In This Issue:  | | • | SILVER LININGS SCARCE IN DECLINE OF READING | | | • | A SHAKY START ON A HUGE AGENDA | | | • | MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE IN ENGLISH INSTRUCTION + CALIFORNIA HAS ENGLISH-PROFICIENCY TEST IN THE WORKS FOR LITTLE KIDS | | | • | AUDIT THROWS BOOK AT AREA SCHOOLS | | | • | HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources | | | • | EVENTS: Coming up... | | | • | What can YOU do? | |
Featured Links: | | | | I am waging a losing campaign, tilting at a windmill; questioning the outcome of the I-Division elections giving over a small and as yet indeterminate number of schools to the mayor's partnership. 5, 6 or 7 - something like that. What is wrong with me? This is all so Last Week …someone should call People for the Ethical Treatment of Dead Horses.
It was a democratic process. Teachers voted. Parents voted. Majority rules, right?
• Except the rules say that when teachers didn't vote, their non-votes count as a "NO!"
• And parents who didn't vote, they don't matter. Unless to prove the media's alleged 'parental apathy'.
• But Parents Are Equal Partners in their Children's Education, right? Except when they're not.
And though the election protocol specifically called for administrators and classified employees to submit letters of support or petitions — the Innovation Division did not seek them at those seven schools.
"As a matter of fact," Dr Michael O'Sullivan, the president of the administrators' union says, "they deliberately avoided seeking such input. As far as I am concerned, that invalidates the entire odoriferous process."
The teachers' union managed to extract an interesting compromise with its own procedures. UTLA President AJ Duffy explains that the UTLA House of Representatives met and authorized by special vote the 50%+1-of-qualified-teachers threshold for acceptance of the I-Division partnerships — UTLA rules normally require a ⅔ vote to deviate from contract language. Whether the HofR had this authority is another subject of dispute within UTLA.
Becki Robinson, a candidate for the UTLA presidency who argues for the ⅔ rule harkens back to another time in an unpublished letter to the Times: A time "...before the Mayor and the Union and the Mayor and the District made back-door deals to serve their own purposes. If the election rules change for any one of the prospective "Partnership" schools, then the rules should change for EVERY school and ALL the elections should be re-run."
There are other issues about how what Times' columnist Steve Lopez called "last week's banana republic-style elections" were conducted — small, ugly, petty process issues. There have even been allegations of politicians giving gifts to YES voters.
Democracy is not pretty process, and it gets messier the more you try to tidy it up.
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WHEN YOU LOOK at all the woeful data about students not reading at grade level and wonder what it all means consider SILVER LININGS SCARCE IN DECLINE OF READING - following.
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BUY A CHILD A BOOK THIS HOLIDAY! Buy yourself a book. Read them together; share books with your friends. Start a book club at a middle school …some of the best writing out there is young adult fiction.
Have happy holdays and be safe and warm. Find Hope and Peace and make them one.
¡Onward/Hasta adelante! - smf
SILVER LININGS SCARCE IN DECLINE OF READING
Editorial by John Sledge | Birmingham, Alabama Press-Register
December 20, 2007 - Three years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts published "Reading at Risk," a troubling survey of literary reading in America. Combing through reams of statistical data, the NEA found that fewer than half of Americans over the age of 18 read even one novel, short story, play or poem in the previous year, and concluded that this decline spelled trouble for a free society. The report unleashed a flurry of cultural commentary and the grim prediction that literary reading would be extinct in 50 years.
There were critics, of course, some arguing that the study did not take into account the importance of other types of reading -- magazines, newspapers and online material -- and that it overstated its case. Some even declared that a teenager who simultaneously emailed and listened to an iPod while reading his school assignment was in fact developing superior multitasking skills that would later stand him in good stead.
But with the recent publication of an even broader and more comprehensive survey, "To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Conscience", the NEA's earlier conclusions are convincingly reinforced. Americans are reading less of anything than ever before, the new report finds, and the consequences are far-reaching and profound. "It's no longer reasonable to debate whether the problem exists," Sunil Iyengar, director of research and analysis for the NEA told The New York Times. "Let's not nitpick or wrangle over to what extent is reading in decline."
In the report's preface, Dana Gioia, chairman of the NEA, summarizes the findings in no-nonsense language. "The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming," he writes. And the story is that despite modest gains in reading skills at the elementary-school level, "all progress appears to halt as children enter their teenage years." Nor do matters improve at the collegiate level or even among adults no longer in school. All across the board among adults, reading is in precipitous free fall.
