wide-eyed

For The Future
by Wendell Berry

It’s time to find a piece of earth and put some roots down. Take advantage of Arbor Day on April 27th as an opportunity to make NYC and our little Earth a cleaner, greener place, by doing a few of these little things:

Find a Location
If you talk with the Parks Department (contact someone in your borough’s office), they might be willing to help you plant on school grounds or a neighborhood park! My students and I will be planting a park close to our school off the BQE to try and absorb some of those particulates that are giving our students asthma.

Get the Trees
If you join the National Arbor Day Foundation, you’ll get 10 free trees. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has a School Seedling Program and you can get free trees or shrubs from them too! Talk with the Parks Department to decide which variety is best for your location. You can request a street tree from the City, but that can take awhile.

Extend the Activity
The Arbor Day Foundation has a bunch of free materials for teachers. They also have great resources for kids. Leaf Miner is fun for any age. And “The Giving Tree” (HarperCollins) and “Miss Rumphius” (Barbara Cooney) are good lessons on victory over tribulation.

Get Famous
The NYSDEC has a National Arbor Day poster contest for fifth grade students.

Just enjoy getting your hands dirty!

Creating Balance in an Unjust World, a conference on Math Education & Social Justice brings together educators, students, and activists from around the world for a 3-day conference. Come figure out where you fit in the equation by exploring the connections between math education and social justice. How is math literacy a gatekeeper to future educational and financial success? How can math educators ensure equity in the classroom? How can issues of social and economic justice be integrated into math curriculum? What is Ethnomathematics?

Add to the power of numbers while gathering to listen to these cool speakers:

• Bob Moses, Founder of The Algebra Project
• Rico Gustein: Author of “Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers”
• Marilyn Frankenstein: Founder of the Critical Mathematics Educators Group
• Luis Garden Acosta: Former member of the Young Lords and Founder of El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice
• Cathy Wilkerson: Math Education Professor at Bankstreet College

The conference, April 27th – 29th, is sponsored by Long Island University College of Education, Math for America, and Teachers Unite. Register online (sliding scale $25 - $200) and receive a DVD featuring conference highlights, lesson plans and other documents distributed at the workshops. Check out the ways you can support the project, even if the Conference happens minus you!

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!

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?

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?

The last time I went to a Teacher’s College at Columbia’s Calendar Day, where they re-present material related to their elementary curriculum’s reading and writing units of study, which was widely adopted by NYC schools under Chancellor Joel Klein in 2003, I sat in the back feverishly typing up my notes on my personal computer (no, teachers cannot take ‘personal computing’ expense deductions) so that I may turn-key upon my return to school.

It appeared ridiculous to me that all of the other 50 or so teachers present were doing the same thing, and many of them were handwriting them, only to have to go home and type them up in order to share and/or place them in a school binder. Much of what were copying down was presented to us on an overhead. At one point, a teacher raised her hand and asked why these overheads were not provided to us as handouts. After all, wasn’t the Dept. of Ed. still in a contractual agreement with TC? Plus our schools were now paying around $200 a head to send us to these events, on top of the cost of our substitute coverages. The reply was short and not so sweet: we can’t make copies anymore. When pressed for further explanation, the presenter quickly made her way back to the overhead - averting the conversation, and giving us more already-typed-material to copy down, and later re-type.

Since becoming a teacher in 2003, I have never heard the idiom “reinventing the wheel” as much as I have in the last four years. It’s almost as if it’s a motto, and yet uttered with mounting disdain. It can be hard to understand how education has missed the boat - the one that set out to flatten rather than round the earth. After conducting a survey at my school, most teachers didn’t feel comfortable using a computer. I would have to say part of the reason is because they don’t have to. Not enough has been digitized, and what has, hasn’t been integrated on a wide scale. Schools vary widely, and some are much more digitized than others, but TC curriculum is a good example because elementary schools all around NY are using it.

When I became a teacher, I was given a stack of TC lessons, which were stamped with “draft”. The stack was probably half a foot thick. I set about hole-punching them, dividing them by subject and then decided if “The Binder” was going to stay at home or not. It ended up at home for weekend planning, but couldn’t go with me a coffee shop and I didn’t have it at school for grade planning meetings. Since the first version, other more recent versions have circulated. I even finally got some copies of a bilingual version. But those originals stamped “draft” have never been fully replaced in hard copy.

