eSchool News » Community Relations

Watch: Karen Lewis says ‘Off with their heads,’ stirs right-wing ire

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:55:04 +0000

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis is no stranger to her outspokenness landing her in the headlines — but many conservatives are particularly miffed by a comment she made during a labor event last month, the Huffington Post reports. In the clip, recorded Dec. 2 during her keynote address of the Illinois Labor History Society’s Union Hall of Honor dinner and posted on YouTube Monday, Lewis noted that an earlier generation of labor leaders resolved their differences with the rich with a very straightforward mantra: “Off with their heads.”

“Do not think for a minute that the wealthy are ever going to allow you to legislate their riches away from them,” Lewis told the audience at the event. “However, we are in a moment where the wealth disparity in this country is very reminiscent of the robber baron ages. The labor leaders of that time, though, were ready to kill. They were. They were just — off with their heads. They were seriously talking about that.”

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Mississippi debate over school reform evokes broader racial divide

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:53:23 +0000

Mississippi lawmaker Kenneth Wayne Jones, a Democrat, briefly became a political pariah last winter when he voted in favor of a proposal to expand charter schools in his state, says the Hechinger Report. He was the only African-American state senator to support the bill, which most members of Mississippi’s legislative Black Caucus disavowed. Jones liked the idea of expanded school options for families, but he also understood his colleagues’ mistrust. This winter, charter supporters will make their fifth attempt in five years to bring charters to Mississippi, one of a dwindling number of states without a real charter school law. (The state has an existing law so restrictive that no charters have opened.) But the deep-rooted skepticism of the state’s black leadership remains one of the biggest obstacles to bipartisan support for charters in Mississippi and throughout the South, where powerful white Democrats are a disappearing breed. It also speaks to broader mistrust among black officials nationwide—particularly those who came of age before or during the civil rights movement—toward contemporary school reform efforts they believe are being imposed by outsiders on low-income, minority communities…

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High school educators resolve to do better in the New Year

staff and wire services reports — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:21:20 +0000

Educators across the country are wrapping up their winter breaks and returning to school with a fresh list of New Year’s resolutions. For high school teachers and administrators, 2013 will be about improving their craft and helping students meet their goals, U.S. News reports.

“My main resolution is to continue to show my students a positive learning environment while fostering the nurturing relationships I have with them,” Jenny Michael, a language arts and ACT prep teacher at Seckman High School in Missouri, said via E-mail. “My students show me something new every day and it is one of the best parts of my job, which encourages me to continue educating.”

But to truly succeed, sometimes students need to fail. Mark Westlake, a physics teacher at Saint Thomas Academy in Minnesota, plans to give his students more room to fail in the year ahead…

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How to include the community when making key school decisions

NoraCarr — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:09:20 +0000

Finding common ground is a difficult, yet essential, task of teacher, principal, and district leadership.

As the 2012 presidential election and the fiscal cliff battle indicates, political division is the new normal. Created to serve as common schools for the common good, public schools are often caught in the crosshairs of opposing factions.

Finding an increasingly elusive common ground is a difficult, yet essential, task of teacher, principal, and district leadership, however.

That’s why the notion of peer, student, and public engagement is gaining such currency, whether through professional learning communities, 21^st century learning strategies, voice polls, online surveys, or potluck suppers built around hot topics like safety, new curriculum initiatives, or looming budget cuts.

Technology tools and services are helping school leaders engage key audiences in new and important ways, from starting conversations with constituents via social media to participatory budget processes that seek to get more community voices to the decision-making table.

While free and inexpensive applications are plentiful online, pulling all these disparate tools together can be time-consuming. Plus, freebies and cheap applications don’t always work well on a district-wide basis, and they can threaten network security.

(Next page: How a web-based service called MindMixer can help)

Teaching compassion: Education and volunteerism around the world

staff and wire services reports — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:05:29 +0000

While many people believe that kids these days are lazy and self-obsessed, there is reason to believe that they are becoming increasingly empathetic and altruistic, the Huffington Post reports. Although a culture of violence — in video games, television and film — pervades the lives of youth, there are many who thoughtfully resist this culture and place value on co-operation rather than competition, and compassion rather than cruelty. According to POINT (People and Organizations in North Toronto), youth had the highest rate of volunteering of any demographic in 2007, and 93 per cent of volunteers aged 15 and older cited giving back to the community as an important reason to volunteer. Educational institutions are a central pillar in fostering volunteerism among youth. According to an infographic by Open Colleges, 86.2 per cent of students obligated to participate in community service participated beyond the mandatory requirement. Student volunteer rates are highest in New Zealand, Canada and China. The infographic indicates that the average rate of volunteering for university students with service learning in high school is over 77 per cent, as compared to 65 per cent without service learning, suggesting that education helps promote long-term volunteerism…

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Sandy Hook students, teachers head back to school

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 13:59:52 +0000

Since escaping a gunman’s rampage at their elementary school, the 8-year-old Connors triplets have suffered nightmares, jumped at noises and clung to their parents a little more than usual, the Associated Press reports. Now parents like David Connors are bracing to send their children back to school, nearly three weeks after the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. It won’t be easy — for the parents or the children, who heard the gunshots that killed 20 of their classmates and six educators.

