Sunday, July 4, 2010

Martin Luther King’s July 4th Speech | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Martin Luther King’s July 4th Speech | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Martin Luther King’s July 4th Speech

Martin Luther King gave a sermon on July 4, 1965 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. His topic was “The American Dream.”
You can read his entire sermon at the Martin Luther King Papers at Stanford. In fact, you can hear it, as well, though his spoken sermon is somewhat different than the written transcript.
Here is a lengthy excerpt, though I’d encourage you to read or listen to it in its entirety:
This is why we must join the war against poverty (Yes, sir) and believe in the dignity of all work. What makes a job menial? I’m tired of this stuff about menial labor. What makes it menial is that we don’t pay folk anything. (Yes, sir) Give somebody a job and pay them some money so they can live and educate their children and buy a home and have the basic necessities of life. And no matter what the job is it takes on dignity.
I submit to you when I took off on that plane this morning, I saw men go out there in their overalls. (Yes, sir,

NEA's 4th of July: Red, White, Blue ... and Green - Teacher Beat - Education Week #NEARA10

NEA's 4th of July: Red, White, Blue ... and Green - Teacher Beat - Education Week


NEA's 4th of July: Red, White, Blue ... and Green

The National Education Association is quietly turning green.
For easy recycling, the representative assembly's internal newspaper, RA Today, is devoid of color and pictures and news stories this year: It prints just the resolutions. And delegates can access it through electronic channels rather than picking up paper copies.
And for the first year, the union has "green delegates." About 1,000 of the union's around 9,000 delegates have opted out of the traditional printed materials that delegates receive. Instead, they download all of the convention materials from a website.
The union hopes to have even more green delegates next year.
This appears to be more than just an RA thing, too. Back at the ranch, the NEA's headquarters on 16th Street in

Sinking oil threatens historic Gulf shipwrecks | detnews.com | The Detroit News #spill

Sinking oil threatens historic Gulf shipwrecks | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Sinking oil threatens historic Gulf shipwrecks

Cain Burdeau / Associated Press

Timbalier Islands, La. -- Not just flora and fauna are getting caked in oil. So is the Gulf of Mexico's barnacled history of pirates, sea battles and World War II shipwrecks.
The Gulf is lined with wooden shipwrecks, American-Indian shell midden mounds, World War II casualties, pirate colonies, historic hotels and old fishing villages. Researchers now fear this treasure seeker's dream is threatened by BP PLC's deepwater well blowout.
Within 20 miles of the well, there are several significant shipwrecks -- ironically, discovered by oil companies' underwater robots working the depths -- and oil is most likely beginning to cascade on them.
"People think of them as being lost, but with the deepsea diving innovations we have today, these shipwrecks are easily accessible," said Steven Anthony, president of the Maritime Archaeological and Historical Society.
"If this oil congeals on the bottom, it will be dangerous for scuba divers to go down there and explore," Anthony said. "The spill will stop investigations; it will put a chill, a halt on (underwater) operations."
The wrecks include two 19th-century wooden ships known as the "Mica Wreck" and the "Mardi Gras Wreck." The German submarine U-166 and ships sunk by other German submarines during World War II are within the spill's footprint.
The Mica was a 200-year-old, two-masted schooner that sank sometime before 1850, according to a report by the Minerals Management Service. It was discovered about 2,500 feet deep in the Mississippi Canyon during work to lay a pipeline.
In 2002, the Mardi Gras wreck was discovered by oilfield workers in even deeper waters: About 4,000 feet down about 35 miles off the Louisiana coast. The wreck got its name from the pipeline project where the wreck was


From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20100704/NATION/7040330#ixzz0skLx8T7U

African college students to study at UConn - Boston.com

African college students to study at UConn - Boston.com

African college students to study at UConn


July 4, 2010
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STORRS, Conn.—Twenty student leaders from colleges in four sub-Saharan African countries are spending five weeks this summer at the University of Connecticut.
The students range in age from 19 to 26. They'll come from Senegal, Nigeria, Mali and the Ivory Coast for the leadership training programs from July 11 to Aug. 14.
They'll participate in classes, volunteer work, community visits and other events through UConn's Global Training and Development Institute, which is part of its Center for Continuing Studies.
It's funded with about $230,000 from the U.S. Department of State. It sponsors the programs nationwide to help develop future world leaders and promote a better understanding of the U.S. among people living abroad.



