Archive for January, 2009
An Idea that Rocks! (groan)
By upton | Friday, January 30th, 2009
My sixth-grade teacher had this cool little presentation at the end of the year where she painted a rock for each of her students. She put a word, just one word, to describe us on each rock. It was obvious that she had put a lot of time and artistry into these, and it made me feel important that she would take her time to do this for us. The word she chose for me was ‘initiative.’ I had never thought of myself as someone with lots of initiative. I have no idea why she chose this for me. But since, I have found lots of ways that I take initiative, and have had to take initiative to get things I want (a better roommate, online classes, a different apartment). She probably doesn’t know I still have that rock. I should tell her if I see her at the library.
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
On the White House Agenda: Service Learning
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | Thursday, January 29th, 2009
It seems like everybody is talking about the White House website lately. In fact, it was mentioned in three different meetings I attended yesterday. So, I decided to check it out for myself – with an eye to finding information relevant to Making Connections.
Not surprisingly, I clicked on the Education tab on the Agenda first. This was the first thing I read:
Address the Dropout Crisis:
Obama and Biden will address the dropout crisis by passing legislation to provide funding to school districts to invest in intervention strategies in middle school — strategies such as personal academic plans, teaching teams, parent involvement, mentoring, intensive reading and math instruction, and extended learning time.
This is good news, but there is a lot more on the site, and the message is strong. Take the time to visit the site yourself, and focus on the topics that are meaningful to you. What grabs my attention, what I seem to hear the most talk about, and what has filled me with the most hope for this new time defined by this new administration, is the message of civic engagement, aka Service.
The website encourages us to:
Enable All Americans to Serve to Meet the Nation’s Challenges
Integrate Service into Learning
- Expand Service-Learning in Our Nation’s Schools: Set a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year. Develop national guidelines for service learning and give schools better tools both to develop programs and to document student experience.
- Expand Youth Programs: Create an energy-focused youth jobs program to provide disadvantaged youth with service opportunities weatherizing buildings and getting practical experience in fast-growing career fields. Expand the YouthBuild program to give 50,000 disadvantaged young people the chance to complete their high school education, learn valuable skills and build affordable housing in their communities.
- Require 100 Hours of Service in College: Establish a new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth $4,000 a year in exchange for 100 hours of public service a year.
- Promote College Serve-Study: Ensure that at least 25 percent of College Work-Study funds are used to support public service opportunities instead of jobs in dining halls and libraries.
I have written often on this blog about the positive impact that happens when kids at risk have the chance to help others. President Obama’s call to service therefore, is an opportunity, not only to encourage more mentors and volunteers to work with kids, but a chance for mentoring pairs, after-schools programs, buddy programs, etc., to go out together and find ways to do something for someone else.
As we have seen over and over in the research in this course and in stories on this blog, volunteering and learning through service to others offers often unexpected benefits. These include (but are definitely not limited to) self-discovery, increased confidence, a sense of purpose, satisfaction, new perspectives, and many chances to see the world beyond our own neighborhoods (and our own place within it.) Service opens the door to new experiences, new friendships, and even, new careers. When people learn and serve together, they create new ways to connect to each other as well.
And, as I always like to say, when we work together to help others, everybody benefits.
Topics: Community Service, Quality Time | No Comments »
What does a successful student look like?
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
A student taking this course for credit posted an interesting list of characteristics of a successful adult student. You can find the list on the DePaul Training Centers website
I think many of the points on this list are equally characteristic of successful young students, and, when missing, offer warning signs that might alert you that a student is at-risk of dropping out. My student points out that a key warning sign is the lack of desire to engage in the activities and interactions taking place in the classroom or program.
She says that “when a student begins to move away from the characteristics on the list, I am aware they are at risk.”
THE LIST for Successful Adult Learners
The following is a list of some characteristics of successful students. Characteristics of a successful student transfer into positive work place behaviors. This list is a description of what a hard-working student does and what a teacher likes to see. By learning these characteristics, you may better understand the day-to-day and class-to-class behavior of successful students. The idea is to provide you with guidelines you can follow which will help you get down to the business of becoming a serious, successful student and future office professional.
· Successful students attend class regularly and on time.
