An Army of Teachers in the Jefferson Arms?

The Post Dispatch ran an article 11-27-11 in the business section about the Jefferson Arms apartment complex remake proposed by McGowan Brothers Development  (MBD).  A key tenant in this project will be Teach For America who would  initially take 5,000 square feet of office space in the building, eventually expanding to 11,000 square feet.  Of the proposed 500 apartments in Jefferson Arms, TFA would like to see approximately 125 of them rented to 250 TFA teachers at a reduced rate that comes out to about 25-30% savings compared to similar properties in the area.  A charter school is also on the wish list for the Jefferson Arms as well as a conference center.

The property was bought in 2010 by David Jump, who many know as the agriculture-river barge-speculator who went on a buying spree in the 90’s and purchased nine buildings along Washington Avenue.  Though it was hoped he would be part of the downtown revitalization effort, Kevin McGowan of MBD, who bought some buildings with Jump, soon discovered that his partner preferred to hold onto the properties and wait for them to appreciate as opposed to investing in them.  Jump considered real estate a hobby and preferred to flip his real estate holdings. His tendency was to let others do the improvements and wait for the neighborhood values to rise.  For instance he purchased a building in that area in 1990 for $900K and then sold it for $4.2 million a few years later having done nothing to the building. Jump may be a shrewd investor, but you’d be hard pressed to call him a philanthropist. He bought the Jefferson Arms last year on a foreclosure and has used the parking garage fees to pay the debt service and taxes on the property.  He has, as is the past, made no improvements to the property other than to drive out all the existing residents.

Don’t fault Jump however.  Without his initial investment in this part of downtown St Louis, other businesses who came in to actually improve the Washington Avenue area would not exist; businesses like Pyramid Construction who was the Jefferson Arms previous owner since 2006.  Hard economic times crushed their vision of turning the building into luxury condos for seniors and drove Pyramid out of business.   Jump, with his buy it and hold it philosophy, lives on to make other deals.

This philosophy has gotten him into trouble with the city in the past.  The City of St. Louis Building Division cited Jump for numerous violations related to the Lesser-Goldman Building in 2005 , including its rotting window frames, missing bricks, defective and missing gutters and accumulation of garbage.  Perhaps this is what motivated him to work with MBD to actually do something with the Jefferson Arms property.  

Clearly Jump is not going to provide the funding for the remake of the Jefferson  Arms. So who is?  Perhaps the MBD and their mysterious Missouri Urban Revitalization LLC partner.  (A concerted check with the MO SOS could find no such corporation listed) The only web reference to MURL is on MBD’s own site,

“Missouri Urban Revitalization LLC is in business to help revitalize low income communities in Missouri.  MURL's principal partners have worked in blighted communities for over 30 years, and have identified many areas in Missouri that with a collaborative effort from MURL, the state of Missouri, the federal government, and local business's, and non profits these underserved communities can be mended.  MURL has made a strong community impact in downtown St. Louis along Washington Avenue, work that has drawn billions of dollars of investment to the area.  MURL has identified the need to increase educational services in these communities and has begun forming partnerships with groups to help improve the educational services provided in these low income communities.  MURL realizes that through better education a community can create a new culture, a more positive culture, a more productive culture.”

Matt Philpott, MBD Director of New Markets program said it is hoped the revamped apartment complex, “would bring a lot of people and activity to downtown” and increase demand for nearby services.  Does that sound familiar to anyone?

Recall the Ballpark Village proposal.  In 2008 the BPV was envisioned as a first-class entertainment and business center with 300,000 square feet of office space and 100-250 residential units.  It  would contain shops, restaurants, office space, a residential area and hotel accommodations at a price of $600 million which was supposed to be funded by future tax revenues.

The construction of Ballpark Village was expected to bring  2,000 permanent jobs to the area . "Ballpark Village is going to be spectacular, and we are thrilled that an agreement has been reached," said Blake Cordish, senior vice president of The Cordish Company, in a statement. "Most importantly, as we have experienced in other cities, Ballpark Village will act as an anchor for the continued renaissance of downtown St. Louis."

http://stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080723&content_id=3184896&vkey=news_stl&fext=.jsp&c_id=stl

Jump forward just 3 years to 2011. The Ballpark Village vision has been scaled-back from 10 blocks to 2, from $600 million to $100 million with only 100,000 square feet of stores and restaurants and a new corporate headquarters for St. Louis-based Stifel Financial Corp. And now the project is looking for city and state officials to approve a plan to use an estimated $35 million in tax proceeds from the site to help fund its construction.

The plans for the Jefferson Arms are clearly in the early defining phase. The vision laid out in the  Post article sounds almost as grand as BPV. It’s ultimate scope and success will be dependent upon financing.  So how does Teach For America fit into this aspect of the redevelopment?

