Junior Michael Kofoid, and sophomores Devin Jones, and Ian Peracca do a weekly math lab together for Math 3. Michael was absent so their teacher, Ms. Abelli-Amen performed his role. This particular day's project was for the students to discover the shape of the sine curve and Periodic Function without these first being discussed and explained. A story was presented stating that "a nurse is walking down a corridor rolling a hanging bag of blue liquid and unknown to her, the bag has a small dripping leak and is swinging behind her as she steadily walks". The students made a model of this scenario and then brainstormed options to improve the model (to make it more periodic) and performed the improvements - successfully! See additional pictures by clicking here.

a) Althea Patchett's projects

b) Kelly Garcia's projects

Senior Althea Patchett loves art! She has been doing art with her artist grandmother for her whole life. Currently, Althea is taking Art 2 at Valley Oaks with Ms. Garcia. They are learning about Surrealism and in the photo top left is Althea's latest Surrealism piece. As described by Althea, the assignment was to "focus on a feeling instead of an idea of exactly what you want to draw." Althea explained it this way: "It's like looking at clouds and then seeing shapes." The most difficult part of art for Althea is working on getting the correct proportions of a face to make it realistic. Her favorite artist, one who really makes her think and feel things is Edward Munch who did The Scream. She went to a show of his at the Museum of Modern Art last year and was struck by the "cool, creepy pictures"! Please continue reading by clicking here.

Senior Kelly Garcia loves art! She has taken Art for the past three semesters. She says she was curious about the course and that it sounded fun. Now she can easily use the terminology of art and can describe the artistic skills she has learned. For example, she is pointing to a recent pencil piece that she completed. It was an assignment on Value, which is ...please click here to continue...

Senior Ethan Carbone says he has always been interested in astronomy and space travel - ever since he was a young child! While working with Ms. Halsey in U.S. History, Ethan was able to choose his project topic and decide how he would design his project. Ms. Halsey, our social science teacher, is a big advocate of giving choice to students when it comes to projects. You can look forward to this when you take courses with her! Ethan expressed his love of outer space to her which then became his project topic. Ethan happily researched the 1969 Moon Landing, wrote a report, and used his other passion, art, to create a huge red poster board artfully loaded with details and photos. Ethan recently saw the new movie, Apollo 11, and really liked it. He says he doesn't understand how some people can believe the Moon landing was a hoax!

Sophomore Sophia Bauer and her horse, Dominic, are featured in a video Sophia made for her 3x4 Returning Student Assignment. If you enjoy animals, you will love watching this well made, pleasant, & funny video!

Please click here to watch.

Sophia is also continuing to earn elective credit with her Dominic in the Goal Setting Course. One of her goals is to teach Dominic to lie down on command! She has already made great progress!

Sophia Bauer is an experienced equestrian. Her Thoroughbred-Quarter Horse, Dominic, is unusually tall! When she bought him, he was a western pleasure horse. Now, with Sophia's training, Dominic has learned to be an English jumper. This month, they achieved a height jumping goal in her Goal Setting Course - congratulations!!

Contact Mrs. Parker if you'd like to do the Goal Setting Course.

Freshmen Brenda Amador and Nicholas Barajas study their new course books at their first group meeting at the kitchen round table in building #2. All freshman are required to take this 5 credit course. All high school students are welcome to take it. At the groups, students share-out their work from the week and then watch and discuss inspirational videos. Aside from the group time, the course is an online course. Students choose to do between 2.5 hours per week and 10 hours per week. Although there are no tests or big projects, this is a difficult course that requires higher level thinking skills, critical thinking, and lots of online research.

Junior Madison Cathcart works at Caprara's Pizzeria in beautiful Penngrove. Madison earned 10 elective credits this past semester in the OWE course. She loves her job, her co-workers, and the tips! Caprara's is lucky to have such a conscientious, friendly and hard worker! This reviewer found the service to be awesome, the food of excellent quality, and the restaurant itself very attractive!

