"Don't Go Gently into that good night"

I am at a different point in my career than most of the people in this class. I am planning for retirement. The date has has been set - June 2010 and the cruise has been planned. And then what?
Perhaps this will sound like someone who watches too much Oprah, but I believe that each of us has the obligation to leave the world a better place than we found it. We need to leave our footprint. It shouldn't be a footprint in the sand which will wash away with the first tide but one that is lasting. The difference we make in the lives of the children we meet is paying it forward. I believe in paying it forward.
I don't think teachers in the suburbs or outstate truly understand Detroit teachers. Whenever I go to workshops I feel a disconnect. They don't get it. They don't know how much we grieve for our students. They don't see our tears. They don't see how fast and hard we pedal with the environmental winds blowing us backwards. I have worked for principals that I am sure studied under Adoph Hitler and learned economics from Enron. Then I have worked for some (like the one I have now) who bear the attributes of Mother Theresa, the fortitude of Nelson Mandela, and the audacity to hope of Barack Obama. There is always hope.
I know retired people who spend their days going to Meijers and "doing" lunch. That's it.
Retirement truly scares the crap out of me. It will be the first time in my life since I started kindergarten in the Fall of 1954 that I haven't either been in school, been working, or raising children. Sometimes all three at once. It will be a clean slate. A clean slate requires some fresh chalk and a good eraser.
Virtual schooling is something I can do. It is something that I can use to help "our broken-winged" children find a place they can soar. I won't need a room key. I will just need my laptop and that can follow me anywhere.
Thank you, Michael, for inviting me into that virtual "live" classroom. Neither of my millenium daughters, both in college, had ever been in one. I one-upped them. That felt kinda good.

Don't wanna be a pooper scooper.

Meet Jack. He attends Mackinac Island High School on Mackinac Island in northern Michigan. This island has a year around population of 600 people. The ferry stops running right after Christmas and doesn't start again until April. Those winter months are spent in total isolation. Sometimes in February the ice between St. Ignace and the island freezes over. Then it is possible to get off the island on a risky, Christmas tree marked, ice bridge.
Jack is a senior in a school of about 100 students. That includes K-12. He goal is to attend Lake Superior State College in Sault St. Marie, Michigan when he graduates. Unfortunately his school is too small to include a teacher for the AP Chemistry class he would like to take. He wonders what to do. He knows what he doesn't want to do. That is to follow his father's footsteps into the family business - tending to horses and driving carriages for tourists.
Jack decides to talk to his guidance counselor who also teaches math and coaches the basketball team. His counselor remembers that Northern Michigan University in Marquette has a professor who teaches an online APChemistry class to students all over the Upper Pennisula. Most of these students attend small town schools or some one room schools. Some are isolated by geography or weather.
The island school has a modern technology lab thanks to many wealthy summer people who donate to the school. Jack finds that the school computers will connect him to his class. He enrolls.
The Professor at NMU uses a program similar to ICN - a two way interactive audio-video system using studio classrooms. The Professor had once taught in Iowa and was introduced to the program there. The Professor tells Jack to find a coach at Mackinac Island High School. He doesn't have to be a Chemistry teacher - just someone who can proctor tests and monitor Jack's progress.
Jack is also required to find someone to provide computer tech support. He talks to the computer instructor at his school and she agrees to help. She also teaches morning kindergarten. There aren't enough students to require a p.m. class.
The Professors job is to send materials to student coaches , send a calendar, evaluate work, and provide feedback. He communicates with parents and sends grades to the guidance counselor.
Jack's parents are curious about this process and wonder how he will learn without other students around him. They learn that Jack will have face to face interaction with his teacher and other students. He actually will have more classmates than he could ever have at the island school. He will be using chat rooms to plan projects, an electronic discussion board, and the Professor will even have office hours online. Jack is all set.
Mackinac Island is advertised as the "Somewhere in Time" place to be for summer tourists. No cars. No carbon monxide. Just peace.
But for a boy like Jack, life in the slow lane was holding him back. Virtual Schooling gave him what he needed. And he didn't have to wait for the lake to freeze to leave the island.

