This is why we love children !

1) NUDITY
I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a
woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark
naked! As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the
back seat, ‘Mom, that lady isn’t wearing a seat belt!’

2) OPINIONS
On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a note from
his mother. The note read, ‘The opinions expressed by this child are not
necessarily those of his parents.’

3) KETCHUP
A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup out of the jar. During her
struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the
phone. ‘Mommy can’t come to the phone to talk to you right now. She’s
hitting the bottle.’

4) MORE NUDITY

A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women’s locker
room. When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing
towels and running for cover. The little boy watched in amazement and then
asked, ‘What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen a little boy before?’

5) POLICE # 1
While taking a routine vandalism report at an elementary school, I was
interrupted by a little girl about 6 years old. Looking up and down at my
uniform, she asked, ‘Are you a cop? Yes,’ I answered and continued writing
the report My mother said if I ever needed help I should ask the police. Is
that right?’ ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I told her. ‘Well, then,’ she said as she
extended her foot toward me, ‘would you please tie my shoe?’

6) POLICE # 2
It was the end of the day when I parked my police van in front of the
station. As I gathered my equipment, my K-9 partner, Jake, was barking, and
I saw a little boy staring in at me. ‘Is that a dog you got back there?’ he
asked.
‘It sure is,’ I replied.
Puzzled, the boy looked at me and then towards the back of the van. Finally
he said, ‘What’d he do?’

7) ELDERLY
While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins,
I used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds. She was
unfailingly intrigued by the various appliances of old age, particularly the
canes, walkers and wheelchairs… One day I found her staring at a pair of
false teeth soaking in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable
barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, ‘The tooth fairy will
never believe this!’

8) DRESS-UP
A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When she saw her
dad donning his tuxedo, she warned, ‘Daddy, you shouldn’t wear that suit.’
‘And why not, darling?’
‘You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning.’

9) DEATH
While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard
the intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his
5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin. Feeling that proper
burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton batting,
then dug a hole and made ready for the disposal of the deceased.
The minister’s son was chosen to say the appropriate prayers and with
sonorous dignity intoned his version of what he thought his father always
said: ‘Glory be unto the Faaather, and unto the Sonnn, and into the hole he
goooes.’ (I want this line used at my funeral!) Â

10) SCHOOL
A little girl had just finished her first week of school. ‘I’m just wasting
my time,’ she said to her mother. ‘I can’t read, I can’t write, and they
won’t let me talk!’

11) BIBLE
A little boy opened the big family Bible. He was fascinated as he fingered
through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked
up the object and looked at it.. What he saw was an old leaf that had been
pressed in between the pages.

‘Mama, look what I found,’ the boy called out…
‘What have you got there, dear?’
With astonishment in the young boy’s voice, he answered, ‘I think it’s
Adam’s underwear!’

From Education Week Magazine

Keeping Great Teachers in the Classroom

According to the United States Education Department, the country will need 1.6 million new teachers in the next five years. Yet a recent report by the nonprofit National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future reports that “approximately a third of America’s new teachers leave teaching sometime during their first three years of teaching; almost half leave during the first five years. In many cases, keeping our schools supplied with qualified teachers is comparable to trying to fill a bucket with a huge hole in the bottom.”

With two-year alternative programs like Teach for America only able to fill part of the gap, the role of teacher retention in solving our massive recruitment task becomes a key question.

A new book by Katy Farber, Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus (Corwin), speaks powerfully to causes and cures for teacher attrition. It’s a book that is very much of the moment in contributing to the national education policy conversation. Farber wonders: What if we shrink the recruitment problem by stopping the hemorrhage?

In a recent speech in Arkansas, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said much the same thing:

“The Asia Society recently held an international symposium on teacher quality and they found that high-performing countries put much more energy into recruiting, preparing, and supporting good teachers—rather than on the back end by reducing attrition or firing weak teachers.”

Duncan also sees a need to increase the quality of those recruited into the profession. Singapore, he noted in the same speech, “selects prospective teachers from the top third of the class and in Finland only one in 10 applicants is accepted into teacher preparation programs. They only pick the very best.”

Unfortunately, high attrition rates work counter to improving the quality of the profession’s candidate pool. By increasing the scale of the problem, these rates make it more likely that we will need to lower standards for entry to the teaching profession.

The human tragedy of needless teacher attrition is striking. Many teachers spend years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars on preparation for their careers. It is typical for new teachers to emerge with student loans that absorb 10 percent or more of meager starting salaries. The economic costs to society of people being educated for careers they quickly abandon are massive. It is an inefficiency of profound magnitude that we cannot afford as a nation at a time of economic crisis.

In Why Great Teachers Quit, Farber addresses three aspects of the problem: retaining new teachers who could become good; keeping good teachers who can yet become great; and, especially, helping great teachers want to stay in the profession they love. Based on interviews with hundreds of teachers nationwide, Farber’s book is an outstanding piece of qualitative research that goes well beyond simple analysis to offer practical, human scale solutions. Farber does not put forth massive program recommendations, but rather advocates multiple small converging solutions that can be implemented immediately by teachers, administrators, parents, school boards, and policy makers. The genius of the approach is that she replaces hand-wringing with practical action.

