If Teaching Were A Sport...

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this TeachingCenter spoof by Key and Peele...if you are a fan of ESPN's SportsCenter you will recognize a lot of themes (and if you haven't seen SportsCenter, watch it after you watch this).

This reminds me a bit of the bumper sticker quote (apparently by Robert Fulghum), "It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber."




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July 2015 News and Notes

Congratulations to Two New Nonprofits!

First of all, let's give big congratulations to two important, new local groups that recently got their non-profit status.

1. The E4DS Foundation, Excellence for Dexter Schools, is focused on raising money for regular operating expenses in the Dexter school district. There is also an Educational Foundation for Dexter.

Question of the Day: Is E4DS Different than the Educational Foundation of Dexter?

Yes. E4DS is the only group whose mission involves funding normal operating expenses associated with regular programming in our schools. The Educational Foundation of Dexter (EFD) provides financial support for teacher grants for innovative and creative educational projects that cannot be funded through the school district. E4DS supports the EFD and shares some Board members between the two Foundations. It is our sincere hope that the information you learn about the limitations of available funding will also move you to contribute and support the great work of the EFD!

Find out more at www.E4DS.org or like them on Facebook.

2. The CivCity Initiative (headed by Mary Morgan, formerly of the Ann Arbor Chronicle) also got non-profit status recently. What do they do? "CivCity is working to crack the nut of civic apathy, increasing awareness of how local government works and how each of us can participate in civic life."

I am hopeful that eventually they will take on some civic initiatives related to the schools--and considering that Linh Song of the Ann Arbor Education Foundation is on the CivCity board, I think that's a real possibility!

Find out more at www.civcity.org or like them on Facebook.

National News

The US Senate has passed a version of the Every Child Achieves Act (successor to No Child Left Behind). According to Barbara Madeloni, president of the Massachusetts Teacher Association, who is quoted in this piece on Diane Ravitch's blog:

“The bill continues yearly testing in grades three through eight and once in high school, but leaves it to states to determine how to use those tests for school accountability. It removes the authority of the federal government to demand that teacher evaluations be connected to student test scores and gives more authority to states to determine specific standards and curriculum.“ 

In giving more authority to states, the bill loosens constraints on how funds will be spent, though fortunately the Senate rejected a voucher amendment. The Senate measure now goes to a conference committee, where senators and members of the House will mesh their bills and develop a final piece of legislation. If approved, that bill will have to be signed or vetoed by President Barack Obama. If Obama vetoes it, Congress would have to override the veto for the bill to become law.

Per Madeloni,

“It is a bittersweet victory to applaud the power of school accountability going back to the states, should this bill become law. While it would allow us to organize locally and make the demands we want for our students and our schools, others have noted that it would mean we have 50 battles to fight instead of one – and that some states are especially weak in their readiness to fight.”  

And the House version [which is called the Student Success Act] is different, but it also provides a means for students who opt out to not count against the 95% rule for participation. In other words, based on federal law, parents opting out their children will not affect Title I funding (to be clear--currently this has not affected Title I funding anywhere in the country, but theoretically, it could).

Do you want the details about the differences between the two bills? This blog post, by Mercedes Schneider, does a good job of explaining the differences around testing. She's got other good stuff on her blog too!

I won't pretend to have read the bill, but at least about this piece of the bill--which gives the ability to parents to opt out--I am pretty happy.

Michigan News

We've got a new State Superintendent of Education, Brian Whiston. Read more about him in Lori Higgins' Detroit Free Press article.

The number of new charter school authorizations is going down. Maybe charter school authorizers are starting to realize they actually need to be accountable for the schools. [Hope springs eternal.]

We have yet another new state law that will negatively affect schools. According to this press release from Miller Canfield:

PA 109 of 2015 amends the Revised School Code to require any district without a positive general fund balance of at least 5% for the two most recent school fiscal years to report annually by July 7 the budgetary assumptions used when adopting its annual budget to the Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI). The budgetary assumptions must include the district’s projected foundation allowance, projected membership, estimated expenditures per pupil for the immediately preceding fiscal year and the projected expenditures per pupil for the current fiscal year. Based on the report, the State Treasurer may determine if the potential for fiscal stress exists within the district.

Local News

And that new state law (PA 109) is one of the reasons why the Ann Arbor superintendent and school board have been so focused on fund balance. Here is the list of local schools (including charters) that need to report. [Most of our local charters are for-profits, and their management companies could be manipulating their fund balances to take as much as they can--maybe they'll leave a little more in the bank now.] Ann Arbor was at 4.9% fund balance this past year, and are projecting to be higher in the coming year.