· Successful students have the ability to work independently and monitor his/her own progress.
· Successful students listen and train themselves to pay attention.
· Successful students take responsibility for themselves and their actions.
· Successful students turn in assignments that look neat and sharp. They take the time to produce a final product that looks good, and reflects care and pride in their work.
· Successful students demonstrate that they care about their grades and are willing to work to improve them
· Successful students demonstrate a willingness to receive instruction/direction from an Instructor and follow through with the presented expectations.
· Successful students ask appropriate questions and are active participants in their learning.
· Successful students pay attention in class and are courteous and polite.
· Successful students have the ability to apply reading strategies to extract important information from text and apply this information to their work. Our classroom textbooks are written at approximately a 9th grade reading level.
· Successful students have the ability to apply upper elementary level English skills to writing assignments.
QUESTION: What do you consider the characteristics of a successful student?
High school
Middle school
Elementary
Please post your thoughts and ideas to this blog.
Topics: Creating a Positive, Kids at Risk, Questions | No Comments »
How to Reach Out to Kids from Military Families
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
Thank you to Rosanne Parry, author of the wonderful book, Heart of a Shepherd, for this article. Her ideas are a perfect way to start off our new administration - simple ways that we can be of help to those who are in service to our country.
Heart of a Shepherd will be available in bookstores everywhere on January 27th in hard cover, audio book, downloadable audio, and ebook formats.
“As the spouse of a Desert Storm veteran and a one-time teacher in a military accommodation school I have been concerned about the isolation of military families from mainstream society. Most people, although they support the troops, have no idea what a deployment costs a family on the level every day’s quiet needs. It is one reason why I chose a reservist’s family with a deployed parent for my first novel, Heart of a Shepherd. My story is set on a ranch in eastern Oregon and covers one boy’s journey of his father’s deployment. I hope it offers an honest look at what it means to send someone you love to a war. And I hope, as teachers (and mentors), we can find a way to creatively shepherd the children of soldiers through their parent’s deployments and beyond.” Rosanne Parry
To learn more about Rosanne, and her books, visit her website
________________________________________________________________________
This December saw the return of one of the largest deployments of Oregon soldiers we have seen in the last six years of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Military families have seen unprecedented stresses and one of the things that has made the last six years unique is that we have deployed reservists more than ever before and deployed them multiple times. The children of these reservists are not in military accommodation schools on army bases surrounded by a cohort of classmates who are in the same boat. Reservists’ children are in your schools, sometimes the only child in their class with a soldier parent.
Fortunately, there are many things a teacher or mentor can do to support a student during a parent’s deployment. Just the daily structure of the school day and the consistency of working with the same teacher (mentor or even friend) is helpful. Here are some more ideas for helping a child cope with a military deployment.
- Acknowledge the soldier’s absence and encourage communication. A simple note or email to the family as soon as you learn of a deployment expressing your support and willingness to help sets you up for success over the coming months.
- Be patient with a student’s mood swings. It is extraordinarily stressful to have a parent in combat, and some children feel ambushed by sad and angry feelings that crop up with little warning. Establish ahead of time a secret sign and a place your student can go if he or she needs to scream, cry, tear up all the newspapers in the recycling bin, or just sit quietly and collect their thoughts.
- Be sensitive about news coverage. Some families stop reading and watching the news altogether because it is too upsetting. If current events are a part of the curriculum, consider alternate assignments.
- Display the flag respectfully in your classroom. It’s a small gesture that means a lot to military families.
- Avoid harshly partisan political discussions if you can. Although they are among the strongest supporters of free speech, many military families avoid expressing their political views while their loved ones are serving in a war zone. Political conversations can be quite painful.
- Watch for economic distress. There are many unanticipated expenses which go along with deployment: unexpected travel, phone bills, medical bills, and the loss of a reservist’s income. Discretely help the family take advantage of food stamps, WIC, reduced lunch, scholarships and clothes closets.
- Adjust the homework load. This student will have many extra chores and less oversight from the remaining parent, so consider shortening the homework, offering tutoring and time to complete work at school or adjusting due dates.
