wide-eyed

The hardest working worms in town will be applauding as their favorite horticulturists gather to learn more about how to keep it green in NYC this month. Yes folks, it’s time to remember our roots and make that spring air even sweeter with a seed!

Brooklyn GreenBridge, the Community Horticulture Program of Brooklyn Botanic Garden, is going to blossom early with Garden-Wise Greening: Growing Healthy Soil, Food & Community. It’s the 25th Anniversary of Making Brooklyn Bloom, and it’s being celebrated this Saturday, March 10, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Conference will feature speakers, workshops, and exhibits on “Greening Our Neighborhoods” and “Growing Local Fruits and Vegetables.” The keynote, Joan Dye Gussow, will speak on “Global Reflections on Eating from Home.” She’s author of This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader, a professor, farmer, and passionate advocate of incorporating green practices into everyday life.

Plus, Green Guerillas, the folks who always show up and work gardens from the ground up, gather for their annual meeting on March 13th, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Community Church of NY, 40 East 35th Street (Madison & Park) in Manhattan. Where other people saw vacant lots in the early 70’s, Liz Christy and the original band of Green Guerillas saw community gardens and urban farms. Their vision of what urban land could become and their determination to make it happen launched a movement. Today, Green Guerillas is a vibrant nonprofit that supports community garden leaders, strengthens gardens, and engages young people as gardeners, artists, and leaders. RSVP at 718.906.100.

And if you can’t wait to get your hands on a whole lot of magic, apply now to the America the Beautiful Fund and get up to 100 to 1,000 of free seeds!

Teaching Matters, the awesome non-profit dedicated to bringing technology into NYC schools, created a cool “Writing the City” e-Zine for middle schoolers where teachers get their students published, e-style. There’s nothing like a little virtual graffiti to motivate a unit.

This is also an excellent resource for educators looking for exemplary peer mentor text organized into various genres: editorials, realistic fiction, features, poetry, memoir, short story, fairy tale, and non-fiction. While teaching a unit on editorials or organizing a debate about whether or not cell phones should be banned in school, check out what our City’s students are already saying and raise the bar. It’s as easy as one, two, three, write that e-Zine:

1. Take a tour
2. Browse the writing
3. Create your class e-Zine It’s totally free! (Be sure to not use students’ full names.)

They’re now looking for middle school educators to nominate a diverse group of highly-motivated middle school 7th or 8th grade students to serve on their Writing the City Editorial Board. Do you have students with a strong interest in journalism or creative writing and an A average in English Language Arts? Students will oversee Writing the City, work with real writers and editors at publications as prestigious as the NY Times, and meet with a community of ten other highly-motivated middle school writers.

Monthly weekend meetings will take place at Teaching Matters. Transportation reimbursement costs available. Apply online by March 16.

We can’t wait until elementary and high school can write the city too!

Trendsetters‘ 4th Annual Women’s History Month Citywide Conference for Girls On 21st Century Careers will open with an interactive telecommunications dialogue with the Women of NASA at the Kennedy Space Center. The entire conference will be brimming with the beyond, as panels and workshops focus on anticipated trends in NYC growth. NYC is expected to add one million warm bodies in the next two decades. How will this effect the needs of our community - our environment, energy, infrastructure, water, transportation, and more? How will future female scientists innovate our tomorrow? Check out some of the panels:

• Arts, Architecture & Design
• Business
• Transportation on the Ground & in the Air
• Energy
• Health & Medicine
• Law Enforcement & Security
• Civil Service & the Non-Profit Sector
• Construction & the Built Environment
• Publishing, Media, Entertainment & Communications

NYC girls, their parents, teachers and guidance counselors are invited to attend for free! Don’t space out, register now! See you there: Polytechnic University, Saturday, March 24, 2007, 8:30 - 3 p.m.

The fifth annual conference I TEACH for educators - especially those in their initial years - organized by Kappa Delta Pi, is March 24 at Brooklyn College. Teachers can choose from interactive workshops such as classroom management, diversity, and gain new instructional strategies. Hear keynote speeches from two National Teacher of the Year winners, and network with colleagues. The deadline to register is March 9, 2007.

