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Monday, December 19, 2011

Reading Struggles of a Dyslexic

My Dyslexia"This much is clear: The mind of a dyslexic is different from the minds of other people." So begins Philip Schultz in From Dyslexia to Poetry, an excerpt from his moving memoir, My Dyslexia. In a short section published in the December 9 issue of The Week, the 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Poetry reveals what it's like for a dyslexic trying to read.

The act of translating what for me are the mysterious symbols of communication into actual comprehension has always been a hardship to me. I often read a sentence two or three times before I truly understand it; must restructure its syntax and sound out its syllables before I can begin to absorb its meaning and move on to the next sentence. And when I make the mistake of becoming aware that I am reading, and behaving in a way that enables this mysterious, electrically charged process to take place, my mind balks and goes blank and I become anxious and stop.

I often forget the meaning of words I've looked up many times before and must consult a dictionary, as I frequently consult a thesaurus while writing to make sure I've selected the right word. As I read, a kind of subtle bartering between uncertainty and hunger for knowledge goes on in my mind, in which I must conquer a feeling of hopelessness and anxiety. I've learned to read the way a runner learns to expect and find his second and third winds, the way an athlete pushes himself beyond where it is comfortable to go. I read word by word, sometimes congratulating myself on the completion of each sentence, each paragraph and chapter.

This one looks like a good read for teachers.

A Dangerous Proposal for IPS

An Indianapolis non-profit has proposed moving the Indianapolis Public Schools under mayoral control with a plan modeled on the rebuilding of the post-Katrina New Orleans schools and New York City Schools. The plan would basically decapitate the IPS administration, not an altogether bad idea, but also heavily supports moving mainly to charter and magnet schools for the city. Nonprofit's proposal would radically reorganize IPS by Scott Elliott briefly notes that the funding for the $700,000 study by Mind Trust was funded mainly via the Indiana Department of Education at State Superintendent Tony Bennett's behest. Bennett recently revealed some of his motives in school "reform" by awarding for-profit charters control of four of five Indianapolis schools under the state's turnaround program. IPS voters would lose their say under Mind Trust reform proposal by Heather Gillers reminds readers that moving under mayoral control would disenfranchise Indianapolis patrons, exposing them and their children to the kind of abuses of power demonstrated repeatedly by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

While there are some items in the Mind Trust's proposal that bear consideration, the inherent dangers of mayoral control, the possible wholesale privatization of the city's schools, and a proposal modeled on New York City and New Orleans charters, hint that this plan is more of a conservative power grab than an earnest effort to improve a troubled school system. (And where in the world did Tony Bennett come up with $700,000 to write a plan from state school funds when support for schools across the state was being viciously slashed?)

Odds 'n' Ends

Gift Suggestion

If you're looking for a special, yet unusual holiday gift for a gardening friend, let me suggest James Underwood Crockett's excellent gardening books. They're interesting, colorful, and easy to read. Although long since out of print, Crockett's Victory Garden, Crockett's Indoor Garden, and Crockett's Flower Garden are still the best reference volumes I have on gardening. While the occasional "new" version of the books show up on Amazon from time to time, they're collectors items and priced accordingly. Used copies are actually quite cheap.

Crockett's Victory Garden Crockett's Indoor Garden Crockett's Flower Garden

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Heartwarming

If you work with special needs kids and need a little lift of your spirits, check out Zak Koeske's Special-Needs Students Transform Into Pop Stars. He tells of "nine cognitively-impaired students" creating their own rendition of Miley Cyrus's "The Climb." The video, All Them, is something special to watch.

On the Blogs

Free Resources on the Net for Every LearnerPaul Hamilton tells about a free mind mapping app for the iPhone and iPad and Google Chrome browser add-ons that add dictionary functions to any web page and another that "magnifies selected text and changes the contrast between the colours of text and background to a pre-set combination" on his Free Resources from the Net for Every Learner blog.

One Sunflower made my eyes wet this week with her story of taking a parent on a Christmas shopping trip in All on a Saturday Morning. She begins the tale:

My story is a tribute to you, teachers, who despite politicians in plaster palaces playing with purse strings, go to the front lines every day with your hearts - bottomless resources with no strings attached.

In these days of extreme teacher bashing, what a beautiful thought.

