Is Your School Secure ?

Is your school safe?

A number of years ago I was invited back to my high school alma mater  in Philadelphia to participate in the alumni Career Day Program, an event that is held annually on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  Having not been there since 1966, I was shocked to see metal detectors and scanning devices at the front door. All of the students were required to  were ID cards. This was a high school noted for its academic prowess and long standing history of being one of the best public high schools in the country.  In fact I was a hall monitor for several semesters and during my tenure I never needed to report a fight or report an incident to the school principal.

The incidents at Columbine High School in Colorado where thirteen individuals were killed and at Heath High School in Paducah, Kentucky where three students were murdered created a major paradigm shift in school security.  After all, schools  were regarded  as safe places- a place where students were in a nurturing environment  with  teachers who cared about them, where they could get a hot meal at lunchtime ( sometimes even breakfast) and a school nurse to tend to their medical and health needs. IN a quick reaction to these shootings many schools resorted to installing metal detectors and security cameras. Some banned backpacks.  Schools required all students and faculty to carry ID cards. Periodic lockdown drills became often as frequent as fire drills.  Many school districts took advantage of state and federal funding for a school resources officer program. Police officers have been placed in schools as one of the staff, their salaries shared by the community and school district. These officers often are involved in conflict resolution and drug abuse discussions as well as dealing with security issues.

IS your school doing everything it can to keep you and your students safe?  Here is a brief checklist to see if you school meets the security safety grade.

·         Has your school conducted a school security audit?

·         Has your counseling staff been trained to identify students with anger issues and how to deal with grief should a tragedy occur?

·         Does your school work with local police to enhance school safety?

·         Has your school encouraged parent advisory committees to discuss ways to improve school security?

·         Have student and staff been taught to “be alert” for anything unusual?

A 2008 Secret Service report found that in more than 80 percent of instances of school violence, at least one person, usually a fellow student or peer, had knowledge of the attackers' plans. If people who suspect a problem feel comfortable enough in school to tell a teacher or a principal, then attacks could be prevented.

While even the most security conscious school has incidents, the more aware and proactive a school is, the less chance there is for a security breech.

As always your comments, ideas and links to other relevant sites are welcome.

Restoring America’s Education Prominence

Recently, nationally known educator and author Dr. Linda Darling- Hammond presented a lecture to future teachers and scholars at Temple University in Philadelphia.  Darling- Hammond, currently a professor of Education at the Stanford University School of Education noted that “The United States will never reverse the decline of its students’ academic achievement scores compared to the rest of the developed world- nor ensure its continued economic and political prominence- until it makes the necessary financial commitment to ensuring equality in education.”

Dr. Darling-Hammond noted that she observed two significant areas of achievement gaps for American students. One was the gap (which has been persistent) between white and affluent students and those students who live in poverty. The second gap – which has widened considerably since the 1970s- is between American school children and their counterparts in other high achieving countries.  When asked about possible solutions, her recommendations included making a significant investment in teacher preparation programs in America’s colleges and universities, emphasis on higher order thinking skills ( HOTS),  and personalization in the classroom including  making schools smaller and limited class size. Finally, the importance of parent contact and cooperation cannot be overlooked.

How are we as a nation going to be able to equip our children and prepare them to compete in the intense 21^st century global job market unless we as a nation address the issues of poverty, homelessness, health care and adequate nutrition ? The focus is on urban education, teaching our nation’s school children who live in the inner cities. This crusade for equality is not new. Fellow educator Jonathan Kozol has for many years been a champion of inner city children with his written work that includes,” Savage Inequalities,” Death at an Early Age, On Being a Teacher and Illiterate America.

The landscape and final agenda has not been set for the upcoming Presidential election, so it is difficult to tell if public education in America will become a significant campaign issue in 2012. However, during all of the campaigns that I have followed, I have yet to come across a candidate who was not an “education President!”  The difficulty lies in the juxtaposition of being pro-education and at the same time cutting funding or eliminating social programs that would help underserved children to become more successful. While throwing money at a problem is not a sure fire way to solve it, neither is withholding funding from programs that have proven to be successful.

