First Step: Ann Arbor Open Is Allowed to Abandon the NWEA MAP Test

Ann Arbor Open parents got this letter today from Kit Flynn, Ann Arbor Open's principal:

Dear parents, 

AAPS Superintendent Dr. Swift, (in consultation with LeeAnn Dickinson-Kelly, Dawn Linden and me), has decided to forego any further administration of the NWEA MAP Test for Ann Arbor Open School. There is agreement that this particular measure is not the best fit for our program.

The balloons were not part of the letter
Kit Flynn sent out. They reflect my feelings.
I took the picture from this free clip art site:
http://www.clipartbest.com/celebration-pictures-free-clip-art

The teachers at Ann Arbor Open are committed to preparing all of our students for any required assessments that are mandated by the district and the state. Quality instruction includes quality assessment as part of the learning process. Our goal is to inform students and parents on areas where students show growth or may need further support, and to inform teachers on the instructional needs of specific students. We believe that authentic learning of needed skills will result in student growth, and want to use assessments that we believe will contribute to their success.
The district assessment committee's charge is to examine current assessment practices, understand state requirements, clarify core values and bring forward proposals to inform and advise an amended Assessment Plan for 2014-15. They will begin meeting soon.
While the district assessment task force begins their work, we will also be considering how to best measure our students' growth. Ann Arbor Open staff will spend time reviewing possible assessments and methods for monitoring progress for our students, especially students who need additional support or are below grade level in key curricular areas.
The staff members of Ann Arbor Open are feeling very grateful today - grateful to our supportive parent community, and grateful to the leadership of Ann Arbor Public Schools for acknowledging our program's unique needs.

Sincerely,

Kit Flynn

I hope this is the beginning of a trend. I think this decision means that right now the only Ann Arbor middle school giving the MAP test is Scarlett Middle School. However, all of the other elementary schools are still giving the test.

Also, the long-awaited Assessment Task Force is going to start meeting next week.So, in general--toast this small success, but recognize it for the baby step that it is, and let's keep working  toward more authentic assessment, and less testing.

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Grab Bag: Open Conference Review, Same Sex Marriage

Open Conference Review

Last weekend, while I was at the County Clerk's office witnessing an historic event, the Open School Conference was happening at a lovely Lithuanian heritage camp, Camp Dainava, outside Manchester. So I didn't really know what happened there, except that one friend told me it was very interesting to hear about the progressive/open school in Boston, Mission Hill.

But yesterday I found out that Nancy Flanagan wrote the loveliest piece about the Open School Conference in Education Week! Titled, "What Professional Development Should Be," she writes, in part,

I was there to present on teacher leadership. I was prepared to share dramatic, even shocking information about the staggering gap between custom-tailored teaching practice and state and federal policy. I planned to tell them about teacher leadership "programs"--where "leaders" are selected and trained and funded, to do the bidding of organizations and promote policy initiatives. I wanted to talk about role-based leaders with defined duties, contrasted with a more organic kind of leadership--leadership that emerges from place and need. Which--it suddenly struck me--was present, in spades, in the room already. A principal who enthusiastically attends a conference planned entirely by her teachers, to learn with them? Teachers who won't let their internally-designed spring weekend together die, after three decades? Precious time set aside to talk about things that matter most in serving the 500 children in their collective care, as educators and parents? If that's not natural and authentic leadership, I don't know what is.

Read the entire article here. (You may have to register for Education Week, but you do get ten free articles a month for that.)

And another thing worth noting about the Open School Conference. Not only did Kit Flynn, Ann Arbor Open principal, attend, but so did the Ann Arbor schools superintendent, Jeanice Swift, and Dawn Linden, the Executive Director for Elementary Education. That may be the first time that has happened--but if not, it's certainly the first time in a long time! Thank you, Jeanice and Dawn, for showing up! I hope you enjoyed it as much as Nancy Flanagan did.

Same Sex Marriage Redux

I was disappointed--no, disappointed isn't the right word. I'm disappointed when I go to a party and none of the desserts are my favorites.

I was infuriated, dismayed, frustrated, and saddened by the Attorney General's decision to appeal Judge Friedman's ruling. To me, it's a waste of taxpayer money. I sent the Attorney General and the Governor this twitter message, but I guess it didn't make a difference.

Don't be mistaken, this ruling affects many children, parents, and teachers in the Ann Arbor schools, and in the various Washtenaw County school districts. Let the governor and attorney general know how you feel!