Gioia emphasizes that more is at stake than whether or not Americans are familiar with "Romeo and Juliet." "As this report makes clear," he argues, "the declines have demonstrable social, economic, cultural, and civic implications. All of the data suggest how powerfully reading transforms the lives of individuals." According to Gioia, readers make more money, participate more fully in politics, and volunteer more often in their communities, and their children do better in school. Furthermore, they are less likely to go to prison. In short, declares Gioia, "Books change lives for the better."
The body of the report presents the findings in a series of easy-to-read charts and graphs. Among the statistics:
Nearly half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasure.
The percentage of 18- to 44-year-olds who read a book fell 7 points from 1992 to 2002.
Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers.
The percentage of 17-year-olds who read nothing at all for pleasure has doubled over a 20-year period.
65 percent of college freshmen read for pleasure for less than an hour per week or not at all.
The percentage of non-readers among these students has nearly doubled -- climbing 18 points since they graduated from high school.
15- to 24-year-olds spend only 7-10 minutes per day on voluntary reading -- about 60% less time than the average American.
By contrast, 15- to 24-year-olds spend 2 to 2½ hours per day watching TV. This activity consumes the most leisure time for men and women of all ages.
For those who do read often and well, this report finds, the advantages are immediate and real:
More than 60% of employed Proficient readers have jobs in management, or in the business, financial, professional, and related sectors.
Only 18% of Basic readers are employed in those fields.
Proficient readers are 2.5 times as likely as Basic readers to be earning $850 or more a week.
84% of Proficient readers voted in the 2000 presidential election, compared with 53% of Below-Basic readers.
If the report is clear about the trends and their implications, it is hazier on exactly what society can do to reverse the decline. But there's no doubt about what we as individuals can do -- buy books and more books, fill our houses with them, read them, read them aloud to our children and place them in their hands, and provide the quiet space to absorb them.
The rewards, as this report demonstrates, will be tangible and dramatic for a lifetime.
A SHAKY START ON A HUGE AGENDA
by Steve Lopez | LATimes columnist
December 16, 2007 - Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says he's trying to fix public education, and for that, he deserves a pat on the back.
But his attempts so far don't always inspire confidence. And I'm not just talking about his sloppy legislative power grab that was laughed out of the courts earlier this year. The latest example was last week's banana republic-style elections at seven campuses the mayor wants to control.
Roughly 90% of the parents at the schools skipped the election. And that was despite enticements that included raffle tickets for Jordan High parents who came to hear the mayor speak. Hizzoner himself picked the winning tickets for a TV, a camera and a Target gift certificate.
It's not clear whether the low turnout was due to all the usual reasons for parental disengagement, or if parents simply couldn't tell exactly what the mayor was trying to sell. But either way, the numbers are a little scary.
Meanwhile, some teachers were still contesting the voting rules days after last Tuesday's elections, and results were in dispute at more than one school. By week's end, the mayor's claim of a clean sweep was shakier than his assertion that he knows how to make low-performing schools better.
To give him his due, he seems to have won clear control of at least five schools that were desperate to get out from under the control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. That's amazing when you consider that the mayor never explained what he'd do differently, other than vague promises of more autonomy and resources.
"It's all these wonderful things about doing more for the children," said Jordan High's Miranda Manners, who teaches English as a second language. "But there are no nuts and bolts involved."
I spoke to Manners in the classroom of art history and French teacher Audrey O'Keefe, another veteran who thought the pitch by the mayor and his team deserved a grade of Incomplete.
They voted against Villaraigosa's Partnership for Schools, a nonprofit that would take over management of Jordan and the six other schools from L.A. Unified. Although Villaraigosa eked out a 54-51 win at Jordan, the teachers union is crying foul. It claims more than 50% of all certificated employees had to vote yes, not just 50% of those who voted.
Conveniently enough for the mayor, there doesn't appear to be any provision in the election rules for contesting the results. Jeez, even Florida had an appeals process.
Manners and O'Keefe say the campaign at their Watts school seemed all but rigged, with the mayor's minions bringing free Starbucks and pastries to pitch meetings and pro-mayor paraphernalia adorning the polling place on election day.
"I was furious," O'Keefe said of the shenanigans.
