Seattle Schools Community Forum

This article appeared in the NY Times about a young woman who took a year off after high school. It was interesting because she first said she wanted it to concentrate on her studies senior year (and not trying to get into college) and also because she wanted to try two different things during her gap year. From the article, "In the fall of my senior year, I contacted the Center for Interim Programs , a company that arranges gap-year programs for students.I knew I wanted to go to a country where I hadn’t been before, and I designed a program with its help. I spent the first half of that year helping villagers in Ghana and the second half studying art history in Italy. My four months in Ghana turned out to be a defining experience. It introduced me to the field of international development." "That experience was the biggest challenge I’d ever had — emotionally, intellectually and physically, but it was also the most rewarding. After Ghana, I went home for a month and t...

Two years ago when my oldest daughters started second grade, I wrote a post on this blog ( Teachers Excel; District Fails ) about their first day of school at Pathfinder K-8 and the two wonderful teachers (Lisa DeBurle and Missa Marmalstein) they met that day. Since today marks the last day Emma and Claire will be in their classes, I want to share my daughters' thoughts on what these two years have meant to them. · It's a Spider's World by Claire · My Thanks to Lisa by Emma While I obviously think Lisa and Missa are exceptional teachers, I also believe there are many, many amazing, dedicated, talented teachers in Seattle Public Schools. They deserve our support and help as they struggle with the challenge of how to meet accountability requirements while keeping joy and creativity in the teaching and learning process. Anyone else have teacher kudos to call out?

With the stunning news of the recent Supreme Court ruling on Guantanamo (and I am reading The Nine by Jeffrey Tobin about the previous Supreme Court, great reading), comes this NY Times article about former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and her efforts to keep civics lessons part of the public education system. From the article: "Sandra Day O’Connor , the former Supreme Court justice, began her remarks at the Games for Change conference in New York by saying aloud what the few hundred people in the audience were already thinking. “If someone had told me when I retired from the Supreme Court about a couple of years ago that I would be speaking at a conference about digital games, I would have been very skeptical, maybe thinking you had one drink too many,” she said to laughter Wednesday in an auditorium downtown at Parsons the New School for Design." What is she helping to develop? "In cooperation with Georgetown University Law Center and Arizona...

Well, he's nothing if not consistent. Don Nielsen, businessman and former School Board member, is quite the education gadfly and so, every so often will appear in the op-ed pages. Here's his latest PI piece . He starts out with this: "She just published a five-year plan that has been developed with the input of citizens and many of this country's leading education and management experts. It is a blueprint for the transformation of Seattle schools, but there is a high probability she will fail." Charlie, would you call the Strategic Plan "a blueprint for transformation"? Nope, me neither. Well, as Charlie has pointed out it is a good management plan but I thought we were talking about educational transformation. His basis premise of why it will fail? She's talented, driven and bright but her hands are tied. How? Governance - he claims that every two years her bosses change (the Board). He adds his own twist by saying, "History has shown t...

This article appeared in the Seattle PI today. (I like to read these sort of things to my son when he gets a little whiny about his life and his parents expectations.) My interest in these kinds of articles is why some people, even kids, are able to rise above circumstances and do well. Is it something in their chemistry or what? That kind of knowledge (if it's even possible to know but there must be some similar characteristics among these types of people) could help educators to reach more students. Heck, it could help all of us help students. For more inspiration, here's a link to CMU Professor Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" speech. It is worth listening to with your kids (if they are older - Professor Pausch is dying of cancer and has only a few months to live). He really wrote this only for his 3 children, all under the age of 6, but they are too young to hear and comprehend it so he gave it to his students. It is one of YouTube's videos with the ...

This op-ed , by teacher Web Hutchins, appeared in today's Seattle Times. It's a mixed bag. He starts by saying: "Recent pages in the Times have been awash with stories about the resegregation of our schools and new Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson's plan to add tougher, "standards based" programs at low-income schools as a way to attract more upper-income, white families back to their neighborhood schools." I'm not sure I ever heard Dr. Goodloe-Johnson say the Strategic Plan included standards-based programs at low-income schools to get back more private school parents. Did I miss something? He's pretty harsh on AP courses calling them "a gilded WASL". Ouch. He then says, "Let's keep it real Seattle. If we're going to talk about social justice and equity in education, let's walk the walk. If we truly believe that all kids deserve an equal opportunity to realize their potential and achieve their dreams then we...

High school yearbooks. Remember those? A permanent record or snapshot of your high school and its inhabitants and what happened during one school year as interpreted by the yearbook staff (and generally one lone advisor). How many of us still have our high school yearbooks and either (1) laugh or (2) do a slow-burn over something ill-advised that got printed or left out or (3) both? So the Times had this article about a yearbook from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho in today's edition. Seems the kids got really caught up in being cool and making the yearbook cool and it offended some kids so much they asked for their money back. Now it takes a lot to offend most teenagers. They tend to take a live and let live attitude so as to not look "uncool". But apparently there were numerous references to drug use throughout, sex and drinking. Yearbooks cost upwards of $40-50 so it's not chump change that gets dropped to buy one. The principal said, "Unfortunately the...