A little history of Teach For America - TFA was first created and funded by the re-established Higher Education Opportunity Act  in 2008 under the Education and Labor Committee. It grants funds for A) Recruiting and selecting teachers through a highly selective national process.  (B) Providing preservice training to such teachers through a rigorous summer institute that includes hands- on teaching experience and significant exposure to education coursework and theory. (C) Placing such teachers in schools and positions designated by high-need local educational agencies as high- need placements serving underserved students. (D) Providing ongoing professional development activities for such teachers’ first two years in the classroom, including regular classroom observations and feedback, and ongoing training and support. [Section 806, part (d)]

Teach For America recruits college graduates to commit two years to teach in low-income communities and become leaders in the movement to end “educational inequity.”  Anyone who has done college tours in the last couple of years has no doubt been overwhelmed by TFA’s recruitment efforts on campus. They do not specifically recruit those with teaching degrees.  In fact, at a time when we are so heavily stressing STEM courses, TFA would prefer to enlist (a word specifically chosen which we will explain later) top students in other disciplines to teach in inner cities or rural districts.  They connect these new “teachers” with local education placement agencies and school districts.  Any funding or benefits for these teachers are picked up by the school district in which they secure employment.

TFA’s role is to provide additional teaching instruction or help with local certification requirements since, as we said, many of these teachers do not have teaching degrees. They  also offer “no-interest loans and grants to help [their] corps members in their transition.”  These grants, $1-6k, can be used for testing and certification fees, travel to the TFA summer institute as well as relocation expenses. In 2010, more than half of the TFA corps received this transitional funding, totaling $7.7 million in awards. That came to 30% of their total funding for FY 2010 ($25m).  Last year they place 7,500 teachers in 33 regions across the country reaching 600,000 underserved pre-k-12 students. 

So did McGowan Brothers happen to stumble across TFA as an anchor tenant? Recall the last few lines of MURL’s mission statement, MURL has identified the need to increase educational services in these communities and has begun forming partnerships with groups to help improve the educational services provided in these low income communities.  MURL realizes that through better education a community can create a new culture, a more positive culture, a more productive culture.” They have an interest in education. So do many other for profit ventures because education is the market of the future. There is a lot of money to be made in education.

This year Fortune Magazine listed TFA 82^nd on their list of 100 best company to work for 2011.  This was based on figures like a 10% job growth with 1,236 US employees.  Sounds like a tenant who will have the necessary funding going forward to pay their rent.

And where did McGowan come up with the idea of turning the apartments into reduced housing for new teachers? The Post article points to a similar project done in Baltimore, the Astor Court apartments.  They have 36 apartments in an “education community, where teachers can share common experiences in the building's meeting and research rooms.”

The project financing involved multiple partners including M&T Bank, Fannie Mae, the Baltimore City Department of Housing and Community Development, the Baltimore City Healthy Start Program, the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, the Maryland Historical Trust, Mercantile Bank, Community Capital of Maryland, and St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. As an historic renovation, the project qualified for local, state and federal historic tax credits. The Abell Foundation provided loans and guarantees to complete the $6 million project financing.

Sounds like a lot of public money to provide the apartments in the first place, and more public money to subsidize them going forward.  This was important to Baltimore to bring in more teachers to their struggling inner city schools.  It may also be important to St. Louis to accomplish the same goal.  But it means that we are heading down the path of providing living amenities to public employees. The only other public employees who  receive such benefits are the military. Like the military, TFA recruits must sign on for a 2 year tour of duty. In exchange for providing those two years of service to their country in some admittedly hostile and dangerous environments, we will provide them a salary, health care, perhaps retirement plan and housing, not all through the exact same funding source, but through various taxpayer funded sources. So is creating this literal army of teachers the direction we want to go with education?

Watch for future blogs with more information on TFA and TEACH.

OH! The HORROR! Cheese Sandwiches Served to Forgetful Students in the St. Joseph District in Missouri.

Apparently eating a cheese sandwich will impact a student's self-esteem in the St. Joseph School District. Some area residents are complaining because some children have to eat (gasp) cheese sandwiches and drink water if the child forgets his/her lunch or doesn't have enough to cover the lunch cost. Here's the previous article about the alternative lunch program from News-Press Now:

For those students who received alternative meals in the St. Joseph School District’s revised free lunch program, a cheese sandwich became like a scarlet letter of shame. Some would rather go hungry than take the free meal. “I saw one girl with her head on the table the whole lunch period. She didn’t touch her food at all because she was so embarrassed,” said Ms. Rhoad, the parent of a student.

These are not children who are receiving "free" lunch from the district, these are students who just might have used their lunch money on other tasty tidbits outside of the lunchroom:

In addition, some parents discovered that the lunch money they gave their kids was being ... well, diverted. Knowing that they weren’t going hungry, some kids would take the cash and buy other things instead of depositing it into their lunch account.“Some kids figured it out,” Steve Huff, assistant to the superintendent, said. “They said, ‘Hey, they’re going to cover me,’ so that money would find other uses.”

The school came up with an "alternative lunch" for these either forgetful or devious students:

First, keep in mind that these aren’t poor kids. The students in the alternative lunch program don’t qualify for free and reduced lunches; their parents can pay the $2.50 (on average) for a hot lunch.If schools allowed kids to run up lunch tabs and not worry about collecting outstanding balances, people would complain that taxpayer funds were being mismanaged and they shouldn’t have to make up for irresponsible parents.On the other hand, there’s no way a school can just refuse to serve lunch to a student with an outstanding balance. You can’t let kids go hungry, especially if you expect them to learn. So the district came up with the alternative lunch program, which is a good compromise.

