PHOTO - PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT: Community House Preschoolers Brian Torres, left, Abigail Carrizales, Samantha Ramos and Christina Alanzo are among those who will perform at a fundraiser for the school.

Cesar Millan, best known as the "Dog Whisperer" for his National Geographic television show of the same name, is coming to Houston - but not to talk to dogs.

Millan will be supporting children as the guest speaker at a Houston Junior Forum event to raise money for the Community House Preschool, 7635 Canal Street. (read more..)

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PHOTO - HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGIE IN THE WINDOW?: Matthew Martinez, 4, left, with classmate Brian Torres, 4 mimes looking at a dog in a shop window while singing How Much is That Doggie in the Window? The children, who attend Community House Preschool , were rehearsing for an upcoming fundraiser with guest speaker Cesar Millan, best known as the "Dog Whisperer."

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photo published in The Leader Preschool Director Honored

Thursday, July 10, 2008 The Leader Northwest Houston resident Maria Elena Calles, right, preschool direrctor of the Houston Junior Forum Community House, is congratulated by Cathy Wheatley, Houston Junior Forum's college scholarship chairman, after Calles was recognized as Administrator of the Year by the Houston Area Association for the Education of Young Children. The Community House Preschool has addressed the importance of early childhood education for the past 50 years. Read more about Houston Junior Forum Community House

Kingwood resident works to make resale shop a better place
By JENNIFER SUMMER
jsummer@hcnonline.com
Published: 07.15.08

Eight years later, with 570 hours in one year and 30 miles per trip, volunteering at Houston Junior Forum Resale Shop is still truly enjoyable for Kingwood resident Alice Kaufman.

Because of Kaufman’s volunteerism, the resale shop receives funds from the ExxonMobil Volunteer Involvement Program which helps the shop stay in working order.

“Volunteering at the resale shop has been amazing. When we are open, I work the sales floor and help customers find things they are looking for. The resale shop is my saving grace,” Kaufman said.

Kaufman first started volunteering in 2000 and has served as chairwoman on and off throughout the years. Currently, she is serving as the chairwoman who is in charge of making sure everything is organized and in order for the managers.... (click to read entire article...)
http://hcnonline.com/articles/2008/07/15/import/20080715-archive92.txt

Read about the Houston Junior Forum Resale shop

JANUARY 24 2008, The Houston Chronicle Editorial
A school that works
Tiny nonprofit preschool for at-risk Latinos delivers bountiful results. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/5484200.html

Of course they camped out in the rain. Latino parents — many of them poor, with few English skills — happily set up a tent city outside the Houston Junior Forum Community House Preschool last week, hoping to win space for their toddlers.

For 50 years, this simple, private academy — which charges $30 a week per child — has delivered outsized opportunities to at-risk children. The school deserves deep study, from inside Houston's school district and without, to figure out how it succeeds.

Even beyond the tent city of parents eager to register their children, there's ample evidence this place delivers. Administrators say 80 percent of students who graduate at the age of 5 later graduate from high school.

These figures for the most at-risk students contrast with the widely estimated 50 percent graduation rate for urban districts such as Houston.

The way Junior Forum knows about its success rate gives a clue to its technique. Founded in 1954 by a service group, the preschool has taught three generations of Ship Channel toddlers. Grateful graduates often return to show off diplomas. But more to the point, Junior Forum shows an ongoing commitment to these former students. Administrators track them throughout the Houston Independent School District, sending postcards in their senior year urging them to stay in school. HISD, which for more than 20 years has offered a pre-K class for disadvantaged 4-year-olds, only began tracking their progress in 2005.

The Junior Forum also offers modest scholarships if its former students go to college. The students have heard about these scholarships ($2,000 a year) since their days at the school.

A spokeswoman for HISD said this pledge has a great deal to do with the Forum school's success.

But Forum principal Maria Calles thinks the long-term impact also has to do with the school's small size — 98 children per year, with about 15 children per class.

Teachers and administrators work intensely to make these children like school and, just as important, to help parents understand how the school system works.

Every year, HISD personnel are brought in to tell parents about the vagaries of magnet schools and how to get children tested for placement.

Junior Forum also works hard on English acquisition — a major goal is keeping kids out of English as a Second Language programs — while celebrating its students' Latino backgrounds.

This graceful mix of practicality and cultural appreciation is a living example of something sociologists have known for years. Contrary to some assumptions, Latinos and immigrants across the board equally value education, including college.