At a TC training last year, someone asked if we could get some of the stuff we were copying down somewhere. The presenter nonchalantly said it was on the TC web site, and every participating school had been given access to a portion of their site where the units and additional materials were listed. I had been teaching three years and that was the first time I had heard - and by the looks of others, I wasn’t the only one. I went home and tried it: no such user. The next day I asked our literacy coach, and she had never heard of it. Some months later I got a hold of a secret password (what’s the point of telling you, it’ll just become more secret). Then this year, some TC units were forwarded to me in an email from a friend at another school. I wanted to blast them out, but I don’t have everybody’s email. And it’s just not enough anyway: we still wouldn’t be able to share all of the additional materials we create.

It’s said that re-inventing the wheel can be an “important tool in the instruction of complex ideas” by “leaving the student to work out those key steps which embody reasoning characteristic of the field.” But the whole point of adopting a curriculum is to standardize instruction. Having information at our fingertips would only help drive instructional innovation within that framework. What we’re doing is actually more like reinventing the square wheel. Why isn’t the curriculum and its supplemental materials available to all participating schools online? Why doesn’t one person type up notes and post them for everyone? Why can’t we share the rockin’ organizers and other things we’ve created? It’s about time we flatten NYC schools with a digital platform.

Coming into the NYC School system three years ago when it was changing curriculum (yet again! teachers griped, and it wasn’t just because there’s resistance to change, but materials shifting and procurement is grueling and can take years), I was aghast at the materials being set out in the halls to be ‘removed.’ Removed meant being hurled by custodians into our school’s five dumpsters; and if teachers were unsuccessful in getting the weight shifted out of the building, it would be shifted into the closest unlocked closet, or grudgingly returned to their rooms - dead space to be endured yet another year.
I was overwhelmed by the prospect of cleaning out my first classroom (and every classrom since), especially once I began opening the closets and pulling things out. I found textbooks dating back to the 50s, canned food from another decade, a teacher’s change of clothes, a formaldehyde-drowned lizard in a canning jar… It wasn’t as if everything was grouped, either, so before I could do anything, I had to figure out what I had. After all, good materials shouldn’t just be thrown out, right? Well, I’ve come to find out that there’s not a whole lot of right about what goes down…to the dumps.

If those books that didn’t go the dumpsters haven’t been given out as supplements to your students (or their trash bins), your school might be taking part of the Dept. of Ed.’s new book buy back program. After making a request, someone will come around with a scanner and tell you the worth of the stacks. Problem is, four years into the curriculum change - at least for many elementary and middle school math programs - most books register that infinite number: zero. They’re not worth anything to the DoE because they can’t be sold. I don’t know who they sell them to, but I would guess their market is country-wide, so the USA has no use for them; they’re obsolete. And some of them are less than five years old.

Our school had someone come around with a scanner last week, and the few books that could be sold back were pulled out and stacked in the halls; the rejects were left in the closets. Apparently, someone would be around to box up the ones they’d buy, and then ‘remove’ the rest. The books to be boxed up are still sitting in the hall, and dwindling, as passersby grab one here and there. Where was the rest to go, I asked? Surely the DoE had a partnership with a non-profit to get these books to someplace in the world that could use them. The answer was: they’re dumped. No partnership, no recycling. What magic the act garbage is! Poof! Gone!

When I pressed the rep. about getting this books into someone’s hands who could use them, he said he might know of some organization doing something like that and he’d try and figure out and let me know. After all, he said, that would be better for them because it’s expensive to have someone come in and ‘remove’ texts to dumpsters. I was hoping he was going to say: it’s better for the world if we can find someone who wants them instead of just adding to PA’s landfills. I’m still waiting on his contact. If anyone knows of such an organization, please pass it on.

According to a letter from the Office of the State Comptroller, the DoE is allocated $57.30 in State aid for textbooks for each enrolled student; a total of $74.9 million for the 2005-06 school year. The DoE expended about $145 million
for textbooks during this same period. That’s a lot of dinero being cycled out to dumpsters. Then there’s the cost of garbage, which is immeasurable.