Friday, December 24, 2004

Christmas Gifts for Teachers

Several good columns, now that school is out for the holidays almost everywhere, have appeared this week on the subject of student gifts for teachers. The Philadelphia Inquirer's Christine Schiavo reports in No more goodies for the teacher (free registration required) that some school districts have gone to an outright ban on gifts for teachers, while others discourage or attempt to limit the practice. The New York Times' Susan Saulny tells about the New York City $5 limit in Some Parents Say a $5 Gift Is Not Enough for Teachers (free registration required). Despite the conflict of interest rule imposed by Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein in 2004, she writes, "But the biggest gifts had already been given after being bought by parent coordinators who collected cash donations, some as much as $50 a student. One teacher got a vacuum cleaner for her classroom last week.

Trials of a New Teacher

The Los Angeles Times staff writer Erika Hayasaki concluded her three-part series this week about Ricardo Lira Acuña, writer turned teacher. It's an excellent, but sad look at a new teacher's struggle to help kids in the classroom. I'll link the whole series here (free registration required):

• A WRITER TURNS TO TEACHING: Beginning a new chapter in his life
• HE SAW HIMSELF IN THEM: Demanding students test their teacher's resolve
• A NEW TEACHER'S CRISIS: Swamped by depression, feelings of guilt, panic

New Server

The entire mathdittos2 domain has moved to a new, faster server. While EdNews is officially discontinued, it still receives quite a few hits, so this seemed to be a good place to post a notice. There may have been some interruption in email in the changeover, so if you wrote and didn't get a response, please try again.

Is EdNews Coming Back?

I've received a number of emails over the last few months asking if I might consider reopening Educators' News on a regular basis. While flattering, the reality at this point is that my new job as User Community Liaison for the PRISM web portal keeps me very busy.

PRISM is a free, assistive web portal for middle school (and other) math, science, and technology teachers. It's funded by a grant from the Lilly Endowment and hosted at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Currently, the site links Indiana state standards in the subjects above to relevant web-based activities. The site also has an excellent search engine that actually makes it useful far beyond the target audience of Indiana middle school teachers. Folks from other states and countries use the site as well as what appears to be a number of homeschoolers.

We've just entering a new phase for the site of attempting to generate a "community of practice" among educators. While we offer the standard forums, we soon will have some new offerings that promise to make the site the "watering hole for educators" that EdNews was supposed to be...and never became:-(.

We're Digging Out, Too!

Like many of you across the midwest, we're digging out from this week's snowstorm. We really didn't get all that much...less than a foot, but strong winds created some nasty drifts. I drove to Indianapolis yesterday for a family visit and saw numerous vehicles off the road, as there were still nasty patches of ice on the interstate. Our local highway was as well cleared as I've seen it after this type of an early storm!

We had a great visit with my mom and dad (88 and 91 years of age!), along with my brother, Chester and his wife, Dee, before they return to the mission field in Kenya next week. My sister, Susan, and her husband, Jerry, were also able to make it over from Missouri. They got to drive through the worst of the storm!

While our sons won't be home for Christmas, all four of our girls will be home for the holiday, so we'll have a housefull tomorrow. Sam knitted scarves for everyone for Christmas. That's Sam and Julia with their scarves at right.

Have a great holiday!

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We're Outa Here!

Educators' News is no longer an active site. It was regularly published from April 18, 2001, through April 18, 2003. Content from the site (archives and features) will remain available via the current URLs for the time being.

For those seeking current education news, let me recommend the following links:

For Macintosh specific news, including some education links, let me suggest:

My sincere thanks go out to the regular readers and contributors to this site for their support over the last two years. Please stay in touch. I'm not dying, just closing this part of the site:-).

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