Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Dunkers Foundation Honors Southwest Nordic State Champions

Adlai Sinkler, Minnesota Hockey Coach Lucia, Joey Doyle & Foss Kerker


Dunkers are a local foundation of business, sports, and university leaders in the interest of networking and supporting youth athletics in MPLS.The website is:  http://twincitiesdunkers.com/index.html


Today's guest speaker was Minnesota Golden Gopher Hockey Coach Don Lucia .

Young Driver Car Insurance Tips: 6 Ways to Save Money


Young Driver Car Insurance Tips: 6 Ways to Save Money


By Joanna Nesbit
You may know already that insuring a young driver is expensive. Our insurance rate doubled when we added our 16-year-old daughter to our policy. If you’re insuring your teen soon, now is a good time to research costs.
Why Teens Cost So Much
Car accidents are the leading cause of death for teens ages 16 to 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Teens are three times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than people ages 20 and older, and boys are more of an insurance risk than girls for several reasons, including a greater likelihood to speed, not use seat belts, and not identify hazardous situations. Sixteen-year-old boys cost the most—an average increase to a family’s policy of 109 percent—but all young drivers represent risk for insurance companies, according to InsuranceQuotes.com. We asked experts for their top young driver car insurance tips.

6 Young Driver Car Insurance Tips
1. Shop for discounts.
You may be eligible for discounts if your teen has at least a 3.0 grade point average or resides at boarding school or college 100 or more miles away without a car. (Rates and rules vary by state.) You can also save money with low annual mileage, higher deductibles, and bundling with other policies. Some policies allow a teen to be insured on just one car—which also means the child must only drive that one car.
Start with your insurance agent and ask whether you’re getting every available discount, suggests Jeanne Salvatore, senior vice president of the Insurance Information Institute. “It’s important to take into consideration the service you’re getting with your current insurer,” she says. “If you’ve filed a claim and you were pleased with the service, take that into account.” But also compare rates on a site like InsuranceQuotes.com, or enlist the help of an insurance broker.
2. Involve your teen.
Young drivers have no idea what auto insurance costs and why. Florida personal injury attorney Michele Ross understands it well and recommends making cost a family conversation. “Have your teens go through the quoting process with you so they understand how expensive it is,” she says. Getting them involved also helps them understand the relationship between safe driving and insurance rates. Consider making good grades a prerequisite for driving privileges, or requiring your teen to pay his portion of insurance.
3. Require driver’s education.
My state requires driver’s ed classes for students under 18 to be eligible for a license, but not all states do. Statistically, however, students who take driver’s ed are less likely to have an accident because they’re better prepared for the road. Driver’s Ed classes can also save on insurance rates.
4. Add your teen to your policy.
Generally, insuring a teen on your policy is less expensive than buying a stand-alone policy because teens benefit from your preferred rates. However, Ross says it’s always worth asking about both. To save further, skip letting a teen have her own car (which will be much more expensive to insure).
5. Drive less expensive cars.
“High-performance or more expensive cars will be more expensive to insure,” Salvatore says. “Balance those considerations with having a car that’s easy to drive and protects the occupants.” (Note: Experts also caution that teenagers shouldn’t automatically get the old family car, which may not be as safe as a newer model.)
6. Delay the license.
For every year older your teenager is, your rate decreases slightly. When your teen does hit the road, she’s a smidge more mature. But keep in mind, teens benefit from lots of practice behind the wheel, so don’t delay too long. You’ll want your teenager to earn a license while you can still
supervise the process.
Other Policy Changes to Consider
Your auto insurance policy will also include liability insurance, which helps pay for any damage your teenager may cause to another person (this is called bodily injury) or their property. Every state except New Hampshire requires motorists to have a minimum amount of liability insurance, but those minimum amounts are often inadequate. For example, in Ohio, the minimum amount required for bodily injury is just $25,000 per person ($50,000 per accident). The amount for property damage is just $25,000 per accident. Consider if your teenager is at fault in a major accident. Those amounts would be unlikely to cover all the costs, which means you will have to pay the rest out of pocket.
Increasing your liability coverage can offer peace of mind, doesn’t cost a lot, and could cost you less in the long run if your teenager does cause a major accident. How much is enough? Ross recommends $100,000 each in bodily injury, property damage, and uninsured motorist coverage (which covers you if your child gets into an accident with a driver who has no insurance). But since rules vary so much by state, it’s best to speak with a local agent who knows your situation.
Adding a teen driver to your insurance is also a good time to purchase an inexpensive umbrella liability policy. In the case of a car accident, umbrella liability covers any costs not covered by your auto insurance liability limits. For example, say your teenager causes a serious accident and you settle a lawsuit for $500,000. Your auto insurance pays up to its limit, say $200,000; the umbrella insurance will pay the remaining $300,000. Again, speak with a local agent about how much umbrella insurance is enough for your family.
A final idea in our roundup of young driver car insurance tips: consider raising your deductible on your premium. However, savings vary by state—anywhere from 6 to 29 percent—and may not be great enough to warrant a change. Again, check with your agent.
Joanna Nesbit is a freelance writer based in the Pacific Northwest. She writes frequently about parenting and her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Family Fun, Parenting, and elsewhere. 




