Happy News

Before break, some happy news.

Congratulations to Adams Elementary in Ypsilanti for making Adequate Yearly Progress two years in a row. I'm not a big fan of testing, but I'd much rather have our local schools making AYP than not making it.

And did you know the Ypsilanti Public Schools Foundation now has a ReSale shop? Not only is it a 501(c)3 organization that you can donate to, but YPS students and families that need clothes and household goods can shop free there. And so can YPS teachers, looking for classroom supplies. What a great idea!

Congratulations to the Dexter school board and administration for being brave enough to admit that they need more time to plan a transition to the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum, and plan the switch back to semesters from trimesters. (And hey, their reasoning looks a lot like mine! Great minds think alike:)

Congratulations to Saline Schools for a relatively user-friendly web site and to their Superintendent for his interesting blog. (The Saline Schools twitter regularly too.)

Congratulations to Pioneer and Huron high schools for taking a step toward equity by offering the PSAT in the middle of the week, and not on Saturday; and congratulations to all of AAPS for eliminating the fee for taking the PSAT. I'll bet a lot more kids took the PSAT! (Not only is that the qualifier for National Merit awards, but it also means those students will get more information about colleges and scholarships.)

Congratulations to Judy and Manfred Schmidt for being honored for all of their work on behalf of the Scarlett-Mitchell Nature Area. If you're looking for a nice walk over break, this could be the one for you! There are about 5 miles of trails there. I linked to this lovely article about the woods once before. You can park in the school parking lot, and enter the park right behind Scarlett.

Congratulations to Ann Arbor Open for another lovely Multicultural Festival. It's my favorite (school) day of the year, as you might remember from this post I wrote last year (now it's an oldie but a goodie).

I'm not sure if I will be blogging over break, or not, but...I hope you get some time off.

Happy 2011!

Overheard: Busing Problems

The bloom is off the rose.
That idea that if you "consolidate" busing you'll save boatloads of cash and you won't have problems, well...
First there was the decision the Ypsilanti school board made that the Ypsilanti schools had to spend up to $180,000 on non-WISD buses to solve chronic problems with buses being late. That came two months into the school year.
(And that is not a school district that is rolling in dough.)

Now this past week I heard about some problems in the Ann Arbor district, and they are mighty troubling.

Guess what? On some routes, buses in Ann Arbor are still late almost every day.
(And parents are being told by principals, it is out of my hands. Call the WISD.)

I'm told that minutes in the day count.  They do, right?

But much worse than that, I overheard a parent ask a principal, in a public meeting,
"What should I do about bullying on the bus?"

And the principal said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Well if it is between two students from the same school, tell the school. If it is kids from different schools, that is a difficult problem. You should still tell us and maybe we can help, but really you need to call the WISD."

And to make matters even worse, the parent said later to me--and was echoed by others--
"We call and we call the WISD, and nobody ever calls us back." and
"The bus drivers on the routes change frequently, and they either don't know the kids' names or don't really care."
(Does that have to do with them getting paid less, or is it just because the WISD doesn't know how to schedule drivers consistently on the same routes?)

Accountability.
Where is it?
How much are we saving?
Is it worth it?
How many bullying incidents are not being prevented?

It's time for an evaluation.
It's time to make the WISD publicly accountable.
I'd like to know...is it just a matter of time to "work out the kinks?"
If that's the case, let's identify them and work them out!
Or is it that we were sold a boatload of hogwash, and the bus drivers got sold down the river?
And if that's the case, how can we rectify the situation?

Bookishness

I was standing at the counter at Nicola's Books, and I heard someone ask a staff person, "I'm looking for a book for an eight-year-old boy..." which just set me off onto a rumination of kids' books.

Fantasy
This past year, I discovered two fantasy series I liked. I'm not pretending they are new, just that I hadn't read the Charlie Bone series of books (Jenny Nimmo) or the Garth Nix series Keys to the Kingdom.

Mystery
Just a couple of weeks ago I discovered a new kids' mysteries author: Diane Stanley. (Try The Mysterious Case of the Allbright Academy.) They are different, but almost as good as, Wendelin Van Draanen's Sammy Keyes mystery series, or Blue Balliet's art and architecture mysteries, like Chasing Vermeer. (Calling them art and architecture mysteries makes them sound lame, and they are so seriously the antithesis of lame).

Classics
Then I started thinking about The Secret Garden, The Moffats, and the book I read about fifty times in high school, The Hobbit (yes, a book can be a classic and fantasy too).

Historical Fiction
I was standing in line at Nicola's buying Avi's The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle for my 11-year-old, who said, when I gave it to him, "I heard that's a good book." (I wonder who he heard that from?)