At one point, on Saturday, I watched the pastor of Ann Arbor's First Unitarian Universalist congregation (Rev. Gail Geisenhainer) perform a wedding ceremony on one side of me, and on the other side, the rabbi of the reform Jewish congregation Temple Beth Emeth (Rabbi Bob Levy) performed a wedding ceremony at the same time. It's worth noting that both couples who were getting married have children in local school districts.

Then yesterday I was thinking about a quote that is sometimes attributed to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." But it turns out that both he and Rabbi Jacob Kohn (who said something similar in 1940, during World War II), were basing their quotes on the quote of someone else, most likely Theodore Parker, who was a Unitarian minister and abolitionist. And Parker wrote:

Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right.* I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. 

Theodore Parker, 1857

*By "right," he didn't mean "right wing" but "morally right"
**Read the interesting history of this quote at Quote Investigator.

And that quote put me in mind of this photo that I took a couple of years ago.

Photo by Ruth Kraut. Creative Commons license.

May that arc speedily bend toward justice!


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Joel's Ann Arbor Open Graduation Speech: Video and Text

A fortnight ago, Ann Arbor Open held its eighth grade graduation. I alluded to it in this post. My son Joel was one of the speakers. I was very proud of the poem he wrote, and he gave me permission to post it. (Thank you Joel!) Unfortunately, I didn't have a video to post. Now I do. Many thanks to Mark for sending me the video he took. If you have a little trouble hearing it, you can read the poem below the video. A few explanatory notes follow the text.

When I Was In Kindergarten 

By Joel Appel-Kraut 

When I was in kindergarten, we would sit by the bookshelf in the classroom and read. We would read until our heads were swirling with all the 5 letter words we didn’t fully understand. When I was in kindergarten, we would stand in front of the stoplight in Char’s room and yell and scream until it turned red. Because some of us went to safety town, so we knew what that meant. 

When I was in 1st grade, we would bring in stuff on 100s day and the kids whose parents let them bring in marshmallows were instantly cool. On occasion, we would get visits from the only Superhero who ever made time for 6 year-olds. When I was in 1st grade, I would cower under the middle schoolers as my siblings told stories about their cute little brother and his golden angel locks. 

When I was in 2nd grade, we would look down on the lowly first graders as if they were our pets. Unless they were on our team in gym. We would marvel at the fact that the science Olympiad teacher was teaching us science. When I was in 2nd grade, even rock paper scissors could not decide who got pentathlon. 

When I was in 3rd grade, we looked up to our CHS buddies as if they were our future, high-school selves. When we went to West Park, a walk down the block was like a time machine, where we could walk the trails like the native-americans who started them. When I was in 3rd grade. We still didn’t have a good way to decide who got pentathlon. 

When I was in 4th grade, we would think of alliterative names for our friend group like fantastic five, or super six. We would engrave the drama in embarrassing recordings that will not be heard ever again. When I was in fourth grade, the CHS buddies didn’t seem quite as tall. We still all wanted pentathlon. 

When I was in 5th grade, we would stress all week about checking out on Friday. We would protest that Rick Hall should not be able to grade our cursive or spelling. How can you tell me that I spelled George wrong when Doover is not even a word. When I was in 5th grade we would have sweet dreams about burning our cursive sheets in a fiery inferno come November. And we would fight about who got pentathlon. 

When I was in 6th grade, we would shrug off checking out as if it were nothing. By 6th grade, we had learned from experience to stay on Ko’s good side during yearbook time. And it was even somewhat sad when Rick put his doover stamp in my yearbook. When I was in 6th grade, we would have sweet dreams about that time we burned our cursive sheets in a fiery inferno last year. And we would laugh at the 5th graders' petty fights about who should get pentathlon. 

When I was in 7th grade, we would commiserate over how we didn’t get the schedule we wanted. We would meet with Allan even though we knew there was nothing we could do. When I was in 7th grade, we thought it was stupid that the eight graders said they should get first choice for Gardening. 

When I was in 8th grade, we would laugh as the 7th graders looked at their schedule to remember it. We turned lunch basketball games into two person dunk contests. When I was in 8th grade, we wanted to get first choice for gardening. 

When I am in High School, I hope to take the lessons I learned here, and apply them every day. I hope to be successful, largely because of this school. When I am In High School and Beyond I hope to be a role model for future kids standing and giving a speech at their 8th grade graduation. 