Sunday, February 26, 2017

Traits of Parents of Successful Kids

Science says parents of successful kids have these 11 things in common

Good parents want their kids to stay out of trouble, do well in school, and go on to do awesome things as adults. 
And while there isn't a set recipe for raising successful children, psychology research has pointed to a handful of factors that predict success.
Unsurprisingly, much of it comes down to the parents. Here's what parents of successful kids have in common:

1. They make their kids do chores.


"If kids aren't doing the dishes, it means someone else is doing that for them," Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and author of "How to Raise an Adult" said during a TED Talks Live event.
"And so they're absolved of not only the work, but of learning that work has to be done and that each one of us must contribute for the betterment of the whole," she said.
Lythcott-Haims believes kids raised on chores go on to become employees who collaborate well with their coworkers, are more empathetic because they know firsthand what struggling looks like, and are able to take on tasks independently.
She bases this on the "Harvard Grant Study," the longest longitudinal study ever conducted.
"By making them do chores — taking out the garbage, doing their own laundry — they realize I have to do the work of life in order to be part of life," she tells Tech Insider.

2. They teach their kids social skill

Researchers from Pennsylvania State University and Duke University tracked more than 700 children from across the US between kindergarten and age 25 and found a significant correlation between their social skills as kindergartners and their success as adults two decades later.
The 20-year study showed that socially competent children who could cooperate with their peers without prompting, be helpful to others, understand their feelings, and resolve problems on their own, were far more likely to earn a college degree and have a full-time job by age 25 than those with limited social skills.
Those with limited social skills also had a higher chance of getting arrested, binge drinking, and applying for public housing.
"This study shows that helping children develop social and emotional skills is one of the most important things we can do to prepare them for a healthy future," said Kristin Schubert, program director at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the research, in a release.
"From an early age, these skills can determine whether a child goes to college or prison, and whether they end up employed or addicted."

3. They have high expectations.


Using data from a national survey of 6,600 children born in 2001, University of California at Los Angeles professor Neal Halfon and his colleagues discovered that the expectations parents hold for their kids have a huge effect on attainment.
"Parents who saw college in their child's future seemed to manage their child toward that goal irrespective of their income and other assets," he said in a statement.
The finding came out in standardized tests: 57% of the kids who did the worst were expected to attend college by their parents, while 96% of the kids who did the best were expected to go to college.
This falls in line with another psych finding: The Pygmalion effect, which states "that what one person expects of another can come to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy." In the case of kids, they live up to their parents' expectations.

4. They have healthy relationships with each other.


Children in high-conflict families, whether intact or divorced, tend to fare worse than children of parents that get along, according to a University of Illinois study review.
Robert Hughes Jr., professor and head of the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of Illinois and the study review author, also notes that some studies have found children in nonconflictual single-parent families fare better than children in conflictual two-parent families.
The conflict between parents prior to divorce also affects children negatively, while post-divorce conflict has a strong influence on children's adjustment, Hughes says.
One study found that, after divorce, when a father without custody has frequent contact with his kids and there is minimal conflict, children fare better. But when there is conflict, frequent visits from the father are related to poorer adjustment of children.
Yet another study found that 20-somethings who experienced divorce of their parents as children still report pain and distress over their parent's divorce ten years later. Young people who reported high conflict between their parents were far more likely to have feelings of loss and regret.