You could also try Avi's Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway? (a lighter story about the radio), or Linda Sue Park's book about the Japanese take over of Korea during WWII, When My Name Was Keoko.

Realistic Fiction
If you liked Harriet the Spy (which I will confess I did not), you will probably like Madeleine George's book Looks. At least, my husband told me the characters reminded him of the characters in Harriet the Spy. It is called realistic fiction because it has that real middle school/high school feeling--in other words, not everybody is nice...

Poetry
Ever and always, Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.
Or if you want a really great anthology, try A Child's Anthology of Poetry, edited by Elizabeth Hauge Sword.

Why am I telling you this? In case you end up at Nicola's like me, looking for that perfect book...

The Worst Job Ever?

OK, I admit that the poll I had up this week about the importance of principals was a little bit of a setup, and not at all scientific. Nonetheless, I was surprised that 100% of the people who answered think principals are important to schools and school culture.

When I first started thinking about schools, I didn't think principals were important at all. In my high school, the principal was practically invisible! Years later, after I had visited hundreds of schools and classrooms, and eaten lunch in many teachers' lounges, I realized that principals were important in setting the school's tone.

So anyway, when I was in graduate school in education I mentioned to a friend who had been teaching for about ten years--first in Michigan, then in Florida--that I thought I might like to be a principal someday.

"Are you kidding me?" she said. "That is the worst job ever!" (I will interject here to point out that I think she was using hyperbole...I don't really think she believes it is the worst job ever.)

She continued, "You have to answer to the administration, you have to answer to the parents, you have to answer to the teachers, and you have no power!"

Ann Arbor Open Principal Update

Today everyone who had written to the administrative staff or Board of Education about this issue got the following email:

Dear [Ruth],

Thank you for taking the time to write and express your concern about
the leadership changes at Ann Arbor Open.  I do appreciate our
involved parents and want to assure you that I, and my administrative
team, take the leadership of all of our instructional programs very
seriously and do value input from our parents and staff.

This response is being sent to everyone who has contacted me regarding
the administrative changes at Ann Arbor Open.  I understand your
concern for continuity and "fit" with respect to this program.  We are
very appreciative that Ms. Kit Flynn will bridge the transition
between Ms. Zikmund-Fisher and Ms. Woodworth during January and will
remain an active supportive member of the AA Open staff.  From our
conversations with Ms. Flynn and Ms. Woodworth we are very confident
that Ms. Flynn and Ms. Woodworth will successfully collaborate
throughout the second semester on behalf of Ann Arbor Open students
and families.  Ms. Woodworth is extremely excited about this
opportunity to serve the Ann Arbor Open community and we are confident
that she will attend to the students, staff and parents with the same
dedication and care that she demonstrated while at Pioneer High.

Ms. Dickinson-Kelley and I anticipate consistency to continue into the
fall of 2011 as we both have the highest regard for Ms. Flynn's
leadership skills and would like to see her demonstrate her
considerable talent on behalf of Ann Arbor Open students, faculty and
families for many years to come.  We do have to work out some
logistics before we can make any long-range announcements specific to
the fall of 2011.  I ask for your continued support and trust as we
move forward with these administrative changes.

Again, thank you for your interest and concern.

Robert Allen
Interim Superintendent

My commentary: If it turns out to be true, it will all be good.

UPDATED: It's the Principal of the Thing

Ann Arbor Open parents received an email today from Naomi Zikmund-Fisher, the Ann Arbor Open principal, saying that she is taking a leave of absence for the 2011 calendar year (January to December) to finish graduate school.

Of course the next question is: who is the interim principal?
The email continues:

For the month of January, Kit Flynn [Ann Arbor Open media specialist] will be filling in as Interim Principal.  Kit has served well in this position many times before and I am very grateful to her for her willingness to step up once again.  We are extraordinarily fortunate to have someone so skilled and so willing to help on our staff.

At the end of first semester, Tamber Woodworth will become the Interim Principal for the remainder of the school year.  Tamber is currently the Interim Principal at Pioneer High School.  As you may have heard, Pioneer Principal Michael White is returning from military duty in January, and Tamber is retiring in June.  This leaves her available to fill our vacancy beginning at the end of January.  The district will then make a decision about an Interim Principal for the fall months. (Emphasis added.) 

So, hey...what is wrong with this picture?

First, as far as Ann Arbor Open staff goes...

I'm happy that Naomi Zikmund-Fisher has the opportunity to take a leave of absence to go back to school. In addition, I think Kit Flynn is an amazing media specialist (I'm very serious about this) and a very competent administrator--and, as Naomi points out, she has filled in as interim principal in the past.

However, if you're following along, you will recognize that this plan requires--not one, not two, but three principals in one year.

