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It Happens Every Year The annual round of stories about banning Christmas in the classroom have begun already. Amanda Guerra reports in School district bans Christmas from the classroom, "The Fort Worth school district says there is a time and a place for Christmas cheer - and it's not during class time." Gift exchanges, holiday messages, and visits by Santa are still allowed in the district, but only "before and after school...Classroom parties are allowed if they are for 'instructional purposes.'" It's too bad common sense and sensitivity for the beliefs of others can't be the standard for what goes on in the classroom at this time of year (and throughout the year as well). The war on Christmas folks are also getting pumped up again. Criticism of the Fort Worth Schools' policy pushed Interim Superintendent Walter Dansby to issue a news release on Friday saying, "Santa Claus is welcome to visit our schools. He can be in the lobby. He can be in the cafeteria. He can be in the auditorium. He can be in the school, outside the school, around the school. But he cannot visit the classroom while the teacher is teaching." During my first decade of teaching, we ran into all sorts of problems with holiday celebrations, with one principal telling a local rabbi, "Get off my back or I'll bring in the goddamned biggest Christmas tree you've ever seen." Years later when I taught at another school in the system that had a very diverse student population, a "hit list" of banned holiday decorations was issued by the system that included nativities, angels, mangers, and the like. In protest against the loss of classroom control in the situation, one of my teaching buddies, Paul, asked me to step across the hall and view his classroom "Christmas decorations." He'd plastered his walls with forbidden angel decorations! When I asked him about the appropriateness of such decorations, he told me his class was all protestant. Paul was Jewish, but he made a good point about being sensitive of the beliefs of ones students. Paul got away with his rather sensible protest, but in later years school district "Christmas police," district level administrators, toured classrooms over the weekends in December checking for and removing inappropriate or banned displays and decorations. I thought that was really sad, but even sadder was the possibility that such actions may have been prompted by teachers being insensitive to the beliefs of a diverse student population. Local Stuff Two headlines from yesterday's Terre Haute Tribune-Star give a hint of the mess Governor Mitch Daniels, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett, and the Republican controlled legislature have made of schools and school, city, and county finances in the state. Tax caps leave ceiling on revenue by Arthur Foulkes tells how various county entities must now fight each other for property tax revenues since the Republicans pushed through a constitutional amendment capping property taxes in the state (and our "enlightened" voters approved it). Schools hurt by budget cuts brought on by the tax caps and the state's refusal to take up the slack and cities and counties now unable to provide critical services are becoming the norm in the state. A second headline to the editorial section, Multiple choice question: Voters must choose which direction they want the future of education to go by Mark Bennett, tells of State Super Tony Bennett's continuing drive to "reform" public schools in the state by use of student test scores, merit pay, vouchers, and school turnarounds that turn over public schools to private contractors, denying local parents input and/or control of their schools. One of Mark Bennett's better observations in the piece was,
We can only hope, but the Indiana electorate are the folks who approved the property tax cap amendment and put Daniels, Bennett, and the teacher bashing Republican majority in office. Bloomberg Steps in It New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unwittingly revealed just how detached he is from the realities of education in comments he made to M.I.T. students last Tuesday. Mary Ann Giordano and Anna M. Phillips report in Mayor Hits Nerve in Remarks on Class Sizes and Teachers that Bloomberg stated:
Obviously, we're getting more education reform "wisdom" from a source who has never taught. Possibly Useful...or not I've had the plague for a week or so and haven't been able to do any real outdoor work for some time. Staying indoors, I've occupied my time with sleeping, doing laundry, sleeping, cleaning up after our indoor herd of cats, sleeping, and also inventorying our saved garden seed. Just making sure we have the required quantity of seed isn't good enough, as some of the seed doesn't store all that well, even when frozen. So I ended up doing some germination tests on our suspect garden seed, not all of it, but just the seed I had a question about. When I got done, I realized that germination tests might fit in someone's classroom as a lesson on seed germination and percentage...or maybe not. Remember, I was taking a lot of cough medicine...some prescription and some from our local liquor store.
The first test I set up last week was of our sweet corn seed. We grow shrunken kernel sh2 super sweet corn, which is a bit more difficult to germinate in the field than regular sweet corn. Having seed of good viability is critical. I plan where my seed will go on half of a paper towel sheet and label the areas for each variety with magic marker. Then I wet the towel and count out seed onto it. For my tests, I just used ten seeds per variety. Commercial seed houses test a thousand seeds at a time in germination tests. For a good school project, you might want to start with just ten seeds if you're just introducing percentages and then move up to a multiple of ten, say 20, and later to 25 to test their skills at figuring percentages.