The Big Sleep

Yesterday I did something I said I would never do. I went to a Toyota dealership and seriously checked out a foreign car - the Prius. Consumer Reports recently gave it red stars in every category. Plus it gets nearly 50 miles to the gallon. That sure beats my PT Cruiser.
Why does it? The Big Three provides excuse after excuse about why the Asian companies outperform American companies.
Somehow I think we are doing the same thing in education. We make excuses.
The Converge article talked about Global competiveness. Asian students are "on fire" to learn. Much of their learning requires learning English first. Both India and China are using eLearning to reach students in areas that don't have the best schools and teachers.
Why aren't we?
DPS has nearly a 50% high school drop out rate. That figure depends on who is doing the calculating. I teach a 7th grade Reading class and in my class I have a young man, Marcus, who just turned 16. Marcus comes to school every day, is polite, and hard working. He works with me every Tuesday and Thursday after school. His reasons for being behind in school are the usual ones - changing schools, family upheavel, transience. I checked with my principal about moving Marcus into high school and she said he had to be in 8th grade to be moved. When he does move it will be to one of Detroit's alternative schools. These are frequently a challenge to get to and educationally not very challenging. I am sure Marcus will some day soon get discouraged and drop out. I probably would.
Yet this week when I was in E. Tawas, I met a young man who was getting his diploma on-line. His mother didn't want him in the local school system so she enrolled him in a virtual high school. He graduates in June and has already been accepted into Alpena Community College.
I teach in a new Detroit school that has three computer labs (35 computers in each) but no computer teacher. Each classroom has five computers for student use. They are rarely used.
We are getting ready in a few weeks to have another workshop day for teachers. The agenda includes nothing about technology. We will be reviewing MEAP scores. Same old.
Marcus deserves a future. It shouldn't involve being 6 feet tall in the 7th grade and eyeing my parking spot. There are thousands of students just like him. We need to wake up from our deep educational slumber.

I am willing to bet - and I might lose- that I am the only member of this class who is also a member of AARP. You might think free coffee at McDonalds. Or wonder why Jamie Lee Curtis is posing topless on the front cover of the April edition of AARP magazine. You may be breathing a sigh of relief that "Thank God, I'm not as old as HER".
Old age is an adventure of its own with many perils along the way. I have to admit my biggest fear is not cancer, heart disease, or death itself. It is Alzheimers. Scientists predict that 1 in 8 baby boomers will have it. We have been given the same advice that I give my own students. Learn something everyday. Learning keeps the brain alive. That is homework I am willing to do.
I have to admit that my own attitudes toward virtual schooling were very uninformed. It seemed to be a perfect way to cheat (my mom could do my homework). Who would know? I smugly assumed that online classes were easy. Brick and mortar classes were hard. I figured lazy people would take online classes. It takes toughness to tackle I-94 in a snowstorm heading down to Wayne State. Besides who would I talk to? Myself?
But after last weeks class, after those films and readings, I had what Oprah likes to call her "ah, ha" moment. I finally got it.
I thought about David, a young man I know who recently graduated from Osborn High School, who had complained to me about how few AP classes were available for him.
I thought about Mackinac Island School, 100 students in grades k-12, on a tiny island that is frozen in for four months a year. The kids walk, ride bikes, ride horseback, or snowmobile to school.
Then there is my sister Nancy who has MS and is imprisoned in her wheelchair. Her mind is still free.
Talk about prisoners - educated they are less likely to return to prison.
I looked up the word "ghetto" in the dictionary. It says "quarter of a city where a minority group live because of social, legal, or economic pressure."
Wouldn't a virtual school represent freedom? It wouldn't matter if our own personal ghetto trapped us by bars on a window, ice barriers, disease, old age, poor schools, or isolation. A virtual school would set us free.
I learned a lot this week. That's a good thing.
I also put my cell phone in the refrigerator. That is NOT a good thing.