When I am 100 years old, I hope to sit around a table on the porch and drink ice tea with my friends, many of whom went to this very school. See, when I am 100, I hope to reminisce about the fun we had, the bonds we made, and the things we learned, when I was in Kindergarten.



*pentathlon=an activity in Science Olympiad (for 2nd-5th graders) that utilizes both scientific principles and basketballs, and requires using the gym.
**doover=do over; pronounced as doo-ver.
**CHS buddies=Community High School buddies, a cross-school program
The first names are names of teachers at Ann Arbor Open.

Graduation: Goodbye Ann Arbor Open!

Ann Arbor Open graduation was tonight. We've put 16 years into this school, and we're going to miss it.

In the great Ann Arbor Open auditorium

there was a fake balcony

and purple and white balloons

and a mobile of. . . the world.

And there were many family members sitting on chairs

Goodbye music instruments

Goodbye music room

Goodbye mural

Goodbye stairs
Goodbye chairs

Goodbye to all the friends (kids and parents) I've made there.

Goodbye teachers everywhere! (at Ann Arbor Open)

Goodbye to the Ks (Kit, Kathy, and Karen) 
in the A2O office too

Goodbye to me, and Goodbye to you.

Goodbye cafeteria

Goodbye whale jumping over bookshelves

Goodbye.

And good luck graduates!

(With apologies to Margaret Wise Brown)

After School Child Care: A Remembrance

As a working parent, few things are more precious than finding the right afterschool child care program. A program where the kids get exercise; and have fun with games, reading, and art projects too. A program where the kids are not glued to the television screen.

Ann Arbor Public Schools Rec & Ed has offered a robust child care program for many years, but to be frank, how good the program is in any individual year rests on two things: a) the quality of the staff and b) the school location where the child care program could be.

Space turns out to be really important. I actually had a co-worker who did an in-district transfer for her kids because the child care space at her districted school was so poor, and she chose a nearby school with much better child care space! The kind of space that the afterschool program gets depends on a combination of space available and the importance the principal places on having good space. In any case, while my children were in the program, the principal--who used the child care herself--felt that this program was very important. The space at Ann Arbor Open was excellent--three basement rooms that were large and had large windows.

In general, in the years my kids were at after school child care, the staff ranged from good to great. But there were a couple of years where not only were the staff excellent, but they also got along so well, and were such good friends, that the feeling was palpable when you walked in the room at the end of the day. That was a special time, and I believe that (at least at that time) Ann Arbor Open had one of the largest afterschool child care programs in the district.

Most of those staff people were in college, or thinking about college, or working on artistic pursuits, and eventually, most of them moved on. One of them even has a child at Ann Arbor Open now! But over the past few months, I was saddened to hear of the death of two former Ann Arbor Open childcare staff.

Jevon Walls worked at Ann Arbor Open both in the child care program and as a lunch supervisor. He connected well with the kids and died after struggling with substance use issues.







Carrie Holmes had a great sense of humor. She was really warm to the kids, and with my daughter she seemed to work endlessly on perler bead projects. (The kids can do the designs, but an adult has to do the ironing of the perler beads.) Thus she was with her on the day that my daughter accidentally put a perler bead up her nose, something we all (except my daughter) found pretty funny. Carrie fought brain cancer for years, and she had just gotten her teaching certificate.





Carrie and Jevon--may your memory be a blessing. 

Teacher Terminations, the Ypsilanti Community Schools, and Staff Appreciation

Hiring and Firing

Friday is going to be a hard day in Ypsilanti and Willow Run.

Teachers. . . all those teachers who were pink slipped earlier this spring. . . will get their final papers, which will tell them if they've been hired; not hired but could be hired later if student numbers permit; or not hired ever.

And you might think, "Well that's too bad, but it's prudent of the new district to not hire too many teachers back, because who knows how many students will join the new Ypsilanti Community Schools." Sure, I understand that. It is prudent. Although originally I had heard that 80% of the teachers would be re-hired, more recently I have heard that it will be a much smaller number.

Unfortunately, late breaking news that I have gotten says that the new YCS district did not follow its own process in hiring teachers.

From the Ypsilanti Community Schools Supporters facebook page, I learned that:

An email from Bob Galardi on March 22, 2013 to teachers said:

References - We will be reviewing over 250 applicants. Some applicants have submitted numerous references. Our plan is to contact references personally. We can't call everyone you have listed. With that in mind we will contact three (3) per candidate. We will use select three from the references on your application unless you wish to specify three you'd like us to contact. 