As far as Tamber Woodworth is concerned...I don't know her, but I'm sure she's a capable principal. But she's already announced a June retirement date, and she can't leave her current position until the end of the first semester, when Michael White returns to Pioneer.

In fact, it is the principle of the thing: There is no reason that any school in the district--barring a series of unfortunate medical leaves--should have three principals in one year!

Unfortunately, it doesn't serve our students or teachers well to have three interim principals. I have another idea. Let's find Ann Arbor Open an interim principal who can serve in that position for a full calendar year. I am quite sure that the district can find a worthy position for Tamber Woodworth.

Is that too much to ask?

We should, after all, have some principles, but only one principal.

UPDATE 12/5/2010

Over the weekend, Ann Arbor Open parents got another letter, this time from Tamber Woodworth. It explains her interest in alternative education, and I believe she is sincere. (I also have talked to some friends who thought she did a good job at Pioneer.) The letter also explains:

Unfortunately, I will have to honor a statutory time-limited extension of my retirement, under which I must conclude my employment by June 30.

So, that explains why she needs to leave this June--she accepted the early retirement offer from last spring.

In other words, this letter from the school administration misses the point: it's not about whether Tamber Woodworth can convince parents that she would be a good interim principal. She cannot serve through December because she is required to retire and that cannot be changed.

No school should have three principals in a calendar year.

To share that view with the administration, write:

Superintendent Robert Allen: allenr@aaps.k12.mi.us or 994-2230
Deputy Superintendent for Instructional Services Leeann Dickinson Kelly: dickinso@aaps.k12.mi.us or 994-2209
Board of Education (all in one fell swoop!): boe@aaps.k12.mi.us

Tell them that one interim principal is enough!

Thurston Pond, Millers Creek

Because I promised myself that I would try to keep this blog positive (and to balance my next post, which will be critical), I thought I would share the cool work that is going on around a tributary of the Huron River known as Millers Creek.

I read about it in the Huron River Watershed Council newsletter.

Runoff and erosion during storm events have created a situation where the water quality of the creek has been greatly degraded. In fact, Thurston Pond, which is part of the Thurston Nature Center, right by Thurston Elementary School, got so degraded that it could no longer be used by the AAPS Environmental Education field trips! (It is still a beautiful little nature center and pond, though, which you can read about here.)

So--Huron River Watershed Council has spearheaded an effort to clean up the water quality of Millers Creek. So far, it seems to be fairly successful.

I would just like to highlight the involvement of the Thurston Elementary PTO, which is a project partner, and the students of Thurston Elementary.

From the Millers Creek web site:

From the Huron River Watershed Council web site:

Thurston School Rain Garden

Thurston School students from the third grade and school neighbors helped Millers Creek by capturing rainwater in a school rain garden. HRWC and JFNew provided planning and design work, site prep, plant materials and educational signs and in June of 2009 we converted a grassy depression that was receiving rainwater runoff from the school's roof into a 1,400 square foot rain garden. The site's heavy clays were replaced with a rich porous soil and then planted with water-loving native plants. As a result, the rain that runs off the school roof now flows through the garden, infiltrates through the soil and is taken up by the plants.

Local Boy Makes Good In A Very Big Education Fishbowl

I spent this past weekend in the New York area.
I was shocked to see the name of someone that I actually had met more than once running across the trailer at the bottom of the screen on ABC News. Truthfully, that doesn't happen all that often.

And I was so very, very interested to read this article in the New York Times:
Mayor and State Reach Deal On A Schools Chief.

If you've been following this issue at all, you know that New York City is a huge, urban school district. In fact, it is the largest public school district in the world, and the school chief is appointed by the mayor. And Mayor Bloomberg has just appointed Cathleen Black, who has absolutely no education background, to be chancellor. Not only that, but she never even attended a public school. Read about the requirements for the New York City chancellor--this requires a waiver, which has just been given.

[The idea is, I believe, that schools can be run like businesses. I don't believe they can--first, because kids are not a product or service, and second--perhaps more importantly--because in a for-profit business you can try to control both your income and your expenses, and in the non-profit education world, you typically only get to control your expenses. But I digress.]

So anyway, to pacify the people who are outraged that she would be chosen (because there was a possibility that the New York State Education Commissioner could veto her appointment), Mayor Bloomberg suggests a compromise. . . a number 2, a deputy chancellor, who actually knows something about education.

And this is where the "local boy makes good" part comes in, and this is why I was so interested in the article. The local boy is Shael Polakow-Suransky, who got his high school education at the fine local institution, Ann Arbor's own Community High School. He also has the distinction of having a mother, Valerie Polakow, who is a professor of Teacher Education at Eastern Michigan University; and a father, Leonard Suransky, with a PhD from the University of Michigan who is a professor in the Netherlands.

