Ohio among Winners of the Race to the Top!

                  Governor Strickland announced on Tuesday, August 24^th, that Ohio is among the state winners in the second round of finalists of a competitive grant opportunity created by the US Department  of Education.  Ohio requested $400 million over four years.  Other state winners in the second round are Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and  Washington, DC. The majority of the funds are earmarked for 325 participating local school districts and 213 charter schools.

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Opportunity for school nurses coming soon!   Molina Healthcare will be sponsoring mini-grant opportunities for school nurses in the amount of $1000.  Further information and grant application will be announced via a member alert.

Greetings from Southwest Ohio.  Welcome to Kathy Dafler who is the incoming SWOSNA president effective July 2010.  SWOSNA has other board positions open for this upcoming year.  Please consider serving the school nurses in the southwest Ohio region.  You may contact me at southwestrep@oasn.org if you are interested.  We would love to have some new people on board.

The next general meeting for the upcoming 2010-2011 school year is scheduled for Thursday, September 16^th at Brookville High School with Mr. Doug Horvath from Dayton MetroParks presenting "No Child Left Inside" which discusses obesity and mental health concerns of children.  More information about this meeting will be coming.  Please join us for some awesome food, great networking, and an informative CE offering.  T-shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies with the logo "Healthy kids learn better.....Ohio's school nurses make it happen!!!"  will be available at the next general session meeting.  They would look great on you at the fall sporting events and you can advertise school nursing.

If you are a member of OASN, but not SWOSNA, then please consider joining.  Also, remember that your SWOSNA membership needs to be updated annually.  You can go online to www.swosna.org and find a membership form available. 

Andrea Smalls, Public Relations Chair is our famous SWOSNA member.  She was featured in "Health Care Today" which is a publication that circulates to the Dayton area and north of Cincinnati.  In honor of Nurses Week, Andrea was highlighted as a School Nurse in this publication.    If you have a story to share about yourself or a colleague, please send it to us so that we can share it with others.

The NCSN exam was just offered.  Great job to all those members that sat for the examination.  Don't forget to apply for the NCSN Scholarship if you took the exam as it is always nice to be able to get money back.

Anyone interested in serving on the SWOSNA Board for next school year,  sharing your passing news of the NCSN examination, and/or sharing a story about yourself or a colleague can contact me, Jeanie Bochenek at southwestrep@oasn.org

Respectfully submitted,

Jeanie M Bochenek, MS, RN, NCSN

Heidi has been a school nurse for 23 years in Wayne County, most of that time with Wooster City Schools.   While her priority is providing for the health and safety needs of the students and staff in two elementary and one middle school, her energy and commitment to the community in which she also lives causes her to do far more.  Her comprehensive health screening program uses trained students from the County's Career Center so that vision, hearing, height, weight, blood pressure, and scoliosis screenings are done for all students annually.  She knows the resources in the community and collaborates well with the Health Department, Free Clinic, YMCA, Lion's Club and churches to get a wide variety of services to families in need.  Maybe most notably, she is widely known for personally modeling a healthy lifestyle that is active; she teaches classes or coordinates programs that improve fitness, promote healthy eating habits, and maintain balanced emotional health.  She leads by example and makes it look like fun as she provides many opportunities for students, staff and families join her.  

Early in her career, Heidi faced the challenge of establishing school nursing services in several districts, as she was the first school nurse those districts had hired.  She quickly learned that school nursing was a specialty practice requiring a unique set of training and skills...and valued the support of OASN and school nurses who were setting high standards as this practice continued to evolve.  In time, Heidi took her turn serving on numerous committees and holding several offices, including president, of both NEOASN and OASN.   She is valued for her continuous willingness to participate in legislative efforts and advocate for the health needs of Ohio's school kids.  She is a passionate and articulate speaker as she shares her experiences with policy makers and politicians.  Heidi is nationally certified, consistently attends conferences and trainings, has started a second master's degree and speaks to groups about various aspects of school nursing.  She is a strong advocate for licensed school nurses and has mentored, supervised, supported and inspired many others along the way.