Ann Arbor has a third in-district transfer/schools of choice window. This might be good news for you if (as happened to a friend of mine) your landlord decided to sell the place you are renting and you might want to not be restricted to a single school area, but you want your kids in the same school as last year...

In the past several months, Ann Arbor has now hired four principals from other local school districts--two from Plymouth-Canton (Megan Fenech for Ann Arbor Open and Karen Siegel as assistant deanat Community High School), one from Northville (Alison Epler for Bach Elementary), and one from Farmington (Jerry Morrissey for Forsythe Middle School). I wish them all good luck! [Fenech and Siegel both live in Ann Arbor.] The Community High assistant dean position was filled in April, and is a new position that is being funded because Community High is adding students, and evening classes.

Ben Edmondson

Ypsilanti Community Schools hired Ben Edmondson as their new superintendent. (He is a former Ann Arbor principal, as well as candidate for Ann Arbor superintendent.) Read his 90-day plan here. (It looks ambitious to me, but it probably needs to be.)

Summer Fun: play.aadl.org

Are you playing the Ann Arbor summer library game? I am! If you are, I am going to give you five six! leads on ways to get some points and codes. [If you're not, it's not too late to start! Visit play.aadl.org, there are both traditional and online versions.]

1. Visit http://www.healthcarecounts.org, which is the Washtenaw Health Plan's site about health care coverage. Specifically, visit this blog post for a code, and a clue for another code.

2. Help out with Arborwiki, our local wikipedia. There's lots of work to be done, and lots of points to be gotten. And I registered and updated a page--it really was pretty easy! (On the page, it explains how to get the points.)

3. CivCity is "sponsoring" a bunch of badges. I think you have to go to meetings to get them... Go to http://play.aadl.org/badgelist and scroll down to CivCity.

4. Go into any local branch, walk around and look for the different codes. That's what I did today at West Branch, and here's a clue to one of the spots.

5. Read. Yup. Whatever you want. You can also get points for commenting on the books, rating them, and tagging them.
The last four books I read? (Which is probably more than I read January through April!)
1. Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind by Sarah Wildman (non-fiction/memoir/genealogy search)
2. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
3. Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce (young adult fantasy)--I liked some of her others' more
4. I'm in the middle of The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee Stewart (kids' book, part of the Mysterious Benedict Society series)

6. Staff codes--some of the library staff have special codes they can give you. Ask them!


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Winter Tales: Reading for a Snowy Weekend

Today is March 1st, and although technically (and based on the weather around us!) winter goes until March 20th/21st, I learned recently that in Australia people say that the season has changed on the first of the month in which the season changes. In other words, I could say that today is spring (although if I lived in Australia, I guess I'd be saying that today is fall!).

This is Andersen's cut out (he was a
papercut artist) of the Snow Queen.

The Snow Queen, and Other Hans Christian Andersen tales

In any case, I fell asleep last night thinking about the story of the Snow Queen in a favorite book of mine growing up--Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. I haven't seen Frozen (until I started this blog post I didn't know it was based on the Snow Queen), and I haven't seen any of the other movie versions of the Snow Queen, and it was one of my least favorite stories in the book (too long! seven parts! too difficult to read! and icy, icy, icy!). Probably it was the icy! icy! icy! part that made me think of it last night, but I found myself remembering one of the illustrations in the book I owned, in great detail.

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

The cover of the book.

Dad takes his daughter out one night, owling. She explains, "When you go owling, you have to be quiet!"

Have you gone owling this winter? I did go looking for (and found) the snowy oils at Willow Run Airport on Christmas Day. And I did hear a screech owl. But that's about it, so far. March can be a good time to look for Great Horned Owls.

Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge

Taken from wikimedia. This is an illustration from the 1876
French translation of the novel. It is in the public domain
because the copyright has expired. Les Patins d’argent,
éditeur Hetzel et Cie, bibliothèque d’éducation et de récréation

It has been a long time since I read this book, where Hans and his sister Gretel are hoping to win teel bladed skates in a race, rather than the hand-carved wooden skates they have. I thought I would include it because--after all--we did just finish the winter Olympics, and it does give you some insight into how speed skating became a Dutch sport.