Reviews of Polakow-Suransky's work from the education community in the New York area seem to be pretty positive. (See Gothamschools.org for an example.) The real question of NYC activists, though, is whether Polakow-Suransky will have any power at all.

That is likely because the New York Daily News reports Mayor Bloomberg responding to this question:

Q: How much autonomy will the chief academic officer have?
A: I think it'd be inappropriate to speak while we're waiting for the. . .  for David Steiner to act but there will be one person in charge. Make no mistake about that.

I like what Gothamschools.org quotes Polakow-Suransky as saying:

At a recent panel on how federal education policy is affecting local school districts, Suransky described his interest in standardized tests as being rooted in everyday teaching:

[U]ltimately the reason for assessment is to motivate what happens in the classroom. If it doesn’t actually lead to good practice in the classroom then it’s undermining practice in the classroom. And so this is an opportunity. This is a moment where there’s an opportunity to shift the direction of practice in the classroom and to push on the level of rigor and to actually figure out what is it that kids and teachers need in order to engage in that type of practice. (Emphasis added.)

It's not really a side note to say that I also had lunch with a few friends whose children are making their way through the NYC public schools. Suffice it to say that ensuring that your children get into the "good" schools might require that you yourself have an advanced degree. For high school, there is a huge book of school choices--which you get to wade through and rank order. . . and if your grades weren't good in 7th grade, you may have ruined many of your chances. . . if your test scores were poor, you can forget a different set of schools.

It's also not a side note to say that I'm sure Shael is influenced in the way that he thinks by his parents' work--in particular, Valerie Polakow's work on children and poverty. As it states in her biography on the EMU web site:

My scholarship is dedicated to advocacy on behalf of women and children in poverty, and in my writings I have attempted to document the lived realities of those who have been shut out— from early childhood education, from K-12 education, and from post-secondary education; and to give voice to those whose rights have been violated by poverty, race and gender discrimination.

In fact, Valerie Polakow is the co-editor of a journal I had never seen prior to looking up her biography. It is called PowerPlay: A Journal of Educational Justice and it looks interesting. [See, for instance, the lead article in the most recent issue: The Persistent Issue of Disproportionality in Special Education and Why It Hasn't Gone Away. And that topic is very related to an earlier conversation--see the comments section--on Ann Arbor Schools Musings.]

So, I admit, I was curious to see what someone I had met when he was a teenager looks like now.

Answer: he has a lot less hair!  In any case--good luck Shael!

The Opportunity to Give Thanks (All Hail the Thesaurus)

Please--take this week to thank a

teacher

secretary

custodian

principal

bus driver

librarian

administrator

lunch lady (or lunch gentleman)

after school staff person

before school staff person

counselor

teacher's aide

or any other school staff person whom you would like to

appreciate

laud

notice

applaud

recognize

acclaim

cheer

boost

commend

magnify

praise

recommend

plug

rave

glorify

cheer

encourage

extol

(All hail the thesaurus, provider of wondrous synonyms.)

And feel free to post your thanks, publicly, in the comments section.

Why now? It is, after all, Thanksgiving. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Piece of My Heart: Skyline

The play, A Piece of My Heart, by Shirley Lauro, has become the nation’s most enduring theatrical production that deals with the Vietnam War."
-The VVA Veteran, The Official Voice of Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc.

A Piece of My Heart is a drama about nurses in Vietnam. It is at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor tonight, Saturday 11/20 at 7:30 p.m. and tomorrow Sunday 11/21 at 2:30 p.m. Buy your tickets at the door.

Want To Learn About The Lab School Proposal?

If you are interested in the Lab School proposal on the Scarlett and Mitchell campuses, here are two opportunities to find out more:

Opportunity #1: 

6:30-8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 10, 

Scarlett Middle School, 

3300 Lorraine St.  

Opportunity #2: 

6- 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, 

Mitchell Elementary School, 

3550 Pittsview Drive (A spaghetti fundraising dinner is also scheduled here on this night, but you can go to the event and not eat the spaghetti if you prefer, or go eat spaghetti and skip the event.)

Scarlett and Mitchell schools are located west of Carpenter Road, south of Packard in Pittsfield Township. (Enter south off of Packard at the traffic signal at Fernwood Avenue to reach both schools.) You can also enter via Platt Road onto Lorraine St.
From the press release: 

Scarlett Principal Gerald Vazquez said the forums are expected to offer basic information on the partnership and encourage discussion in small groups to generate ideas and raise pertinent questions. “We want parents to know that we are working on this as a process and we want them involved in the process,” he said.

So--GO!

Here are some of my questions, but I'm sure you have others.