Heidi's contributions project such a positive image of school nursing.  She is dedicated and professional, compassionate and creative, clearly focused on addressing barriers to good health and learning.  We are proud to honor her as Ohio School Nurse of the Year for 2010-2011!

 News from South Africa News   August 2010

I hope that this finds you all well and happy after the 4^th of July celebrations.  Hopefully no rain on your parades and no fireworks accidents.  Just a few more observations about life in the SA bush.

Housing/buildings:  There are really no deciduous trees in any part of SA that I have visited so far.  There are short bushy trees and thorn trees but nothing like hard wood or even pine.  The tree farmers plant and harvest Gum Trees when their trunks are about 6" to 8" in diameter. They grow very straight and the lower limbs are removed as they grow.  I have been told that these are used in mines for supports and I have seen them used as roof support and corner supports in buildings.  People make their own cement blocks one by one, mixing sand and cement mix with water and then they pour this into a wooden box/frame to become firm.  The blocks are then turned out to dry in the sun.  This seems to be an art.  Sometimes the producer will find that the blocks are drying too fast and they will be sprinkled with water.  The blocks are turned from time to time and given a few weeks to completely dry.  Of course if it rains things go a little slower. 

Hair:  Well as a woman and as a white woman I'm continually amazed at the amount of work and money poured into hair activity with my South African friends and family.  It first seems that all mature (older) women simply wrap their head with a scarf and keep their hair covered at all times.  I lived with an older woman in Bhundu for two months and never saw a speck of her hair.  For the younger women it seems that they spend a lot of time getting hair attachments.  This involves having their natural short hair braided into very small tight braids and then artificial hair is sewn into the scalp end of the braids, one little bit at a time until the entire head is covered and it looks like it could have been their natural hair.  The other option is the wig but most go for the sewn in version.  Sometimes these are multi colored braids and sometimes they are just long strands.  If long strands are used the goal is to have straight (white person's) hair.  Rarely do you see a young woman with her natural hair showing.  I have seen attachments sewn into the heads of some very young children.  It looks very unnatural and must be quite uncomfortable.  In some folks it looks like the natural small braids are pulled extremely tight in order to secure them and this leaves little areas of puckered scalp showing.  The attachments are usually left in place for a couple months.  During this time the person cannot wash their heads.  They also cannot scratch their head so you see folks just thumping the side of their head to fix an itch.  After a couple months the attachments are cut out and the process is repeated.  I think this must be very hot during South Africa's blazing hot summer months.

Music:  This is a country of singing.  It seems like everyone was born with an amazing ability to sing and they do sing.  Nearly every meeting is started with a "praise song" followed with a prayer.  The songs are like spirituals and everyone seems to know all of the words.  There are no song books.  I have not seen any formal plan for who will begin the song or for what song will be sung.  It seems intuitive, and it's always in 4 or 5 part harmony, with feeling.  The prayer is sometimes actually given by someone, but sometimes I think they announce that "we will pray now" and everyone prays at the same time, out loud.  It sounds like babble, babble, and then they all seem to stop together.  It's still a bit mysterious to me.  Often a similar thing happens at the end of a meeting.  Someone will just start singing and everyone will join in and then the meeting is ended.

Initiation/Coming of Age:  In my previous community I attended several "Coming of Age Ceremonies" with the Ndebele culture.  These were held for young girls and involved traditional dress, or lack of dress, with beads and dancing to drums and whistles. The girls wear big beaded cuffs around their legs, waist, and neck.  They wear a beaded loin cloth or short skirt like item, bare feet and bare above the waist.  The cuffs are very large and heavy and make walking very difficult. I did not see or hear anything about boy's "Initiation School".  In training we were told that this is an event not rally a school.  Currently in the news we are hearing about the illegal Initiation Schools taking place in an adjoining province.  It seems that the routine involved boys of about 15 years of age and they go off into the bush (They say they are going to the mountain) to have a sort of circumcision performed by a traditional "nurse" or traditional "doctor".  The current problem involved some self appointed nurses or doctors that are performing the ritual without training, medical equipment, or sanitary conditions.  There have been 41 deaths since June 1^st and the government/health department is starting to look into the practice.  It seems that the young boys challenge each other to "be a man" and have this completed; in some cased the boys are doing it to each other.  Sounds awful.  Another good reason to go ahead and circumcise your baby.