But her bigger concern was the absence of a clear plan to help teachers overcome disengaged parents, students who aren't up to snuff after years of social promotion and gang violence so prevalent that the high school is occasionally in lockdown.
Allowing teachers to help manage their own school is intriguing, they said.
"But who will do all that work, and how do you decide who's directing it?" asked O'Keefe.
On Friday morning I went to Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights to get some answers. I was hoping to meet with the mayor, but his office sent me Marshall Tuck, executive director of the partnership.
Tuck, a bright young do-gooder with a Harvard MBA, spoke passionately about the shameful mediocrity of urban public education in America. At Roosevelt in 2003, he said, there were 1,800 freshmen and 786 seniors, meaning the dropout rate was astronomical.
Understood, but how's the mayor going to change that?
Tuck answered in generalities for the most part. Being vague was part of the mayor's political strategy all along, because a specific plan might have alienated those whose support was needed. And besides, the mayor was selling the fuzzy idea that each school would design its own plan.
Sounds good in theory. But when Tuck talked about handing control over to a council of teachers, parents and administrators, I found myself wondering how they'd ever reach consensus on anything. It's an exciting proposition, but frankly a terrifying one, as well, given the different agenda each party will bring to the table, not to mention the possibility of opposition to specific reforms by the teachers union.
But let's say they get it together at Roosevelt, where faculty and staff voted 152-62 in favor of the mayor. How will the school change?
Hopefully, Tuck said, the energy level will get a boost when beaten-down teachers and parents who've lost faith become reengaged. Maybe a few of the small-learning centers at Roosevelt can be moved off campus to ease overcrowding. There could be more money for teacher training and computers, and with stronger connections to businesses and service agencies in the area, Roosevelt students might find new ways to prosper.
"We don't pretend to have all the answers," Tuck admitted. But it is time for a bold change, he said, and any success the mayor's team achieves can be a model for the rest of the district.
It could also help Villaraigosa in his lust for higher office, and don't think that isn't part of the calculation. Get a few benefactors to pour money and resources into a handful of schools, bump up test scores a bit and take your bows.
Meanwhile, students at roughly 1,000 other schools in the district will be looking on like kids whose house got missed by Santa.
For one Roosevelt teacher, voting for a new direction was a no-brainer.
"I don't trust the district," he said flatly, giving me his frustration, his logic and everything but his name.
The teacher wanted a say in what to teach his students. And the bureaucracy is a nightmare in every way, he said, telling the story of his broken classroom door. It took weeks to get someone to look at it, he said, and it'll take weeks for a second person to come and actually fix it.
In the meantime, he waited so long for someone to fix a broken window, a second window was broken. A repairman showed up, fixed the first window and left without fixing the second one. He said he didn't have a requisition order for two windows.
The teacher said the mayor's team didn't do a very good job of explaining its plan, but he voted for "the lesser of two evils" because he saw nothing to lose.
It would have been better all around, I think, if teachers and parents voted for something new and specific rather than against something old and broken. For the sake of the kids, though, let's hope the mayor's promised improvements materialize someday.
In the Roosevelt courtyard, Tuck spotted a supportive teacher named Jorge Lopez and they shook hands to celebrate the victory. Lopez then said something the mayor should take to heart.
"Now comes the hard work."
MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE IN ENGLISH INSTRUCTION + CALIFORNIA HAS ENGLISH-PROFICIENCY TEST IN THE WORKS FOR LITTLE KIDS
►MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE IN ENGLISH INSTRUCTION : Experts point out that total immersion does not produce the best results
by Rubén Moreno | translated from La Opinión
Friday, December 14, 2007 -- Almost ten years after voters in California passed Proposition 227, experts in education emphasize that the formula of learning all the subjects only in English does not produce the results expected in the schools. This is especially true for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), which contains a high percentage of students classified as English learners.
“The data tell us that the way in which it has affected students hasn’t been the best. Before, only 29% of students were in bilingual programs,” said Patricia Gándara, co-director of the Civil Rights Project of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), to La Opinión, after participating in a panel during a summit that the school district is holding until today about English and academic performance.
Currently, more than 250,000 high school students in California are English learners, and 83% of them speak Spanish as their first language. In LAUSD, 38% of the students are still acquiring the language and another 20% speak nonacademic English.
