While the Brewers are struggling, not so the kids at MPS' James Fennimore Cooper Elementary on the South Side. Kayla Jimenez, a sixth-grader at the school – which meets state academic expectations and whose principal was tapped by DPI last year to serve on an important committee – has won the Crew's first-ever Strike Out Bullying essay contest.
Maybe the Dodgers should have read her essay before Thursday's game, in which they walloped the Brewers, 14-4.
Hundreds of one-page essays – with the theme "What is your school doing to strike out bullying?" – from around the Milwaukee area were submitted to the contest.
According to a Brewers' press release, 12-year-old Kayla, "wrote about the many different approaches that J.F. Cooper School has helped prevent and end bullying. She described a pledge that was handed out to every class and signed by any student who would not tolerate bullying. In addition, students at the J.F. Cooper School created black and blue posters, representing the hardships that victims of bullying go through, and displayed them throughout the campus."
Because her essay was chosen, Jimenez will throw out the first pitch at the Brewers-White Sox game on Monday, May 11. She gets tickets and transportation to the game.
Earlier in the day, a group of Brewers players, staff and personnel will visit Cooper to bring some Brewers apparel.
If they get half the reception we got when Cooper principal Jennifer Doucette and her team hosted the "mock chicken leg summit," the Brewers are in for a treat.
Last month, Cooper eighth-grader Brianna Guzman also won a national sports-related essay contest, hosted by Major League Baseball and Scholastic Books.
Kudos Cooper writing teachers and kudos, too, to the Brewers for encouraging and recognizing Milwaukee's young writers.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