5. They've attained higher educational levels.


A2014 study lead by University of Michigan psychologist Sandra Tang found that mothers who finished high school or college were more likely to raise kids that did the same.
Pulling from a group of over 14,000 children who entered kindergarten from 1998 to 2007, the study found that children born to teen moms (18 years old or younger) were less likely to finish high school or go to college than their counterparts.
Aspiration is partially responsible. In a 2009 longitudinal study of 856 people in semirural New York, Bowling Green State University psychologist Eric Dubow found "parents' educational level when the child was 8 years old significantly predicted educational and occupational success for the child 40 years later."

6. They teach their kids math early on.


A 2007 meta-analysisof 35,000 preschoolers across the US, Canada, and England found that developing math skills early can turn into a huge advantage.
"The paramount importance of early math skills — of beginning school with a knowledge of numbers, number order, and other rudimentary math concepts — is one of the puzzles coming out of the study," coauthor and Northwestern University researcher Greg Duncan said in a press release. "Mastery of early math skills predicts not only future math achievement, it also predicts future reading achievement."

7. They develop a relationship with their kids.

A 2014 study of 243 people born into poverty found that children who received "sensitive caregiving" in their first three years not only did better in academic tests in childhood but also had healthier relationships and greater academic attainment in their 30s.
As reported on PsyBlog, parents who are sensitive caregivers "respond to their child's signals promptly and appropriately" and "provide a secure base" for children to explore the world.
"This suggests that investments in early parent-child relationships may result in long-term returns that accumulate across individuals' lives," coauthor and University of Minnesota psychologist Lee Raby said in an interview.

8. They're less stressed.


According to recent research cited by Brigid Schulte at The Washington Post, the number of hours that moms spend with kids between ages 3 and 11 does little to predict the child's behavior, well-being, or achievement. What's more, the "intensive mothering" or "helicopter parenting" approach can backfire.
"Mothers' stress, especially when mothers are stressed because of the juggling with work and trying to find time with kids, that may actually be affecting their kids poorly," study coauthor and Bowling Green State University sociologist Kei Nomaguchi told The Post.
Emotional contagion — or the psychological phenomenon where people "catch" feelings from one another like they would a cold — helps explain why. Research shows that if your friend is happy, that brightness will infect you; if she's sad, that gloominess will transfer as well. So if a parent is exhausted or frustrated, that emotional state could transfer to the kids.

9. They value effort over avoiding failure.


Where kids think success comes from also predicts their attainment. 
Over decades, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has discovered that children (and adults) think about success in one of two ways. Over at the always-fantastic Brain Pickings, Maria Popova says they go a little something like this: 
A "fixed mindset" assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens that we can't change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled.
A "growth mindset," on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of un-intelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities. 
At the core is a distinction in the way you assume your will affects your ability, and it has a powerful effect on kids. If kids are told that they aced a test because of their innate intelligence, that creates a "fixed" mindset. If they succeeded because of effort, that teaches a "growth" mindset.

10. The moms work.


According to research out of Harvard Business School, there are significant benefits for children growing up with mothers who work outside the home. The study found daughters of working mothers went to school longer were more likely to have a job in a supervisory role and earned more money — 23% more compared to peers raised by stay-at-home mothers.
The sons of working mothers also tended to pitch in more on household chores and childcare, the study found — they spent seven and a half more hours a week on childcare and 25 more minutes on housework.
"Role modeling is a way of signaling what's appropriate in terms of how you behave, what you do, the activities you engage in, and what you believe," the study's lead author, Harvard Business School professor Kathleen L. McGinn, told Business Insider.
"There are very few things, that we know of, that have such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working mother," she told Working Knowledge.

11. They have a higher socioeconomic status.


Tragically, one-fifth of American children grow up in poverty, a situation that severely limits their potential.
It's getting more extreme. According to Stanford University researcher Sean Reardon, the achievement gap between high- and low-income families "is roughly 30% to 40% larger among children born in 2001 than among those born 25 years earlier." 
As "Drive" author Dan Pink has noted, the higher the income for the parents, the higher the SAT scores for the kids. 
"Absent comprehensive and expensive interventions, socioeconomic status is what drives much of educational attainment and performance," he wrote.


http://www.businessinsider.com/how-parents-set-their-kids-up-for-success-2015-11/#6-theyteach-their-kids-math-early-on-6

Friday, February 24, 2017

Spring Sports and Captains' Practices

Softball Captains Practice
Interested in Trying out for Softball?  2017 Captain's practice schedule
Full Schedule and Contact information here!

