Weekly roundup: Girl Scout cookie box features Mission Viejo High student, esports participation promotes STEM, and more

It’s Girl Scout cookie season across Orange County. If you purchase the popular Thin Mints box from a Scout, you’ll see a local student gracing the front cover.

Trinity Brewer, a junior at Mission Viejo High School, appears on this year’s Thin Mints box, holding up a canoe with two other Scouts.

An Orange County Register article from earlier this week describes how Trinity entered an essay contest two years ago for the opportunity to appear on Girl Scout cookie boxes. Brewer and five other Girl Scouts from around the country were selected as models for the 2020 boxes.

Education News title cardNow 16, Brewer didn’t realize she would represent the most iconic of Girl Scout cookies until a year later, according to the Register. Now she appears on the box of Thin Mints, the organization’s top seller.

“It’s really exciting,” she told the Register. “But Peanut Butter Patties are still my favorite.”

Trinity has been involved in the Girl Scouts since kindergarten, when she served in the Daisy troop. As an 11th-grader, Brewer is now a Girl Scout Ambassador.

“My involvement in Girl Scouts has taught me leadership and social skills,” she told the Register. “It’s taught me to notice someone feeling left out and say, ‘Hey, come join us.’”

Here are some other education related articles from throughout the region for the week ending Jan. 31.

  • The Huntington Beach City School District board this week voted 3-2 to close an elementary school this summer, deny most transfers and reduce teaching positions.
  • Students and staff from OCDE’s Inside the Outdoors environmental education program honored Martin Luther King Jr. Day by helping clean their community.
  • Among the crowds paying homage to Kobe Bryant in the days after his death were scores of children. Experts and educators offer some advice for how to help kids grieve this tragedy.
  • Students who participated in a national esports league that launched in Orange County became more interested in STEM careers, demonstrated greater critical thinking skills and reported higher levels of school engagement, according to newly released research from UC Irvine.
  • By next fall, all kindergarteners in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District will have the same daily schedule as the rest of their schools. PYLUSD officials announced recently that it will transition to full-day kindergarten at all 21 elementary sites.
  • California is making progress improving the lives of its 9.2 million children, but still lags behind other states — especially on issues related to young people’s mental health, according to a report released this week.
  • California’s experiment of allowing community colleges to grant bachelor’s degrees shows promise of benefiting students, but EdSource reports that partnering with universities may be a better alternative.

This is the part where we encourage you to keep up with local education news stories by bookmarking the OCDE Newsroomsubscribing for emailed updates or following us on FacebookTwitter or Instagram.