Currently this alternative lunch program for middle and high school students is a cheese sandwich and water.

A parent from the Francis Howell School District exploded with laughter when told about these poor mistreated students (some readers in St. Joseph said prisoners eat better than these kids) who were served cheese sandwiches. When a student forgets his/her lunch or the lunch account is overdrawn in Francis Howell, he/she is served a safflower butter (not peanut butter because of peanut allergies) and jelly sandwich.

The cheese has been deemed too unhealthy and costly so cheese sandwiches are never part of alternative lunch fare in Francis Howell.

If providing alternative lunches becomes particularly appealing, why would a student ever spend his/her money in the lunchroom? Maybe if the student "suffers" (oh, the inhumanity) a couple of times by eating a cheese sandwich, he/she will be more responsible in the future bringing those notes home about a low lunch account amount or not spending lunch money in places for more fun items other than school lunch. It's not as if the parents aren't aware of the low lunch cost level:

Parents received letters saying that beginning Oct. 24, students whose lunch account balances fell below minus-$7 would receive an alternative meal. For elementary students, that meal consists of a cheese sandwich on wheat bread, pinto beans, applesauce and milk. Middle and high school students receive a cheese sandwich on wheat bread and a glass of water.Families are contacted at least three times before the lunch balance gets to the minus-$7 level, said Rick Hartigan, the district’s chief operating officer, including times when it reaches $5, and when it hits zero.

Why is the school board so "heartless"?

Three years ago, the free and reduced lunch rate climbed to 58 percent. The district recognized that there were families that didn’t qualify under the free and reduced lunch standards, but still suffered financial difficulties. The board of education authorized the nutrition services department to offer the full, regular hot meal to every student, regardless of his or her ability to pay.

“Everyone got a free lunch, the idea being that some of those kids that might fall through the cracks could have lunch instead of not going through the line. If you are hungry, you are not thinking about your schoolwork,” Mr. Hartigan said. “It was great empathy of behalf of the board of education. There’s an example of putting kids first.”But by doing that, the budget went into the hole each year.

The first year, the district had a $17,000 negative balance, the second year it lost $28,000. Last year the district had lost $45,000 — all due to unpaid lunch balances.“We discovered that a lot of students had been given money to bring to school to pay for their lunches, but knowing the school district would offer them a free lunch, used the money for other purposes. The board’s good will was taken advantage of in many instances,” Mr. Hartigan said.

School used to be a venue for learning personal responsibility and suffering consequences for irresponsible behavior. If you forget an important document when you are graduated and working in a job, will some entity come to your rescue to save you embarrassment brought about because of YOUR actions? These daily reminders and responsibilities in school such as remembering lunch money is training for the larger issues facing a student in the future. If having to eat a cheese sandwich because you forgot your lunch that day is the worst thing to happen to you during the day, I consider you a lucky child.

Obamacare Refers to People as "Units". Education Reform Refers to Students as "Human Capital". Worried Yet?

Elizabeth Scalia (The Anchoress) has an excellent article about the dehumanization of people under Obamacare. She recounts (and provides a transcript) of a radio interview she heard on the Mark Levin show from a neurosurgeon:

The caller said that he had recently gone to Washington to participate in a conference involving both the American Association of Neurosurgeons (AANS) and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS). I couldn’t take notes while driving, but the gist of the call was this: these surgeons were told, by a member of the Department of Health and Human Services that under the new health insurance legislation (aka Obamacare) government-insured people over the age of 70 who present with brain issues — stroke, hemorrhages, etc — would see no automatic surgical intervention, as they might now. Before any surgery could be begun, an “ethics” panel — made up not of doctors but of administrators and bureaucrats — would convene assess whether the person would be treated. “As a general course, though,” the caller said, “only ‘comfort care’ would be offered if you’re over 70.”

“So, generally speaking, it will be ‘comfort care only’ for patients over 70? That will be the rule, rather than the exception?” Asked a horrified-sounding Levin.

“Yes, but they’re not referred to as patients, or even subjects,” the caller corrected, “they’re called ‘units’. That’s what they called them.”

Appalling? Dehumanization at its ugliest? This has been going on for quite some time in the education reform movement. Students aren't individuals with individual needs. They are "human capital" and their inherent value is to supply the workforce.

You can access information about the workforce model envisioned by the education reform movement here. What is apparent from the Obamacare term of "units" and the education term of "human capital" is that there is a profound and intentional shift away from:

"Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth" (Abraham Lincoln)....to a Totalitarian Democracy: A system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government" (Israeli historian JL Talmon).

When you are deemed to be no longer useful to the "state", you are not provided services. Plain and simple. The current push toward labeling people as "units" and "human capital" negates their usefulness as human beings and instead, rates them according to their usefulness to the system. Look at the above graph. Human capital is not as important to an organization as it once was, so is it any shock human beings aren't as of much value in the larger society?

