic achievement.  

Heights Youth Club, proud to be part of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland, is grateful for community collaboration, including a hot and healthy meal served daily, provided by the Cleveland Food Bank, volunteer tutors, and corporate support. Recently, employees of the Eaton Corporation toured the facility, and the Great Lakes Science Center hosted a holiday party at the science museum so that kids could visit exhibits. 

Helen Hollis, CHHS '06, walks home from school with fourth graders at Escuela Los Angeles in Grecia, Costa Rica. Hollis is bilingual and spent her first year out of high school volunteering in Costa Rica and Ecuador. She volunteered as an English teacher at an urban elementary school from September through December 2006. Hollis, a junior at The Ohio State University, is currently enjoying a semester abroad in Peru.

What do Cleveland Heights, Kirtland, Solon, Stow, Akron and Willoughby Hills all have in common? …an Upward Basketball (Upward) league.

A league, designed for boys and girls K-6th grade, has started at the new multi-purpose building at the Church of the Saviour on Lee Road. Upward is the world’s largest Christian sports program for children.

Fifteen elementary students completed Girls on the Run’s second season at Canterbury Elementary in November. The girls met twice a week for 12 weeks and trained to complete a 5k race.

Parent volunteers complete training to coach the girls. Each session consists of a discussion on topics such as self-esteem, team building, physical fitness, nutrition, communication and respect. 

Girls on the Run, an international organization, is committed to addressing the physical, emotional, spiritual, social and mental well-being of third to fifth-grade girls in the community.   

This year the soccer program through the Cleveland Heights Recreation League did something revolutionary. It asked parents to provide all snacks from the fresh fruits group and to serve water for hydration in reusable containers.

Kids ate mandarin oranges, grapes, bananas, strawberries, watermelon and lots of Ohio apples. Each week Coach Sean Sullivan reinforced the concept of choosing healthy snacks with the soccer players and their parents. As an organization promoting sports and fitness, the soccer program also encouraged appropriate food choices for optimal health. 

Tiffany Ann Laufer (Saint Ann School class of ’87) reads her latest book, The Porch Dream, to an eager group of Saint Ann School kindergartners (Class of ’18). Laufer, who is both an author and filmmaker in Cleveland Heights, was invited by the class as part of its Secret Reader program. The class was the first group of children to hear Laufer’s new story. For more information about The Porch Dream or any of Laufer’s other children’s books, log on to www.bellaboobooks.com.

Heights Parent Center has a family liaison located in each CH-UH elementary school to welcome and engage parents of new and returning students this fall. The Parent Resource Center is staffed by family liaisons and is open several hours a week. Parents can relax, have a cup of coffee, chat with one another and comb library shelves for community information and parenting resources. 

The liaisons are available to help parents help each child be successful in school. Check the center's Web site, www.heightsparentcenter.org, for information on the Family-School Connection, to locate the name of the family liaison at each building and the Resource Center's hours. 

What are your children doing after school? If you worry about them being home alone or hanging out with the wrong crowd, the Heights Youth Club on Lee Road can end those concerns.

The club offers a positive and safe environment for youth ages 6-18 where they can do their homework with the help of tutors, participate in daily games and contests and nurture their creative side.

The Heights Youth Club is now halfway through its third annual summer program. The club kicked off the summer with its first annual "Taste of Heights" fundraiser where members of City Council and residents came out to enjoy food from over 20 area restaurants and to support the club. Special thanks to Jimmy O’Neill for his hard work and dedication to making the evening an overwhelming success.

Since the event, club members have enjoyed various activities in the gym, games room, computer lab, art room and teen floor. All of the activities are age specific and all members get a chance to be in every area of the building at some point during each day. Members also enjoy a full hot lunch every afternoon when they arrive.

FutureHeights bids farewell to Dominique Goodwin who volunteered as an office intern during her 2009 spring semester at Cleveland Heights High School.

Dominique graduated in May and will attend Shawnee State University in Portsmith, Ohio this fall.

"It was a fun experience," she said, "I learned to write better, what it takes to put a newspaper together, and how hectic an office can be."

We wish Dominique well in her future endeavors.

 

To scores of Cleveland-area kids, “Swoosh” is more than just the sweet sound of a basketball cleanly slipping through the net. It’s a summer tradition.

For the eighth year in a row, Swoosh Co-Ed Camps are available this summer to all students entering grades one through nine. “Our philosophy is simple,” says Amy Hertz, whose company oversees the camps, “we offer programs that parents can be confident in knowing their children will learn, grow and have fun in a positive and safe environment.”

Summer vacation is just around the corner and what are your children going to do? The Heights Youth Club is here to help cure summer boredom, with three floors of constant activity as well as a daily meal. 

This summer, the club will engage members aged 6 to 18 in programs such as teen sports leagues, arts and crafts, movies and game room tournaments, just to name a few.

A paper obsolete

Covered in mountains and rivers

Governments line to line

“Rip” the paper turns

Over fjords covering oceans

The paper looking out

Through its lakes

Pages of covered land

Shapes like monkeys jumping in trees

Animals frolicking in the stream

Colors of the rainbow

Never touching itself

Paper on which chess was played

The Heights High Parent Connection Council will host two simultaneous talks for families about alcohol and other drugs on April 30, 7 p.m. at Heights High. Please come to the Social Room by 7 p.m. for a brief overview, then students and parents will be directed to the appropriate room.

