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Sunday, February 3, 2013

The Eagle Has Landed | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

The Eagle Has Landed | Gary Rubinstein's Blog:


The Eagle Has Landed

On October 15th, 2012 Bill and Melinda Gates visited Eagle Valley High School in the Eagle County school district in Colorado. Eagle County, in which ski mecca Vail is located, is a demographically unusual place with almost exactly 50% white students and 50% Hispanic students. Many of the Hispanic students have parents who work in the various ski lodges and resorts.  As the Gates’s only visit one school a year, this one was surely carefully chosen.  Three months later the school is mentioned by Gates in two very high profile places:  A Wall Street Journal article written by Gates, himself, called My Plan To Fix The World’s Biggest Problems and The Bill Gates 2013 Annual Letter.
Here is a quote from the Wall Street Journal article:
In October, Melinda and I sat among two dozen 12th-graders at Eagle Valley High School near Vail, Colo. Mary Ann Stavney, a language-arts teacher, was leading a lesson on how to write narrative nonfiction pieces. She engaged her students, walking among them and eliciting great participation. We could see why Mary Ann is a master teacher, a distinction given to the school’s