The system has supplanted the human beings who have supported it and the system is feeding the system, NOT the people it was designed to serve. The servant (the government) has now become the master of the people. Government panels (bureaucrats and administrators) will decide if and when you receive health care and what educational track is best for students to travel for the good of the workforce.

The connection between Obamacare and education reform is quite simple. Centralization and dehumanization are the primary concepts of these programs. Human beings (possessing souls and individual thoughts and desires) are now labeled and designated as inanimate objects: units and human capital.

This is how your government views its citizens. Scalia entitled her article "Assessing People as "Units" is Evil":

Assessing human beings as “units” is Evil. Period, full stop. It is a diabolical disorientation. The only people who do not understand that are people who also have difficulty with that inconvenient old “conscience thing“.The caller to Levin’s show said he was a neurosurgeon, and of German descent. He mentioned his ancestry at the same time he discussed “units” and admitted he was distressed. The source of his distress was very likely his recognition of a the sort of ruthless efficiency someone in his family once knew first hand, either from one side of the ledger, or the other.

She is correct. I offer an addendum to her excellent title: "Assessing People as "Units" and "Human Capital" is Evil. What is occurring in educational "reform" is an educational version of Obamacare and just as evil.

The Sunday Education Weekly Reader: 11.27.11

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for 11.27.11. This week's roundup:

• The readers know more about what's wrong with Kansas City, MO public schools than the editorial board.
• When do you think graphic sexual education curriculum will appear in US classrooms for students as young as eight years old?
• A lesson on how immigrants were taught to become Americans and still hold onto their religious identity.
• Question: How did the US EVER become a super power and send men to the moon without an overbearing educational nanny state?
  

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The Kansas City Star editorializes about what Kansas City can do to encourage schools to become functional and not failing. As usual, a commenter sheds light on the problem more succinctly than the editorial board and with common sense:

Hiddy-ho, here we go - The school board is pointless because it doesn’t really matter who is on the board, the results will be the same – failure. To achieve success, the community needs to come to the realization that about 90 per cent of pupils who attend school in the Kansas City School District aren’t college material. Once the education program in the Kansas City is restructured away from college prep and toward training students to be employable in the trades and service industries, we might then began to see the beginnings of a successful school district. There is an old saying that “you can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear.” However, a pigskin coin purse might be possible.

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Graphic sexual education curriculum is present in UK schools for eight year old students and the parents aren't happy about it. From a parent who withdrew her child from the school showing the DVD:

‘The original letter from the school led me to believe that it (the DVD) was just about puberty,’ she said. ‘The title was not given so we couldn’t even look it up online. I couldn’t make the viewing parents were invited to, but I didn’t think I had any reason to be concerned.

‘The first I knew about its content was when I heard my daughter and her friend discussing it on the way home in the car. It caused such a stir. There were reports of some boys copying what they saw and jumping on girls after school.


With the push for international curriculum, it may very well be in US classrooms in the very near future. How does this type of curriculum make ANY student STEM ready and "globally competitive"?

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This is a touching story on how a teacher taught young Jewish students in Hebrew Academy how to assume an American cultural identity while still retaining their religious heritage.

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According to this author, the US government MUST become involved in the educational lives of INFANTS if the country is to become educationally competitive:

If we could fix things from birth to age four or five, reading scores in third grade would take care of themselves–there wouldn't be an American epidemic of reading failure in grade three.

Is this the role of US government? Whatever happened to the role of parents in their children's lives? And how can the government "fix things" for a child at birth? What "things" need to be "fixed"? Isn't the child's well-being a parent's responsibility vs the government's?

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Educational thought for the week:

"Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company". --George Washington from Rules of Civility

Revisionist History and the Rewriting of the Meaning of Thanksgiving. The Practice of "Gratitude" is SO Inadequate and Wrong.

We're winding up the Thanksgiving weekend and I've been reading articles about gratitude and the reasons for our celebration. Traditionally public school students have been taught to be grateful for the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. Throughout the years the religious influence has been watered down for political correctness, but in some lesson plans, the word "gratitude" has been pre-empted in favor of other words when teaching about Thanksgiving.

When you think about Thanksgiving in a historical way, what words come to your mind? A lesson plan from Education World suggests other "character education" words trump and should replace the word "gratitude" when celebrating Thanksgiving:

INTRODUCTION

The U.S. Congress has decided to change the name of the holiday celebrated on the last Thursday in November. The name "Thanksgiving," the lawmakers say, doesn't capture the entire spirit of the day. The holiday should be a day for more than just giving thanks. Now, Congress has asked your class to help choose a better name.

TASK

Working in teams, your class will

• brainstorm what the day called Thanksgiving is all about.
• research Thanksgiving customs and experiences.
• identify character traits that might be demonstrated in our Thanksgiving practices.
• choose a new name for the holiday.
• create a short PowerPoint presentation explaining your choice and reasons for it.

Why should this day be for more than just giving thanks? Why doesn't giving thanks capture the entire spirit of the day? Is it because we are giving thanks to God? Is it because gratitude is outdated?