However, numerous teachers are now saying that not a single professional reference of theirs was contacted.


Teachers are also saying that they were not allowed to submit letters of recommendation during the interview process.

What does all this mean? If these claims are substantiated, I would guess that it means the new Ypsilanti Community Schools will find itself in a morass of litigation, and that is not a good way to get started.

Also--apparently tonight--the night before these notices are going out--there was a special meeting on ideas for how to help the teachers through this. Really? The night before, and YCS is just now convening a meeting on how to help the teachers?

In a great irony, Staff Appreciation Week is next week.

Readers: 

Many of you are at schools where the PTO or another group has a plan for staff appreciation. (At Ann Arbor Open, at least one plan involves providing a lot of pies to the staff.) You can participate.

Alternatively:
Take this opportunity to write a note to a teacher telling them what you like about their work (or about them as people).
Take this opportunity to write a note to a custodian, front office staff person, principal, or other staff person.

And in Ypsilanti and Willow Run on Friday and next week especially, remember--a kind word will go a long way.

Determinative Architecture and the Roberto Clemente School

Is determinative architecture even a term?

I'm trying to use a phrase that says that architecture can determine a building's uses. Take your nearest cathedral. The architect tries to give you a soaring, celestial feeling with those high arches and stained glass windows.

An interior northeast view of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain. By Jnolan14 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Now imagine how classes might flow in a school built in the sixties or seventies with partial walls and everyone facing into a central pod for a media center. (This could describe the new part of Ann Arbor Open or Logan Elementary.)

Logan Elementary, picture from a2schools.org, Ann Arbor Public Schools

Compare that to the high walls and solid building of Eberwhite, Bach, or the oldest part of Ann Arbor Open at Mack. Not only are the halls and classrooms much quieter than in the "open" structure, but the building itself also causes teachers and students to act differently.

The older part of Ann Arbor Open at Mack. By Dwight Burdette (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

When my oldest son was in kindergarten at what was then Bach Open School (at Bach), the kindergarten/first grade teacher had a very large room. There was plenty of room for a very large set of blocks that were a kid favorite.

I took these from daycaremall.com. Those large blocks looked something like these.

Between my son's kindergarten and first grade years, the Open School moved to Mack. The classrooms in the newer part of the building were much smaller. Goodbye blocks :(

The Roberto Clemente Building

The Roberto Clemente program was conceived of in 1973 and became reality in 1974. Its original name was the Alternative School for Disruptive Youth [Flattering! I'm sure that attracted lots of kids!].

Early on the name was changed to honor Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates player who died in a plane crash on his way to a humanitarian mission in Nicaragua after the devastating 1972 earthquake. [Fun factoid about my family--my oldest son early on adopted Roberto Clemente's number as his own for his baseball jersey, and my youngest son has followed that tradition. That's #21, in case you didn't know.]

The Roberto Clemente program was located way out of town for many years. According to this history, it was located at Meadowview Elementary on Textile Road in Pittsfield Township. I remember wondering if the building was even within the school district boundaries.

Roberto Clemente School, built in 1994; taken from the Pittsfield Township Historical Society web site

Plans for the current location were developed in the early 1990s, and the Roberto Clemente school building opened in 1994. When the plans were developed, Joe Dulin, the principal and founder, had in mind one key trait: class size. Knowing that there was a risk that class sizes would rise, he intentionally worked to keep the room sizes small, because he believed--and, I should say, still believes (he has spoken recently at a school board meeting) that small class sizes are the key to the school's success. Make the rooms small, he thought, and you can't really make the classes too large.

They also, intentionally, built the school off of bus routes.

Roberto Clemente is a school where many of the kids have failed in other school settings. Roberto Clemente is a school where many of the kids come from low-income households, thus it is a Title I school. Roberto Clemente is also a school with many kids who qualify for special education services. All of those things add to the per-pupil cost of the school, which today is approximately twice that of the comprehensive high schools. (Title I designation and special education funds though, are revenue streams into the school as well.) But undoubtedly, the key reason that the school's per-pupil costs are so high is that the classes are so small--and the school itself is small.