From Slacker on Bluebird's Classroom:

We had three days of Government Mandated Really Big Deal Testing for our seventh graders. Three days of constructed response writing tests. So, for the first three periods of the day, the kids were testing and writing. Except they finished in 20-30 minutes and then had nearly two hours to just sit there and BE SILENT. I'm convinced that whomever comes up with these ideas for these tests has never been in a seventh grade classroom (at least not recently) and has no clue about 12 and 13-year-olds. A big block of time, doing the same thing, for these kids is maybe twenty minutes. Thirty max. No standardized test should last longer than a typical classroom period.

Mrs. Bluebird goes on to relate the fallout from keeping kids cooped up and quiet: fights, missing homework, in-class work, and projects - general bad behavior not evident before the Government Mandated Really Big Deal Testing.

Charleston at the CapitolHistory is Elementary has an interesting posting, 13 Things About Flappers, that probably isn't appropriate for classroom use, but sure is interesting. I had to quickly click over to the Library of Congress to find a photo to illustrate "flappers."

And speaking of the Library of Congress, a couple recent postings from the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog may prove interesting:

 • Teaching with Architectural Drawings and Photographs by Stacie Moats
 • "Occupying" the Bonus Army Protests of 1932 by Danna Bell-Russel

I didn't realize that P. L. Thomas was writing for the Schools Matter blog these days, but found his Holding Journalists, the Media Accountable an excellent read about journalists who buy into the rock star school "reform" movement.

Sara Wu has a great guest posting by Mark Lock this week on her Fed Up with Lunches blog, The Psychology of Children's Eating: How to Leverage It for Good.

Save Our SchoolsBless her heart, Peggy Robertson underscores the concerns I wrote about Monday in A Dangerous Proposal for IPS in her Indianapolis: The New Feeding Ground for Corporate Education Reformers posting on her Peg with a Pen blog. Peggy is an administrator for United Opt Out National and a member of the SOS Steering Committee. She recently posted an excellent Call for Action on the SOS site, listing the dangers of current neoliberal attacks on public education and actions parents and teachers can use to combat this assault.

After over a month of inactivity on his Practical Theory blog, Chris Lehman began his A Vision Statement for School Change posting last week, "Tap, tap, tap...is this on? Anyone still reading? Sorry I've been gone so long." While a funny intro, the heart of his posting is pertinent to what we do:

I believe than any parent should be able to walk into any school and ask any teacher, student, staff member, "What does teaching and learning look like here? What are the ways in which that is nurtured and developed for everyone in the school community?" and get a real, coherent answer that isn't just lip-service.

Mr. Teachbad finally got around to watching and reviewing Waiting for Superman.

Odds 'n' Ends

IJM - Gifts of Freedom

Friday, December 23, 2011

Holiday Wishes for Administrators, Teachers, and Students

Meris Stansbury has a timely article this week on eSchool News, 10 holiday wishes for administrators, teachers, and students. While a little short on wishes for students, the piece emphasizes some of the most needed things in education today from real teachers and administrators.

An Incredible Story

While you have some time over the holiday break, you might want to take a look at Paul Schwartzman's excellent series, The Seat Pleasant 59. It's the story of a fifth-grade class "adopted" by businessmen Abe Pollin and Melvin Cohen in 1988. They set aside funds to pay for college tuition for all of the students in that year's fifth grade at Seat Pleasant Elementary in Capitol Heights, Maryland. It was an ambitious social experiment of "extra attention and hundreds of thousands of dollars" to help the students "achieve the kind of success that had eluded their parents" in the poor community.

There is a bit of poignancy is the story, as things didn't work out well for many of the "Class of 1995." But "at least 11 of the 59 graduated from four-year colleges; at least three of those 11 attained advanced degrees; [and] at least 12 students completed trade school."

Sadly, when I first tried to access the stories, many of the pages were so loaded up with sidebars and advertising that the slow, slow Post servers couldn't deliver the full text of the page before the browser timed out. I tried three different browsers on my Mac and even fired up our Windows 7 sporting HP and the latest version of Internet Explorer with the same results on all. The answer turned out to be patience, lots and lots of it.