The lesson plan has a social worker on the "team" to come up with a new and improved version of Thanksgiving:

The Social Worker: researches character traits and makes a list of at least 3-5 traits other than gratitude.

Here is a link for the new traits:

GoodCharacter.com Click trustworthiness, respect, fairness, caring, and citizenship


Education World publishes a lesson that teaches Thanksgiving needs to be renamed so students can learn other character education traits. Forget teaching about the quest for religious freedom and the gratitude Americans have traditionally practiced on this day. What holiday will be next for tweaking? Do we need to encourage children to role play as social workers to teach the qualities of trustworthiness, respect, fairness, caring, and citizenship to celebrate Thanksgiving? Where is the honor to God for blessings received in those character traits?

Public education students should read Rich Lowry's article, "A World of Gratitude" (reprinted below) about gratitude. "Gratitude" is an important "character education" trait. Thanksgiving need not be renamed to fit some current political agenda. If we cease to practice gratitude, we cease to acknowledge our history and lose ourselves in the process.


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Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2011 King Features Syndicate

A World of Gifts
Gratitude is central.

Eventually social science works its way around to confirming eternal verities. So it is with gratitude.

An article in a psychological journal a few years ago noted that “throughout history, religious, theological and philosophical treatises have viewed gratitude as integral to well-being.” Psychology has recently worked to quantify the wisdom of the ages and confirmed — sure enough — it was correct.

A raft of recent research has established that grateful people are happier people. They are less depressed and less stressed. They are less likely to envy others and more likely to want to share. They even sleep better. As the journal article put it, empirical work “has suggested gratitude is as strongly correlated with well-being as are other positive traits, and has suggested that this relationship is causal.”

Gratitude has long been a neglected quality. A decade or so ago, the Encyclopedia of Human Emotions didn’t include it. (For that matter, neither did Bill Bennett’s affirmatively traditional The Book of Virtues.) As the New York Times reported back in 1998, “Psychologists rarely think much about what makes people happy. They focus on what makes them sad, on what makes them anxious.” They were more likely to study, in other words, the miseries of a Woody Allen than the wellsprings of joy.

Gratitude constitutes what philosopher David Hume called a “calm passion.” It doesn’t have the theatrical potential of anger and hatred, or courage and sacrifice. Nonetheless, there’s a reason it has been considered central to the good life and a good society by all major religions and by thinkers stretching from Cicero (“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others”) to Oprah (“Whenever you can’t think of something to be grateful for, remember your breath”).

Gratitude acknowledges our dependence on others and the debt we owe because of it. Grateful people want, somehow, to return the favor of their undeserved windfall. It is a sentiment that, in the jargon, is “pro-social.” A leading figure in its study, Michael McCullough of the University of Miami, maintains that it binds us to others beyond the ties of family and of commercial transactions.

Gratitude is at the root of patriotism, of the impulse to preserve and improve our patrimony. In a culture that tends to celebrate self-glorification, gratitude points us beyond our own demands and discontents. It inclines us to see all around us a world of gifts.

What did we do to inherit a country that is free and prosperous? To deserve Charlie Parker or Mark Twain? To build the Golden Gate Bridge or the Chrysler Building? To measure up to the beauties of the Catholic Mass or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? Or simply to prove worthy of traffic lights and potable water?

In the classic essay “I, Pencil,” Leonard Read writes an account of the production of a pencil from the point of view of the pencil. The bottom line is that no one person could ever know enough to produce it alone: “Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.” If that’s true of the humble pencil, how much more so does it hold for our civilization?

Without gratitude, William F. Buckley Jr. wrote, “We are left with the numbing, benumbing thought that we owe nothing to Plato and Aristotle, nothing to the prophets who wrote the Bible, nothing to the generations who fought for freedoms activated in the Bill of Rights.” He called for “a rebirth of gratitude for those who have cared for us, living and, mostly, dead. The high moments of our way of life are their gifts to us.”

John Adams captured the grateful attitude when he acknowledged the hardships of this vale of tears while celebrating it all the same (if in anachronistic language): “Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments upon disappointments. What then? This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding.”

Thanksgiving and Education: Teaching Gratitude and Recognizing Blessings

Below is a great article on "Teaching Your Kids to be Thankful" detailing many ways to encourage children to recognize and express gratitude for the blessings in their lives. Especially intriguing to me was the "Thankful Paper Chain" activity that can also morph into a Christmas lesson on gratitude.

Gratitude is an important lesson parents must teach their children (and adults must remember to practice). Tomorrow we'll write about some educators who don't think teaching gratitude is very important. But today, as you give your own thanks with your family and friends, hug your children and view them as blessings provided to you for caretaking.

Happy Thanksgiving and may blessings abound!

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(from http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/thanksgiving/articles/teaching-kids-to-be-thankful.html)

Teaching your Kids to be Thankful

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to teach your kids about being thankful. Here are some ideas to teach your children how to appreciate the blessings in their lives.

Giving Thanks Placemats

The goal of this craft is to create a collage filled with drawings and pictures of all the things your children are thankful for. Cut photos from magazines, or print some photos from your computer. Older children can write captions under the photos or draw their own. Be sure to put the child’s name and the year on it.