Class sizes are generally 15 kids or fewer, and. . . here is the kicker. . . if the school wanted to lower their per-pupil costs, they would need to make the class sizes larger. The classrooms, however, are meant to fit class sizes of 15 students or fewer. The architecture determines the use.

You see where this is going, right? It's a bit of a Catch-22. In order to be successful, the classes need to be small, but in order to lower the schools' costs, the class sizes would likely need to be larger. Yet the current building structure will not allow that (at least, not without significant renovations).

If the school were to move, would the class sizes balloon? Would the school (or in this case, the program) still be able to effectively serve those students?

Joe Dulin's plan seemed like a good one in 1994 (pre-Proposal A). With the threat of the program's elimination or with potential plans that the school be moved to Ann Arbor Tech or Pioneer, does it seem like a good plan now?

Your School Should Have One Too

You School Should Have One What Too?
One Town Hall Meeting.

Tonight Ann Arbor Open gathered for a Town Hall meeting, organized by the Ann Arbor Open Coordinating Council (our PTO). It was really positive. That is good because I think in the coming year we'll have lots of bad news.

The Town Hall meeting was called: 30th Anniversary of Ann Arbor Open! Where have we been and where are we going?

The meeting officially began with someone giving the history of Ann Arbor Open. The history of Ann Arbor Open is a little different because it is the history of a program and not a school, but every school has an interesting history.

[Side note: In fact, just the other day Ed Vielmetti posted a fascinating piece about the building of Ann Arbor High School (now Pioneer High School), with a film and everything! Find it here.]

Then we moved into small groups (assigned by colored dots on our name tags) and were asked to discuss these six questions and report out. There was a good mix of parents, teachers, and even a few kids (two of whom reported out for their group!).

I think these questions could be used, with only slight modification, by most of the district's schools.

1. What can parents do specifically to support teachers with increasing class sizes?
2. What can parents do specifically to support specials teachers, staff and administration?
3. How can we lessen the impact of testing on the project-based learning in our school?
4. What methods of promotion (PR) do we use to educate prospective families and the general community about Open Education? How do we provide a common message?
5. What do we do well at our school that we can promote to the greater Ann Arbor community? Multi-cultural fair? The incredible projects that happen in classrooms every day? Others?
6. What does it mean for a family to be part of the Open School?

Anyway--although students were invited--I couldn't interest my son in coming with me.
On my way out the door, though, he asked, "Are other schools doing this too?"
"I don't know," I said.

But now that I've been to one?

I hope so.

Save the Golden Frog! A View of the Ann Arbor Open Multicultural Fair

Sure, there's lots of hard-hitting news to be written, but I thought I'd start off, post-winter break, with a look back at the last week before winter break, and a peek at my favorite school event of the year. My favorite school event of the year is Ann Arbor Open's Multicultural Fair.
What do I like about this event?
To begin with, it is the culmination of several weeks of project-based learning for each and every class in the school.
Second, it begins with a gigantic potluck that enhances the sense of community.
Third, it is a fundraiser for the library. Families are asked to bring a potluck dish and a $10 donation, but nobody is turned away.  A lot of people come, and the event raises a couple thousand dollars for the Ann Arbor Open library every year.
And last--but not least--I really appreciate the timing of the event. Since the Multicultural Fair takes place the week before break, the entire focus of the school that last week is on the Multicultural Fair exhibits. That's right. The focus is not on Christmas. As a Jewish parent, I find this to be a huge relief--even when the fair itself takes place on one of the nights of Chanukah. (After all, there are eight nights of Chanukah.) I've been in other schools just before Christmas and the Christmas fever is a little bit overwhelming.
So this year I took some pictures (with a cell phone). They are not going to win any awards, but they will give you some of the flavor.

Some of the first and second graders were studying Malawi, and they built a village.

All of the seventh and eighth graders worked together on a spectacular exhibit around Africa.
During the event, the students took turns drumming. I did take pictures of them drumming, but since I didn't ask permission to use their photos, the only one I'm posting is where everybody is blurry:). On the far left is Papa Tito, who is an African drummer by training and who came in and worked with the students.

Here you can see the baobab tree that some students built.

I have to say that the Africa exhibit made me realize how terrible my African geography is. I do have a basic grasp of the larger countries, and I did know a lot about a few of the countries. But had I heard of Sao Tome and Principe? No, I had not. Did I know that the Second Congo War has been the deadliest war since World War II? It sounded familiar, but I couldn't tell you the reasons for the conflict. Yes, I did learn some things from the students' exhibits.


