Time in the Classroom

I like this article on core curriculum because I don’t quite understand why
there is so much time wasted on non essential education and so little time
afforded to the important subjects. We are so busy teaching children how to be
social, we forget that they don’t know where their state is in comparison to
five others, or that events occurred before they were born.

As for teacher planning, what happened to homework? If kids have to
spend hours and hours doing rote homework, why shouldn’t teachers have to spend
time planning?

If more independent study could replace homework, and more
teachers were willing to read kid’s work, the education result would be
outstanding. Judy

Our View: Don't shortchange students on school days

2005-08-16

If you're under 18 and go to public school, you're in luck: Many of you will spend fewer days in school this year. (State of Washington)

The state Board of Education has waived the 180-day requirement for 70 school districts -- including Northshore, Federal Way, Seattle and Tacoma. Students will spend from one to five fewer days in class in those districts and teachers will receive more planning time.

``As long as students learn what they're supposed to, it doesn't matter if they did it in 175 days as opposed to 180,'' rationalizes Larry Davis, state board executive director.

Sorry, Larry, but it does matter. U.S. students slip lower every year in the worldwide academic race as other countries accelerate their education programs.

According to William L. Bainbridge, University of Dayton professor and president of an education research firm, here's how we stack up during the final four years of secondary school,
* U.S. students spend an average of 1,462 hours on core subjects -- math, science, language and social studies.

* Japanese students spend 3,190 hours on core subjects.

* French students spend 3,285 hours on core subjects.

* German students spend 3,628 hours on core subjects.

It shouldn't be a battle between classroom time and teacher planning time. ``The waiver days have not hurt education; if anything, they have helped,'' argues Pat Eirish, state Board of Education research and assistance program manager.

Our state Constitution says education is the paramount duty of the state. Let's live up to that and give our children more time in class, not less, to succeed.

If that includes giving teachers more time to plan, then it's up to the Legislature to provide school districts with the money for that as well.

Jewish Preschools

Like their young students, Jewish preschools growing rapidly in Boston

Currently, there are 37 Jewish preschools in the region, with just over 2,000 children enrolled in them. Some are small, serving 20 or 30 families. Some, such as New England Hebrew Academy in Brookline, educate more than 100 children. Then there are the Jewish Community Center Preschools, which enroll more than 600 children at their six sites.

Jewish preschools are alive, well and a force to be reckoned with," said Lisa Kritz, director of the Erna and Julius Hertz Nursery School at Temple Israel of Sharon.Enrollment at the Jewish preschools has shown some fluctuation in recent years with shifts in demographics and the economy. But the interest in early childhood education seems not to have waned.

The JCC Preschools recently commissioned a study that found "young Jewish families are leaving areas such as Brookline and Brighton and moving north and southwest to areas where they can afford homes," said study director Sherry Grossman.

Enrollment figures also correlate with the number of early Jewish education options available in a particular community. "It depends on how many Jewish preschools there are in the area," she said. "Also … young families who are moving further out are not interested in a long commute for preschool."

The city of Cambridge has added a preschool year to its public school, affecting enrollment at Alef-Bet Preschool, director Judi Zalles told the Advocate. "Some families just can’t afford to send [a child] to a Jewish preschool if the public school has a free program," she noted.

Most Jewish preschools appear to be keeping their enrollments up, but, as one school director conceded, "we have to work at it."

"Here at Temple Israel," Kritz said, "we are starting a new Shabbat morning program for parents of toddlers. We need to work with the congregations and tap into where young families are and make them aware of our programs."

Administrators at Jewish preschools also report that they are serving an increasingly diverse group of families. At the JCCs, 80-85 percent of the children "have at least one Jewish parent," Grossman said. "We …are careful to make our programs welcoming to families from all across the board."

Among the 39 families whose children attend Alef-Bet, Zalles said, "we have some that are Orthodox and a few that are not Jewish." People who are not Jewish enroll their children in the program "because we are careful to make them welcome," Zalles said, "and they have an appreciation for the reverence for family life, community celebration, values and ethics we share."

Often Jewish parents themselves have little knowledge about Judaism and, as Zalles suggested, may use the preschool as an entry point into the community. "Many families come here as a doorway for them to Jewish life," she said. "They would like community support in raising a Jewish child."Similarly, a Newton nursery school administrator sees preschools providing a foundation on which to build a broader Jewish community.

"The community has begun to see preschools as a first step in the Jewish education ladder," said Janet Perlin, nursery school director at Temple Shalom of Newton. "We have created a real Jewish environment for the community. Now, how do we help these parents continue their and their child’s Jewish education? We don’t want them to say, ‘That was a lovely experience,’ and drop it because they can’t sustain it on their own."

Zalles finds that the most effective way to help the parents is to offer a preschool program in which "there is a vibrancy and celebration of life."Orthodox schools, too, are seeing a variety in the backgrounds and goals of their students’ families.

"Still, there is no question," said Esther Ciment, early childhood program director at New England Hebrew Academy, "that parents who send their children here want a strong basic Jewish education. They are happy that we are inspiring their children with a love for Jewish tradition. We hope it will rub off on the parents, too."Families who choose her program, Ciment finds, are particularly interested in the strong framework of values and ethics she tries to communicate to the academy’s students.