“The difference between {sic} standard English is that students only speak one language where the vocabulary is in English, but that is a combination that has received the influence of other languages, whereas English learners speak it as a second language,” explained Norma LeMoine, the director of the division in charge of closing the academic gap in LAUSD. {Translator’s note: This paragraph is not clear in the original Spanish.}
According to LeMoine, using the example of an immigrant student who has arrived recently without any knowledge of English, “it takes that student two years to acquire the ability to communicate, but it takes him from five to seven years to learn the language proficiently.”
“It would be an advantage for students to be in a bilingual class. For them it would be easier to learn English, but we are also stealing their language from them when we know that all people have an incredible capacity to develop several languages, even three or four at the same time,” added Gándara. “We are stepping on the richness this country has by impeding the growth of Spanish.”
Proposition 227 has required for a decade that instruction in California classrooms be completely in English and, in the case of those who don’t understand the language at all, that the immersion period not exceed a year, during which they must acquire the language. Only in those cases is instruction in the native language allowed in order for the students to have education exclusively in English a year later.
“What is lacking is an appropriate policy for learning English on the part of the state, which limits the materials and methods we can use to teach academic English in the schools,” said Mónica García, president of the LAUSD school board. “As a district we haven’t exerted pressure, but there has to be more awareness on the state level and greater outreach to experts so that they can inform us.”
The same as many analysts, García agreed that there is also a “lack of trained teachers” who are aware of the type of students they have to teach.
“The teachers don’t have an understanding that the students are native. This problem has historical roots,” said María Brenes, executive director of La Lucha del Pueblo, when she referred to the fact that the English the students speak is influenced by many cultures, which means that the children make errors in grammar and syntax.
Another of the arguments expounded during yesterday’s sessions has to do with the fact that children who come from low-income families or families where their parents don’t speak English also take longer to feel confident in the language, although the root of the situation is much larger than a simple racial matter.
“Many people say that it is a cultural problem, but that is only one part. White students and those who are better off economically are also behind the statistics about other states,” said Jeanne Oakes, a professor at the Institute for Democracy, Access and Education at UCLA.
The summit, in which more than 200 local and national experts are participating, ends today and it will help LAUSD to assess the scholastic needs in order to improve the performance of the students who are learning English and are still not proficient, in a school district where 93 different languages are spoken.
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►CALIFORNIA HAS ENGLISH-PROFICIENCY TEST IN THE WORKS FOR LITTLE KIDS
from the EdWeek blog | Mary Ann Zehr is an assistant editor at Education Week
December 20, 2007 - California will be the last state to fully comply with requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act that a state's English-language learners must be tested in English proficiency each year in grades K-12.
I reported recently that all states and the District of Columbia had cleared an initial hurdle in putting such tests in place. (A blog entry on the same subject is here.) But my article didn't mention one nuance.
California is still lacking one small piece of the English-language-proficiency testing system required by the federal government. The state is testing English-learners in kindergarten and 1st grade only in speaking and listening and not also in reading and writing, as required.
But Deb Sigman, the director of standards and assessment for the California Department of Education, told me in a telephone interview this week that the California legislature decided in August to allocate $1.4 million for the creation of a literacy test for ELLs in kindergarten and first grade. Field testing is expected to begin in 2008, and full implementation is scheduled for the 2009-10 school year. Ms. Sigman said the test will likely be administered individually and be given to about 416,000 ELLs.
California will be the last state to comply with the English-language-proficiency testing requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act, noted Millicent Bentley-Memon, a senior education program specialist for the office of English-language acquisition of the U.S. Department of Education, in an e-mail message to me. She said all other states are testing ELLs in grades K-12 in reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
Ms. Sigman pointed out that children entering kindergarten aren't exactly expected to "read."
"There's some language [in the legislation authorizing the test] about making sure it is developmentally and age-appropriate," she said. "There's an attempt to keep the testing time down."
AUDIT THROWS BOOK AT AREA SCHOOLS
By Paul Clinton, Staff Writer | Daily Breeze
December 23, 2007 -- Inspections required by state law found textbook shortages, deteriorating campuses and underqualified teachers at eight local campuses in Los Angeles Unified and Centinela Valley school districts.
County auditors singled out Hawthorne High School's campus for special scorn, detailing the dirty fountains, rotting wood, leaky roof, exposed wiring and pervasive bird droppings in a 24-page memo released last week.
Many of the restrooms were locked when the campus was inspected at a time when students were attending classes, records show.