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Schools Matter: Globe Joins NYTimes and WaPo in Avoiding Facts about Charter Schools

Schools Matter: Globe Joins NYTimes and WaPo in Avoiding Facts about Charter Schools

Globe Joins NYTimes and WaPo in Avoiding Facts about Charter Schools

I am sometimes dizzied by the irony that Massachusetts, the birthplace of modern public education and the home of Horace Mann, is now leading the way toward the establishment of segregated corporate charter schools that resemble apartheid minimum security prisons more than they do schools funded with public dollars for the common good.


Rather than education functioning as the "balance wheel of the social machinery," as Mann envisioned, the present day segregated charter chain gangs serve to isolate, contain, and intellectually sterilize those whose economic disadvantages have been disguised by the corporate tanks of deficit thinking as defective cultural

NEA Convention 2010: NEA Votes “No Confidence” in Race to the Top | Intercepts #NEARA10

NEA Convention 2010: NEA Votes “No Confidence” in Race to the Top | Intercepts

NEA Convention 2010: NEA Votes “No Confidence” in Race to the Top

Much of the morning was spent in debate of New Business Item 2. It reads:
While the National Education Association Representative Assembly supports and appreciates the significant increase in federal funding for education, the NEA takes a position of no confidence in the US Department of Education’s Race to the Top competitive grant policies and guidelines, the use of competitive grant policies and guidelines as a basis for the reauthorization of ESEA, and similar initiatives and policies that undermine public education.
Introduced by Phil Rumore, president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation, the motion divided delegates. Supporters argued the Race to the Top process “brutalizes” teachers and students and is at its heart anti-union. Opponents thought the vote of no confidence was too harsh and undermined affiliates who had participated in crafting the process in their states.
Efforts to amend and refer the measure were defeated on the floor, and it ultimately went to a vote unchanged, after about 40 minutes of debate. As you will be able to tell from the video I will post later, the voice vote was

NEA's Delegates Vote 'No Confidence' in Race to the Top - Teacher Beat - Education Week #NEARA10

NEA's Delegates Vote 'No Confidence' in Race to the Top - Teacher Beat - Education Week

NEA's Delegates Vote 'No Confidence' in Race to the Top

After a protracted debate, delegates to the National Education Association approved a new business item that takes a position of "no confidence" in the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top guidelines, the use of competitive grants as a basis of the the ESEA reauthorization.
It came as a symbolic slam at the Obama administration. But as with President Dennis Van Roekel's keynote speech, it stopped short of actually calling out the U.S. president, a supporter of the program. And the debate over the item provided the clearest picture yet of both the internal and external difficulties the NEA faces pushing against an education agenda promoted by a Democratic, not a Republican, administration.
For one, the item passed by a razor-thin margin. Most resolutions pass with a simple voice vote. New Business Item 2 required a standing vote, where delegates pro and con stand, in turn. The room looked to be divided

NEA - Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly (RA) #NEARA10

NEA - Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly (RA)

2010 NEA Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly (RA)

Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly (RA)

NEA 2010: Turning Hope into Action


New Orleans, Louisiana — June 26 - July 6, 2010


RA TODAY HEADLINES


NEA Members Get It Done! House Passes $10 Billion Jobs Bill

The House of Representatives voted to approve funding that will save an estimated 138,000 educator jobs. NEA members called Congress by the hundreds, adding to more than 60,000 calls made in the weeks leading up to last night's crucial vote.

Priority Schools Campaign building army of volunteers for nation’s schools

Transforming America’s lower-performing priority schools is going to take an army of committed educators and community members.

RA Tod@y Blog 2010

Announcements: Sunday, July 4

NEA Fund for Children & Public Education

Meeting Room Changes

All meetings that were scheduled to meet in:
  • room 265 will now meet in room 284
  • room 266 will now meet in room 285
  • room 267 will now meet in room 286
  • room 268 will now meet in room 287

NEA RA: “No confidence in Race to the Top” � Fred Klonsky's blog #NEARA10

NEA RA: “No confidence in Race to the Top” � Fred Klonsky's blog

NEA RA: “No confidence in Race to the Top”

JULY 4, 2010
by preaprez
The gap just got wider between the United States Department of Education and it’s Secretary Arne Duncan on the one side and America’s teachers on the other. Never has their been such hostility between the NEA, a reliable Democratic constituency, and a Democratic Party controlled USDE.
While earlier New Business Items had addressed problems with Race to the Top in general terms, NBI 2 was most clear and direct:

“While the National Education Association Representative Assembly supports and appreciates the significant increase in federal funding for education, the NEA takes a position of no confidence in the US