Pearson Education and Former New York Education Commissioner Subpoenaed

In September and October, the New York Times' Michael Winerip wrote two columns (1, 2) about Pearson Education wining and dining state and local education officials on Pearson sponsored junkets. On Wednesday, the Times' Winnie Hu wrote in Testing Firm Faces Inquiry on Free Trips for Officials, "New York State's attorney general ...is looking at whether foundation employees improperly sought to influence state officials or procurement processes to obtain lucrative state contracts, and whether the employees failed to disclose lobbying activities in annual filings with the attorney general's office." And yesterday, Mary Ann Giordano got to the heart of the matter in State Is Investigating Pearson Foundation Trips:

The contracts referred to: a recent five-year, $32 million contract for Pearson Education to administer state tests, and another $1 million contract for testing services with the State Education Department.

The last contract was awarded after David M. Steiner, then the state education commissioner, attended a conference in London in June 2010 that was organized by the Council of Chief State School Officers and underwritten by the Pearson Foundation.

If the name, David A. Steiner, sounds a bit familiar, it may be because he was the state education commissioner who granted Cathie Black a waiver from meeting superintendency requirements, allowing her to become Chancellor of the New York City schools...for a very short time.

Steiner claims "'there is zero link' between his trip and the contract. The state Education Department also denies any impropriety." Giordano notes that "subpoenas have been issued," with the advisory, "Stay tuned."

Full disclosure note: When I realized what apparently was going on, I immediately dropped several branches of the Pearson Education conglomerate from our affiliated advertisers list. But I still feel sorta slimy from the experience.

Newt x4

As I scanned education articles in my RSS reader yesterday, I was surprised to see Newt Gingrich's name coming up. Since I was already feeling a bit slimy from reading about the Pearson/Steiner potential scandal, I went ahead and checked out the stories about the Newt. Mike Rose wrote about the former speaker's verbal dazzle in Newt Gingrich and the meaning of smart on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet blog:

There's no doubt that Newt Gingrich is a smart and calculating guy and a savvy politician.  But it distorts our collective sense of intelligence, of keen analysis, and certainly of wisdom when the media casually and automatically defines him - and public figures like him - as a grand thinker, a person of big ideas.

Jay Mathews attempts to pin down where the major presidential candidates are on education in Gingrich, Romney, Obama - education triplets. Jay describes the three candidates lack of attention to education issues as a "dull three-way tie," noting, "by and large they support the test-driven, school-rating, pro-charter-school policy that has ruled the United States for more than a decade." Can teachers vote for "None of the above" next November?

While not current, Tommy Christopher's Not An Onion Spoof: Newt Gingrich's Education Plan Is To Fire Janitors And Replace Them With Kids comes to mind. Christopher wrote in November:

There can't possibly be people with whom this resonates, can there? Even the most rabidly anti-union conservative has to agree that we shouldn't exploit child labor, even if those children are someone else's, even if they're the children of those fat-cat union janitors, right? Surely we can all agree that kids aren't failing in school because they lack the opportunity to clean toilets.

But humorist Andy Borowitz hits the nail on the head with his only slightly facetious Gingrich Plummets in Polls as Voters Start Remembering Who He Is: Dawning Awareness Threatens Campaign.

Want a Beer with your White Castles?

An Associated Press story by Doug Whiteman about White Castle selling beer got picked up, I think, by almost every news outlet in the nation. Even ABC News and Time Magazine picked up the story online. The gist of the story is that White Castle is testing selling beer and wine at one of their restaurants in Lafayette, Indiana.

As the New York Daily News's Rheana Murray wrote in White Castle to offer alcohol: Fast food hamburger joint serving up beer & wine at Indiana location, "White Castle, the slider shack where drunks go to soak up their suds, now offers beer on its menu." She quotes Jamie Richardson, Vice President for Corporate Relations at White Castle System, Inc., as saying, "For now, this is a one-restaurant test."

While White Castles and beer certainly aren't educational news, I grew up with the small hamburgers and still remember when they cost just 12¢ each. We used to hit White Castle when we went on "lunch" break at 2-3 A.M. from the retail dairy where I worked in high school and college. (And yeah, I actually worked a night shift job, 30-40 hours per week, for a while when I was in high school. Newt would absolutely love the violation of child labor laws I got away with then.)

I read somewhere that one can get a glass of wine in France with their Big Mac at McDonald's. But getting beer with your plate or bag of gut busters (as they were semi-affectionately called in our neighborhood) just doesn't seem right. You probably will suffer a tad of indigestion from the White Castles, so why intensify the experience with beer? But maybe the carbonated barley pop will work like Alka-Seltzer in combination with the miniature hamburgers. Who knows?