The 2008 Presidential Race is picking up momentum, and education reform will play a role in candidates’ platforms. Although candidates seem to be focusing on the war in Iraq, health care, and energy reform, it’s hard to predict how education will be addressed. What will be the future of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)?

The federal government is more involved in education than ever before through NCLB, spending an unprecedented amount of money on the U.S. education system:

Title I of the federal government’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001— represents the largest single federal involvement ever in education. For the 2004-2005 school year, Congress authorized $18.5 billion, and $12.342 billion, a sum quite close to the President’s budget request, was actually appropriated. For school year 2005-2006, Congress authorized $20.5 billion; the president has requested $13.342 billion.
- No Child Left Behind: Where Does the Money Go? by Gerald W. Bracey, George Mason University

NCLB has been criticized wildly for its focus on testing (Eduventures estimate $2.29 billion as of 2006); corruption as money flows into private coffers close to the Bush Administration (court cases around the curriculum Reading First); and accountability measures for schools unmatched in the private sector, especially those providing services to schools, such as testing agencies. Serious money is being spent, but there are complaints expenditures are not monitored and there is rampant corruption and waste. Money is being thrown at agencies that provide services to schools, and progress is monitored by test scores. Problem is, does this evaluate the effectiveness of the services provided by private agencies?

It can be hard to feel like the voter’s voice is heard in times like these. But administrative change is an opportunity to reinvigorate our involvement. Education Sector, an education policy think tank, has compiled its “Eight for 2008: Education Ideas for the Next President.” This list of proposed initiatives is intended to be bi-partisan and provocative. Are they aligned with your priorities for educational reform?

Teachers College is hosting a professional development day on March 21 called Service Learning: Making It Happen. While examining the theme of “Hunger and Homelessness in New York City”, panelists will explore ways to weave service learning, reflection, and student driven service projects into curriculum. Lessons will be applicable to service projects addressing any issue or topic. You’ll learn how to start a service learning project, or improve what you’re already doing! Plus, you’ll have opportunities for networking with teachers, professionals, and service-learning supporters. All participants will receive service-learning resource packets to utilize in their classrooms. Here’s the schedule:

8:30 – 9:15 – Breakfast and Registration
9:15 – 10:30 – Welcome and Keynote Speaker
10:30 – 11:45 – Challenges & Successes in Service Learning – Small Group Activity
11:45 – 12:45 - Lunch
12:45 - 1:45 – Panel Discussion – “Making Service Learning Work in Your Classroom”
1:45 – 2:15 – Service Learning Reflection – Modeling an Activity
2:15 – 2:30 – Closing

The event is sponsored by: TNYC Regional Network of the NYS Learn and Serve America Network, the NY Metropolitan Service Learning Institute, the NYS Department of Education, and the Peace Corps Fellows Program at Teachers College.

If you’re interested, sign up now. The deadline is March 14, but the event is limited to the first 60 registrants. The application and more information is attached. Announcement_and_Registration.doc

The new PBS Teachers site is slated to enter into orbit March 1, and will replace PBS TeacherSource. It’ll serve as the launching pad for PBS’s downright impressive lineup of educational resources, grades pre-K to 12. The site’s new search engine will help educators find streaming video of PBS television programs and other multimedia features, in addition to thousands of downloadable lesson plans correlated to yes, a big favorite, state and national standards. Also, check out Media Infusion, their new blog for sharing ideas about using media and technology around their site’s resources.

And if you haven’t already, check out their News Flash Five, which could light up your SmartBoard and a rug-full of faces with news, animated style.

Stay in the loop and create a PBS teacher profile (don’t forget to set your local PBS station for specific listings). While you’re at it, sign up to receive PBS Teacher Previews, the PBS weekly online newsletter for educators, via e-mail. Grade level, resource type and extended taping rights codes are indicated resource listings in the newsletter, which is super duper helpful.

PBwiki has just made its spread sweeter than ever. You might want to get a glass of milk for this!

