IT’S A COLD DECEMBER EVENING in Lexington, Kentucky, and I’m sitting by the fire with a teetering stack of final essays from ENG 104: Freshman Comp. I know what I’m in for. All semester I’ve been hectoring my fifty-odd students to insert commas after introductory phrases, to improve paragraph development, and to remember that the phrase for granted (as in “take for granted”) means “to accept,” whereas for granite, the phrase they often use instead, could only suggest homage to that igneous rock, something akin to W. H. Auden’s poem “In Praise of Limestone.”
It’s been a tough three months. I had been away from full-time teaching for a few years, and away from eighteen-year-olds for longer. From 1995 to 2005, I taught four, sometimes five, sections of Freshman Comp each semester. I read roughly 8,000 essays during that decade—200,000 pages, 50,000,000 words. After all
Welcome to Lotsa Helping HandsWe created Lotsa Helping Hands to answer the question what can I do to help? If you are caring for someone in crisis, or going through one yourself, chances are you have heard this question a lot. And, if you have watched a friend or loved one in need, you have probably asked the same question. Everyone wants to help, but no one knows exactly what to do.
Everyone knows what to do and when to do it. Energy is spent helping, not scheduling.Families in crisis are often overwhelmed with many offers of help and phone calls to return. If you are looking for ways to help a friend or loved one, you can create a private community to:
Getting started is easy. Here’s how it works.Not sure who should create the community?Have questions? Contact us at info@lotsahelpinghands.com |
Watch a message from Hal Chapel, Co-Founder and CEO of Lotsa Helping Hands.
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Illinois teachers: Don’t forget that every Tuesday is Pension Call Tuesday. We’ll post the phone number or email of an Illinois Representative and you make the call. “Our pension benefits are constitutionally protected. As Dick Ingram, the head of TRS said, there is no funding crisis. We have always paid our share. And it was a promise you made to the teachers of this state.”
Message to John Kass, Tribune columnist (Don’t we miss Mike Royko?). Why don’t you take a cut in pay. I mean your paper is in trouble and you can help. You want Chicago teachers to work for $4 an hour. We all should make a sacrifice. Right, John?
H/T to Jersey Jazzman: Goodnight Irene.
David Reber: Money matters. Reality matters. Whether it’s closing the achievement gap or flying to Mars,
August 25, 2011
Contact:
Mona Davids, NYC Parents Union, (917) 340-8987
New York City Parents Union Statement on School Staff Layoffs
The latest announcement by the New York City Department of Education regarding layoffs of school aide workers, family workers, parent coordinators, health service aides, community assistants and other school workers reflects the distorted priorities of elected officials and their New York State and New York City budgets.
Beyond the thousands of needed teachers lost to attrition who will not be replaced, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg share the blame for additional havoc wreaked upon the lives of our schoolchildren with the greatest needs - students with disabilities, students in our poorest neighborhoods, and students who receive free lunch. These students — most of whom are Black and Latino — are being denied the support of workers who care for them everyday – workers who also happen to be the lowest-paid employees of the New York City Department of Education and who also happen to be mostly Black and Latino.
Contrast these layoffs and those impacted by these layoffs with the highly-paid, non-union educrats
,<< When Leuzinger High students return to school on Monday, they will be welcomed with a state of the art addition which features 44 new classrooms. (SCOTT VARLEY)
08/28/2011 - all the talk of doom and gloom in the world of education, most K-12 schools in the South Bay are poised to begin the 2011-12 school year having suffered only an incremental erosion of resources rather than cataclysmic cuts.
But that's only because many districts already have made the deep reductions necessary to weather the shift in the economic climate. In Torrance Unified, for instance, the "doom and gloom" scenario has already arrived. Others, such as El Segundo Unified, are dipping into reserves to hold it together.
The lucky ones, such as Manhattan Beach Unified, are the beneficiaries of increasingly generous campaigns to maintain programs in
August 28, 2011 by gatorbonbc
In case you missed it, the same weekend Congress tortured us with an eleventh-hour default standoff, thousands of parents, teachers, and education leaders gathered for a call to action on educational policy. Organizers of the Save Our Schools weekend met over four days for events that included workshops, a congress, and a march of about 5000 people. We came to address not just an education crisis, but current government policy that shows a profound lack of judgment about and respect for the field of education.
No one argues that public schools are fine the way they are. What's being protested is how policies like "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top" are attracting privatization monies that systematically demonize teacher unions and shut out parent and teacher voices in tackling what should be our shared goal of improving schools. (Read about the co-location sagas playing out in New York City schools under mayoral control. Watch the newly released film "The
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