Ask about how the funding will work. Will it really be cost-neutral?
Ask about why they are doing this project.
Ask whether these kids will be research guinea pigs and what protections they will have.
Ask what kind of projections they are using for enrollment. Do they really need two schools that can together fit over 1000 kids? Why not just use Scarlett? Why not make it a single K-8 school?
Ask about who will be teaching the classes.
Ask about special education integration.
Ask about how you can opt-in if you want a year-round school, even if you are not from that part of the district.
Ask about how you can opt-out if you don't want a year-round school, and you are in that part of the district.
Ask about whatever else you can think of....

Evaluation, Part II: The World Languages Partnership

Three weeks ago, I promised a second post about evaluation. The first post can be found here. I said at the time that I wanted to do this because the Ann Arbor schools are considering an alliance with UM for a "lab school," and since we already have a partnership program--the Ann Arbor Public Schools Languages Partnership--it is worth taking a look at how it is being evaluated, who is doing the evaluating, and what is being evaluated. This might offer some valuable insights for the future. As I wrote before,

The point of assessing the assessment is decidedly NOT to point fingers at what is not working, and it is NOT to praise what parts of the program are working. The point is to see what is being evaluated, who is doing the evaluation, and whether and/or how those things that need to be evaluated are being examined...

In other words: I am not evaluating the program itself. I am evaluating the evaluation process and product.

I've posted the documents, which I received from the district, on the web site Ann Arbor Area Government Document Repository, and this is the documents link. This is a very cool web site where people can post files they have acquired from local governmental units and make them widely available.

What I got was an assessment of third graders who had gone through the partnership program. There is a "CEFR grid," which lays out the broad, overarching goals of the program based on an internationally-recognized standard. There is a sample of the assessment tool that the students filled out.  And there is a summary of the students' assessments.

Was what was done, done appropriately? Done well?
For instance--is it appropriate to use the Common European Framework guidelines? Absolutely. That reflects an international standard for language learning.
Was the assessment the students filled out appropriate for third graders? I thought so! Take a look:

It seems age appropriate to me. Later on in the survery there were some places where students had an opportunity to write more. The summary document describes that 1,034 students were surveyed, and shares items such as "60% say they learned most of what was taught."

So--that's fine. It seems like an age-appropriate, large-scale survey of 3d graders.
There's only one problem, and that is that this survey is as far as it goes.

Although this is a fine assessment of how the students felt about learning Spanish, it is a terrible fail as far as assessing the Languages Partnership Program.

Let's remember that this is a new program. 
Before we expand it, isn't there more that we want to know?


NOTE: Since this was my written request, "Can you please send me copies of any evaluations that AAPS has done about the Ann Arbor Languages Partnership," I'm going to assume that what I got is all that there is at this point. It is certainly possible that there is other material out there.

On the academic side:
It's really nice that 60% of the students say they learned most of what was taught, but does any independent assessment--say, by their teachers--bear that out?
If some students are not learning, who are those students? 
Does this appear to decrease, or increase, the achievement gap?
It's really nice that a majority of students feel their teachers (who are for the most part, I believe, pre-student teachers) teach "very" or "pretty" well, but is there any other assessment of that? By university supervisors, AAPS mentors, or principals?
What about the students' regular teachers--do they feel that this program is value-added, or that it takes away from other activities? [I think this is important to know, as the program gets expanded.]
What about the school principals? Do they feel that this program is value-added? 
If school time is at a premium, and it is a zero-sum game, do we lose anything by adding Spanish? If so, what is it? If teaching a language is important, did we give enough time to it or should we give more time?
How much repetition should teachers be expected to do as we expand the program to fourth and then fifth grade? Will they be doing numbers and colors over and over again?
What did we do with students who already know Spanish from their homes? Were they classroom helpers? Were they given other things to do? How did that work?
Does it work to use pre-student teachers? 
What happened at the end of April when the UM winter term ended? Did the lessons end then?
Were the apprentice teachers responsive and responsible?
Were community members used, and if so, did that work well, or not? If not, what were the roadblocks?


On the financial side:
What was the original budget? Did we go over the budget? Under the budget?
Did either the University or AAPS have unexpected costs that they had to cover, and if so, what was the cost?
What lessons did we learn about the financing?
Is this program sustainable going forward?


On the partnership side:
Is the partnership working overall?
Were there any surprises? What were they?
What parts went smoothly and what parts did not?

And two more things...
First, from the A2LP web site:

While classes this year were taught in the Media Center at each school, and Media Specialists served as mentors for our ATs, in the 2010-2011 school year, classes will be held in students’ regular classrooms, with classroom teachers as mentors.

Under which setting do things seem to go more smoothly...in the media centers or in the classrooms? Do the classroom teachers feel prepared to be mentors for Spanish language apprentice teachers?

