The Ed Services Team hopes that staff enjoyed Monday’s professional development day, the final one of the 2021-2022 school year. Thank you for being engaged and for all you’re doing to support each and every student during this transition year which is very different than we had imagined. You are appreciated for your kindness, patience, and grace as we support students’ social emotional well-being and academic learning at their current levels. There were so many takeaways from both sessions today. Two that stood out, Remember to connect with your “why” and the power of small wins.

Dr. Dominique Smith is the co-author of several popular books. We will purchase one of his titles for any certificated or classified staff member interested.

The form will stay open through Friday.

With the cooling temperatures signaling winter is just around the corner, here are a few reminders about some important COVID-19 mitigation efforts:

The TUSD Farm is quieting down for winter, but we still have plenty of projects happening during these colder months! We have three steers currently and expect two more this week all managed by FFA students in the high school agriculture programs! FFA students have also planted winter vegetables for planter box production. Broccoli plugs have sprouted and will be put in the ground as row crops for an FFA student project, with plans to send broccoli to the Child Nutrition Department for school meals. Walnut harvest has just begun...last Wednesday Grower Direct Nut and Martella Farms hosted a tour for FFA students to visit the plant and learn about walnut production. On Track students have been planting seeds to grow crops and have also been working out at the Farm to harvest walnuts, prep the orchards for winter, and fix irrigation. The Farm Clips are in full force and emailed out weekly to elementary sites! If you have special requests for videos, please let me know.

The English Learner Task Force is excited to announce and launch TUSD’s ELD Resource Padlet. The ELD resource was a recommendation from the District’s English Learner Task Force. As of now, the Padlet contains the Weekly ELD Tips & Strategies for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years. The goal is to continue to add resources. If you have any suggestions for the TUSD ELD Resource Padlet please email Alice Solis, Director of English Learners, Assessment, and Special Programs, asolis@turlock.k12.ca.us.

Turlock High School Class of 1997 graduate Jaklen Alkyan has written and published two children's books and will be releasing the third one this month. Jaklen now resides in Southern California and is a Human Resources Director but enjoys writing books as a hobby. Check them out!

In the 1860s, Johann Friedrich Miescher discovered a substance in the white blood cells that turned out to be DNA. He didn’t know what it did. He just figured out how to separate the molecules that make up the cell.

Almost 90 years later, in 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA. They didn’t know how it copied itself nor how it controlled our cells.

By the 1970s we knew how DNA copied itself and discovered how it made proteins which make up our bodies but didn’t know the sequence of the bases that made up our DNA. At that time knowledge was doubling every decade. It was estimated that it would take more than a lifetime to figure out each gene in our DNA. At the end of the century, we had computer-aided robots that were able to determine the sequence of the bases in DNA in weeks and now we are down to hours.

Scientists eagerly studied DNA. Knowing its sequence. Knowing how it controls life processes allow us to make medicines and vaccines that target specific proteins. The process has become so exact that we can replace one base in a gene with another base so that the victim of Sickle Cell Anemia is no longer sick and will live a normal life, without all the pain and early death the disease causes.

DNA is exciting but some scientists looked at ancient strains of bacteria that lived in hostile environments (like the near-boiling temperatures of geysers) and realized that the circular strand of DNA they possessed contained snippets of virus DNA. Why? They realized that this was an immune system. When a virus invades a bacteria, the bacteria has a type of RNA that cuts up the viral DNA and adds it to their DNA chain giving the bacteria protection from any further viral invasion. Jennifer Doudna realized that we could use the special types of RNA to edit any DNA and to build unique strands of DNA and RNA. Emmanuelle Charpentier came to the same realization at the same time. She used this new discovery to make a RNA vaccine for Pfizer and her company BioNtech.

Merck Pharmaceutical has recently announced a successful antiviral medicine. If the special RNA in bacteria can cut up viral DNA, why can’t we ingest them and have it cut up the COVID-19? These RNA tools are highly specific to the place they cut on the genetic strand so they aren’t chopping up your DNA. The path to the partial cure of COVID ran through Turlock. Lauren Weisel graduated from Turlock High School. She earned her degree in Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. She moved to the East Coast and took a job with Merck where she was put on the team to develop molnupiravir. Infected people with symptoms that tend to lead to hospitalization and death now have their chance of going to the hospital cut in half.

Past vaccines took years to develop. That doesn't mean they were tested for years. The same standards that were used to certify past vaccines were applied to the newly developed vaccines. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines aren't made of denatured virus DNA nor are they made from viruses grown in egg albumin (egg whites) which cause adverse effects when injected into people with egg allergies.

Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for Polio. He was able to bring his vaccine to market much quicker than any other vaccine because he used the eternal cells of Henrietta Lacks (HeLa cells). Instead of testing it on living subjects over a long period of time, he tested it on human cells and introduced the polio virus to the cells. He stopped a crippling, deadly disease. The HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccine development was accelerated by the use of HeLa cells. Scientific advances have advanced technology which now thankfully allow us to accelerate the production of vaccines.