San Jose students a world away
During a week when many San Jose schoolkids are enjoying vacations, a group of students from Leland High School are in Cambodia, delivering music and technology to their peers at Doris Dillon School — a school that was created and funded thanks to an effort spearheaded by now-retired Bret Harte Middle School teacher Jim DeLong more than a decade ago.
DeLong says three Girl Scouts who attend Leland — sisters Mira Karthik and Megha Karthik and friend Sofie Gmerek — approached him last fall about implementing projects to benefit the Cambodian school. Their projects include teaching ukulele to the students, with Mira raising money to buy 12 instruments from Guitar Showcase to bring to the school; teaching sustainable farming techniques; art classes; and CPR skills.
As word spread at the Almaden Valley school, other teachers and students wanted to get involved — with a total group of 14 students and 14 parents paying their own way to make the weeklong trip, which started Sunday. And those students will be bringing their
own projects to the school.
Bret Harte teacher Carrie Genise and her daughter, Savannah, will be teaching students Ultimate Frisbee; Smera Patil crowdfunded a donation of dozens of books for the school’s library; and tech whizzes Zach Case, Chris Healy and Corey Moore are spending their week teaching robotics classes using educational bots Dot and Dash donated by Wonder Workshop marketing vice president Mike Lorion. The trio are also taking along three of Wonder Workshop’s new Cue robots, which are designed to help students learn to write programs in Javascript.
The list of projects goes on and on, and the effort being put forth by the students doesn’t surprise DeLong.
“When you make a choice to make a difference for others, your work takes on a life of its own,” DeLong said last week. “It grows in expected ways beyond you. That’s what happened with this upcoming trip.”
RIGHT MOVIE, RIGHT TIME? >> South Bay native Phil Leirness is back in San Jose this week with his new movie, “The Lady Killers,” a dark comedy about a high-stakes game of “romantic” conquest gone wrong that Leirness says explores the ways exploitation and misogyny lead to violence.
Leirness says as a filmmaker and a state-certified violence prevention specialist, he’s grown increasingly concerned with the proliferation of exploitative imagery produced and consumed as entertainment. He and his producers spent a year showing the movie at test screenings and festivals to prove it had an audience, but then everything changed. “Suddenly in the wake of the #MeToo movement and the watershed moment that was the Harvey Weinstein allegations, we have a movie that has been called ‘exactly the kind of film we need right now,’ ” Leirness said.
And he’s happy to have the Feb. 21 screening at 3Below, the former Camera 3 theater where Leirness said he first saw Wim Wenders’ 1987 romantic fantasy “Wings of Desire,” the film that made him want to be a director. The 7:30 p.m. screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Leirness and actors/producers Lily Holleman and Burt Bulos. Get tickets and more details at www.3belowtheaters.com.
‘FIRE AND FURY’ AUTHOR ON HIS WAY TO SAN JOSE >> Michael Wolff, whose book “Fire and Fury: Inside The Trump White House” has brewed so much controversy since its release, will bring his speaking tour to the California Theatre in San Jose on April 17. Now, the news release promises Wolff will share new, exclusive details about his experience in the Trump White House, but my guess is that stuff will only be new and exclusive until the first show in Los Angeles on April 14.
But if your interest is piqued, tickets go on sale to the public through Ticketmaster on Feb. 23 at 10 a.m.