Monday, September 7, 2009 - Labor Day (US)

Homeless Students

Under the McKinney-Vento program (388K PDF document), public schools are required to provide "equal access to the same free, appropriate public education, including a public preschool education, as other children and youth." Surge in Homeless Children Strains School Districts by Erik Eckholm in Saturday's New York Times relates some of the difficulties school districts face in providing the required free transportation to and from students' "school of origin" and some of the challenges faced by homeless students and their parents.

Odds 'n' Ends

Labor Day for years was the traditional end of summer vacation for students in the United States. Some schools and regions still begin their school year the day after Labor Day. In our area, schools have pushed the beginning of school well into August to get in the required number of school days, keep most traditional school vacations, and finish the school year by or close to Memorial Day.

The current push for school reform will almost certainly include lengthening the school year by ten or fifteen more school days. It will be interesting to see how this issue works out in terms of school calendars. Start dates, end dates, and holidays will all probably change some. I'd guess that this Labor Day or maybe next year may be the last time we'll see schools observing the old, traditional starting date for schools.

Late Update

The prepared text of President Obama's speech to America's schoolchildren is available online.

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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

The Stimulus and Cutbacks in Schools

As students in many school systems around the nation return to classrooms today, they'll find their classes larger with some programs trimmed back or eliminated entirely. The New York Times's Sam Dillon tells of the cutbacks and how they were lessened somewhat in Schools Aided by Stimulus Money Still Facing Cuts.

Odds 'n' Ends

Winnie Hu tells of schools going paperless and its effects in Fewer Fliers Sent Home as Schools Put More on Web. CNN relates that Laura Bush supports President Obama's speech to schoolchildren. And of course, the speech will be televised on C-SPAN today at 12 noon (EDT) and streamed live on WhiteHouse.gov/live.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Speech

Retired Associated Press writer Walter R. Mears says of the dustup over President Obama's address to schoolchildren, "The office, whoever the man in the White House, always has commanded respect. That is eroding in the era of nonstop talk shows and angry blogs." He writes in Analysis: Obama foes contrived back-to-school fuss that "the broadcast talkers and anti-Obama bloggers who fomented the whole business, were not looking for information or for reasons not to make a fuss. They wanted one, and got it."

If you somehow missed the speech or the news coverage of it, it's available from the White House site or on YouTube. Here are some follow-up articles on the speech:

• The New York Times: Presidential Pep Talk Kicks Off Year for Students by Sam Dillon
• The Los Angeles Times: Bipartisan praise for Obama's school speech by Christi Parsons
• The Indianapolis Star: Speech is part inspiration, part education by Jason Thomas and Gretchen Becker

NYC Teacher Reports

Jennifer Medina's 12,000 Teacher Reports, but What to Do relates how New York City principals have used recent teacher reports based on the test scores of their students. It's an interesting look at what may be the beginning of grading teachers almost solely on test scores.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Hubble Space Telescope Returns to Service

NASA announced yesterday that the Hubble Space Telescope is now back in full service following the STS-125 repair and refit mission last May. Dr. Tony Phillips tells the story on Science@NASA in Spectacular First Images from the Rejuvenated Hubble Space Telescope.

The announcement was accompanied with the release of a series of spectacular new images from the telescope, including the composite at right of a "butterfly" nebula, multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, and a "pillar of creation."

As with almost all NASA photos, the images may be used for classroom purposes without prior permission. In other words, if you need a photo of Jupiter to illustrate a worksheet or even your classroom web page, you can pull it from NASA without worrying about copyrights or fair use. (Note that NASA almost always requests a photo credit such as the ones shown with the images both left and right.)

I've used lots of NASA photos in the classroom for decorations, the creation of worksheets, and even as desktop images for student laptops. There are lots of creative uses for such images.

When some unexpected PTO funding arrived in my classroom years ago, I used it to buy photo paper and ink and printed the Astronomy Picture of the Day each day for almost an entire school year. The photos were first posted in the hallway (adding a good deal of traffic congestion:-). Students in other classrooms would often gather and read the latest addition. I later placed the photos into binders. My older special ed students would get the bound volumes and page through them during their "free time," often having excellent discussions that could easily be counted as "time on task."

Also see: Hubble Opens New Eyes on the Universe

Pollinating Gloxinias

I started growing gloxinias years ago just because I liked the flowers. But after I'd brought some into the classroom, a whole new reason for growing them emerged. When doing a science lesson on flower parts and pollination, I used gloxinias to demonstrate flower parts and the plants shedding pollen. We eventually ended up hand pollinating the flowers with Q-tips, saving the resulting seed, and growing lots of gloxinias to send home as Mothers' Day presents.

I've been hand pollinating my gloxinias for an update to a feature article on Senior Gardening. Yesterday, I harvested the first of the seed from a couple of bloom ovaries. The seed is tiny, almost dustlike, but it also stores quite well in the freezer.

The photo above shows a gloxinia bloom with some of the pollen on the flower petal. I scraped it up with a Q-tip and moved it to the pistil (stigma) of a bloom on another gloxinia.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Harkin to Head Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee

Senator Tom Harkin is the new chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The post became vacant with the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts last month. Alyson Klein writes in Education Week that Harkin "will have broad authority over both policy and money for education issues in the Senate, placing him in a powerful position as Congress prepares to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)."

Senator Harkin has long been a champion for students in special education, calling for full federal funding of IDEA. Klein notes one commentator has "questioned how willing Senator Harkin would be to go along with the Obama administration in pushing certain education priorities through reauthorization of the ESEA," including "paying teachers based on performance, the use of student test data to evaluate teachers, and elimination of caps on charter schools."

Have a great weekend!

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