Please note- Dr. Linda Darling Hammond most recent book,” The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future” was reviewed on this blog on June 27,2011 and is retrievable from the link on this page. Other books by Linda Darling-Hammond include: Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and be Able  to do ( 2007), The Right to Learn: a Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work, and A Good Teacher in Every Classroom (2005). All of the above listed books are available at Amazon.com and can be order via the link on this site.

As always your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Starting College Early

Three and out

A number of years ago, when our daughter was a sophomore in high school, she decided to attend a six week summer drama program at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. When she returned home, she told us that she could handle college level work and wanted to forgo her senior year of high school and start college a year early. Since her high school did not offer an accelerated program  for early  graduation she went to her guidance  counselor who  said that she could high  school a year early, but  she would need to take certain classes  during her freshman year to be  able to get her diploma assuming she could find a college that would accept her. Fortunately she did- in fact four universities said yes. When she finally selected a college, her new academic advisor told her that she could come as a freshman but could not advance to sophomore status unless she obtained her high school diploma. Fortunately both her college advisor and high school guidance counselor worked together make our daughter’s plan a reality.

Today there are many more options. Some students wish to get a jump on their college education load up on Advanced Placement (AP) courses.  Students can earn as much as 18 credits or more and enter college as a high freshman or even a sophomore.

In an effort to save money, high schools in many states are offering options for students to complete the required course work to obtain a diploma in three years. Combining courses and offering summer course work are just two plans to accelerate the process.  Students seem to be willing to forgo the prom and senior class trip in order to get to college sooner and ostensibly to get to job market sooner (the jury is still out on this issue).

Several states, like Indiana, have program in place where high school teachers are taught how to teach introductory college courses. Students who successfully complete these courses can obtain college credit. In other states, students are given release time to take courses at local communities colleges.

What we are witnessing is a major paradigm shift in the way education is  delivered to students.  No longer is it engraved in stone that a student must spend four full years in high school in order  to be awarded a diploma.

 According to Elise Christopher, a researcher who tracks high-school students for the National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 2.9% of students who were sophomores in 2002 graduated from high school in three years or less.

What are the downsides?

1)      Scholarship funds. By graduating early some students may lose out  for  certain competitive scholarship funds.

2)       Social issues. Some 16 and 17 years olds are not quite ready for the independence and social situations presented in college, especially if a student is going to live on campus.  Students have to realize that for the most part there is little or no hand-holding at the university level.

3)      Competitive Colleges and Universities. By choosing to graduate in three years or other leaving for college a year early may be a negative for those students who wish to attend the more selective institutions. Some universities wanted to see a fully rounded resume with academic course work, extra-curricular activities as well as community service.

Readers might want to view this article published by Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development in Illinois. (http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/resources/displayArticle/?id=153.

You will have an opportunity to review a synopsis of the  research a about attending college early, including both social as well as academic issues and other alternatives for students who want to get a jump on their college education.  Please share this information with your students.

Commemorating Yom Hashoah

Shoah is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.  Next week  religious and secular communities around the world will be commemorating this horrific event with services, guest speakers and memorial programs. Whether you teach in a state that has a mandated Holocaust curriculum or not, this event creates a timely opportunity to teach you student about the effects of indifference and hatred. Here are several suggestions for teachers who wish to prepare lessons about the Holocaust.

The Holocaust by Bullets

Father Patrick Desbois is a French Catholic priest on as mission. He is seeking to investigate a part of the Holocaust that has barely been mentioned. While most writings, films and television programs focused on the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Belzec, and Treblinka, little has been mentioned of the Einsatzgroupen,  mobile killing squads, run by the SS that drove into small towns and villages, primarily in the Ukraine, rounded up all of the Jews in the community  and shot them.  Many local citizens were complicit in this atrocity, pointing out where the Jews lived, digging the pits where the mass executions took place, and taking some of the victims’ valuables.

