Letters

VA, PA Deserve Support
On September 11, I stood with my second grade students and watched smoke pour out of the Pentagon. I wept when finally I was able to turn on the television to see the events of the day at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania and New York. I grew up in Arlington. My home has been the target of a terrorist attack.

It crushed me when I got the November issue of NEA Today and read the headline, "We're All New Yorkers." I am not a New Yorker! I am a Virginian. I know that what New York has to deal with is horrible. I just wish Arlington and Pennsylvania weren't forgotten.

Annemarie Glover
Arlington, Virginia

Terrorism and History
Thank you to Elaine Akagi for her article about the parallels between the terrorist attacks and Pearl Harbor (My Turn, November). As a social studies teacher, I taught my students the comparisons. However, I also taught my students that we must learn from the internment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. My students were able to see that our government was wrong, history cannot repeat itself, and that we cannot judge someone by how they look or where they came from. I encourage fellow educators to be sure to bring this perspective into the lesson when teaching these parallels.

Dianne McGee
Lewisville, Texas

Clearing the Air
Thank you for publishing "Breaking the Mold on Air Quality" (News, November). I am on permanent disability with hypersensitivity pneumonitis after exposure to mold and dust in my classroom. In my district, at least 20 of the 35 schools have reported "hot spots."

One of the primary causes has been carpeting used in classrooms and elementary lunchrooms as well as inadequate ventilation systems. Nevertheless, administrators continue to put carpeting in classrooms instead of tile. And even newer constructions have poor ventilation.

I cannot walk a block without stopping to breathe several times. Two of my colleagues retired and continue to enjoy hiking and jogging. My golden years will not be very golden.

Elsie Cadena
Mead, Washington

Children's Classics
I enjoyed your article on children's classics (What Makes a Classic? November), and I'm glad to see Eloise on your list. It is a classic.

What disturbs me is the discriminatory marketing of the book Eloise and related licensed products. Every new book and every product is drenched in a nauseating shade of hot pink. By slapping a "For Girls Only" color code on Eloise you effectively bar future generations of boys from enjoying this classic. We should, instead, be encouraging boys to read books with girls the main characters,especially plucky girls who break traditional feminine stereotypes.

I urge librarians, teachers, and parents to seek out older copies of Eloise without the pink covers.

Cathy Taylor
Glenside, Pennsylvania

I always look forward to my copy of your publication to read about new trends in school.

Your list of "the best of classic books" was very interesting. Although I agree with your choices, I must say you left off a great classic series by P.L. Travers: Mary Poppins (not the Disney version).

This series was so full of gentle imagination and magic, as well as teaching proper behavior under the guidance of that perfect, often too-strict nanny.

I started reading these when I was a third grader and just last year purchased a newly published set of the four Poppins books (Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins Comes Back, Mary Poppins Opens the Door, and Mary Poppins in the Park).

What a treat to reread those delightful stories.

Marguerite Brockway
Amherst, New Hampshire

Poems for Thought
I found the article about Poet Laureate Billy Collins in NEA Today very interesting (Innovation, November).

I like the idea of giving high school students a poem a day.

I think high school is a bit late to start, though. I teach second grade and my second graders have already memorized four poems. They love doing this and their favorite so far is Life by Paul Lawerence Dunbar.

I'm teaching my students to read using a phonics-based language arts program, and I've already seen incredible growth.

Once they are able to read fluently, I'm sure they will be more interested in memorizing poems on their own.

Harry Onickel
Ferndale, Michigan

Marrying for Money
Velma Stewart's strategy for teaching money management by "marrying" students (Innovation, November) is new and inventive? Funny, I know family and consumer sciences teachers that have been using this same strategy for years! However, when the FACS teachers used this strategy, they were ridiculed and told that their curriculum wasn't "academically challenging." Now the push in education is making curriculum "revelent to the students lives." Family and consumer sciences have always been perceived as the bastard child of education. But if you want to see the next trend in education, look to your FACS teachers.

Loretta Schuler
Bedford, Indiana

Enough Gun Laws
I was outraged to see in the November issue of NEA Today a full-page placed by "Americans for Gun Safety" touting the McCain-Lieberman "Gun Safety" Bill. I am a 30-year member of the NEA and also a member of the NRA. I am tired of seeing my dues to the NEA used to support the gun control agenda.

I am against the need of some groups to "federalize" issues to circumvent the state legislatures or the state voters. If 32 states have no background checks, then 18 must have some such laws. So work to have the states pass such regulations.

More federal gun laws are not the answer, nor will such laws make schools safer. I'd be more impressed if the NEA and other such organizations pressed for enforcement of existing gun laws and punishment for criminals who break the laws already on the books, which number in the tens of thousands.