Second, from the A2LP web site:

Future research studies will include the perspectives of community members, whether or not they are parents of students participating in A2LP.  While many community members expressed their opinions at board meetings and in online discussion forums prior to the program’s start, the Partnership is interested in formally documenting the response to the program after several months/years of operation.

In fact, the A2LP brochure specifically states:

The Partnership will be advised by a community committee, which will be chaired by the Superintendent and the University’s Director of Teacher Education.

 But when I asked about the committee, I was told that:

There is not a committee as of yet. There is a plan to initiate the committee in the coming months. The main goal of the committee will be to help secure funding for professional development and promotion of the programs.

 Uh-Oh. As far as I'm concerned, that's a piece of the assessment that I can comment on: Fail. First of all, the program is a year-and-a-half in (if you include planning time, it's more), and there is no community committee yet. Second, the goal of the committee is no longer advising, but securing funding?

[It's no accident, I think, that I signed up for a committee during the budget forums last year, and have heard nary a word about them yet.]

On the AAPS web site, the Ann Arbor Languages Partnership program information is embedded in the World Languages page. There is a fuller description on the UM web site. The UM one closes with these words:

The program is the first of its kind in the School of Education and we want to ensure that its development is data-driven.

From the AAPS side, don't we absolutely agree? In order to make our work data-driven, our evaluations cannot simply be about students' assessments of themselves. They must be about the program operations as well, and they should be reflective in nature so that the partners know whether the program is working and/or financially sustainable, how well it is working, and what could be done to make it work better.

Is THIS the price of bullying?

HURON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Samantha Kelly endured merciless taunting from classmates after they learned that the high school freshman had accused a senior of rape.
The weeks of harassment eventually became too much. Samantha went home from school Monday and hanged herself in this community southwest of Detroit.

UPDATE, 11/11/10: After I posted this (I wrote it last night), I thought about a book that can be taught in middle school and high school. At the time I read it, I didn't like it. I thought it was too much in the genre of dealing with current problems (yes, that is a genre--I just don't remember what it is called). I'm inclined to prefer nonfiction for this kind of issue.

And yet--last night--falling asleep, I wondered: would Samantha Kelly have been helped by reading Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak? Or had she read it, but it wasn't enough?

As Audrey Clark notes, "Rape is not a word that falls freely from the tongue."

Means of Production

I was on my way to Gallup Park today and I passed a street with lots of signs opposing any privatization of the Huron Hills Golf Course.

Which made me think about the proposed privatization of City of Ann Arbor composting, where--in addition to privatizing--they want to consider an out-of-state company over an in-state company that would save the city more money.

Which made me think about why it is that when I get a City of Ann Arbor parking ticket I have to send it to New York state. Is there no local company that could process parking tickets?

Which made me think about the privatization of school bus transportation, and why it is that it is not working out so well for Ypsilanti, which now has to shell out up to $180,000 more to cover routes that aren't being covered properly, despite previous assurances by the WISD that they would ensure proper coverage.

And that made me think about Karl Marx. No, I'm not a Marxist (except maybe for the Groucho kind), and I'm definitely not a Marx expert, but I believe that Marx was on to something when he said that we should be concerned about who controls the means of production.

In the case of the golf course, the land itself is the means of production.
In the case of the compost, the compost and the composting technology are both the means of production.
In the case of the school buses, the buses are the means of production. (Marx's idea of means of production separates out human capital, so it's not the drivers.)

In the case of schools, the schools themselves are means of production--even when it's not an assembly-line education.

And we the people should be careful about giving up control of the means of production...it turns out to be not so easy to get it back, sometimes.

On a related note (well, I thought it was related), you might be interested in Mark Maynard's post: Bill Moyers on Plutocracy.

Roundup: Dexter, Ypsilanti, Howell

From the Dexter Schools web site:

All who are interested in learning more about the IB Diploma Programme are invited to attend one of the informational parent meetings scheduled for Nov. 10 and 18.  All meetings will begin at 7:00 p.m. and will be held at the Media Center at Dexter High School.  The IB Diploma Programme is an esteemed and rigorous two-year course of study that spans the high school junior and senior years and is intended for university bound students.

Dexter is doing an International Baccalaureate program on its own. (In my earlier article, To IB or Not to IB, one of the commenters had gone to a very small IB school and had a successful experience.) Several other school districts s are "consorting" with the WISD. 

I wonder how that will work? Today I read that the Ypsilanti schools, which started out "consorting" with the WISD for transportation, in order to save money, are now spending up to $180,000 additional to pay for a private company to provide more transportation. Some savings, huh?
(I actually saw one of the Trinity buses today in Ypsilanti, and I wondered why the bus said Trinity on it. I thought maybe it was a Catholic school. But now I know.)

Now it is time to ask for some more accountability and evaluation from the districts and the WISD, regarding the actual (not projected) savings from this privatization project.