No Child left Inside

On November 22, 1963 a lone photographer recorded history on an 8 mm camera. Actually I read that 32 people filmed the assasination of President Kennedy but none with the detail of Zapruder. What would have been different today? EVERYONE in the crowd would have filmed.
I loved the section on Grassroots Video in the Horizon Report . Film is an incredible expression of creativity. And everyone can paricipate. It's cheap. It's easy. It's fun.
Websites like You Tube make it easy to share. Although You Tube doesn't come thru the computers at my school. The censors stop it. I hope that changes soon.
With students being able to produce video from simple devices such as phones and cameras it becomes an easy tool to use in research and interviews.
This morning I read something interesting in the Detroit Free Press. An article said that participation in outdoor activities has declined nearly 25%. It blamed "videophilia" - doing stuff indoors in front of a screen, watching television, sitting at computers, playing videos. Then on the radio on the way to church I heard that 30% of our children are overweight.
I don't live in the past. I do like to visit there sometimes. It is a warm and fuzzy place filled with long gone people. We hear that life was simpler than. I don't believe that. I wouldn't like to give up my safe car, good medical science, or the computer.
But I sort of agree with this article. I have mentored a 13 year old girl for several years. I took her to a beach on Lake Huron. She had never made a sand castle, walked along a lake, climbed a lighthouse, or had a bonfire. She lives at 7 Mile and Gratiot and had never been to Belle Isle or downtown Detroit. But she is very good at finding her way around the internet.
I think that life is about balance. We need to encourage our children to go outside and discover nature. Plant a garden, watch the birds, learn about bugs. They need to know that Mother Nature is important and enjoyable. Taking a long hike in the woods is calming.
We can't always just watch the film.

This is a website that I will definitely reccomend to the other teachers at my school. Especially those that teach history. I sat here watching an incredible video of the historian David McCullough, author of 1776, talking about George Washington. History is so often poorly presented to students but McCullough made the times that Washington lived in come alive.
Then I watched a special about Pearl Harbor. Using maps, photos, and narrative the "Day that would live in Infamy" were real.
Maybe I am uninformed but this is the first educational website that I went on that was in both English and Spanish. A quick click at the top of the page was all it took.
Tech support was clearly indicated.
I found the site to be easy to navigate and each site or page that I went on was available.
This site seemed to be directed more for parents and educators. I don't think students - at least young ones - would access information easily without guidance. I liked that lessons were offered to parents to use over summer vacation. Lessons using the local library were very good.
The site is easy to read and visually appealing. It was current and up to date.
There was an excellent section on Black History month. I liked the fact that the science section had information on minority scientists which my students are always searching for. Usually with difficulty.
It is probably not a site that I would put my middle school students on but their teachers and parents - yes. My students love sites like mathplayground or funbrain. Those are more interactive and "fun". But I would suggest this to teachers and parents.

That's not Jesus

Visitors are stunned when they walk into our school at Christmas and see Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and four shepherd boys standing perfectly still in the atrium outside of the Media Center. After all this is a public school.

This year I added a Christmas tree. It was decorated by Thai Her, a 6th grade Hmong student, who had never decorated a tree in his entire life. He begged to decorate this one. Thai is very short -even for a 6th grader - so the lights and ornaments mostly covered the bottom half of the tree. The true Christmas Star was the bright smile on Thai's face.

Jesus and Mary were two 8th graders and the shepherd boys were mostly my library helpers and a few other carefully chosen for their promise to stand perfectly still for two hours.

Jesus was the only problem. Mary handed the baby back to me. "That's not Jesus, Mrs. Mann."

I have the same problem every year. I shop carefully at Toy R' Us for a black doll and every year he is handed back to me. Jesus is not supposed to be black.

I explain that Jesus could not be a blue-eyed, fair skinned child considering the place he was born. He most likely looks more like the people who own the party store down the block. Eventually they accept my black Jesus.

Last year our Art teacher, a very devout Jew, complained that our Christmas nativity doesn't represent her faith so I encouraged her to put up her own holiday decoration.