 The third and fourth graders studying Panama decided to do something about the demise of the golden frogs of Panama. There were students sitting at a table collecting donations. I took a picture of the sign.

I made a donation and I got one of these really cute bookmarks in return. Do you notice the pink tongue? And I love how that is a "corner" bookmark.

I'm Proud. . .

I'm proud of the brave teachers who are plaintiffs in the American Civil Liberties Union suit over the ban on domestic partner benefits. The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Michigan filed a federal lawsuit today asking the court to strike down a new Michigan law that bans many public entities from providing health care insurance to the domestic partners of their employees.

Two of the plaintiffs are teachers, and they are both teachers in the Ann Arbor public schools. I'm so proud of Peter Ways (Ann Arbor Open teacher) and Theresa Bassett (Slauson Middle School teacher)--and their families. (The other plaintiffs work for the City of Kalamazoo and Ingham County.)

Ways is quoted as saying, in the ACLU press release,
“This is not about politics or ideology for us,” said Peter Ways, an Ann Arbor Public Schools teacher whose partner will lose his benefits. “This is about real families who are facing the real consequences of discriminatory laws. Just like our colleagues whose families will continue to receive health insurance, we want to care for our families.”
Kary Moss, the ACLU of Michigan executive director, said, “Although justified by the Governor as a cost-cutting measure, the numbers don’t hold up,” said Kary L. Moss, ACLU of Michigan executive director. “The reality is that the legislation was intended to disenfranchise LGBT families."

According to the ACLU web site, 


Peter Ways and Joe Breakey of Ann Arbor have been in a committed relationship for more than 20 years and have a nine-year-old daughter. Peter works for Ann Arbor Public Schools. The district extends insurance coverage to his partner Joe who is self-employed as a licensed therapist. Being self-employed gives Joe the flexibility to be home for their daughter after school. Due to the added expense that comparable individual coverage will cost, Peter and Joe are considering a move back to Washington so that Peter could take a job that provides family benefits.






Theresa Bassett and Carol Kennedy of Ann Arbor have been in a committed relationship for 25 years and have six kids ranging in age from six to 20 years old. Theresa has worked for the Ann Arbor Public Schools for 28 years and currently teaches 6th grade and 8th grade math. Theresa’s employer extends health insurance coverage to Carol who is self-employed as a daycare provider. Because of Carol’s family history of breast cancer, individual comprehensive insurance coverage will be extremely expensive. In fact, Carol estimates that purchasing comprehensive coverage on her own will cost the family an additional $800 a month, putting considerable pressure on their finances, which are already strained by a mortgage and the cost of sending two children to college.

If you see these teachers, tell them you're proud of them too.
And if you have some change to spare, support the ACLU's work by donating now.

School Board Debate: November 3, 2011

Ann Arbor Open will be hosting a school board candidates' debate this

Thursday, November 3, 2011, 7:30-9:00 pm.

The debate will be held at Ann Arbor Open at Mack, 920 Miller, Ann Arbor, MI. (Park off of Red Oak or Brooks.)

Right now, 5 out of 6 all six candidates are scheduled to be there. Children are welcome.

I believe this is the last debate before the elections. Tuesday, November 8th. Don't forget!

The format will be as follows: a very short presentation from each candidate, followed by a question-and-answer session during which each candidate will be asked the same question and each will be given the same amount of time to respond. The questions will likely refer specifically to the future of Open education in the district. If there's time afterward, there will be refreshments (and the opportunity for more informal exchanges and conversations with the candidates).

Be there, or be square!

Open Classroom Conference This Weekend

The conference starts Friday night, and goes all day Saturday.
It's titled:

Get Up, Stand Up; Democratic Education as a Right

There's lots of good stuff, including:

Deborah Meier and Jane Andrias, talking about progressive education.

Review and discuss the education reform issues brought up in the film Waiting for Superman. Brit Satchwell, Ann Arbor Education Association president (that's the teacher's union) will help the group develop "talking points" in reponse to the film. [I think this is a really great idea. I haven't seen the film because I thought it would upset me; the idea of developing talking points in response to it sounds like an excellent plan.]

There will also be small group discussions led by Chris Curtis (current Slauson principal), Stewart Wood, and Irene Allen.

The conference is at Camp Ohiyesa, which is about a 40-minute drive from Ann Arbor.

Find out more and get a registration form here.