If you make this collage from two standard letter size pieces of construction paper taped side-by-side, you can take the completed collage to a copy shop when you’re done and have it laminated. It then becomes a placemat that you can use every Thanksgiving for years to come.

Thankful Paper Chain

Another way to remind your children of their blessings is to create a paper chain. This is similar to a regular paper chain – where you cut strips of paper and connect them together as loops, but there’s one difference. You write on the strips of paper before you connect them. Write the things you are thankful for with your children. For instance, “Grandma plays games with me” or “My teacher is nice.” The fun part of this activity is to make the chain as long as possible – showing all your blessings. If you’d like to keep this up during Christmas, just use green and white paper.

Thanksgiving Tree

This is another take on the idea above and works really well if you have several kids in the family. Get each child to trace their hand on yellow, red, or brown construction paper. Cut out the hand shapes and write (or have the child write) what they are thankful for on the hand shape. Cut a tree trunk shape out of brown construction paper. Glue it on a large piece of poster board. Let the kids add their hand shapes as leaves above the tree trunk, turning it into a beautiful fall colored tree.

Thankful Book

This idea is similar to the others, except it’s more of a keepsake. Purchase a photo album or scrapbook kit and make a “blessings” theme. Add photos of loved ones, including stories about why they are special to you. Also, include pages of your favorite foods, favorite stories, favorite movies and all the other things that make you happy. Any time your kids feel down, you can open your blessing book to see all the reasons you have to be happy – and thankful for the blessings in your life.

A Little Thought on Investments

With the Fed pumping more and more dollars into the economy, tanking the value of the US dollar, people are looking for places to store their wealth to protect it.  Gold prices soared recently as that gleaming yellow metal became a safe haven for wealth. The latest trend shows farm land being gobbled up and speculated upon by hedge fund managers, as food is poised to become the next valuable commodity. What's next?

You have only to look at the memos coming out of the Dept of Ed and speeches by our President to see what is THE most valuable asset in America.  It's our children. So many people want them; want to teach them, to guide them, to mold them. They can hardly wait to get their hands on them as soon as possible after their birth (early ed.) They want to catalog them like valuable works of art (LDS). They want to make sure they are reaching their optimum output capacity (assessments.) High end vehicles get less attention and care.

So if you're looking to invest your most valuable asset, your time, into something that will provide lasting results, consider your children. While you have them over this holiday break, take some time to enjoy your investment.

And those stay at home moms and dads who have been told, by the feminists and others, that they aren't doing anything meaningful, remind them that you have been given the incredibly important job of overseeing the production of our country's most valuable asset, our children. The product of your work will last decades.  Can they say the same?

Message to DESE: "Occupy Mayflower". Teach THIS to Missouri Students.

What is the purpose of DESE? From its Mission Statement:

The mission of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is to guarantee the superior preparation and performance of every child in school and in life.

How does DESE guarantee" the superior preparation and performance of every child in school and life"? We've had issues with DESE's standards (particularly Social Studies and its skewed version of history) and the emphasis the department places on international education vs learning about America's laws and founding principles.

As we near Thanksgiving, I wondered what students in Missouri might be learning about the landing by the Pilgrims and other settlers from England. Would they be learning this was in fact a "divided" community (Puritans vs non-Puritans) in which the people had to design their own form of self-government to live peaceably?

The roving and increasingly scattered population found it difficult to attend the General Court, as the governing meetings at Plymouth came to be called. By 1639, deputies were sent to represent each town at the other General Court sessions. Not only self-rule, but representative government had taken root on American soil.

I can't tell from the DESE Special Calendar of Events that the department has any interest in teaching why Americans celebrate Thanksgiving or the importance of the Mayflower Compact (image above). The link to "Thanksgiving" leads to this:

Public holidays.

9.010. The first day of January, the third Monday of January, the twelfth day of February, the third Monday in February, the eighth day of May, the last Monday in May, the fourth day of July, the first Monday in September, the second Monday in October, the eleventh day of November, the fourth Thursday in November, and the twenty-fifth of December, are declared and established public holidays; and when any of such holidays falls upon Sunday, the Monday next following shall be considered the holiday. There shall be no holiday for state employees on the fourth Monday of October.

The only mention of Thanksgiving on the website is the regulation deeming it a holiday for the citizens. Why is the Mayflower Compact important in 2011 anyway? Since DESE teaches students they live in a "constitutional democracy" then I propose DESE downplays (or ignores) the historical knowledge of the reasons the Puritans made the trip. How society was formed with Puritans and non-Puritans alike is not worth mentioning even though it impacted the governing structures of the country in the future.