I also asked our bilingual teachers, Mr. Kue and Mr. Vue, to do the same.

Neither did.

Our school is 90% African-American and 10% Hmong. The Hmong are a group of recent immigrants from Laos wherere they are mostly farmers and their adjustment to the east side of Detroit has been a challenge. They are a group of students who are rarely a behavior problem, and are rarely absent or tardy.

Their parents don't speak English but they come to conferences. At Osborn High last years Valedictorian and Salutatorian were both Hmong students.

Does culture matter? Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.
I don't believe my annual live nativity would work at most suburban schools. But here our largely African-American culture is comfortable with religion and are not afraid to display their faith. We have gospel choirs and we often pray at school events.
But I don't think the biggest culture problem is the color of Jesus or the fact that my Hmong students raise chickens in their Detroit backyards. The biggest problem we have is our culture of violence and culture of failure.
My students are very bright but they don't challenge themselves and we don't challenge them enough. We accept mediocrity at all levels of education - school board, administration, and our teaching staffs.
Violence permeats the lives of my students. How can they focus on school when the walk home is perilous? Or life at home at often a dubious proposition.
I think this is a problem that is frequently buried under MEAP scores and endless testing.

On the Shores of Gitchiegoomie

Grand Marais is a picturesque village of 300 people on the very top of Michigan's Upper Penninsula about 500 miles north of my Detroit area home. It was here, in the 6th decade of my life, that I completed my first (and only) Triathlon.

I am an avid bike rider, a fair runner, and a lousy swimmer. My plunge into the icy waters of Lake Superior (Labor Day temperature 54 degrees) sans wetsuit, water depth 60 feet, knowing the reputation of Superior from Edmond Fitzerald lor for not "giving up her dead", convinced me that I was soon to be fish food. I wasn't. But I was the very last person out of the lake.

I remember my sister standing in the back of the pick-up filming the entire thing, me running up the beach to my bike calling out "I am not dead"!!! Then 18 miles of hills on a bike.

I had just started my run when a man flew by me finishing his.

"Don't give up," he called out. "You're doing good!" He was 75 years old.

I won a Silver Medal. Sounds impressive. The truth? There were only two people in my age group.

Why am I telling you this and what does it have to do with educational websites?

It has to do with motivation- the biggest problem I have with my students.

I have found a great website that is changing the lives of my students and our school. It is http://www.oambassadors.org/. This is a new site. It is a joint project of Oprah's Angel Network and Free the Children. I completed a lengthly application process and last fall we were accepted. So far we are the only DPS school to be an OAmbassador school. The program sent me lesson plans and materials for 35 students plus more activities on their website. Right now we are raising money for a school in East Africa.

My middle school students are not very global. They think a foreign country is the "west side". But now they are learning geography, social studies, and are reading incredible stories on their website. This week the Roots of Action tour came to our school and showed films and talked about child labor, poverty, education and health issues around the globe. One young man from Sierra Leone told our students about his village being attacked by rebels and his mother and sisters being raped. It was very moving. Our students were very affected.

We are planning several fund raisers - our African-American History Program, a basketball game between staff and students, a fun run, and a talent show in the Spring. It amazes me that our students are reaching into their pockets to help children in another continent.

When children can find a website that is colorful, fun, challenging, and easy to manuever they will use it. I think this is one that can change their lives forever.

I think about that 75 year old man. He ran faster, rode faster, and easily left me on the shores of Gitchiegoomie. His message was clear. Don't give up.

In all this talk about generations it is easy to forget one thing. We are sending our children into the future - a place where we cannot go. We must give them the foundation they need to get there and hopefully to make the world a better place.

My grandson, Christian, was suspended from kindergarten. He was 5 years old. His crime? He pointed his umbrella at a classmate and said, "I am going to kill you." He got three days at home.

I spent a good part of my childhood with a pair of six shooters strapped to my hip shooting up my classmates and they quite avidly fired back at me. It seemed like harmless fun in a time when television was filled with cowboy shows. We received guns for Christmas and our birthdays and ran around the neighborhood killing each other. It was great.