A second Centinela Valley Union High School District campus, Leuzinger High in Lawndale, also was listed in poor condition because of broken and cracked windows, doors and locks that don't operate properly, trash stored in heating vents and one classroom with a wobbly wall.
President-elect Gloria Ramos said the newly constituted board will walk each of the three high schools during the holiday break.
"There's definitely some investigation we need to do," Ramos said. "Every single member is interested in getting the sites up to par."
The Los Angeles County Office of Education is required to audit the schools under state laws known collectively as the Williams legislation.
The laws stem from a class-action lawsuit filed in 2000 claiming the state's poorest children are being denied equal educational opportunities.
Under the laws, districts must provide schools that are clean, safe and functional, instructional materials that can be used outside of the classroom, and teachers with proper certification in classrooms with at least 20 percent of pupils learning English as a second language.
In the county, 594 schools in 38 districts were inspected.
The inspections were completed during the 2006-07 year.
In addition to the two Centinela Valley schools, three LAUSD schools - Banning High in Wilmington, Westchester High and Meyler Street Elementary near Torrance - were in poor condition.
Pervasive graffiti, mold in bungalow classrooms and dirty floors were found at Banning, according to a report.
At Westchester High, inspectors identified condemned bleachers (with rotting wood) and cement walkways broken up by tree roots.
Meyler Street was credited as a clean campus, but dinged for dry rot, peeling paint and blocked emergency exits in classrooms.
Repairing LAUSD's aging campuses has been a continuous process, said Kevin Reed, the district's general counsel.
"Folks in operations will respond immediately to get those conditions fixed," Reed said.
County education officials identified Gardena High School as one of five that hadn't supplied enough textbooks to its students by the eight-week mark in the 2006-07 school year.
Audits of teachers certified to provide instruction to English language learners found five schools with less than 80 percent compliance.
Of the teachers with at least 20percent of English language learners in their classrooms, Narbonne High in Harbor City and Carson High had 71 percent and 79percent of those teachers authorized.
Many of the teachers at those schools who haven't earned the credential are veterans, Reed and other officials said. LAUSD requires teachers entering the district to possess the credential.
"We continually push it with the teachers," Carson High Principal Ken Keener said. "When the more veteran teachers got their credential, this was not even a consideration. So they have to go back and get the credential."
Fewer than 2,500 of the district's 32,000 classroom teachers still haven't earned the credential, said Deborah Ignagni, administrator of certificated employment.
Centinela Valley fared worse, the data shows.
Hawthorne High, Lawndale High and Leuzinger High had 74percent, 62 percent and 79 percent, respectively.
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THE WILLIAMS REPORT: THUMBNAIL OF LAUSD SCHOOLS
THE FACTS:
1. All schools are subject to the Williams requirements.
2. County Offices of Education only inspect schools in the lower ⅓ of base API.
3. All other schools are still required to comply - There are no exceptions.
(smf notes: There is disbelief within portions of the parent community as to the efficacy of the LACOE inspections process and therefore of the authenticity of these results.)
The Los Angeles Unified School District operates a total of 575 schools 294 (51 percent) of which are considered low-performing and subject to county superintendent review under the Williams legislation. With the support and cooperation of school district staff, LACOE visited and monitored all 294 schools in 2006-07.
►FACILITIES: LACOE inspected schools to determine if facilities are clean, safe, and functional. Of the 294 of LAUSD schools inspected, LACOE found:
• 151 schools in “good” condition
• 119 schools in “fair” condition
• 24 schools in “poor” condition
►TEXTBOOK SUFFICIENCY: LACOE visited schools to determine whether each pupil, including English Learners, has a standards-aligned textbook or instructional materials, or both, to use in class and to take home. In some cases, schools were surveyed prior to the actual visits through the use of a teacher questionnaire.
• Of the 294 schools visited, 35 were found to have instructional materials insufficiencies.
• Of the 35 schools with insufficiencies, 1 did not resolve them within the eight-week period. As authorized by law, the county superintendent requested that the California Department of Education, with approval from the State Board of Education, purchase the necessary textbooks on behalf of the district. The district resolved the insufficiencies prior to any action taken by CDE.