I don't usually comment on schools outside the county, but I did find this news item very interesting. In the Howell district, a teacher got caught up in issues around bullying, LGBT rights, and religion. He got a two-day suspension, and now a protest of the suspension is planned at the school board meeting. Here is the Detroit News article, which ends with this information: "The district has planned a diversity forum for 7 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Howell High School Freshman Campus." Hey, maybe I have some readers from Howell...

And back to Dexter, where I just saw in annarbor.com that apparently an 8th grader has committed suicide. I don't know anything more, except that it makes me sad, and there is help for those who need it. 

Awesomely Beautiful Murals

While looking up the information about high school theater productions this fall, I came across this little note on the Lincoln Schools web site:

During the Depression years as part of a WPA project three large murals were painted by brothers Leon and Bronislaw Makielski. The murals depict the development of our rural community from the pioneer days to the industrial days of the 1930’s. The murals are still present in the rooms above the Senior Citizens Center. (November 2010)

I'm pretty sure that the high school I went to was built by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration,  so I was curious. And I found this web site. (You can read about the Chelsea murals there as well.)


Boy are these murals beautiful. I'm inserting one of them here--photographs by Einar Einarsson Kvaran. Go to the web site to see the rest of them.

"No Bow Lesbo," or Straight Pressure

A friend recently reported to me that--not so much in Ann Arbor, but in some other parts of southeastern Michigan, it is common for girls who play high school softball to wear bows in their hair. And if you don't?

Then you might be tagged a 

"No Bow Lesbo."

In other words, if you don't wear a bow in your hair, you must be a lesbian. Since kids generally don't want to be tagged a lesbian by others (whatever their personal identity)...the pressure to wear bows is on.

And it's this kind of insidious pressure...this semi-conscious use of name-calling...that is emblematic of the ways in which issues around sexual orientation are not just about BULLYING.

I mean, I wouldn't call that bullying. But is it name calling? Yes. Is it a culture of respect? No. Is it wrong? Yes. What are we doing about it?

Technology Lesson

I do really miss teaching, BUT it is not every day that I read or see a piece of information that makes me think of a bunch of lesson plans I could teach based on that piece.

This evening, though, I read Dusty Diary's post:
Percentage of Rural Homes with Four Technologies: 1930-1950.
Yeah, it's about the Census.

You might think this would be dry, but the numbers just hint at the story, and Dusty Diary's questions at the end are thought-provoking.

5. Last, a mere seventeen years before DD was born, a 62% majority of homes in areas like Augusta Township did not have a phone. Contrasted to today, that is astonishing. How were people's lives changed by this absence, compared to today? Were their minds quieter? Were their lives calmer? Did things move more slowly? What else might have been different?

So--history teachers, technology teachers, teachers trying to teach kids to turn dusty archives into something new...I hope Laura Bien's post gives you some great ideas.

The Theater Moon

Last Saturday night, with a double bonus of occupied children and no plans, we ended up at the UM ice hockey game--and it was fun.
However, if that same scenario happened this coming weekend, or any other into early December, I might have made a different choice, because we are now entering

High School Theater Month!

Yes, folks, between now and early December, you have your choice of many high school plays--some of which, based on past experience, will be truly excellent. Truly, it is an embarrassment of riches.
And the fun begins...this weekend!


Ann Arbor Huron High School: The Huron Players are presenting The Crucible by Arthur Miller, October 29 and 30 and November 5 and 6, at 7:30 pm. This play is a favorite play of mine, and it is about the Salem Witch Trials--a time of great shame for the accusers, as far as I am concerned. 
Look for A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare) in the spring.

Ann Arbor Pioneer High School: Pioneer Theatre Guild is putting on the musical Hairspray, November 6th, 7th, 12th, 13th, and 14th. (Sunday shows are matinees.) Hairspray takes place in 1960s Baltimore, and includes a focus on integration. Keen observers of the high school theater scene might know that high schools around the country have been waiting, and waiting, for the rights to put on Hairspray. This is the first year the play is available to high schools, so guess what--more than one local school is putting it on. It will be the spring production at Skyline. Go to both and compare!
Look for Seussical (based on the works of Dr. Seuss) in the spring.


Ann Arbor Community High School: CHS Theatre will be presenting Little Shop of Horrors, December 3d, 4th, and 5th. In a departure for CHS, they are doing a musical. In what is not a departure, it's going to be "non-traditional," yet maintaining the original's "wry blend of humor and tenderness." It's a small theater, so you will need advance tickets. I don't know about a spring play.