Food:  there continues to be surprises in this department. There is a type of potato that they call a "sweet potato" and it is a little sweet.  However, it is white with some dark spots.  When it is exposed to the air, cut or pealed, the white begins to turn black quickly.  It's pretty good but not as good as our yams if you ask me.  I'm not too focused on foods so it's easy for me to forget what I'm missing from home.  The only thing that sticks with me is my memory of ice cream.  I know what I'll eat first when I arrive back in the US.  The beef is not very nice in my store.  I'm sure that in the city one could get a sirloin or steak of some sort.  Here we have some type of stew meat which is boiled and served too early which makes it very tough.  I'm sticking to chicken.   There is no bacon, small sausage, or fish. Certainly no shrimp or shell fish. No turkey, ham or deli meats.  I eat a LOT of peanut butter. They have some type of sandwich fake meat called polony.  It seems a little like bologna but mushier and dyed bright pink.  I just tried it once and it felt too artificial to be counted as a meat product.  Veggies at the store are seasonal so right now it's potatoes, beets, onions, sweet potatoes, and more potatoes.  There are sometimes some bags of mixed frozen veggies and those even have broccoli.  No canned veggies. Missing green stuff and fruits.  I miss berries and grapes.  You might think that a country that exports tons of wine would have grapes around but I guess most of the wine verities are not the usual eating ones.  As for pasta, there is only one thing- macaroni.  No spaghetti, lasagna, or noodles.  No chicken noodle soup in cans (no canned soups at all).  They have a type like "Cup of Soup" with the little skinny noodles. I'm sure I've mentioned, no cheese of any type including cottage or cream.  No sour cream or whipping cream.  No butter.  And certainly, nothing like a cake mix or brownie mix.  Really no cookies.  They have a type of cookie that they call biscuits, which are very plain and pretty tasteless.  I would make chocolate chip cookies if they had chips.  I did see a Peace Corps recipe using broken up candy bars.  Cereal, two kinds (can you imagine?).  They have corn flakes and bran flakes.

If anyone is a knitter and would like to make a contribution I found a US organization called Motherbear.  They hand knit bears and send them to orphan projects.  I ordered 100 and had them within 2 weeks.  I think you can Google them and their web site has the pattern available.  They are really cute.  The organization sews on a heart and attach a tag with the knitter' name.  We are planning to give this first shipment to the orphans that eat at our drop-in center every day.    No frozen prepared foods. No meals or pizza. Really no desserts other than the dry cookies or candy.  The people in my village are so impoverished that they are focused on the essentials and not really thinking about dessert.

I'm helping a group of young people start a small poultry business and the 100 chicks that they bought about 6 weeks ago are now ready to sell.  I'm really surprised at how fast they developed.  They had electricity and keep the light on at night so that the chicks would eat all night and grow fast.  Guess that works.  They are not planning to collect and sell eggs.  They hope to see all of the stock for meat and buy more stock.  I've helped write their constitution, budget, and letters to funding sites for small business start-ups.  I really don't know much about chickens but they seem knowledgeable and we are lining up some training with the Dept of Agriculture.  I think I'm going to get my first real fresh chicken soon.  Hope they will slaughter and pluck it for me.

No rain here.  I see that I'm really in the dry bush part of Africa.  It is very dusty and irrigation is unheard of.  People carry water from the local taps or from the river to water their subsistence gardens.

Guess that's enough for now.  More to follow.

Gail (Pohlman) 

Retired school nurse and SWOSNA member

Current Peace Corps Volunteer