What does DESE mention on its site for students, educators and parents? What DOES DESE find important to highlight on its calendar with information and teaching resources? (Here are some sites with accompanying information through 2011):

June 5 World Environment Day
June 12-16 National History Day Contest
August 1-31 Children's Eye Health and Safety Month
August 26 Women's Equality Day
September 1-30 Library Card Sign-Up Month
National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month
September 8 International Literacy Day
Sept. 11-17 National Arts in Education Week
September 11 Grandparents' Day
September 16 Constitution Day
September 24 Worldwide Day of Play
September 26 Family Day
October 1-31 Disability History and Awareness Month and UNICEF Month
October 6 Read for the Record
October 9-15 Fire Prevention Week and National Educational Office Professionals Career
National Metric Week
National DECA Week
October 20 Lights On Afterschool
October 22 Make a Difference Day
October 23-31 Red Ribbon Week
October 24 United Nations Day
November 13-19 American Education Week (Nov. 16-Education Support Professionals Day; Nov. 18-Substitute Educators Day)
November 14-18 International Education Week
December 1 World AIDS Day

These sites have information primarily from lobbying groups (such as the NEA and the American Library Association) or federal government sites. The sites with no information except the notation that it is a holiday set by either the state or federal government include:

June 14 Flag Day
July 4 Independence Day
July 27 Korean War Veterans Day
September 5 Labor Day
September 11 Schools must display flags at half-staff for September 11 Anniversary
Emergency Services Day
Emergency Personnel Appreciation Day
September 16 POW/MIA Recognition Day
September 17-23 Constitution Week (September 17-Citizenship Day)
October 10 Columbus Day
October 19 Missouri Day
November 11 Veterans Day
December 7 Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day

Schools must display flags at half-staff

A few thoughts come to mind while comparing those holidays or special days/week and wondering why some have teaching resources/information and others are just noted with the legal notice from state laws:

• Is DESE is too incompetent to write up information on holidays such as Independence Day, POW/MIA Recognition Day, Veteran's Day, Pearl Harbor Day and September 11? Wouldn't it be a good idea to explain on the calendar WHY flags are being flown half-mast on that date? Why is "Grandparent's Day" given a link with resources on September 11 but the explanation of what happened on that date (with nearly 3,000 people dying in a terrorist attack) is not mentioned?
  
• Does DESE believe in American exceptionalism? If so, why are the resources scant for those holidays recognizing that trait of our founding documents and persons exemplifying this belief?
  
• DESE highlights the increasingly centralization and special interest lobbies present in education. Read the mission of the UN under the United Nations Day link: "Let us unite, seven billion strong, in the name of the global common good."
  
  

  Message for UN Day 2011 by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Does The Mayflower Compact and its importance in American governmental structure pale by comparison to the "global common good"? Our students are not learning so much about America, rather, they are learning how to become "good global citizens" and focus on the "global common good". I wonder what William Bradford would think about this turn of events. I wonder if Missouri students even know who William Bradford was and his important contributions via the Mayflower Compact.

DESE has seemingly forgotten why and how we are founded. What's listed on its calendar and what is linked (and what is not) does not place much emphasis on American history. To remedy this turning away from America, DESE should teach "Occupy Mayflower". It would be a study of how a representative government was created and how that representative government formed our future historical documents. Looking at this calendar, a taxpayer would think the Missouri standards are currently concentrated primarily on global studies, special interests and social justice. I doubt this is education that will "guarantee the superior preparation and performance of every child in school and in life."

Having a National Educational Curriculum Makes Certain Aussies and Kiwis "As Cross as a Frog in A Sock"

Some of the current educational buzzwords in the United States have been:

• globally competitive
• career ready
• common core standards
• cradle to grave education
• education equity
• social justice
• STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) ready
• international standards

We read educational articles and learn how American students are:

• falling behind the rest of the world
  
• not competitive on the global stage
• needing standards (that are untested and not supported by real data and real research) that are internationally benchmarked
• needing a nationalized curriculum because all students should learn the same material at the same age regardless of geographical location
  

ONLY WHEN we achieve a national curriculum, standards and assessments will this alleged downward trend in education be reversed and we will once again be a nation consisting of smart students who can compete on the global level. According to Arne Duncan:

In an event yesterday sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) State and Local Officials Initiative, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan emphasized the importance of a global approach to education. Noting that the United States is experiencing both increased competition from and collaboration with other countries, Duncan described education as the great equalizer and connector, not just for students in American schools, but also around the world.

The push for this "global education" is starting to become a little less "global" in the world. Not all the countries in the world have rose colored glasses on when it comes to global curriculum; they don't even approve of a nationalized curriculum.

Kudos to educators and parents in Australia and New Zealand for questioning the wisdom of a "one size fits all" approach to education and grading students on the same standardized measure for all students.

From Australia:

National curriculum threatens Australia’s innovation

Leading British educator Stephen Hepplen is cautioning Australia against its federal education reforms, which include a national curriculum, arguing they’ll stifle creativity at the state level.

“One of the huge advantages in Australia is the states have taken it in turns to lead,” He told The Age. “With standardization you lose the ability for one state to innovate and pass the baton on to another.”

Australia’s first national curriculum was endorsed by all the country’s education ministers last December, covering English, Math, Science and History through tenth grade. The ultimate goal, according to the government, is a curriculum that goes through twelfth grade and also includes Languages, Geography, Art, Health, Physical education, Information and Communications Technology, Design and Technology, Economics, Business and Civics and Citizenship.