In an effort to locate these mass graves and give the dead a proper Jewish burial, Desbois went to the Ukraine, started knocking on doors and  asking two simple questions- Did you  live  here during the war and do  you know what happened to the Jews. Despite having  numerous doors being slammed in  his face and despite being threatened, Desbois persisted in  gathering information as well as artifacts to determine what happened to approximately 1.5 million Jews in the Ukraine and elsewhere in eastern Europe.

The Holocaust by Bullets is a searing account of one of the most egregious crime committed during the war. Desbois pulls no punches to vividly describe what he saw and to relate his interviews with eyewitnesses. While this book  is most suitable for upper high school and college students, it is a must read for teachers of the Holocaust want to get a more complete picture of the systematic efforts of the Nazi regime to bring the “ Final Solution” of what to do with European Jewry to reality.

The book, initially published in 2008 is a winner of the National Jewish Book Award. It is published by Palgrave Macmillin with support of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It can be ordered at this web site from Amazon.com or at your local bookstore.

Teachers and administrators who are looking for a more dynamic way to get students to understand the Holocaust, I would like to recommend “ Warsaw.”  “Warsaw” is a musical production in the Les Miserables genre that focuses on the lives of those who were caught in the Warsaw ghetto, its defiant resistance and its ultimate demise. This show with a riveting plot and passionate musical score is available for schools, colleges, churches and synagogues as well as other public venues.  For more information about the production and to hear some samples of the music go to www.warsawthemusical.com

The United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum has a great deal of information about the events of the Holocaust and the Days of Remembrance, April 18-22. You can access this information by going to http://www.ushmm.org/

“Those who fail to heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.”

Celebrate National Library Week

National Library Week

If you have been a follower of this blog for any length of time, you are well aware of the importance I have placed on literacy- getting students to read, to enjoy reading and to get books in their hands.  Next week will provide you as classroom teachers another great opportunity to weave literacy in your lesson plans.  April 8-14 is National Library Week. It is one of the annual events sponsored by the American Library Association. (www. ala.org). With the use of the Internet and all that it has to offer, many students may believe that the library has become obsolete. There are numerous activities that you can use to demonstrate to your students the importance of the library and how valuable the librarian can be. The American Library Association has created a web site that will be helpful in the planning of activities. You can access it at www.atyourlibrary.org

There are many civic and education minded non- profits out there that have been established to aid in promoting literacy in schools and to encourage students to read. I had the opportunity have lunch with the founder and executive director of one such organization.  “K is for Kids Foundation Inc.” was established in Southwest Florida by Mrs. Karen Clawson to encourage today’s readers. The organization seeks to obtain donations of books as well as funds to purchase books and give these books to school students. Clawson calls her events “fun raisers” and in a short period of time her organizations has been quite successful getting books into the hands of school children. The program has a teen advisory council and the organization has been successful in obtaining a donation of bookshelves from Target. Aside from individual donations, thousands of books have been donated by Book Warehouse. So far books have been donated to 19 schools that serve over 15,000 students.

A similar program was recently initiated in North Carolina. Book Harvest is a nonprofit organization that placed news and gently used books in places easily accessible to children. They include, school, after school programs, Head Start program, health clinic waiting rooms, etc. (you   get the picture.) To date this organization has provided over 45,000 books to children in North Carolina. For more information, check out their web site at http://www.bookharvestnc.org/contact_us

The Harvest Book Company in Suburban Philadelphia is a huge buyer of second hand books. They often donate books they cannot sell to area charitable organizations. For more information you can contact them at webservice@harvestbooks.com

More tips for getting kids to love reading. It starts at home!

http://www.freeprintablebehaviorcharts.com/reading.htm

This site has free printable book logs and reading charts for parents to help motivate children to read.
There is also an excellent list of tips for activities to do at home. From the methodical to the zany it is crucial for everyone, parents, siblings, teachers, librarians, civic organizations and the government to encourage young people to read.

Don’t forget to thank your librarian both in school and at your local public library.

READ!!!!