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I wrote about this book once before. Reading it as an adult, I realized two things. 1) It is truly a tale of near-starvation. 2) It is very hard to imagine how isolated, and bored, we would be living in blizzard after blizzard, far from other people and with little to entertain us.

The Moffats by Eleanor Estes

Cover of the first edition.

Strictly speaking, this is not a book about winter at all. It is about the lives of four children and their mother, living in Connecticut. I love Eleanor Estes, and I love the Moffats series.
But there is one scene that is so vivid to me, when they run out of coal in winter and need to get more coal, that I thought I would include this anyway.

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Cover of The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats.

Last, but not least, let's hope that in all this snow we are able to still enjoy, and wonder at, the snow--just as Peter does, in The Snowy Day.

"He walked with his toes pointed out, then he walked with his toes pointed in. 

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Halloween Special: Pumpkin Lesson Planning

Just for Halloween, I thought I would share two pumpkin activities that I have seen (but have not taught myself).

1. This is a lesson in observation and decomposition. And if you wanted, you could add some measurement and composition (as in, writing) related activities.

A. Buy (or grow) two medium pumpkins.
[If you want to, you can weigh them at various times throughout this activity. You could also turn this into a full blown lab report, or a full blown poetry initiative.]
B. Carve one. Leave the other whole.
C. Ask students to draw the pumpkins.
D. Place each pumpkin on its own aluminum pan, on a windowsill in the classroom.
E. Over the next 2-3 months, observe the pumpkins. Draw them, write poems about them, weigh them. . .

[Hint: If the uncut pumpkin does not start to rot, smell, etc. at some point you could discuss cutting the pumpkin.]

2. Dissection: Use the pumpkin to teach key science terms and lab steps. (Hypothesis, method, etc.)

1. Each group gets a pumpkin and a knife. (You may need to cut the pumpkins in half yourself, especially if either knives or strength are an issue.)
2. Predict what will be inside--the number of pumpkin seeds, the weight of the pumpkin...
2. Groups should separate, measure and weigh the components of the pumpkin. Yes, count the seeds! Measure the thickness of the outer wall.
3. Do a class graph.

Use your imagination to expand on the bare bones descriptions of these activities. 

Have fun!

Happy Halloween!

A Month's Wordle of Posts: Blogathon 2013 Ends

It's the last day of the blogathon. This wordle comes from the titles of my 31 (!!) June posts. [I only needed to post one a day, but there was one day where I posted twice.] You can make your own wordle at wordle.net.

Haiku for Schools Monday

As part of the WordCount Blogathon, I've been asked to post a haiku today. Remember the format?
Three lines, and traditionally the first has 5 syllables, the second has 7, the third has 5 again. (Modern haiku sometimes stray from this format.)

I want to make it fun for you too!

First, I've got a haiku from me.

Then, enter your haiku into the form below! I will share them... (And by the way, if they are not about schools or education? That's fine too!)

I tire of posts on 
michigan funding. Prefer

pure michigan fun.

And here are the other haikus that I got: 

Privileged lawmakers
hoard resources so their kids
can always "win"
--Julie

Snyder doesn't get it.
School districts going bankrupt
Come from funding cuts.
--Anonymous

Teachers cost too much
Legislators say cut them
Prefer to fill jails
--Hunter Van Valkenburgh

Filling in bubbles
Sucks away joyful discovery
Just choose C
--Julie

Data-driven laws
But without the data
That's Republicans
--MsDrData

Funny Common Core Video Raises Serious Questions

I found this video extremely funny. The author/editor of the video, R.N. Gutierrez, titled this:
Why We Need Common Core--I Choose "C."

In the comments, Gutierrez writes:

People have asked me why I "make fun" of Think-Pair-Share. I actually like and use TPS. My purpose for including it was not to poke fun of the strategy but to point out that many students have difficulty when it comes to critical thinking or thinking independently. I feel that because many schools must teach to the state test, especially low performing schools, we “feed” our students information (and perhaps maybe scaffold too much), and they aren't given a chance to truly analyze and apply it.

[Note: A Think-Pair-Share activity has a student think on his/her own, then pair up with someone, discuss/share, and settle on an answer--which is then sometimes shared with the rest of the class.]

I thought this video was very funny because it pokes fun at our overtesting mania and teaching to the test. 
Where R.N. Gutierrez and I disagree is that he or she thinks that the Common Core will solve this problem, and I think that the Common Core will exacerbate this problem. 

[Note: At its simplest level, Common Core is a "core curriculum" that is aligned nationally. And of course, proving that one is aligning to the Common Core requires new and different tests.]

