September 2005

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One in Six

That’s how many kids live in poverty in America—the same now as 30 years ago, according to the 2004 Kids Count report put out by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Is that adequate yearly progress?

A Smart Look?

That girl sitting in English 1, crossing her Lucky legs and searching through her Aéropostale bag for the perfect shade of lipstick—do you ever wonder how much thought she puts into her look? As opposed to how little she expends on the textbook!

The answer: Maybe not much.
When school starts this year, some of your students will have had a professional hand in putting together their back-to-school wardrobe. Instead of relying on Mom to take them to the mall and offer gentle advice—“Not on your life!”—they’ve hired image consultants to do the sartorial thinking. “I can take the heat off parents,” says Denver’s Debra Lindquist, who’s starting to see school-aged clients who understand image affects outcome. “You don’t want to look like a runaway when you’re trying to get a scholarship.”

Photo: Stockdisc

2.6

No Bargain Here

Think you just got a deal on those rolled-back prices? Think again. You may have just helped to break unions and dismantle public schools.

That’s the word from a new national campaign aimed at educating the public about Wal-Mart’s labor practices. Wake-Up Wal-Mart (www.wakeupwalmart.com), which NEA has endorsed, says low wages and inferior health benefits are forcing Wal-Mart families into public housing, free school lunches, and Medicaid.

But if—like educators—its employees want to organize for a better workplace, well, that’s a problem: Wal-Mart closed down the one store where workers voted to form a union.

In the meantime, the company’s profits soar, thanks to the success of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club and billions of dollars in public tax breaks (read: cash that could have gone to public education). And the Walton family continues to contribute heavily to anti-public education efforts like private school voucher initiatives and anti-public education political action committees.

Wake-Up Wal-Mart, organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers, the union working to organize Wal-Mart’s 1.2 million workers, hopes consumers will spread the word about the impact of the company on its employees, communities, and public schools—and urge Wal-Mart to become a more responsible corporate citizen. For more information, visit www.nea.org/topics/walmart.html. And to learn how other companies help public education, see “Shop Smart.”

Photo: AP Worldwide

Virtual Wilderness

Before visiting the Oregon Cascades last year, Teena Staller and her fifth-graders took a virtual walk in the woods. While their fingers hiked across a computer keyboard, they examined lichen, listened to forest sounds, learned hiking safety, and took notes on bark rubbing—all without leaving their classroom seats.

A lot of great stuff lies in wait on the Internet, but it takes time to find it and check for accuracy and grade-level appropriateness. With the help of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), you don’t have to. NSTA is offering SciGuides, Web-based tool kits with links to roughly 100 Web sites already screened and evaluated that can complement your science lessons. Price tag: $5.95 apiece.

Subjects range from life cycles and organisms for elementary learners to atomic structure and chemical bonding for high school students. Each kit includes guides for using the material in class, sample student work, audio files, and accounts of how teachers, like Staller, have effectively incorporated the resources into lesson plans, lab experiments, and field trips.

Check out the SciGuide website for more information.

—Daniel Moise

Photo composite: Stockbyte, Photodisc and Image Source

Click! You’ve Got A Mentor

When Marchell Josie, former chairperson of the Ohio Student Education Association, started her student teaching program at Ursuline College, she realized early on that her college textbooks had not fully prepared her for the classroom.

So Josie (left), along with student Yvette Scott, retired teacher Nancy Wonson (right), and Ohio Education Association student organizer Joanne Gay, set up a cyber-mentoring program. About 50 retired teachers signed up initially and began communicating with student members by e-mail last September.

“Some of the retired teachers were hesitant because they had been out of the classroom for so long,” Wonson said. “But nouns are still nouns and the multiplication table hasn’t changed. Most of the actual teaching tools used 20 years ago are still going to work. The retirees put the spark there, and the students can apply it.“

Visit the Cyber Mentor website for more information.