A True White Castle Story

On one of our early morning break trips to the White Castle at 38th Street and Keystone in Indy, we sat at the counter and gave the waitress our orders. Gary, sitting to my left, ordered, "Six hamburgers, fries, and a Coke." I also ordered "Six hamburgers, fries, and a Coke." Dave, sitting to my right, only chose to change the order slightly, saying, "Six, fries, and an Orange Crush."

The waitress, having clearly missed Dave's oral comma, promptly brought back the first of his order, saying, "Here the first two of your six orders of fries!"

Odds 'n' Ends

I really intended today's posting to be one of those warm, fuzzy issues that featured lots of positive stories. I got off to a pretty good start with Meris Stansbury's piece on wishes by teachers and administrators. Paul Schwartzman's excellent series about The Seat Pleasant 59 has lots of highs and lows, but certainly was worth the time I spent fighting the Washington Post's incredibly crummy web page construction to just get the stories to load. But then came Pearson Education, followed by Newt and White Castle selling beer. White Castle and beer led me totally away from anything educationally related, other than Dave's "missing comma."

To possibly add a little balance to the Cashing in on Kids series featured here last week from the Miami Herald, Orlando Charter School Excels At Serving Students With and Without Disabilities tells of the UCP Bailes campus in East Orlando. It's "one of seven charter schools run by the non-profit UCP, affiliated with the central Florida chapter of United Cerebral Palsy." The school's student make-up is pretty unusual for charters, most of which avoid taking special needs students: "Half of its students...don’t have a disability. The other half has disabilities such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and autism."

Have a great weekend and holiday.

Buy.com

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Ho, ho, arrgh...

G5 innardsI had supper well on the way last night while my wife was bringing home two of our grandkids for an overnight. As I walked out of the kitchen past the foot of the stairwell, I heard loud fan noises from upstairs. Hustling up the stairs to see what was wrong, I found my venerable G5 Mac with its fans absolutely screaming. When I tried to shut it down, I realized that the screen had frozen.

When such stuff occurs, the usual answer is electrical deprivation and then a restart. But after unplugging the computer, waiting a few minutes, and then plugging it in and hitting the start button, the unit powered up but didn't boot. I could hear the fans running, but no hard drive sounds. The screen remained blank. And after a few minutes, the fans began to speed up again.

I began troubleshooting the seven year old machine, first replacing the PRAM battery, hitting the reset button on the motherboard, and trying a different video card, all with restarts in between. Nothing worked.

I even looked online for help, using my old G4 Quicksilver Mac, but really didn't find a lot of good direction, other than folks who suggested the motherboard was bad.

So...

Several years ago when I was working for a prestigious school of engineering, I'd used several of my Macs at the office. While the program I worked for would buy the webmaster of our site a Mac for testing, they wouldn't invest in one for me, despite the fact that they loved the stuff I created on my Mac. I first used a Blue & White Mac that became surplus at home when I bought our G5. Later, I went to a Mac Mini, followed by a 12" G4 Powerbook. Eventually, I picked up another twin processor G5 that was identical to my original one, other than the video card, RAM, and hard drive. It served me well.

In retirement, the extra G5 has functioned as a test bed at times. It's final setup was running Mac OS X Server with a mirrored hard drive array, although I'd not used it in months. It's primary purpose had become being my "insurance policy" for my main, seven year old Macintosh. And last night, I cashed in the policy.

G5, Quicksilver, HPIt only took about an hour to first fire up the backup G5 to make sure it still worked. When that proved okay, it was just a matter of swapping drives, RAM chips, and video cards between the two machines.

After booting up the backup with its new innards, I reassembled the old G5, as I plan to work a bit more with it to try to isolate the problem. But I've already noticed that the previous backup machine is quite a bit more responsive than its predecessor had become, indicating to me, at least, that there had been things wrong with the aging G5 long before it locked up and quit. I also was reminded that the internal speaker was bad in the backup machine, but my external speakers plugged into the headphone jack worked just fine.

Of course, now, my "insurance policy" machine, which I'd considered selling off at times, is my main Mac. If it should go down, I'd be in a little trouble. A little, but not a lot, as I've backed up on Time Machine, and I have the QuickSilver and the Powerbook. Actually, the Powerbook still gets daily use, as I store it under an end table in the living room, pulling it out daily to play around on while watching TV. But it probably is time to start thinking about a new Mac.

Mac Pro. Mac to the power of 12 from MacMall.com

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