At day two of our test, our main crop sweet corn, a variety we've used for years from Twilley Seeds, showed moderate germination. At day four, which I forgot to document with the camera, our 2011 seed had all germinated (100%) and our two year old seed had at least 70%. (There was noticeable swelling on an eighth seed, but no emergence as yet.) The 2003 variety 277A seeds (shown above at the beginning of the test) showed no germination at six days. The Harris Seed from 2010 had only 30 % germination. With sweet corn, you want at least 75-80% germination rates before you head into the field to start planting. (And yes, I used to do this testing with our seed before filling up our John Deere four row planter and seeding 2-4 acres of sweet corn each year when we lived on a farm. Our seed then came in large bags that cost well over $100/bag! If carried over seed wasn't good, one wasted more than just time and fuel, but also the cost of fertilizer and herbicide put down at planting, along with a lost crop or a delayed one from replanting.)
I tested just one variety of green beans, Strike. I had some commercial seed bought for the 2009 gardening season and some seed I saved at the end of that season. Both the commercial seed and our saved seed germinated at a pleasing 80%, good enough that I don't need to purchase more Strike seed this year. Obviously, test samples of 10 seeds will be pretty easy for figuring percentages. Samples of 25 seeds should present a bit more challenging math for students. Two notes: The reddish seed shown above is treated seed, as in treated with a poisonous fungicide to prevent rot. Obviously, you do not want your students handling treated seed. Secondly, seed germinating on damp paper towels stinks. Do be prepared for a bit of odor. Also, let your custodian know what you're doing. I once had one of the best custodians we'd ever had proudly tell me, "I cleaned out that smelly, moldy mess from the first locker for you." We were doing bread mold tests for science class! Odds 'n' Ends
Some other real education news headlines from over the weekend include:
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Interesting Fred Hess and Linda Darling-Hammond have co-written an interesting op-ed on The New York Times, How to Rescue Education Reform. It's good to see folks from mostly opposing camps agreeing that the current round of "education reform" is really a mess. On the Blogs The Dangerous Weapons in School, Or When You Remove the Permanent Markers...... on Blogging through the Fourth Dimension is a pretty good read. Jim Horn writes about The Most Dangerous Aging Geek in America on the Schools Matter blog. It turns out that the Gates Foundation has made a $376,635 grant to, of all things, ALEC, the group responsible for all the anti-teacher, anti-public school boilerplate legislative proposals used by lazy, clueless conservative state legislators all around the nation. Horn's take on the grant: "I can only conclude that Mr. Gates and his fellow trustees fully embrace the notion of killing public education one state at a time."
I should add that Safari Reader doesn't always eliminate all extraneous material on a page and also has problems displaying pages from sites built with tables. But it's another free tool that may find some use in your classroom. Paul also writes about the Simple English Wiktionary in Simple English Wiktionary – Useful Online Dictionary for All Learners. He notes that "dictionary definitions frequently contain words whose meanings are challenging." The Simple English Wiktionary defines itself as "an online dictionary that uses simpler words so it is easier to understand." The History is Elementary blog has an interesting discussion this week, Static History...It Doesn't Exist. The annual Edublog Awards competition is underway. Voting in numerous categories of Best Blog is open to everyone. For most of us, the nomination lists give us a place to hunt for, what else, but more interesting education blogs. Odds 'n' Ends
If today's posting seems a bit less than inspired, that's because it is. My wife, Annie, stepped into my office as she was leaving for work and said, "Well, you're not as hot as you were yesterday." If only she were commenting on a relative lack of popularity. I'm going back to bed! Indiana's Lost $320 Million Lots of reports surfaced yesterday that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels miraculously has discovered $320 million the state somehow misplaced and never missed. Indiana Governor Daniels says state found untouched $300M by the AP's Tom LoBianco is representative of the early reports. Later reports, analysis, and commentary have begun to ask the hard questions about Daniels' vicious cuts to education and social programs in the state. The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette editorial, Windfall vs. painful cuts, is again representative of the later postings. Hopefully, the next generation of reports will begin to question whether the current revelations are part of a sinister plot by Daniels and Indiana Republicans, or simply gross incompetence. Republicans are already talking tax cuts and rebates, ignoring the damage done by budget reductions that injured the state's school children, individuals with disabilities, foster children, mentally disabled, and others. And this was the man who wanted to be Incredible Compensation for Virtual School Execs Emma Brown has a rather disturbing report today on the Virginia Schools Insider blog on the Washington Post. In K12 Inc. chief executive Ron Packard paid $5 million compensation package in 2011, Brown relates the total compensation paid to a number of executives at the for-profit K12 Inc. Interestingly, Wikipedia's opening for their entry on the virtual school vendor isn't terribly complimentary:
Brown drew her data for the posting from "an amended annual report filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission." Sighted
The image at right proved to be another bridge too far for my iPhone, but fortunately, I was able to find the bumper sticker from the car ahead of me online. It read, "A Working Person Voting for a Republican Is Like a Chicken Voting for Colonel Sanders." I hunted high and low for an affiliate advertiser that carried the bumper sticker, but didn't find one. But a place called Bumper Art has it. Odds 'n' Ends
Have a great weekend!
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©2011 Steven L. Wood