—Vanessa St. Leger & Daniel Moise

Photo: Scott Shaw and Brand X Pictures

Trade Secrets

The skills you use on the job can help another member with a dilemma on the home front.

This month: Technology support teacher Dan Phelon of Windsor, Connecticut, downloads on keeping your kids safe online.

Safe Surfing

Stake out the site. Monitor home computer use just as you do TV viewing. “Don’t leave kids alone in their bedroom for three hours, because they can go to the wrong places,” sometimes just by an errant keystroke, says Phelon. You may want to keep the computer in an open family area. Admittedly, it’s harder as Web browsing goes portable and wireless.

Be a guide. If your child has a research project, help identify the best sites. Your state library system may offer free access to online databases, a good place to start, as well as anything that ends with an .edu, says Phelon. “Many kids just go to Google...type in a few words, and get a million hits.” With young children, you can help find a half-dozen or so worthwhile sites and bookmark them in the “favorites” section in your Web browser.

Search that history. Anyone who’s ever worked a computer lab can tell you, sometimes kids wander to inappropriate sites. A technique Phelon uses in schools works just as well at home: check the “history” section and the “cache” of your browser. This will tell you what Web sites and pages have been shown recently. Check the “help” menu if you need details on how to do this.

Illustration: Ingo Fast

Got a tip to share?

We’re looking for school nurses or other health professionals to advise fellow members on the best ways to avoid getting sick during cold and flu season. If you’d like to be considered, e-mail us with your name and local, a brief description of what you do, and your top three tips.

67

Book Focus

Word Crimes

Between you and I, this book is a little devil, making us giggle at the persistent grammatical errors other people make. (Err, between you and ME—sometimes we make them too.) The author, James Cochrane, a British editor for more than 40 years, reminds us of a certain ninth-grade English teacher who shall remain nameless. He sets us straight on some of our most common mistakes: the difference between imply and infer, the rule on less and fewer, and why to avoid the “clownish” use of “irregardless.” But what we like most is the needle he takes to overblown, multi-syllabic, make-me-sound-important “prior to’s” and “restructuring’s” that fill our administrative memos. Like this, about the rampant use of “incentivise”—“Anyone with an ear for language will want to avoid this hideous recent coinage....”

Notepad

Feeling the Pain

Large, urban districts serving minority and low-income students bear a bigger burden in the No Child Left Behind law, as they struggle to meet more performance goals than less diverse districts, and also push kids with vastly different levels of preparation to the same proficiency level, says a new study from the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, done with NEA’s help.

The study recommends developing research-based, realistic expectations for improvement, as well as using multiple measures of performance. Click here for more information.

Thanks to you!

Black and Hispanic 9-year-olds are closing the achievement gap in math and reading, according to the 2004 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Overall, White, Black, and Hispanic 9-year-olds scored higher, on average, in 2004 than in any previous year. At the same time, the White-Black gap in reading decreased from 44 points in 1971 to 26 points, and the White-Hispanic gap fell to 21 points.

Global Takes

Approved but ignored in Japan

Huge Chinese demonstrations broke out last spring when the Japanese government gave its okay to textbooks whitewashing Japan’s war crimes in China, including the “rape of Nanking” when hundreds of thousands of civilians were slaughtered. But the Japanese government’s position does not represent mainstream public opinion there, the Associated Press reports. Only 18 out of 11,102 Japanese junior high schools actually use the controversial text, and the Japan Teachers’ Union denounced it.

Banned in Turkey

The Turkish Supreme Court has ruled Turkish teachers’ union Egitim Sen can be banned for advocating children be taught in their own language. Kurdish groups want schools to include their language, but the country’s constitution declares only Turkish is the mother tongue.

The union has been fighting a see-saw battle in the courts, supported by other Turkish unions and by Education International, of which NEA is a member.

Slimmer in Singapore

A campaign to fight fat among Singapore’s children through mandatory exercise, weight monitoring, and healthier lunch programs seems to be working. Ten percent are overweight, down from 14 percent 10 years ago.