It has been 40 years since I graduated from high school and I have never killed anyone nor has any of my classmates. Viet Nam veterans don't count. The government made them do it.

This is the biggest change I have seen between the generations. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
We punish children for their immaturity. They are supposed to be immature. They are kids.

I am afraid to hug my students and when they try to hug me I usually back away. I don't drive them home from school or allow them into my classroom by themselves. I always keep my door open. Teachers today are afraid and they never were before. I know there have been incidents widely publicized of teachers having relations with students. It happens. It may be rare but all of us suffer from the suspicions of the public.

Sex between consenting teens can put the boy on the sex registry for life. Or in prison. Imagine going to prison for what we once thought was some Saturday night fun in the back seat of the Chevy.

I am not naive about life. I know that bad things happen. I grew up Roman Catholic and I never imagined that the good priests of my youth could have been guilty of what they were later accused of. I admit I was shocked.

Are we over- protecting this generation of children? Or are we over-reacting to the experimentation and excuberance of our youth? It seems that we are constantly looking over our shoulders.

One of the male teachers at my school told me recently that when his female students lean over his desk he isn't sure where to put his eyes. Our students wear uniforms but some of the girls leave top buttons undone, wear tight shirts, or are simply just 'large'.

There are a lot of reasons that teachers leave the profession - nearly 50% in the first five years of teaching. But I believe that one reason is the constant fear of liability. Most of us are simply trying to be good teachers but the fear of a lawsuit can stop us in our tracks.

I saw all of this mentioned only fleetingly in the articles I read in this weeks articles. But I think it is important.

Slightly off topic, but I think the biggest difference in learning is not generational but relates to gender. Boys learn differently than girls. Last year when our staff convened to discuss the coming year I suggested dividing our classrooms by gender. Almost all of the teachers thought this was a great idea. My principal did too but it was never implemented. This spring I am going to bring it up again. I think the boys are more active and need more movement and hands-on learning. In middle school same sex classrooms could be more focused without the distractions. Many schools across the country are doing this - Atlanta Public Schools is one. It has proven successful.

I Never Went to Woodstock

I had an interesting conversation this morning with my "Millennial" daughter, Ashley. She attends Northern Michigan University in Marquette. She told me that her professors give students a ten minute break for each hour of class. She explained this is because her generation has short attention spans and can't sit still for more than an hour.

I told Ashley that we are studying the millennials in my class. She said that was funny because she was studying about the baby boomers in her Marketing class. "You guys are going to be the death of us, mom." She is probably right.

Our histories define us and give us a commonality. Sort of. I was annoyed to read recently that my generation ( I was born in 1949) was defined by Woodstock. Excuse me? JFK, Vietnam, Civil Rights, the Cold War and some very overcrowded classrooms explained a whole lot more. Every kid in my class had a father who had fought in World War 11.

I don't believe I will ever forget the fear of those days in 1962 when the United States and Russia went nose to nose in Cuban waters. We were facing our worst childhood fear - nuclear war. The drill was this: hide under your desk with your head tucked between your legs. I finally figured out the rationale of that one. We were in the perfect position to kiss our ass good-by.

The house I live in now was built in 1964. Its description: three bedrooms, 1 and a half baths, and a bomb shelter. Yes, I have my own bomb shelter. It is a spooky place under the garage and totally encased in cement. If Iran ever sends over the big one you are welcome to use it. I won't be there. I will be hiding under my desk.

I read over these four articles and I really wonder about some of these academics. Do they have too much time on their hands?

Have the Millennials changed the face of the earth so much? Are we all so different? Each of us has the challenge of new technology. We learn something new that in a few years may be old. The older we are the more of a challenge it is to keep up. It is the struggle that so many older people face who take buy-outs from their jobs and then have to re-train to learn a new skill. They are too young to retire but their old skills are outdated.