Is this long, cold winter making you mad?!?  Then get out of the house and join us for an evening of rip-roaring games, amazing entertainment, finger-lickin’ food and mind-blowing madness!

Noble Elementary School PTA invites kids of all ages to a night of fun and games at the Cleveland Heights Community Center Gymnasium (1 Monticello Blvd.) on Saturday, March 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.  We’re pulling out lots of games, including basketball, hula hoops, soccer, ping pong, scooters, horseshoes and more. 

Reaching Heights is now accepting applications to the Heights Summer Music Camp to be held June 8 to 12 at Wiley Middle School in University Heights.  Students currently enrolled in fifth through eighth grade who reside in the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district and have two years of experience in their school’s instrumental music program are invited to participate.

Heights Youth Club was one of two organizations chosen by the Northern Ohio Minority Business Council to participate in an event recognizing corporations, educational and government agencies, and minority business enterprises for their commitment to diversity and economic development. NOMBC, an affiliate of the National Minority Supplier Development Council, facilitates sustainable business relationships over a 38 county area in Northern Ohio.

The Youth of the Year program is a Boys and Girls Club of America nationally sponsored event. The competition recognizes extraordinary members who have made worthwhile contributions to their family, school, or community; have shown a dedication to academic excellence; and have risen above personal challenges or obstacles. The program benefits members by helping them to achieve personal growth, developing their leadership skills, strengthening their moral values, and building positive self-concepts along with developing healthy attitudes toward home, community, school and their club.

My sister's children taught me a new phrase, “no waste lunches,” in discussing how Ruffing Montessori School is quite green –featuring lunches that are entirely consumed or composted.

Eight-year-old Riley O'Neil loves animals and already has three cats of her own. But she needs another pet – a dog to help her deal with her Asperger's syndrome.

Children's International Summer Villages (CISV) hosted an information meeting on Thursday, Dec. 18, at the CH-UH Main Library in Cleveland Heights, providing an opportunity to meet local kids who were delegates in recent CISV trips to and exchange programs with Sweden, Brazil, and Mexico. CISV programs are geared toward students ages 11-18 and are supported substantially by a strong network of volunteers around the world. Applications are being accepted now for upcoming summer camp programs in the Netherlands and Sweden (11-year olds) and an exchange program with Austria (14-15 year-olds). The deadline is Jan. 5, 2009.

Looking to be thrifty this holiday season? 

Check out the Heights Parent Center's Nifty Thrifty Holiday Gently Used Toy Sale. Browse their selection of gently used toys, games, books and other kid-friendly gift items.

On Nov. 21, the students of Open Doors Academy were stunned by the arrival of a surprise guest, movie star Will Smith.

The Heights’ Youth Club is a place where younger and older kids can expand their mind. The Heights’ Youth Club means a lot to a lot of children of all kinds. One of the directors that makes sure most kids are involved is Mrs. Williams. For me, basketball was my escape - that’s when I met another director, Jeff Haynes, who told me about the new basketball team they were beginning to start. I slowly made my name to the top of the ladder. Sometime in the future I would love to play for Roscoe Morgan’s team - Mr. Morgan is the club’s director. So really if not for the Heights’ Youth Club I probably would be incarcerated somewhere doing things that would never cross my mind.

Left to right: Cleveland Heights residents Tamar Fleshler, Sophie Madorsky, and Alee Sonkin, rehearse with JCC Playmakers Director Sherri Gross for The Sound of Music. Performances are Dec. 11-14 and 18-21. For tickets, please call the box office at 216-831-0700, x1230. $10 General, $8 JCC Members, Seniors and Students.

What is the best kept secret in Cleveland Heights? Some say that the Heights Youth Club is indeed that secret.

The Heights Youth Club is located at 2065 Lee Road is across the street from Heights High School. The club was founded by people who believed that kids in the Heights community needed a safe and enjoyable place to go after school and during the summer. Extensive research and analysis revealed the need for community based programming for kids.

The trend is undeniable: parents are becoming more proactive and seeking ways to improve their parenting skills. This can be seen in the growing number of parenting websites, parenting books, magazines, radio and TV reality shows (such as Nanny 911 and Supernanny). The book, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, has currently sold over 13 million copies. Clearly parents are taking steps to be more conscious and consistent in how they raise their children.

On one of my recent drives, my ears perked at the topic on BBC’s “World Have Your Say” hosted by Ros Atkins. The globally conscious segment of the British Broadcasting Corporation gives guest speakers all across the world the opportunity to express viewpoints that range from politically correct to radical (by the standards of mainstream media). The subject of the show was child-rearing.

Ruffing seventh grader Caroline Anderson-Nhok advanced to the State Finals of the 2008 Power of the Pen Interscholastic Competition for Young Writers. In Ruffing’s first year in the popular program, two teams of six writers represented Ruffing and competed with students from area public and independent schools at the district event.

While most of the students at Heights High will be breathing a sigh of relief for summer vacation in June, Miles Walker, an 11th grader at the high school will be packing his bags for a seven-week stay with a host family in Japan. He will attend school to study Japanese language through the AFS Student Exchange Program. AFS (formerly the American Field Service) is a leader in intercultural learning and offers international exchange programs in more than forty countries around the world through independent, nonprofit AFS organizations, each with a network of volunteers, a professionally staffed office, and headed up by a volunteer board. AFS-USA works toward a more just and peaceful world by providing international and intercultural learning experiences to individuals, families, schools, and communities through a global volunteer partnership.