►TEACHER ASSIGNMENT: LACOE monitored the 294 schools to determine if teachers have proper assignments and certifications, focusing on those in classrooms with 20 percent or more English Learners. LACOE found:
• 36,202 classes had 20 percent or more English Learners
• 4,054 of these classes had teachers who lacked proper authorization to instruct ELs
SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY REPORT CARD : California public schools are required to prepare annual School Accountability Report Cards (SARCs), which provide important information about each school and communicate a school’s progress in achieving its goals. As required by the Williams legislation, LACOE reviewed 294 schools’ SARCs to verify whether Los Angeles Unified SD provided accurate data relevant to facilities maintenance and textbook sufficiency in their SARCs
published in 2006-07. All SARCs reviewed were verified to be accurate in terms of textbook sufficiency data reported, HOWEVER, the SARCs could not be verified on facilities maintenance reporting because the data provided did not come from LACOE’s evaluation instrument.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest of the Stories from Other Sources
PAY 2 PLAY + SDUSD GETS AN ADMIRAL OF THEIR OWN — A valley sports league protests LAUSD's misbegotten policy to charge for after school playground use by kids and San Diego gets an retired navy flag officer to head their schools too.
The Daily News says that LAUSD AND CITY MUST WORK TO MAKE BETTER USE OF SCHOOLS
LAUSD TOLLS MIGHT SURPASS $210 MILLION: New payroll system continues to drain the District.
LAUSD TRIES TO STEM THE OUTFLOW - An effort to bring neighborhood children back to neighborhood schools.
Obituary: MARNESBA TACKETT: A LONG LIFE WELL LIVED IN PURSUIT OF LA EQUALITY: As chair of the Los Angeles NAACP’s Education Committee, Tackett raised money to pay for the Supreme Court briefs submitted by Thurgood Marshall in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan. case that desegregated the nation’s schools in 1954.
That done, she turned her attention to the Los Angeles Unified School District, which she found was just as discriminatory as the district in Topeka.. She had textbooks with stereotypical presentations of blacks removed from the classrooms and she filed and won a lawsuit, Crawford vs. LAUSD, to make the Jordan High School facility and environment more conducive to the educational process.
SCHOOLING ANTONIO: The mayor learns to settle for less. than a total takeover of L.A. Unified - or - MAYOR V DISSES ROMER. While the mayor touts his takeover of the cluster of schools as an issue of accountability, some parents have expressed skepticism about the plan, calling it little more than a political ploy and worrying that students under the plan will suffer if the mayor loses reelection in 2009 or runs for governor in 2010.
States' Evidence: WHAT IT MEANS TO MAKE 'ADEQUATE YEARLY PROGRESS - or - "GAMING NCLB" - Avoiding becoming a Program Improvement school, district or state - through legislation rather than education - and without risking losing the federal funds!
EVENTS: Coming up...
▲LACMA: FREE YOUTH MEMBERSHIP
The NextGen program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is great! When kids 17 or younger sign up for a free membership, any adult who accompanies them to LACMA is admitted free and is entitled to members benefits and discounts. Foe more info: http://www.lacma.org/programs/NextGenKids.aspx
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▲EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOP OFFERED IN CONJUNCTION WITH 3RD ANNUAL LUMMIS DAY: THE FESTIVAL OF NORTHEAST L..A.
An educational workshop for teachers encompassing the history, geography and culture of Northeast Los Angeles will be presented in conjunction with the third annual "Lummis Day: The Festival of Northeast Los Angeles" on two consecutive Saturdays in February, (2/2 and 2/9).
Titled “A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT: CHARLES LUMMIS AND THE CULTURE OF THE ARROYO SECO,” the workshop will be presented as an LAUSD-approved one-point credit class and the curriculum will include seminars and presentations by poets, authors, naturalists, a Native American storyteller, and historians. A broad cross-section of Arroyo locations will serve as classrooms for the program, which will include docent tours of the area’s museums, field studies and nature walks through urban wilderness areas.
Carmela Gomes, a retired LAUSD teacher who serves as Educational Director for the Lummis Day Community Foundation, has designed the 15-hour course in cooperation with the Los Angeles Unified School District and will lead eight additional presenters representing a broad cross section of disciplines and interests for this uniquely multi-disciplinary curriculum. The course is aimed at allowing teachers to impart a sense of “place,” community pride and unity among Los Angeles students.
For further information call or email Carmela Gomes at 323-257-1900 or carmela.gomes@lausd.net.
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• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-893-6800
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Yolie.Flores.Aguilar@lausd.net • 213-241-6383
Marlene.Canter@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Julie.Korenstein@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress, senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Schwarzenegger: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• Register.
• Vote.
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