Ann Arbor Skyline High School: Skyline Theatre Guild is presenting Shirley Lauro's A Piece of My Heart, November 19th and 20th at 7:30, November 21 at 2:30. This play is a very unusual play (I think) for a high school production--it's about women nurses in Vietnam, and I am totally excited about it. This is the show for you if you have relatives who were in Vietnam, Korea, or Iraq and Afghanistan. I do have a child at Skyline, so of course there is a little more promotion of the Skyline play, but I think I would promote it anyway because it is such a great subject. 
In the spring, you can watch the second coming of Hairspray.


Chelsea High School: Chelsea Theatre Guild is doing a high school classic, Bye Bye Birdie, November 11, 12, and 13th at 7 p.m. Typically, they don't do a spring play.


Dexter High School: Dexter Drama Club is putting on another high school classic, Our Town, (Thornton Wilder) November 18th, 19th, and 20th.  Look for Guys and Dolls in the winter (see below--you can compare it to Lincoln's production), and Alice in Wonderland in the spring. 

Lincoln High School: Lincoln Drama Club is putting on the high school classic Guys and Dolls November 18, 19th, 20th, and 21. Look for Nevermore: The Final Mystery of Edgar Allen Poe in the spring. 


Manchester High School: Manchester Drama Club is putting on The Curious Savage by John Patrick, November 10th (understudy performance), 13th and 14th. This is a comedy about a woman whose husband dies and leaves her $10,000,000. I might point out that $10,000,000 is a lot of money now, but it was way more money back when this play was written sixty years ago. I don't know about a spring play.


Milan High School: Milan High School Drama is doing a Holiday Musical that features arrangements from the TV show Glee, December 2, 3, 4, and 5. I don't know about a spring show.

Saline High School: Saline Drama Club has also chosen an interesting play this year: The Giver, based on a book by Lois Lowry. Actually, I have no idea if the play is interesting, but the book is--and it is very frequently assigned to 4th to 7th graders to read.

Are you wondering about Whitmore Lake, Willow Run, and Ypsilanti? Whitmore Lake does have a drama club, but I couldn't find any information about a fall performance. I've been told by Emma Jackson, Ypsilanti Public Schools communications staff person, that the Ypsilanti High School fall show fell victim to budget cuts several years ago, and there will be a spring show but it hasn't been announced yet. I couldn't find any evidence of a drama club in the Willow Run schools. So that makes me a little bit sad. 
I haven't even mentioned that most of these schools do interesting one-act plays in the winter for theater competitions. I know, it's hard to believe that you can compete in theater, but you can, and they do--there are rules for set-up and take-down, costumes and length of the play. Read about the competitions, and the Michigan Interscholastic Forensic Association, here.


So, now that I've solved your weekend entertainment problem...

In the Meantime

Part II of the Evaluation piece has been delayed by technical difficulties, so in the mean time, I'd like to share some informational links and comments.


Regarding LGBT issues and the Saline schools:

There's a contested election for the Saline school board. The two candidates on the ballot are against the addition of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, but there is a write-in candidate (Marian Faupel) who is in favor of their addition. You can watch the video of a school board debate here. (The candidates are all a mixed bag though, if you read their opinions about privatization and unions, among other items.)

Here is an article about a Saline resident who wants the school board to reconsider its vote, and is starting a PFLAG chapter (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

Child-psych.org is blogging about why a gay-blind approach to bullying won't work.

 Ypsilanti schools: unions, homecoming, voting and more

There's a contested election for the Ypsilanti school board too. WEMU has coverage of this here and here.

WEMU also has coverage of the teachers' union contract: concessions, concessions, concessions.

I felt bad for the students that Ypsilanti's Homecoming Dance was cancelled. According to a friend of mine in the district, it was the right call because there was a fight Friday night (the night of the Homecoming football game), with non-students fighting, and one of them (the one who hadn't been captured) reportedly had a gun. First of all, students do spend money and make plans around Homecoming, so I feel bad for them. I also couldn't find any reports regarding whether the bozo in question was captured. Combining the Homecoming and Halloween dances is just not the same--and I say that as someone who never went to Homecoming or Prom.

I'm very curious to hear more about how New Tech High School is working out. (Anyone with direct experience who would like to send me a note, I will post it.) I did know that the New Tech model is a national model, but I didn't really realize that the New Tech High School model involves lots of project-based learning.

Willow Run: Is there news?

News from Willow Run has been mighty silent. But I did pick up that Joseph Yomtoob (former Superintendent, many years ago) is now serving as the middle school principal.

I also noticed that new teachers who start in Willow Run are starting at just over $33,300 (if you have a BA), and around $3,000 more if you have an MA. I'm pretty sure that is lower than most of the surrounding districts.

At the end of their last approved board meeting, they went into closed session to discuss negotiation strategies. Didn't they just reach agreement with the teacher's union?

Still not a peep about Count Day. Anyone know how their numbers have turned out?