“I’m nervous about it,” Connors said. “It’s unchartered waters for us. I know it’s going to be difficult.”

Classes are starting Thursday at a repurposed school in the neighboring town of Monroe, where the students’ desks have been taken along with backpacks and other belongings that were left behind in the chaos following the shooting on Dec. 14. Families have been coming in to see the new school, and an open house is scheduled for Wednesday…

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How to talk to children about the Sandy Hook shooting

staff and wire services reports — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:23:52 +0000

Schonfeld said if children bring it up themselves, you can talk about what’s being done to keep them safe.

The killings at a Connecticut elementary school have left parents and educators struggling to figure out what to tell their children.

The international organization Save the Children, headquartered only 20 miles from where the killings occurred in Newtown, opened up a “child friendly space” in the community to give local children a place to play while their parents seek counseling and support.

The group said parents and other adults should listen to children carefully, reassure them, give them extra time and attention, be a model for them of sensitivity to others, and help them return to their normal routine.

Clergy members had similar advice for those who turned to them for help. Added Rev. Linda L. Grenz on the Episcopal Rhode Island Diocesan News website: “…if your child doesn’t want to talk about the events at all, they may not need to talk and you might just take a walk with them or read them a book or give them a hug to let them know you care.”

Michigan protests: Teachers remain dedicated despite cuts

staff and wire services reports — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:35:57 +0000

Michigan fought long and hard to become a union state. Yet our legislature has passed two right-to-work bills Tuesday, pushed through in a lame-duck session, Yahoo! News reports. There was no open debate on the floor. It was, instead, a rush to action. Instead of representatives paying attention to the estimated 10,000 protesters outside the capital, the people who elected them, the house moved quickly to squash their voice. I’m not in a union, so how does this affect me? My husband, a union teacher, was at work Tuesday. My mother, a union teacher, also went to work Tuesday. They are working for the betterment of your children. My husband, a guidance counselor in an urban district, lost sleep debating whether to go to work, or go to Lansing. While he feels that the legislation is wrong, he did not get into education to become involved in politics. He got into education in order make a difference in the lives of his students…

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The great divide, now in the toy aisle

staff and wire services reports — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:12:48 +0000

Earlier this year, at the 109th Annual American International Toy Fair, held at the Javits Convention Center as one of the culture’s most convincing cases for childlessness, a former investment banker named Jill Todd displayed “The Tuneables,” an interactive DVD series she had created through her company, the Music Intelligence Project , the New York Times reports. The daughter of two musicologists, Ms. Todd developed the project in conjunction with her parents as an instructional system in melody, rhythm and tone — the fundamentals of music leveraged as a means to enhance cognitive function. Nearby, but easily obscured by the acres of primary-color plastic, was a booth for a company called Fat Brain Toys, whose games and puzzles in logic and sequencing came with an impressive lineage, some of them designed by the celebrated inventor Ivan Moscovich, a Holocaust survivor. Walking into one of the three branches of Toys “R” Us now in the Bronx, you would find nothing from either of these ventures…

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Stupid in America: Why we, and this viral video, are to blame

staff and wire services reports — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:38:55 +0000

English rapper-poet Suli Breaks is out with a video that’s taking the internet by storm, and young people are loving it, the Huffington Post reports. “Why I Hate School But Love Education” has received nearly half a million views since it was posted to YouTube on Sunday. The young, educated artist takes a strong stance on schooling, urging the world’s youth to “understand your motives and reassess your aims.”

“Let’s look at the statistics,” Suli Breaks says, pointing to moguls worth billions of dollars as examples of those who succeeded without graduating from an institution of higher learning: the late Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Jackson. (We won’t harp too much on the fact that he misspells both Zuckerberg and Jackson’s names.) Suli Breaks has a point — school might not be for everyone, but an education is crucial, and students should assess whether they’re really in school to learn. But the arguments he uses to make it have their flaws — evocative of this crisis of “stupid in America” (a phrase borrowed from a 2006 ABC investigation) that in the end, is only perpetuated by a whirlpool of communities — and the media — asking all the wrong questions about education…

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