PBwiki, a Technorati favorite, just launched their new PBwiki Point-and-Click editor for all you WYSIWYG fans, which lets you edit in rich text and import photos, videos, and more. They’ve also added a shared calendar, and easy ways to add YouTube video, Flickr photoshow, chat room, stock chart, and more. Just click “Insert Plugin.” If it’s a little too sweet for your taste, you can always go back to the way you put your PB together before - they’ve enabled switch back-and-forth between Point-and-Click and Classic editing modes. And don’t fret over the one you’ve already made: you can switch to PB on the sweeter side right now, free!

Even better, they have a special educator section, probably because they know how much teachers like our P&Js. Take a look at how educators do their PBs:

Mr. Lindsay’s beautiful classroom wiki demos his students’ work with book reviews, poems, stories, and tons of other resources. It’s a wiki run “by the students, for the students.”
Another excellent educational wiki. You’ll note the project proposals, class notes, and different sections for different classes.
Penn State English 15 course, which is required for all freshman English students at Penn State.

To show you the same love you saw in your mother’s eye as she handed you your P&J, they’ve created a two-page Q&A for educators. If it all sounds a little too sticky for a first bite, take a tour before digging in, then sign-up, lick your fingers and enjoy!

Wireless Generation is working for the NYCDOE on a project called ARIS, for “Assessment Reporting and Innovation System”. ARIS will be a web-based system for NYC teachers, who’ll receive logins enabling access to information about their students, such as attendance data and scores from various state and city assessments. ARIS will automatically pull data out of DOE systems like ATS and HSST (with daily uploads to keep ARIS current). ARIS will have other features, such as tools to locate instructional content, as well as mechanisms for sharing instructional content.

They are looking for NYC K-12 teachers to come into their office for 30 minutes this week to provide feedback on this new system. In exchange, they’ll give out $25 gift cards (likely for Amazon) to all participants. Here’s what they’re working on and what they might ask you if you decide to help them out:

We are currently working on the design of class roster views–when you are looking at a list of students in your class, what views are
available, and on each view, what information do we display about each student, how do we organize the information, and what sort of
interactions (e.g. sorting) do we enable? We are fairly far along in this process, and have mockups that show what various screens would
look like. These have been developed with input from ARIS “user reps” (e.g., teachers and principals), but we would like to get feedback
from a larger number of teachers before we finalize the designs. We will be showing you these screen mockups, and asking you questions
about the data that will let us see whether the displays convey the information clearly. We will also be asking you whether all the
information we are displaying is relevant to you, and whether there is anything we are missing. We are also working on the design of a “student profile” page, which will display information about a single student, and we may also ask you to look at mockups of this page.

If you are interested, contact Brianna, bklemm@wgen.net, and provide your contact information and the days and times you are free to go to their office in DUMBO.

I came across this advertisement on Treehugger by Simple Shoes selling little walkers that will “reduce our environmental footprint” because they are manufactured using sustainable materials like recycled car tires, cork and bamboo while reading about German recycling programs (which rock the globe over!). Seems cool, despite a rising obsession with buying our way out of our environmental disasters - and I don’t just mean so-called earth-friendly shoes. It’s getting more and more in to buy “green” when overconsumption be it “green” or not is a problem in and of itself. That thought was secondary to a bigger font:

I’m not an environmentalist, but I care about the environment.

Hold up! Isn’t that what, in essence, an environmentalist is? Why make such a declaration? And why on treehugger? Treehugger says they’re committed to making sustainability mainstream, and if you are looking for “doom & gloom, this is not the place.” Just makes me wonder if an axe has dropped and a wedge edged between environmentalists and another crowd of those cool to care. The environmental movement has been ineffective in going mainstream, but is it because of negativity? No, Simple Shoes isn’t Treehugger, but it is the consequence of an environmental movement that can be very real, and not always concerned about being pretty.

Their shtick — simple shoes for a happy planet — doesn’t really stick. Wouldn’t polar bears, who are drowning in the Antarctic because the ice won’t hold them anymore, be a whole lot happier if they were environmentalists and it was cool to say so?