But many Latinos, who have a disproportionately high dropout rate, come to this country particularly poor. Other groups, notably many Asians, arrive as professionals, often already trained to U.S. educational standards.

Latinos' poverty and inexperience with education systems, by contrast, make it much harder for them to take advantage of schools, notes Rice University sociologist Stephen Klineberg. Students often drop out to help their families make ends meet. And they often languish in the worst schools, with parents ignorant about how to intervene on their children's behalf.

"The fact that public education is free doesn't mean that resources don't have a major role to play in taking advantage of those opportunities," Klineberg said.

The Forum school is not a lavish place: It receives no federal funding, survives on donations and grants, and has shied away from expansion because the money simply isn't there. Yet its teachers and volunteers are so dedicated that the school is an educational magnet for mothers and fathers as well as toddlers.

The results of those small, relevant classes and intense parental involvement are eminently visible. You could glimpse them last week in the parents camping outside the school's gates.

But you can see them even more clearly in the applications on Calles' desk. In recent years, Calles said, she's reluctantly had to reject more and more children of her most loyal graduates.

Once at-risk toddlers themselves, these adults have climbed too far up the ladder for their own children to qualify.

JANUARY 20 2008
The Houston Chronicle

Letizia Guillen, left, chats with close family friend Manuela De Leon while waiting to enroll their children at the Houston Junior Forum Community House on Sunday. Registration began today, but many families have been waiting since Friday to enroll at the preschool. KEVIN FUJII: CHRONICLE

SCHOOL REGISTRATION: An education in sacrifice
At first-come, first-served Forum, parents willing to camp out for a coveted spot By CAROLYN FEIBEL
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/moms/5471348.html

For three days, the parents camped out in the cold and rain. Some slept in their trucks. They cooked tamales on propane stoves and huddled under blankets and waited for relatives to deliver hot coffee and food.

The reward? Not Hannah Montana tickets or the newest tech gadget. Just a coveted slot for their children in a neighborhood preschool near the Houston Ship Channel.

The Houston Junior Forum Community House Preschool is a modest peach-colored cinderblock building just down the block from a washeteria in Magnolia Park. But the parents speak of the 50-year-old school with a fierce pride.

"The statistics of the kids coming out of the school is well above average," said Susie Underwood, of Pasadena, who plans to enroll her 3-year-old daughter. "Every opportunity you can do to give your child a step ahead, you should."            read the story in it's entirety in the Houston Chronicle

APRIL 2007:

Cesar Millan, the famed Dog Whisperer, will speak Wednesday evening at the Houston Junior Forum Dinner. The event will benefit the Forum's Community House Pre-School for at risk children on Houston's east side.

The Houston Chronicle
The Dog Whisperer speaks up: With dogged determination, Cesar Millan is training both the pet and its owner, By KRISTIN FINAN
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/pets/4890770.html

Sure, every dog has its day, but according to Cesar Millan, happy households also depend on owners having their way.

The star of the Emmy-nominated The Dog Whisperer, Millan has dedicated himself to the "rehabilitation of dogs and training of their owners" and attracted a huge following of dog lovers eager to put his advice into practice in their own homes. read the story in the Houston Chronicle

The Leader, Volume 53, May 10, 2007 (Bottom Left Column)

'Whisperer' Speaks Up - (in Left Column) Judy Perkins, left, Houston Junior Forum president takes a break for a photo with guest speaker Cesar Millan and Michelle Sorenson, event chairman, at the Forum's recent fund-raising event, "Dinner with the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan". The dinner was held at the Hilton Americas Hotel and raised more than $100,000 for the Forum's Community House Preschool for at-risk children. - photo courtesy of Perry Video & Photo

MAY 2007: Week of the Young Child

They Love a Parade Pupils at Houston Junior Forum Community House Preschool, 7635 Canal St., and their families recently celebrated Week of the Young Child by marching in a street parade.

NOVEMBER 2006:

U.S. Army veteran Al Vogel, 92, is surrounded by a host of flag-waving Houston Junior Forum members during a Veterans Day celebration held Nov. 10 at All Saints Catholic Church's Third Age Learning Center. Surrounding Vogel are (from left) Mary Jane Hue, Connie Mendoza, Angela Mahmarian, Patti Gillies, Wanda Beckner, Jenny Cain and Carolyn Kares. Not pictured is Margie Koch. Vogel and the other veterans, along with their families and friends, enjoyed a color guard salute from the award-winning Reagan High School JROTC, and were treated to patriotic music and singing by the Swinging Strings senior band.