My grandmother grew up on a farm with no indoor plumbing, no electricity or phone, a woodstove, a one room school, and parents who plowed behind a horse. In 1927 Charles Lindbergh flew over her house on the eastside of Detroit tipping the wing of the Spirit of St. Louis over his own mother's neighborhood. Exciting stuff for a young girl from the country. Life changing in dramatic ways.

I bring this up because sometimes we don't look at life with a broad enough scope. The Millennials are not the first generation to differ so radically from a previous one. Their parents are not the first to look with askance at their children and wonder where they went.

How does all this affect our classrooms? I work in the library at my middle school and I know one thing for sure. Kids today do not want to do research in a book. They want the internet. I don't bother buying much non-fiction for this reason. I don't buy encylopedias. They are outdated.

The Millennials that I know seem to be hard working people. Almost all of my two daughters friends work full time jobs and go to college. They want marriage and children. They seem to be devoted to families. They are comfortable with technology in a way that I will never be. They are exposed to a diversified world that I never was. These are good things.

I teach in an urban school and I don't think my students have access to the technology that the students in "Millennials Rising" have. I am not so sure that their futures are quite so rosy. I sensed these were upper-middle class people they represented.

I never went to Woodstock. I get bored by my peers who still smoke pot, listen to endless oldies, and cruise Gratiot in their 57 Chevys. It isn't good to get stuck in the past.

Next year I will be turning 60. I have a few things on my Bucket List.

Reflection - Blogs in Education

The concept of using blogging to extend the classroom is an interesting one. Sharing writing, ideas, and criticisms outside of the classroom walls with possible immediate feedback is exciting.
I teach in the Detroit Public Schools and I know we are often our own worst enemies. The Media Center where I teach has 35 fairly new computers. Truthfully, teachers do not use them very often. I think the problem is an uneducated workforce. I am 59 years old and agewise I represent a large group of teachers. Many will be retiring within the next ten years. They simply resist learning anything new. Our principal refuses to send out paper announcements to staff. They are asked to check email daily but many don't. They haven't learned to email or use the internet efficiently. Educators who refuse to learn those simple things will not use something like blogging. I am not sure how to overcome "teacher resistance".
As I read over these three articles, I wondered how many teach in urban schools. Many of the schools in Detroit are 100 years old. The last one I taught at was built in 1925. It was beautiful but "unwired". My present school is new and each classroom has computers. They frequently break or are stolen. There is no money for repairs. Suburban schools make the assumption that students have computers at home. Detroit teachers assume the opposite.
My students are intelligent and bright. Unfortunately they are excluded from much technology that would make their learning more interesting and richer.
My grandparents had 68 grandchildren and we have a family website called Cousins Count. It is an active site that in the ten months since it was formed has had 9000 hits. Recently my 90 year old aunt died and the news was posted on Cousins Count informing family all over the country and beyond. Arrangements were announced the same way. Even my 86 year old mother blogs on Cousins Count. I love the "togetherness" that a blog can bring to a widespread family.
I am enjoying this class and its challenges. It is very different from anything I have ever done in school. I think that with proper training that a "willing" staff could effectively use blogging in the classroom.

Marge's profile

My name is Marjorie Mann ( Marge) and I teach at Brenda Scott Middle School at 7 Mile and Hoover. I have been teaching for the Detroit Public Schools for 16 years.
Last year my principal put me in the Media Center full time. She did this because I love books.
My problem is the Media Center has 35 computers that make me feel woefully inadequate. That is why I chose this class.
I also teach one Reading class to 7th graders. Before the Media Center assignment I taught Reading/Writing full time.
This year I applied to Oprah.com to become an O'Ambassador club at my school. This is part of Oprah's Angel Network and is a student fundraiser. Right now we are fundraising for a school in E. Africa. This club involves a lot of computer work.
I did not grow up with computers so this is a challenge for me and my aging brain.
The biggest reason that I chose this class is to help my students who come into the Media Center with questions that I can't answer. Since I am the teacher I like to stay at least one step ahead of them.