- Communicate good news with the deployed parent. Take pictures at school when the student is in the play or spelling bee or science fair. Email a copy of an outstanding essay, a high scoring math test or a work of art. Describe in loving detail a smart, kind or funny thing this student did at school. It means the world to a soldier far from home.
- Honor holidays, especially Veterans’ Day and Memorial Day. Invite a veteran from a local veterans organization to address you class. Remind the class why we celebrate these holidays.
- Pray. Most military families are people of faith. If you are too, tell you students that you are praying every day for their soldier’s safe return.
One More Idea: Children can be very kind and compassionate, especially if they have a little encouragement. On the kids page of my website there are some ideas for what a child can do to support a friend with a deployed parent.
Topics: Creating a Positive, How to Help, Relationship Strategy | No Comments »
A good resource that you can lose yourself in
By upton | Thursday, January 15th, 2009
http://blog.oregonlive.com/schoolsguide/
is a site that provides plenty of information on all Oregon schools. I found it while researching the dropout rate of various schools. You can compare schools and districts in lots of different areas.
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Oregon Campus Compact: Capture the Impact: Alternative Break and Service Day Photo/Video Contest!
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
I recently posted information about the upcoming Weekend of Service in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. (Be the Change: Sign up to Volunteer Soon)
Now, Capture the Impact: Alternative Break and Service Day Photo/Video Contest! offers another way that teachers and mentors (anyone taking the Making Connections class) can make the most of the weekend. Oregon Campus Compact, “a statewide membership organization connecting community engaged colleges and universities with resources, convening the state for collaborative work and advocating for the civic mission of higher education,” is sponsoring a photo/video contest. The contest is a perfect opportunity to creatively answer the question: What does Community Service and Engagement look like?
By recording what they see and experience in their community, mentors and teachers can spend quality time with kids, get involved in and more familiar with their community, provide some service, encourage creative thinking, and share what they learn. What a great way to add even more to a day of service
For more information and a contest application, click here
To increase your chances of winning 
here are Ten Tips for Better Photographs (courtesy of John Waller and the Photo of the Year Contest)
1. Be in the right place at the right time. Get out there, look around, and take your camera. It’s tough to take great photographs if even one of those actions is missing.
2. Take lots of pictures. Digital photography has opened up a world of possibility to the amateur photographer because now you can instantly review your pictures. Adjust your settings, try different angles, or capture the action at different moments. The more photographs you take, the more likely you are to get a great shot. But remember what worked and what didn’t and apply this new understanding when you take the next picture.
3. Watch the sun. The best times to take pictures are usually early in the morning and early evening; the worst time is generally midday, when light it most harsh.
4. Flash away. Just because you are outdoors doesn’t mean you should put away your flash. Subjects in shadow can appear much too dark when compared to a bright sunny backdrop. When using your flash outdoors, the camera exposes the background first, and then adds in the flash to illuminate your subject.
5. Get close up. Investigate the world around you in finer detail and you will discover a wealth of photo opportunities right at your feet. Most cameras have a macro mode that make getting those close up shots of insects and flowers a snap. Or when you are shooting action, zoom in so we can see the beads of sweat on an athlete’s or worker’s forehead.
6. Anticipate what is going to happen. To take a great outdoor action shot, you need to prepare for it in advance. What might happen, what would be the best angle, and are your settings appropriate? Then when your buddy cuts a sweet turn on their skies down the mountain, or a laughing kid comes zooming by on a swing, you’ll be there to take the picture.
7. Use a tripod for low light. Those sweet sunsets, or moonrises, or starry night shots can be really sweet pictures if they are sharp and crisp. But a tripod is necessary because even the slightest shiver or tremble from a hand-held camera can cause the scene to blur.
8. The rule of thirds. This time tested rule tells us that we should not put the horizon line in the middle of the shot, but rather drop it to the bottom third or the top third depending on what meaning you want to convey. A low horizon conveys a sense of open, vast airiness, and a high horizon instills a sense that the land is the dominant force. The same is true for framing people.
9. Get a sense of perspective. Sometimes having a person in your scenic and street pictures really impresses how big those trucks or buildings, mountains, cliff, waterfall, or landscape really is.
10. Get creative. There are a lot of predictable photographs out there. The unconventional photographs really grab people’s attention.
Play around with angles and settings and HAVE FUN!
