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Monday, January 19, 2009 - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day A School Success Story The Associated Press's Dorie Turner had an inspiring article in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, Students soar in poor Atlanta neighborhood. Turner tells of the "Ron Clark Academy, a private middle school tucked among boarded-up houses and graffiti-peppered walls in Lakewood, one of Atlanta's poorest neighborhoods." American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan The economic stimulus package introduced in Congress last week calls for a significant investment in education. eSchool News reports in Stimulus bill includes $142B for education that "Some $20 billion for school modernization and $1 billion for educational technology are among nearly $150 billion in funding targeted toward education in the House version of the new economic stimulus package, which lawmakers introduced Jan. 15." State School Superintendent Wants to be Whitelisted I had to grin when I noticed the posting below from an Indiana Department of Education "SuperMail":
I found it interesting that the Indiana State Superintendent of Public Instruction might be considered a spammer and had to request that school techs whitelist his email address. I wonder what system superintendents, principals, and classroom teachers will think of receiving his missives directly. Orion
If your school doesn't have a commercial planetarium application such as the excellent Starry Night Supreme Court to Hear Education Cases The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear two education cases according to Supreme Court to hear school strip-search case. The High Court will hear one case that seeks to clarify the law on searching students for drugs. The second case may determine "whether taxpayers must cover private school tuition for a child with a disability before the student has tried a public school." While the first case got the sexy headline wording with "strip-search case," the special education case could have a greater effect on our nation's schools. Inauguration Streaming Thanks to a listserve posting from Linda Uhrenholt, AT&T Regional Director of Education in California, I was able to find some more good resources for tomorrow's inauguration ceremonies. It appears CNN will be streaming the inauguration live tomorrow, as will CBS, the Washington Post, YouTube, and others. Hulu has clips of inaugurations from W.'s second all the way back to Dwight D. Eisenhower's second inauguration. Of course, I'd guess your best bet for watching the inauguration will be via cable. But if you're scheduled into your school lab at around noon (ceremony starts at 11:30 A.M. EST), you might want to use the links above if you don't have cable TV in the lab. Looking Ahead February has a lot of teachable holidays, so I thought I'd get busy now and list some links you might want to follow. The Teachers Corner February Calendar is a good source for every "Day" featured in the month. I'll not try to cover them all, but will hit the biggies here. Black History Month (all month)
Super Bowl (February 1)
Elmo's Birthday (February 3)
Presidents' Day (February 16)
Unless I come up with something really new and different, you're on your own on Valentine's Day, Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk Day, and the International Polar Bear Day. Looking Back and Forward I was fortunate to begin my teaching career at the old Grandview Elementary in Indianapolis in 1971. Grandview was viewed as a "problem school" by the upper school system administration. Our student population was predominately black, but over the years I was there moved to a more diverse student population. Some of my lasting memories of Grandview are of the evening we had a community viewing of the I Have a Dream film. The gym was packed with parents, students, teachers, and just people from the community. Another such occasion was when the school board, to avoid court ordered bussing, voted to desegregate Grandview. Our parents turned out en mass to fight for our school, hoping to retain the school boundaries as they were and retain the teaching staff that then existed. Over the seven years I taught at Grandview, I learned a lot from the parents and students there. We had a true sense of community and shared spirit and mission. We attended one of the few integrated Christian Churches of its time that was part of the community. The parents were incredibly motivated and patient with rookie white teachers like myself. It was a time of rich learning for us all. I left Grandview in protest after it became a "by application only" alternative school. The application process appeared to discriminate against our neighborhood students. I was lucky to land a job teaching "developmental third grade" at Harcourt Elementary, just a mile or so north of Grandview. Again at Harcourt, I worked with folks who'd escaped the inner city to what the Indianapolis News once called the "golden ghetto." I've never had a more motivated and supportive group of parents. Education was a high priority in their lives. There was also a spirit of hope that flowed over our kids, telling them they could achieve great things in life. Over the years after I left Harcourt, I was saddened as our country appeared to retrench into segregation and racial hostility. But with the recent presidential election, today's MLK Day, and the inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama tomorrow, I find that my faith in hope for equal opportunity for all our kids is somewhat restored. Maybe our nation has grown enough now to complete the hope and mission some of us felt in the late 60's and the 70's. Annie and my prayers go out to our incoming administration that God may grant them wisdom in governing and that He may help the people of our nation shed our hatred and prejudices of others.
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COPA: An Acronym You Can Now Forget eSchool News reports that the US Supreme Court has refused to hear the government's appeal to revive the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) of 1998. COPA dies quietly in Supreme Court relates that the high court refused granting an appeal hearing on a federal appeals court ruling that said "the law would violate the First Amendment, saying filtering technologies and other parental-control tools are a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content online...Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. ruled in 2007 that software filters work much better than the law would. Reed also said the law failed to address threats that have emerged since it was written--including online predators on social-networking sites--because it targets only commercial web publishers." No Layoffs This Semester in LAUSD Jason Song and Howard Blume report in the Los Angeles Times that "no teachers will lose their jobs this school year...a calculated gamble that will preserve classroom continuity in the short term but lead to a larger deficit next year." In L.A. Unified teachers' jobs safe for now, Song and Blume tell that LAUSD Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines, who had recently been authorized to send layoff notices to nearly 2,300 instructors said, "The price of disruption is just not worth it." If the layoffs were mandated, "thousands of students would have had to change teachers mid-semester, classes could have grown in size and administrators who have not taught for years might have been bumped back into schools." Texas Board Changes Stance on Science Curriculum The Associated Press is reporting that the Texas board of education sides with evolution advocates in preliminary curriculum vote. The Texas State Board of Education voted Friday "in favor of dropping a mandate that teachers address both "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theory." The New York Times notes in Split Outcome in Texas Battle on Teaching of Evolution that an amendment that would "compel science teachers to instruct students about aspects of the fossil record that do not neatly fit with the idea of species’ gradually changing over time" was added to the curriculum. Study of School Facilities ScienceDaily (and other outlets) are carrying the following press release: New Study On School Infrastructure Could Influence Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan. The study (1.9 MB PDF document), commissioned and released by the American Federation of Teachers, "documents infrastructure funding needs in each of the 50 states...and calls for immediate federal action through direct funding to address inadequacies and inequalities in school facilities attended by low-income children." The full study is unlike most academic reports as it is filled with photos illustrating inadequate school facilities. Some Folks Not So Positive on Duncan Appointment Two postings on the New American Media site take issue with President Obama's choice of Arne Duncan for Secretary of Education. I still think Duncan was a good choice, but add the links below for balance. Odds 'n' Ends Educators' News has suffered from neglect as I move in and out of some extended substitute teaching assignments. I'm really unsure as to when I'll get back to a regular publication schedule. I posted some fairly positive comments last week about the Brinno GardenWatchCam, a relatively inexpensive, digital time-lapse camera. I noted a couple of issues about the USB drive format required and the inaccuracy of the camera's timer. The first unit I received also lacked an essential part, the bottom plate of the camera containing the tripod mount, necessitating an exchange with the vendor. My emails to the Brinno customer service address have gone unanswered, so I need to add a buyer beware notice here. It would appear that buyers are on their own if they experience issues with the Brinno GardenWatchCam. From my experience, the camera will take acceptable time-lapse movies, but I think prospective users are likely to be as disappointed as I am with the overall quality of the unit and total lack of support from the manufacturer.
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©2009 Steven L. Wood