Senior Jessica Rue Colman has worked for the last year and a half at Sprout grocery store not far from VOS. She prefers not to be a checker but rather to work in the back unloading, organizing, managing, and stocking incoming shipments. She enjoys her co-workers.

Jessica is also enjoying her last high school lacrosse season and they are on a winning streak!

Last month, it was Opening Night at the Petaluma Wednesday Night Drags for drag racing and Jessica won 1st Place! She has been doing this fun activity for the past two years and so she has had some good practice. What she had to do is "estimate her drive time and do well with the lights". She had to watch and go at the green light which requires great reaction time to win 1st Place! Any car can compete. Hers is her '96 Chevy Impala SS. She says that just high school kids compete against each other. Adults compete against each other and win money.

Abbi feels she has found a great, long-term part-time job at "Panda", which will take her through college. Her first job was at Target and now at Panda Express, she realizes how much fun a job can be! This job is fast-paced and her managers clearly respect her and think very highly of her. Abbi says that there is great communication and everyone is very helpful. She feels well trained and says that there is "a lot of structure and efficiency". Because she is very passionate about food, she thought she would seek a non-retail position. There are many tasks involved in food handling and this helps make the work interesting for Abbi. Mostly Abbi takes customer orders but she says, "Honestly, I have enjoyed the smaller jobs more such as filling the sauces, cleaning the tea, and taking the temperatures."

This is Felipe's second job - his first job was at a Thai restaurant in Petaluma working with another VOS student. A gym friend of his encouraged Felipe to apply. Felipe enjoys this part-time job because both his co-workers and the customers are really nice. He says "it's a really 'chill' "environment. He can skateboard to this job from home and he enjoys mostly that he earns tip money! The most difficult part about his job he says is learning the computerized register. He easily memorized all the table numbers and most recently he has taken on an additional part-time cafe job.

Cece has been at Starbucks for 8 months and she works at different sites. This is also her second job - her first was at Thistle, here in Petaluma. She feels that working here is very good experience for whatever future career she ends up pursuing. Her co-workers and managers are supportive and nice and there is a good sense of teamwork between everyone. The most challenging part of her job was learning all the drinks! An unusual task she had recently was to set up the holiday decorations which took 8 straight hours - she didn't get off work that night until 10:30pm! Sometimes the scheduling is difficult but she knows to be flexible. Her favorite drink? - "Straight Cold Brew".

Preston Ashton, now a senior, has been a VOS student since the start of his freshman year. He chose VOS because he "likes to do the un-common thing and be different". Working his first job at Jamba Juice (photo) since March, he is preparing himself for a life-long career in business. He is very well informed about the company, its policies and products. Additionally, he is very enthusiastic about his job and says it makes him feel more independent and lets him be able to pay for his car. He likes to work-out and wanted a job where he could promote and consume healthy food. When he graduates he plans to go to College of Marin and then San Francisco State to get an MBA. He wants to be a business entrepreneur - all of his family members have become their own business owners. Cars are Preston's #1 passion. He goes to car meets and shows and loves to go on drives with his friends. In addition, Preston can easily be called a great animal lover because he has 3 Bearded Dragons, 1 California King Snake, a tortoise, 2 goats, 2 alpacas, 3 dogs, 3 cats, and he had two rescue Jack Rabbits but they escaped.

Ben Hoffman was a VOS student from 7th through 12th grade and graduated in June of 2016. He chose the "combo" route through Valley Oaks and went to the JC. He is currently at SRJC in an engineering pathway. After this year at the JC he plans to transfer to Cal Poly’s Material Sciences department. His passion is to have a career where he can address the issues of climate change.

Nick Matteri is also pictured here at his 2018 graduation ceremony. While a senior at Valley Oaks, he commuted to the Santa Rosa airport for classes and earned his pilot license. He will earn a Bachelors Degree in Commercial Aviation from UND. He decided against the other top school for this degree, Embry-Riddle, since UND will be half the cost and Nick has friends at UND from the Santa Rosa flight school. Nick spent all 4 years of high school at Valley Oaks.