Topics: Community Service, How To's, Quality Time | No Comments »
District Drop Rates
By rpilk | Sunday, January 11th, 2009
To my suprise there was very little information out there about drop out rates for elementary through middle school aged kids. I tried looking at PPS School District and also Gresham/ Barlow School Districts web pages online and found only statistics about high school drop rates. There has got to be something on this?
Topics: Drop Out Rate | 2 Comments »
The New Year is a perfect time for thinking about the dropout rate
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | Friday, January 9th, 2009
It’s a new year, the beginning of a new term for the Making Connection course, and the time that Sam Adams takes on his job as Portland’s new mayor. This should be good news for Portland kids, because on of Mayor Adams’ top priorities is to reduce the high school dropout rate.
In fact, his campaign promise is to “cut the dropout rate in half.” Of course there is a lot of discussion about just what that rate really is, but according to Portland School Foundation study that he quoted, “43% of Portland Public Schools’ eighth-graders don’t graduate on schedule.”
The new mayor does have some good ideas about how to make a difference. In a recent Oregonian column about this, Anna Griffin described Adams’ ideas. These include encouraging city planners to use land-use laws and tax incentives to help working-class students and their parents find affordable homes, “rather than having to hop from one school to another.”
This makes sense based on statistics that show that changing schools one or more times raises the risk that a kid will drop out. So does his other suggestion that “businesses that offer internship programs and hire local graduates can get first crack at city contracts. (Adams is already talking about a summer internship program that will put incoming ninth-graders in the business world, to show them what life with a diploma can be.)” I am totally in favor of that too.
Griffin’s article, and so many others in the news these days, focuses on the financial obstacles that stand in the way of any changes to the schools. But her article, and I assume the new mayor, has overlooked the small ray of reasonably good news that is at the heart of the Making Connections project. While all of the new mayor’s ideas are good and important, they will require work, time, planning, dollars and infrastructure.
Yet they overlook an idea that can make a difference right now - this course offers something teachers, mentors, and parents (in fact anyone who work with kids) a simple and inexpensive way to learn the importance of, and skills for building and maintaining strong relationships with kids. We KNOW that connecting with kids, their families and the community can reduce the dropout rate - and it can happen without setting up new programs or tax incentives.
Mr. Mayor, welcome to your new job, and consider yourself invited to get to know more about this project. We’d like to Make Connections with you.
Topics: Drop Out Rate | 1 Comment »
Many Hands Make Light Work
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
When I was in the fourth grade (in the Bronx), our class got a ‘special’ assignment. We were to make stuffed felt toys to give to ‘sick kids.’ I remember choosing the royal blue pony shape that had been pre-cut by adult hands, the colored yarn to work with, and needles for stitching. I remember being taught to create an edge stitch, and how to stuff and turn and finish. I embroidered eyes, added a mane and tail from yarn, and for the first time, allowed my creativity to take over. What I remember most of all, is that my pony turned out beautiful, to my nine year old eyes, a work of art.
The pony was a gift I was proud to give. I imagined the delight of the anonymous sick child, I imagined a girl, when she received this little stuffed toy. I have no idea if anyone else saw what I saw in my pony, but that project turned out to be a great gift to me. My previously unknown ability to turn felt and yarn into something beautiful opened the door to a sense of confidence in myself, and became the gateway to a lifetime passion for crafts, and the arts. For many years, I earned my living with the skills I discovered at that time.
Now, members of the Portland community have lots of opportunities to turn their skills and talents into gifts for others too, and of course, in the process, learn new things about themselves and their abilities. Every week now, on page two of the main section of the Oregonian, a feature called Your Source| 5 ways to plug into your community, has been added. Each week, this column presents 5 things that you (and the kids you work with as teachers, mentors and parents) can do to benefit the community.
This week the suggestions include something for everyone. Here are a few examples:
Knit for Newborns (for details go to www.handsonportland.org or www.virginiagarcia.org
Find out about college financial aid www.collegedgoaloregon.org and
Adopt the Community Warehouse for a week – www.communitywarehouse.org for more information.
Do you have an organization that can use help? Please feel free to post a request on this blog.
Topics: Community Service, How to Help | 1 Comment »