Baseball Captains Practice
Southwest Baseball is holding captains’ practices now! Mondays and Wednesdays from 6:50-7:40am in the West Gym at Southwest. Please see details at http://mplssouthwestbaseball.org.

Track and Field Captains Practice
February 27.  March 1, 3, 6, 8, 10.

First day of Season is March 13th, 2017 

Softball Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser February 25th at Cuzzy’s Bar and Grill


Softball Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser

February 25th at Cuzzy’s Bar and Grill  More information here!

Artist Leslie Barlow Southwest 2007 Graduate New Exhibition Opening Saturday the 25th.


Gallery: Artist Leslie Barlow poses for a photo in her studio with some of her paintings.


LEILA NAVIDI – start Tribune

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The sunlight streamed into Leslie Barlow’s studio as she painted, illuminating the faces surrounding her. On one canvas, a couple hold hands as they walk. Another pair sits together on a couch. In a third painting, a couple gaze at their two children.
Everyday families doing everyday things. Except that these families, unlike those typically depicted in oil portraits, are interracial.
“I wanted to represent them as they are,” said Barlow, 27, brush in hand, “and question our ideas of family normalcy.”
Barlow’s new exhibition, “Loving,” which opens Saturday at Public Functionary in northeast Minneapolis, was inspired by the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case that struck down laws banning interracial marriage, and the couple behind it: Mildred and Richard Loving.
But the show’s 10 portraits are also deeply personal.
The first multiracial couple Barlow ever painted? Her parents. Her father, a musician, is mostly black, while her mother is white. “I never saw families that looked like mine in paintings,” she said.
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This exhibition, backed by a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, is Barlow’s most ambitious, displaying her use of vibrant colors, especially in skin tones, and drawing on themes of race and identity that — not so long ago — she was hesitant to explore.
Barlow is “really well-trained,” building portraits in layers of color, said Tricia Heuring, the director and curator of Public Functionary. So it’s powerful when she uses those traditional techniques and materials to portray people missing from the halls of museums, Heuring said.
“It’s almost like a rewriting [of history] when you use methods that come from the past.”
Barlow created the works while trying to make sense of President Donald Trump’s election, between marches in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., while listening to audiobooks about race. On her laptop: “Between the World and Me,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah and “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
Focusing on love between the people she was painting helped, Barlow said. “Us coming together, the healing and love, can be just as powerful as going out and kicking ass and protesting Trump,” she said, talking in her Northrup King Building studio last week. “We can celebrate the bridging of these divides.”
She turned to her assistant and laughed.
“That sounds a little Miss America, doesn’t it?”
Playing with color
Barlow has thought about race her whole life. But she hasn’t always painted about it.
“I was too nervous to have it become a part of my work,” she said, “mostly because I didn’t have the language to talk about my experience.”
That was partly because she had never had a person of color as an art instructor. Not at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie, where she got her undergraduate degree, nor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where she earned an MFA in 2016.
Barlow’s assistant, Hannah Farrell, a student at MCAD, looked up from a canvas to shake her head: “Me, neither.”
“Anna, have you?” Barlow called out to her studio-mate. She, too, shook her head.
“So I wasn’t illuminated to artists of color working with topics I was interested in,” Barlow continued. “We were shown the typical one or two art stars, like Kara Walker, but nobody else making work in between.”
At Stout, where there were few black art students, she felt that people would expect her to make art about race. So instead, she made art about gender. But after graduating, she began to realize that “I didn’t have anything new to add to the gender conversation,” she said.
Then, in 2013, Cheerios came out with a TV commercial: A curly-haired girl with a button nose comes into the dining room with a box of cereal. “Mom?” she asks her mother, who is white. “Dad told me that Cheerios is good for your heart. Is that true?”
Then we see her father, who is black, awaking from a nap. On his chest — a pile of cereal.
The ad ends with a single word: “Love.” But it generated a lot of hate. The ugly, online furor surprised Barlow, who was “obsessed” with the ad and its family, who looked a lot like hers. She wanted to unpack why this commercial — “which wasn’t about race” — could ignite such backlash. “Why are people so upset about this normal representation of this family?”
The world needs more images of multiracial people doing everyday things, she decided. “At that point I realized, ‘There’s something here,’ she said. I could push that conversation further.
Thus began her “Other/Identity” series. In “Three Black Girls,” a piece from 2013, three women sit together, staring back at the viewer. Their faces, painted in rich tones, pick up the bright colors in their shirts. Barlow, on the right, is flecked in gold.
‘This is your story’
On a recent afternoon, Barlow stepped back from the painting: a woman and her two daughters, standing in the snow beneath a purple sky. She turned her head left, then right. The snow was missing something.
“That’s right,” she said suddenly. “I was going to do green.” Barlow loaded her brush with a light lime green and began sweeping it across chunks of snow.
In the photo of the three figures, displayed on the laptop beside her, the snow is gray. But Barlow plays with color, letting objects and people reflect the hues around them. Same goes for skin. “I stay as far away from the traditional peaches and browns as possible,” Barlow said, “to refect the colors that really do reflect onto our skin.”
She looked down at her own arm, shifting it in the light. Her hair fell from behind her ear, its ends dyed the same bright green.
Barlow first invited Heuring to her studio two years ago, excited to talk with a female curator who, too, is mixed-race. Having one white parent “positions you differently in the world,” Heuring said. “There is a different set of awarenesses of who you are and where you fit.”
At the time, Barlow was “really hesitant about painting about race,” Heuring said. But Heuring encouraged her: “Yes, this is your story, this is your truth.”
Growing up in south Minneapolis, Barlow knew Loving v. Virginia not from a textbook — but as “something my parents always talked about.” The Lovings, in 1958, were convicted of miscegenation, a felony. At the time of Supreme Court oral arguments, nearly a decade later, 17 states still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage. The case inspired the 2016 film, “Loving.”
“People wonder, ‘Why are there so many racial tensions now?’ Barlow said. When you start to realize that a lot of these laws existed into the 1960s. ... She paused, shaking her head. My parents were kids during this time.
“It’s very ingrained, this idea that we are different.”
In “Just a Car Ride,” a 2016 portrait of her parents, Barlow placed the couple in their car — the space where they’ve encountered the most racism. For “Loving,” Barlow used oil paints, pastels, charcoal and fabric to depict families in their happy places: living rooms, bedrooms, their front stoop.
On one raw canvas, a couple sit on a bed, nuzzling each other, their baby in their arms. Behind them, pink light warms a teal wall. Their smiling faces are precise, detailed. But their legs blend into the quilt beneath them, creating a feeling of union.
When Alissa Paris first saw the image — her image — she cried.
“I’m grateful to have a little moment of my life captured,” she said, “there for my grandchildren to see and there for me to reflect on.”
Paris, 29, and Barlow met through a mixed-race discussion group. Her mother is half Puerto Rican and part German, while her father is mostly African-American. She and her partner at the time, Jared, are “second-generation mixed,” she said, and were honored that Barlow wanted to feature them because of that multiracial identity.
Barlow’s work is “fine art,” Paris said, “but it’s also oral history.”
“I think a lot of mixed people are allowing other people to tell their stories — to guess at their stories,” she said. In contrast, “Leslie’s inviting us to be part of that history and telling of our story.”