Anyway, it's food for thought. 

American Public School History: Quiz Results

So here are the quiz results. With the answers. How did you do?

The first public school in our country was Boston Latin, founded in 1635. That's right, 15 years after Plymouth Rock! So I can say that public schools are "like a rock" to our country.

In 1827, Massachusetts passed a law making all schools free to all children. This was a little bit of a trick question, in that Michigan wasn't even a state yet. It's also worth noting that Massachusetts is still the national leader in school funding. And their student achievement results show it.

The answer is "fund parochial schools." I wanted to highlight this so that you would understand that issues around funding parochial schools have also been around for a long time. The impetus for this has changed over time. When these laws were first implemented the main issue was that the majority of citizens were Protestant and there was an influx of Catholic immigrants.

Most of you got this one right! The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case was overturned by the Brown v. the Board of Ed. decision. However, you should read up on these other cases! Engel v. Vitale is about prayer in public schools; Tinker v. Des Moines features Ann Arbor's own Paul Tinkerhess and is a free speech case; and Hendrick Hudson Board of Ed. v. Rowley is an early (early? 1981!) special education case.

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.

Skyline "Cares"

 

Every now and then something comes along that I find both very funny, and very sad at the same time. My daughter's friend gave this to me. She is a Skyline High School alum, and noticed on her return to Skyline that they have put these new signs up in the halls. 

Yes, thanks to these signs, we now know that Skyline is a warm, welcoming, and--dare I say it--caring place.

For Pete's Sake. . . Jeez Louise. . . Holy Cow. . . 

Who thinks these things up? Who decides to spend money on this?

The Birthday Problem Revisited

Math people, history people, social science people, people people--this one's for you.

What follows in this New York Times article is a nice exposition of a classic puzzle.

Does anyone in your family share a birthday? Steven Strogatz writes. . .

By an amazing coincidence my sister, Cathy, and my Aunt Vere have the same birthday: April 4.

Read on.

Actually, this entire Steven Strogatz series about math in everyday life is excellent.

Sign of the Week

Love Andy Borowitz!

Graduation Photo Links and More

Top Scholars

AnnArbor.Com Top Scholars: I think this is the top 5% (or top 2, for the smallest schools) of every school in the county.

Graduation Photos

From Annarbor.com

Annarbor.com Community
Annarbor.com Huron
Annarbor.com Pioneer
Annarbor.com Skyline

From AAPS News (You can subscribe to this and get it in your email inbox if you like)

AAPS News Community
AAPS News Huron
AAPS News Pioneer
AAPS News Skyline
AAPS News A2 Tech and Adult Education

Ypsilanti Graduation and Honors Ceremony (from ypsd.org but you need to scroll down)

Picnic Pops: Saturday, May 19th, 2012

A fun, outdoor, ice cream social type event, with lots and lots of music. Join in the fun--free! Did I mention music? At Pioneer High School. Saturday, May 19th, 2012.

Here is the schedule:

Following is the full schedule of Picnic Pops:

10:30 AM Skyline Symphony Band
11:15 AM Huron Symphony Band
12:00 PM Forsythe
12:30 PM Skyline Concert Band
1:00 PM Huron Concert Band
1:30 PM Clague
2:00 PM Huron Varsity Band
2:30 PM Skyline Varsity Band
3:00 PM Slauson
3:30 PM AA Open
4:00 PM Pioneer Concert Band
4:30 PM Pioneer Varsity Band
5:00 PM Pioneer Symphony Band

Sign of the Week

Theatre. . . Competition?!

Without much notice or fanfare, high school theater* groups around the state prepare one-act plays for a theater competition--the Michigan Interscholastic Forensic Association competition, or MIFA, as it is known--throughout January and February.

In the theatre competition, actors and crew operate under time constraints, as well as the requirement that the play be portable--and they get feedback from judges. They present at "districts," then at "regionals," and then--if they are lucky--to "states."

One year the requirement is to pick a comedy, and the next year the requirement is to pick a serious play. Directors can choose a musical or a straight play; a play that was written as a one-act, or cut a play down.

This year, at least four local schools are participating, and in fact, a regional competition is occurring at Skyline and a state competition is occurring at Chelsea Dexter High School, although Dexter has not submitted a MIFA play. (This year, Community and Huron are not performing one-acts, but Huron will be doing Sweeney Todd the weekend of February 9th and look for Community High School's PG-version of Avenue Q in the spring.)

