wide-eyed

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. ~Native American Proverb

If there’s one teachable moment you don’t want to miss this year, it’s Earth Day. If you weren’t able to book Bash the Trash, consider putting together a field trip to EarthFair Inside, on April 14th and 15th. It’s a free two-day educational expo in Grand Central’s Vanderbilt Hall with key environmental organizations, children’s activities, and green companies. ELLE magazine will host the “ELLE Green Room” featuring eco-fashion and holistic beauty products.
You could also make some recycled art with Materials for the Arts (go to them or they’ll come to you).

Get some more ideas on what to do from the Environmental Protection Agency.

If you want to make it a week long event, or you just can’t get out of the classroom, consider something simple, like reading the Lorax by Dr. Seuss, or showing the film (great for any age). By ordering through the following links, you’re supporting my project, Educating Tomorrow:

• “The Lorax (Classic Seuss)” (Dr. Seuss, Theodor Seuss Geisel)
• “Seuss Celebration (The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat / The Cat in the Hat/ Green Eggs and Ham / The Lorax)” (Hawley Pratt)

If your students can work with heavier material, give Gore and An Inconvenient Truth their well-deserved airtime:

• “An Inconvenient Truth” (Davis Guggenheim)

Connect your students to the Earth! I’ve got loads of other ideas, so if you want to brainstorm or share information, email me at coquille@houshour.com.

Teaching Matters’ DigiDocs Institute and Student Film Festival will showcase videos created by NYC elementary, middle and high school students June 8, 2007. The Festival brings history and arts alive with documentaries focused on topics as varied and meaningful as Brown vs. Board of Education and bullying in school.

According to an Principal as Technology Leader in Principal Leadership this February, technology expenditures and usage in schools have increased 300% in the last three decades. Over 92% of U.S. elementary and secondary schools and classrooms were connected in 2004. Sounds great, but there is often a lack of professional development on how to integrate and absence of coordination to ensure its equitable use and maintenance. We better do good with what we can get our hands on – get into those vaults, dig your way around the closets, write a grant, and get digitized! In 2004, 83% of homes with children aged 17-21 have computers and around 78% of those were online. Guide your students’ digital experience by facilitating their project. As the web weaves itself immense, meaningful surfing and contribution becomes a learned skill and teaching must-do.

Check out documentaries from previous festivals. Use them to inspire your entry, (register to save a spot now, submissions due Friday, May 25) or supplement any lesson with this peer production.

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!

Last week I went to an amazing benefit concert at Carnegie Hall, thanks to my good friend and Robert Thurman groupie, Helen. Laurie Anderson, Ray Davies (The Kinks!), Philip Glass, Ben Harper, Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, Sigor Ros, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe and crowd gathered to support the Tibet House, Tibetan cultural survival and PEACE! Patti Smith reading Ginsberg with her deep vibrato and a song Michael Stipe had performed only once before to his accompanying guitarist earlier in the day were especially sensational.

NYC is lucky to have the Tibet House, who is dedicated to preserving and promoting the wisdom and the arts of the distinctive and endangered Tibetan civilization. Robert Thurman, co-founder, is a popular professor in the Religion Department of Columbia University, author of numerous books, and gives frequent talks, on Buddhism at the Tibet House (all proceeds support the mission). If you miss one, you can listen to his videos and podcasts. He’s a beacon of wisdom – intellectual, spiritual, practical – and people say his talks can be life-changing! His next talk in NYC is “In Homage to His Holiness the VI Dalai Lama”, March 8, 2006 7-9 p.m. at the Tibet House.

“Operation Respect: Don’t Laugh at Me,” an anti-bullying/peace-building training program for educators, brings together two anti-bullying leaders in NYC this month:

1. Peter Yarrow, author of the curriculum “Don’t Laugh at Me” on character education, conflict resolution and diversity education. It’s designed to promote constructive conflict resolution and positive inter-group relations, free of bullying, ridicule and violence.
2. Mark Weiss is the Education Director of NYC-based Operation Respect. He’s the founder of the first alternative high school in the Bronx in 1979, and founded the School for the Physical City.

Program materials, including the curriculum, guide and a video will be given to each participant. It’s free for PHI Delta Kappa members – not sure if there is a fee for non-members. If you want to participate and want the materials, don’t push and don’t shove. Just register by March 14, 2007 by emailing i.igodlin@verizon.net. Include your name, address, telephone number and grade level you work with. (If you can’t make the gathering, you can sign up for their free DLM materials on their site. (And while you’re at, check out their Educator’s Ave.)

Date: Saturday, March 24, 2007
Time: 8:30 – 12:30 p.m. (Continental Breakfast)
Place: Pace University, One Pace Plaza, Multi-Purpose Room

Remember: be nice and give peace a chance!

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?