Thursday, February 23, 2017

Southwest Last Blood Drive - You Can Help!


What? 

THE LAST Southwest Blood Drive of the school year. 

 Why?

Blood donations are always in need, some patients have over 120 transfusions just for their own surgeries/needs. Every donation counts, and has the ability to save and change lives, as well as our community. The last blood drive is bigger than the rest, and in order to pull it off we have to join as a Southwest community- parents, students, faculty, and staff. 

 Where?

Southwest High School Blood Drive
Thursday , March 2, 2017
8:30am-2:30pm

How do I sign up?



2) Enter the Sponsor Code 0298

Southwest Alumni and Student Inspired to Take Action Written by 2015 Grad


11 Girls Who Were Inspired to Take Action Following the Election


Two of the young women interviewed in Seventeen Magazine are current and former Southwest students.  This is the link.








"I'm Making My Friend Group More Diverse"
"I've participated in a school walkout to protest Trump's presidency. I've marched through my neighborhood chanting, 'My body, my choice!' I do feel scared, but even though I'm a young woman, and I realize this presidency could affect me, I also recognize that it will have an even larger effect on other people. So my plan is to expose myself to a broader range of perspectives from many different types of people not just in the classroom but in my social life. This means befriending people who don't come from the same background as me, like sitting with people of different nationalities and religions at my school's cafeteria."


– Ava, 15, Minneapolis, MN