This coming weekend (February 3d and 4th, 2012), both Skyline and Pioneer high schools are doing public performances. Both of them are on Friday and Saturday nights at 7:30 p.m.

Pioneer High School is performing Spring Awakening, a play following the lives of ten teenagers as they move from adolescent to adult.

Skyline High School is performing Amadeus, about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri.


Chelsea High School and Milan High School are also performing.

Update 2/6/11: So is Lincoln High School. Lincoln High School is performing J. M. Barrie's Half an Hour.

You may recall that Milan High School had four students die over the last year, and at least a couple of the deaths were suicides. The play that they have chosen is called The Bright Blue Mailbox Suicide Note, and I understand--from someone who saw the play at districts--that the play opens with projections of news stories about the students who died. Intense? Yes. But also an important memorial to them. I've never seen the play but I think using the arts as a way to work through emotional issues is a terrific idea.

As for Chelsea--well, I'm still looking for the title of their play--and I will hope to update this.

As far as I can tell, neither Milan nor Chelsea has public performances, but I could be wrong about that.

If you get a chance to go to one of the public performances, they're short and you will probably find that the way the set and crew are integrated into the performance makes the experience more interesting. The theme for this year is "serious drama," and the topics are. They are appropriate for high school students, but these are probably not the right plays for your eight-year old.

Update 2/6/11: The current schedule for the regional event at Skyline High School has Skyline, Pioneer, and Lincoln performing there, but not Chelsea or Milan.


*theater or theatre, I can't decide which to use. Read more here.

Forsythe Has...

Many cool murals, done by students over many years.
Here is a piece of one!

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.

Reprise: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Astute readers of this blog will know that I've already written, at length, about the book that I bought my youngest son a couple of years ago for Chanukah, a book that he loves but--at the time--described to me as "inappropriate." Honestly, it's one of my favorite posts, so you should read it.

But you might be wondering, well if she already wrote about The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, what more is there to say? Plenty, as it turns out. I think my son has read this book 9, 10, 11 times, and I had read it about 1-1/2 times (what can I say--I'm a skimmer, and some parts of this book are rather painful). The part I'm going to quote is rather painful, and yet it's a part I didn't even notice until I decided to get the audiobook for last year's Thanksgiving pilgrimage out east. (By the way, it is an excellent audio book.)

Sometimes when I listen to a book, I notice parts of it that I didn't notice when I read the book. And so it was that I caught this passage, which is in the chapter, "Because Geometry Is Not A Country Somewhere Near France."

"All right, kids, let's get cracking," Mr. P said as he passed out the geometry books. "How about we do something strange and start on page one?"
I grabbed my book and opened it up.
I wanted to smell it.
Heck, I wanted to kiss it.
Yes, kiss it.
That's right, I am a book kisser.
Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent. 
But my lips and I stopped short when I saw this written on the inside front cover.

THIS BOOK BELONGS TO AGNES ADAMS
Okay, now you're probably asking yourself, "Who is Agnes Adams?"
Well, let me tell you. Agnes Adams is my mother. MY MOTHER! And Adams is her maiden name.
So that means my mother was born an Adams and she was still an Adams when she wrote her name in that book. And she was thirty when she gave birth to me. Yep, so that means I was staring at a geometry book that was at least thirty years older than I was. 
I couldn't believe it.
How horrible is that?
My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.
And let me tell you, that old, old, old, decrepit geometry book hit my heart with the force of a nuclear bomb. My hopes and dreams floated up in a mushroom cloud. What do you do when the world has declared nuclear war on you?

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful that I--and my kids--have never had 30-year-old geometry books. So may it always be.

Halloween Windows

I grew up in a town with a vibrant downtown. Every October, the local merchants would give up their window space so that elementary and middle school students could paint Halloween-ish figures on a 3'x5' (or so) piece of glass real estate. Of course there were prizes for the best paintings--which I never won. But it was fun anyway, and it brought a lot of people downtown. I've never seen this anywhere else.

Anyway, it turns out that they are still doing this, and last year I was in town a few weeks after Halloween. I took a picture and--can you believe it--I'm actually remembering to post this a year later!

And I was thinking. . . Ypsilanti. . . Saline. . . Dexter. . . Chelsea. . . Manchester. . . Milan. . . even Ann Arbor. . . maybe you would like to adopt this tradition?

Send me a private message if you want the name of the town so you can find out the details regarding how the project is run.

Happy Halloween!