The book is divided into eight chapters, each addressing an aspect of the problem, such as standardized testing, working conditions, compensation, and the actions of administrators, parents and school boards. Each chapter follows a narrative structure that begins with a heart-wrenching anecdote of a teacher (usually a composite portrait) driven from, or on the verge of being driven from, the profession. From this dark beginning, Farber proceeds with an explication of the problem, suggestions for practical solutions that can be implemented quickly and inexpensively at multiple levels, and concludes each chapter with a message of hope.

A Practical Blueprint

I found myself asking after reading Farber’s book, what if the ESEA Blueprint took up some of her suggestions? What if Race to the Top gave points for states that established 30 minute duty-free lunches, regular bathroom breaks, and provisions for nursing mothers as the norm? What if voluntary standards for teacher working conditions and compensation analogous to the Common Core Standards were established—and adoption of these teacher standards was undertaken with equal urgency? What if states, municipalities, and LEAs received funding and recognition for adopting the “Precautionary Principle,” giving the benefit of the doubt in cases of building and environmental hazards? What if teachers were evaluated according to their own effort and achievement (which they can control) rather than that of others?

In a more general sense, what if politicians, policymakers, parents and the media consistently demonstrated respect for teachers in word and deed? What if teacher empowerment was encouraged in substantive ways under the research-supported principle that shared decisionmaking actually enhances administrative and policy effectiveness? What if teacher attrition rates received the same attention as student dropout rates?

Certainly, if these types of measures were adopted widely, relationships between teacher unions and all levels of government would become less adversarial, and teacher buy-in on the reauthorization of the ESEA would be more attainable, helping to retire NCLB with its raft of unintended and unwanted consequences. In addition the task of recruiting and retaining the millions of high quality teachers we need for America’s future would be easier, saving enormous amounts of money in education, retraining, and lost productivity.

Farber’s comment regarding duty-free lunch seems apropos here: “It seems like a small simple thing, but it is one issue in a fragile and highly built deck of cards.” The multiple, converging “small simple things” she suggests will make a profession in teaching less like a house of cards and more like a real career for smart, motivated and caring people.

In The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Diane Ravitch speaks of policymakers having a view from 20,000 feet. Why Great Teachers Quit brings the down-to-earth perspective of practitioners to the policy conversation and humanizes the quest, shrinking the distance between policy and practice. Farber’s book makes a practical contribution to solving real problems in education. Simultaneously tragic and hopeful, Farber’s book belongs in the hands of everyone who cares about the future of education.

Good morning!

Time for anther Advent week at school.

Please remember to have children wear long sleeves now. It is too cold for short sleeves.

Children need coats, hats and mittens. We go outside every day that is above 32 degrees. Children should be able to handle their own coats. It’s their homework!

We will be trimming the tree this Friday afternoon.

We will be stringing popcorn and cranberries on Thursday.

Please remember to take your cookie recipe cards.

Please take your child’s work home with him every day.

Please encourage your child to pick up his toys at home so that he will be familiar with the job at school.

We do not let children run cars on tables. This is something to think about at home.

When speaking with your child, please have him answer you in full sentences. It is advisable to ask children what you have said, so that they can enter a real conversation. Many children are in the habit of not listening. This will be detrimental in Big School. It is the time to grasp their attention and demand it.

Have a great week!

Lots going on at school in the early Advent days. Lots of things you should know about like the race to the Santa Prize. Every Advent, we encourage the children to take care of one another. We explain a lot about charity and giving and doing for others. We talk about playing indoors and about order and cleaning up after ourselves and helping the little guys put things away. Then, as a tangible, we have something in the back of the school building called Santa Strings. Each child (who has an operative medal) has a Santa String. Every day, every child can earn lots of paper presents to go on his string. The child who has earned the most presents will receive the Santa Prize at the party on December 17th.

The whole point of this is to bring to the children’s attention, that they are responsible for their play and also for children younger than they are. We are a group activity place, and the cohesion of the group is very important.

There is also an Advent Box, filled with goodies and presents, that goes to the best behaved child at the school on the day before. The kids LOVE this, and are always curious about their chances of getting the box.

We have and will continue to make candy a couple of times a week for those who behave themselves. Last week we made fudge, and this week we will make caramel.

Every morning, Miss Amy is trying out a new Christmas cookie for snack later in the day. We are making postcards for parents who would like to take home the recipes and make these wonderful cookies at home. The cards are issued every day, and you can find these on the front desk. Please take the cards you think your family would like.

A letter was sent home with your child about our Christmas party. We will be having a “Sing in Santa” party on December 17, at 3:00 p.m. Every child must have an accompanying adult. Every child in attendance must have a small gift. Please bring your gift to school in a brown paper bag with your child or children’s names. These gifts are a secret and will be brought into the school by Santa. Please consider the weight of your gift.

Your gift should look as if it came from a workshop like blocks, a wooden puzzle, a rag doll, a stuffed toy, a wooden truck or car, a plain ball, or something with out a logo on it.

We will be going to the Nutcracker Suite on December 17 in the morning at the Victory Theatre.

More about this later.

If you have any questions, please see Miss Judy.

If you want to say something nice about the recipes, please see Miss Amy!

Tree trimming will commence on Friday. We will set up an enormous tree and deck it out in the p.m. on Friday.