From New Zealand:

Parents speak out against New Zealand’s national standards

Over 150 families in Wellington, New Zealand are asking the federal government to not hold their children accountable to the recently adopted - and heavily debated - national standards, according to Television New Zealand.

The standards cover what children should be doing from the moment they walk in school doors in “year one” through eighth grade. So far, more than 50 schools across New Zealand still don’t include the national standards as targets in their charters - something they are now required by law to do.

The parents of children at Raphael House Rudolf Steiner School in Lower Hutt are upset their school has to implement national standards when the holistic philosophy of Steiner education means children do not start learning to read until they are seven.

The focus in New Zealands eight Steiner schools is on growing the child’s mind, soul and body. Judged against state education standards, pupils would fail until they are about 11, when their reading and writing levels will typically match and average child’s.

“It’s completely against the philosophy of our curriculum,” [mother Monica] Brice said. “We would have to tell our children that they’re not doing well, which would be terrible for their self esteem.”

The Department of Education and Arne Duncan should follow the discontent of Australian and New Zealand citizens. Perhaps being "global" isn't such a bad idea after all if those "global" ideas are akin to our constitution and protect individual rights. These citizens recognize the centralization of curriculum negates states' rights for educational directives and the death of innovation.

As they would say in New Zealand, this plan for nationalized curriculum is down the gurgler.

(And here's the definition of "as cross as a frog in a sock" in Australia: Frog in a sock, as cross as a : sounding angry - a person or your hard drive!)

The Sunday Education Weekly Reader: 11.20.11

Welcome to the Sunday Weekly Education Reader for 11.20.11. This week in review includes stories reporting on:

• Lessons for OWSers from Monty Python and a university professor
• Tracking kids from kindergarten to college in Washington state
  
• An unintended consequence of Common Core standards for school districts
• Educators thumbing their noses at NCLB and state accountability measures for one student

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What Have the Romans Done for Us? is a piece combining the meaning and contributions of capitalism via Monty Python and Gary Wolfram from Hillsdale College.

These are good lessons for OWSers on the benefits of capitalism.



Wolfram writes:

Whenever I watch media coverage of another Occupy Wall Street event I am reminded of an exchange between Jewish protesters in the 1979 Monte Python movie Life of Brian. One of the protesters asks another what the Romans have brought to the area and the conversation goes like this:

Question: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Answer: Brought peace?
Response: Oh, peace – shut up!

The point is that the Roman institutions brought a good deal to the area that was being overlooked by the protesters. The Wall Street protesters, in their hatred of capitalism, overlook things including the fact that over the last 100 years capitalism has reduced poverty more and increased life expectancy more than in the 100,000 years prior.

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Washington state education officials know a lot more about your kids than they ever knew about you. They can now track a child from kindergarten through college enrollment and soon will be able to tell you everything about every kid who has gone to school in Washington from preschool through their first job.

How did the US ever put a man on the moon, did entrepreneurs create new industries and other countless Americans live fulfilling lives without the government tracking student achievements? Look at the excerpt above from the article: officials...soon will be able to tell you everything about every kid who has gone to school...

That unfortunately will include such information as eye color, gestational age at birth, political affiliation, family income and over 300 other data sets.

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Missouri's Superintendent of Education stated last year the implementation of Common Core standards would cost the state $0. That's right, $0. One of the most "transformational" changes in education would be free! From DESE in a previous posting on MEW and our analysis:

"No additional costs are anticipated for revising and maintaining the standards in Missouri".

The new system will include assessments for grades 3‐8 (much like our current MAP), end‐of‐course tests (again, the same or similar to those we are currently using), and tools that all teachers can use to improve classroom instruction. The plan also calls for the system to include an end‐of‐high‐school assessment which will measure mastery of elementary and secondary content and assure that every child is ready to go on to post‐secondary training, education or employment. There is no cost to Missouri associated with the SMARTER‐development assessment system.

Pay attention to the last sentence. The new assessment system relies heavily on computer generated assessment answers from the students. This means districts will need computers for each student, or expanded computer labs at every school. We believe these assessments will be very different from the ShowMe standards and WILL require extensive professional and software development for districts. Again, who is going to pay for the computers needed by students required by the mandates? Where is the money to train the persons necessary to score these new on line assessments?

Perhaps Nicastro was partially correct in stating the implemenation of Common Core is $0 if she is talking about the cost to the state. To the districts, however, it's a different story. They are the ones particularly hard hit and stuck with these unfunded mandates. More computers are necessary to comply with the common core assessments. With more computers mandated to be compliant, districts face the responsibility for not only paying for them, they must also pay for their repairs.

How are districts to pay for laptop repairs with shrinking budgets? Will this be happening in your district?

William Shuttleworth, superintendent of the Maine School Administrative District No. 28, said he “shivered” when he recently wrote out a check for $56,000 in repairs to laptops at the district’s Camden Hills Regional High School. He added: “I don’t want to write another one.”

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Failing students take a toll on NCLB and AYP reporting in school districts and can impact funding and adminstrators' jobs.

This superintendent takes a chance with a struggling student and remembers why he has the job. It's not for test scores; it's to help students.

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Educational thought for the week:

" Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. " --George Orwell