Here at her 2018 graduation ceremony at Lucchesi, Julia Sherman had big plans underway. She spent a semester doing a science internship in Costa Rica and then worked for the Spring semester back in town. After her one year deferred enrollment, Julia is now a freshman at U.C. Davis. During her 4 years at Valley Oaks, Julia worked at the Petaluma Market and co-enrolled at SRJC in Spanish 1 and 2 and in Environmental Studies and in a lab science Geology course.

Students working on a-g courses and setting-their-sights on a university directly after graduation co-enroll to achieve that goal.

Senior Marissa Barredo has been busy completing college applications. She has received acceptance letters from Channel Islands CSU and University Nevada Reno. She is still waiting to hear from San Diego State, Sacramento State, & Sonoma State. She is considering applying to Arizona State. Good Luck, Marissa!

Marissa chose Sacramento State University.

Sophomore Ian Peracca has been planning to attend U.C. Berkeley probably since before his freshman year. Ian took both Biology and Math 2 as a freshman which have given him a step up toward advanced math and science courses.

Although sophomore Devin Jones says he is unsure about his exact college plans, he is "keeping all his doors open". More than thinking about a specific university, Devin is developing his career plans. His current plan is to have his own accounting business and be a Certified Public Accountant. Both he and his younger brother have always had excellent math skills. Devin wants to be in business with his brother. He feels that this is a very stable career field that will always be needed, and the independence of being his own boss, scheduling his own hours, and being in control of all decisions is very attractive to him. He is excited to possibly get an internship with family friends who have an accounting business - "it's good to get your foot in the door now", says Devin!

Sophomore Kailey Kroyer is also one of our VOS a-g college prep students and she is keeping herself well on-track to transfer to a 4-year university after graduating from VOS. She is co-enrolled in BYU and Honors courses now, has nearly straight A's, and has courses already picked out for this summer at SRJC. The university she will choose she says, does not have to be in California, in fact, she plans to apply to Ivy League colleges. She visited Hawaii recently and is now drawn to the beauty of the University of Hawaii. A career in the medical field is what she is thinking about right now and this interest was sparked by watching movies and shows. She sees herself being happy working in a hospital. She says she loves animals but being a vet and watching animals die all the time would be too hard. What she thinks will be the most fun about being a freshman at a university is living in the dorms with a bunch of friends and being able to walk to campus classrooms. Being away from her parents and not having to ask permission to do every thing is another thing that sounds really fun to her! Kailey started in January at VOS but she said that since 6th grade she had wanted to be home-schooled. She wanted more control of her schedule. She was at Harvest Christian Middle School and then considered Newman but the long drive was too much. Besides thinking about fun future college life, Kailey regularly plays basketball with friends and family!

Junior Flynn Loveless is one of our VOS a-g college prep students. Since he just transferred in January, he is not co-enrolled this semester but he plans to take Geology with a lab at the SRJC in the fall. He has already taken Spanish 1, 2, & 3!

Flynn is especially easy going and open-minded, skills that will make him successful in any career. In addition, he is very humble and I could not get him to state anything that he would brag about! He is not sure yet which university he would like to get into but knows that he wants it to be in California. He has a family friend who is a counselor at Petaluma High School so he gets lots of advice. Happy for us, Flynn plans to stay with Valley Oaks and be a VOS grad! What he likes best about VOS is the flexible hours. He sees it as a huge benefit that he and all students have the opportunity to create nearly any schedule wanted - it can incorporate sleeping until 8am, co-enrolling, day hobbies, and having a job. Flynn's main hobby is video gaming with, primarily, Fortnite. He says he doesn't have the problem of overplaying hours of the game because he "does his work first and then plays". This is why VOS students like Flynn are unusual and somewhat rare - they know how to manage their time! Flynn's favorite food is chicken enchiladas with mole sauce. He has two dogs (a black lab and a Husky mix), and while he has been to Mexico, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, he would like to possibly do a university junior year abroad in Italy - a fantastic plan!