The Southside Advocate (12/18/14)

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Girl Scouts launch online cookie sales in January ä PAGE 5G

ADVOCATE THE SOUTHSIDE

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THURSDAY DECEMBER 18, 2014 H B O C AG E • C O U N T RY C LU B • H I G H L A N D • J E F F E R S O N T E R R AC E • K E N I LW O R T H • P E R K I N S • U N I V E R S I T Y C LU B THEADVOCATE.COM

Darlene Denstorff ON THE SOUTHSIDE

DDENSTORFF@ THEADVOCATE.COM

YMCA hosts holiday fun run The Paula G. Manship YMCA is hosting its third annual Gingerbread Jog, featuring a one-mile family fun run and dog walk, and a 5K race, starting at 8:30 a.m. Saturday at City Park. Preceding the two runs, families and dogs participate in an Ugly Sweater Contest, pictures with Santa, gingerbread decorating and a jump house. All proceeds from the event will be used for YMCA youth programs. Race day registration is $25. For more information, visit www.ymcabatonrouge. org.

Luminaries alight Sunday

Kenilworth Subdivision lights up Sunday night for its annual Luminary Night and lighting contest. Judging for the light contest is from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Categories include best lighting, best block, most original, most whimsical, best religious, best mailbox, best door, judges’ choice, North Pole award, perennially wonderful and best live portrayal.

Library to close on holidays The Bluebonnet Regional Library branch will close Christmas Eve and Christmas day. The library also will close New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day.

Contact Southside Advocate Editor Darlene Denstorff by phone, (225) 336-6952 or (225) 603-1998; or email southside@theadvocate. com. Deadline: noon Monday.

Lab pairs self-reliance,cooperation in high school techies BY C.J. FUTCH

in her computer architecture class. “Try three before you ask Mi’Yana Solomon said she me,� John Richardson, who dinever considered herself a rects St. Joseph’s Academy’s techie. When she decided she Computer Sciences program, wanted to try to get a job with said. “When they run into a her school’s student-run com- problem, they have to try to puter help desk, she wasn’t solve it three different ways on sure how it would go, especially their own before they ask me when she learned the first rule for help.�

cfutch@theadvocate.com

It’s a way of thinking that can be a culture shock for a lot of students, said Claire Luikart, a 2007 graduate of St. Joseph’s who returned to the school after college as technology special projects manager. It can be intimidating, and not just because of the expectation of self-reliance. The all-girl Catholic high

school has a reputation for producing tech-savvy students, and the help desk and 3-D printing lab are run by the savviest. It’d be easy to assume that this kind of self-reliant attitude would limit collaboration, but, in fact, it tends to make the collaboration more sophisticated, because each student is required to approach problems in

a unique way, Richardson said. This way of learning gives each student a deeper understanding of each system they’re learning, he said, and that doesn’t apply just to the computer lab. “We take them to conferences and they give presentations. When the time comes to take äSee LAB, page 2G

Reasons to run

Wildwood Elementary School students, from left, Ava Marshall, third-grade, and fourth-graders ReyoncÊ Wilson, Trinitee Vance, Ta’Liah Smith and Ty’Neaciia Hills get themselves ready to race with a cheer they created themselves.

1,500 participate in Girls on the Run

BY C.J. FUTCH

cfutch@theadvocate.com Girls from all over the Baton Rouge metro area participated Saturday in the 2014 Girls on the Run 5K. Hydie Wahlborg, exectutive director of Girls on the Run South Louisiana, said the race had nearly 1,500 runners, 550 of those girls from 32 schools in and around Baton Rouge. “We added six new schools this season and expect similar growth for our spring program that will begin late February with our end-ofseason 5K the first Saturday in May,� she said in an email. “For most girls, it is their first 5K. Also, according to data from our registration forms, this event was the first 5K for 337 adults,� she said. Girls on the Run is a program that uses activity-based lessons to teach girls from third to eighth grades how to deal with everything from self-esteem issues to peer pressure to bullying. The activities also serve to slowly build the girls up to a 3-mile run, which ends on race day. This year marks the sixth for Girls on the Run of South Louisiana, and 3,700 girls have completed the program. Race day activities included several stations at which runners could get their faces or their hair painted, write their reasons for running on the backs of their bibs and take pictures using props at the GOTR photo booth, and many other stations. Advocate staff photos by C.J. FUTCH Girls warmed up with an exercise session beRacers begin the Girls on the Run 5K on Saturday at Pennington Biomedical Center. fore the 9 a.m. race start.

Gingerbread houses more than just sweet treats for Southside woman BY C.J. FUTCH

cfutch@theadvocate.com

Advocate staff photo by C.J. FUTCH

Melissa Parrino adds peppermint detailing to her gingerbread replica of the Orangerie.

Melissa Parrino has many niches, but her daughter, Katie Guitreau, who works at the LSU AgCenter’s Botanic Gardens, agrees that baking is one of them. It goes a little deeper than just baking, though. Parrino builds gingerbread houses, and fairly elaborate ones at that. This year, as part of a group gingerbread-house-making workshop held at Guitreau’s workplace, Parrino created a foot-high edible replica of

a Burden property building known as the Orangerie — a former citrus greenhouse now used by the Botanic Gardens for events. The nonprofit organization recently renovated its kitchen, and Parrino admits she offered to teach the workshop partly because of the new kitchen space. “It’s so much roomier than my kitchen at home,� she said, nodding at the piles of candy of every possible shape, flavor and description that littered the kitchen island, along with long sheets of baked ginger-

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bread. “As you can see, this can take up a lot of room,� she said. Not to mention time. In reality, after the baking is done, you can have a house constructed and decorated inside a couple of hours. But as Guitreau, who follows in her mother’s footsteps when it comes to perfectionism, points out, “there’s always a little bit more you can do.� Parrino has been decorating and giving her houses as gifts during the holidays for decades, going back to her days as a cafeteria manager at

Magnolia Woods Elementary school. “I’d bake the gingerbread in the ovens at school, but I’d wait to put it together and decorate it until the kids were in the lunchroom. It became something to look forward to, for the students and for me,â€? she said. Each year, she would make a couple and, on the last day before Christmas break, give away the houses to students chosen in a random drawing. “They waited for gingerbread time,â€? she said. äSee GINGERBREAD, page 2G

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