Jim Bowden
Coos Bay, Oregon

Dress Isn't Success
I have been a teacher for three years and wholeheartedly agree with Fodie Mitchell (Debate, November) that student behavior and, for that matter, achievement is not necessarily better when I am dressed "better."

I think back to my days as a student and what my teachers wore. I remember a fifth grade teacher who dressed in designer, and I assume expensive, suits everyday. She looked wonderful but she never left her desk. She was dull and therefore, I did not learn much.

Dressed in jeans and a casual shirt, another teacher darted around the room intriguing students and interacting with them.

I think we should focus on a teacher's ability to teach and manage, and not on their attire.

Carla Ryder
Salinas, California

I retired after almost 30 years of teaching in elementary grades. I've found, at least in Arizona, that the kids display less of a rebellious attitude against authority if teachers dress cleanly, but casually.

I used to dress in business suits, nylon stockings, and business high heels twenty years ago, but if teachers dressed that way out here today I think it would come across as a sad attempt to establish superiority based upon an ill-preceived stress on "class" or economic status.

Bev Gibbons
Apache Junction, Arizona

Teachers, Phone Home
I am surprised by Sheana Thorell's Letter to the Editor entitled "Embarrassing Students" in the November issue. She writes: "No human being deserves to be embarrassed and belittled." First, I do not understand how a parent phone call embarrasses a child. Second, if the child is acting up in class, he or she deserves some form of punishment, and if embarrassing the child by calling his or her mother or father right then and there does the trick, so be it. There are so few options left to teachers. I applaud Jarrad Grandy for calling parents immediately.

Bart Birdsall
Tampa, Florida

Violating Privacy
As a parent of a learning disabled child and two non-disabled children, and as a learning disabilities teacher, I agree that allowing a nonprofessional to grade students' papers is a violation of privacy (News, October).

A far better answer for everyone involved would be to provide each teacher with a trained/professional classroom aide to help with the many tasks related to teaching.

A student's work is for the eyes of the professional educator only!

Angela Newmaster
Blue Springs, Missouri

Prescription Victory
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your recent article on the "Viagra" ruling (News, October) in NEA Today! I shared the information with our district administrators and they have agreed to provide coverage for several forms of contraceptives. This change affects 500 people in our district and would not have occurred if not for the information contained in the NEA Today magazine.

Heather Miller
Barberton, Ohio

A Bit Part for Tests
I appreciated Bob Chase's editorial on "Challenging the Almighty Test" in the October issue.

He, like most educators, realizes that these state tests need to be placed in their proper perspective instead of being used to turn schools into unAmerican robotic factories. Instead of taking center stage, they should be bit part players in the great play or movie we call education and real life.

Our education dollars should not be spent on shallow, arbitrary mea-sures of teaching/learning. Rather, they could be better utilized to reduce class sizes, fix school buildings, build community partnerships, and supply schools with the materials they need to maximize student learning.

Christian Milord
Brea, California

Confronting Terror Abroad
On September 3, 1993, I was awakened at 5:30 a.m. by a telephone call: "Terry, there's a bomb about to go off beside the school!" By the time I got there, the once-beautiful courthouse in our city of Armagh was in ruins and my school nearby was virtually uninhabitable.

A few months later, my early morning journey to school was interrupted by a radio news flash. One of our school parents had been murdered.

These are just two of the countless occasions in Northern Ireland when I and my colleagues have had to deal with the effects of the bomb and bullet on our children.

We are proud that our classrooms have, with few exceptions, been havens of compassion and caring, and the teacher a leader and an example of all that is good in human nature.

Teachers--on both sides of the community divide--have strived to maintain a degree of normality and consistency in the lives of our children, despite unbelievable tragedy and turmoil outside.

After the bombing in 1993, the children missed only one day of school. Lessons resumed in parts of the building while other areas were repaired. In the case of the murdered parent, we prayed for the victim in a school assembly and school continued. Teachers visited the grieving family at home. When the children returned, the whole community, staff and children alike, took on the responsibility to ease the transition back to school.

The challenges sometimes increase with time. On September 3, 1998, in front of the rebuilt courthouse, only yards from my school, five years after the bomb that caused such destruction, William Clinton and Tony Blair spoke to an audience of thousands. They encouraged us to turn the other cheek on the terrorist, thus eliminating his or her reason for being. All sides were to forgive and forget.

It was comparatively easy for me to take up this challenge. None of my relatives had met death at the hand of the terrorist.The three children who had lost their father were also in the audience. Turning the other cheek is not, I suspect, so easy for them. But they have been trying for eight years to do just that.

You, the educators of America, will have many challenges to meet in the coming months in helping to pick up the debris left in your streets and classrooms by terrorism. At some point, you will also have to answer the same questions I and those three children have wrestled with.

My thoughts are with you.

Terry Shields
President
Ulster Teachers Union