"When children learn these things so early," she said, "there is a good chance that they will end up holding onto them throughout their school career."

The issue of children with special needs is an important one for Jewish early childhood programs as they strive for inclusion.The JCCs receive support from the Ledgewood Special Needs Program, which provides early identification and intervention for children ages 3-5. Researcher Sherry Grossman credited this on-site support for what she said has been "a rise in the number of children with special needs."We serve our children, including children with special needs, up to 50 hours a week," Grossman said, "so we have an interdisciplinary team of specialists available to work with families."

Other schools without those resources say they are making sure that their professionals have the skills to handle special needs issues effectively. "We want to include children with special needs, but we need to make sure our teachers receive the professional development to do that," Ciment said.

Ina Regosin, dean of students at Hebrew College in Newton and director of the college’s Early Childhood Institute, reports that there has been increasing interest in the college’s certificates in early childhood Jewish education and in early childhood Jewish education leadership.

"Preschools need to have educated professionals," she said. "This is part of a national push as well."

That interest apparently includes non-Jewish professionals, too. "We have had non-Jewish teachers participate in our certificate programs," Regosin said. "They have committed to teaching at a Jewish school and want to do it well."Or, as Grossman put it, from the perspective of parents, "People are looking for quality first."

Things to Think About

I'm publishing this that I got from a good friend. It's well worth reading especially now that there has been such a huge disaster down south. Read this in case. God forbid it should happen to you.

Insurance Claims and Disasters

by Mary Biever

First comes shock. You've lost your home, don't know where you're going to live, and may be walking around in borrowed clothes or donated shoes. It does get better. Four years ago, our home burned, and the following are things I learned which might help.

Safety first. Loved ones matter more than things. Don't risk yourself for any belonging. Make sure tetanus shots are updated. If/when you work on your house, wear pants with knees in them. Secure the perimeter. If you can, put temporary patches on holes in roofs or windows. It might help prevent further damage.

Educate yourself.

Do you have replacement insurance coverage or actual insurance coverage?

If you have replacement insurance coverage, how does it work and what must you do

(how are receipts handled, etc.)?

How is your insurance organized?

Ours was divided into 3 categories: temporary housing (save receipts from meals); content replacement; and rebuilding our home.

How much coverage do you have?

If your house is older, do you have code insurance?

In our city, older homes must be rebuilt to current code. Without code insurance, this is out of the homeowner’s pocket. With our company, the actual value of a lost item was calculated with a formula they had which calculated the difference between replacement cost and the age of the item. That ten-year-old couch you had when you first got married isn't worth much.

Simplify your life.

If you have suffered a major loss, you have just inherited an intense, temporary part-time job that will seem to be full time. The better you organize it and the harder you work, the faster and more fully your family will recover from the disaster.

Delegate. Who in your family has which strengths, talents, and time? I get excited at the prospect of putting together a binder, so I inherited the claim. My husband’s stronger at finishing tasks, and his job the last year of the claim was pushing me so I wouldn’t quit, which I wanted to do on several occasions. Teams accomplish more than solo acts.

Organize quickly:

Buy the following first so you can organize better as you go.

You will need to have a portable, packable office:
File bucket (with handle) to be packed with the following:

Top compartment:penspencilspostit notescheap calculatorpaper clipsbinder clipssection or envelope for business cards

Bottom compartment:Baby wipesBand-AidsLatex glovesTrash bagsZiploc bagsMulti-subject notebookAnti-bacterial hand wash which doesn’t need waterPocket foldersCamera with extra film rollsPaper towels

Cooler:Buy water bottles and ready to eat snacks. A large hard cooler can also become a chair.

First, organize the notebook, with a bright, gaudy, easy-to-find cover. I wrote any phone numbers I might need on the back of the notebook. One section of the notebook became to do lists. Another section was for claim items. A third section was for prices for replacement items and rebuilding. A fourth section was to list items dumped during packout (explained below).

As you sign papers and get receipts, you can quickly throw them into the bucket to organize later. Choose a bucket with the brightest, gaudiest lid you can find so you will spot it more quickly.

Fireproof cash box. At the end of each evening working on the claim, I moved receipts/valuable papers from the file box to the cash box.

Photocopier. If you don't have a small one, find the fastest place you can make copies because you'll be busy making lots of them.

Febreze in bulk. If you have a fire, we found generic giant-size bottles of Febreze worked well. We used a lot of it and also dryer sheets in removing odors.

The claim! The claim!If you don't know how to use a computer, now is the time to learn. I used Access and Excel and recreated our insurance company's forms. The following features were the ones I used the most: filters, find, queries, sorts, and reports.

Over two years, my database/spreadsheet probably saved me over 100 hours of time on our content claim. If I hadn't used those programs, we wouldn't have completed our claim so thoroughly and wouldn't have recovered as much of our belongings. Our first claim was 60 pages long. Our insurance company re-entered the claim into their system and resorted all items. If this happens to you, doublecheck items. Our company made minor mistakes on the original claim which, when tallied together, amounted to several hundreds of dollars in our favor.

Itemize, itemize, itemize. Mentally go through every room of your house. I took the notebook with the content subject area and wrote a room at the top of a page. Then I mentally went through that room and listed what was in it. Go through every cabinet, drawer, and closet. Count every extension cord, socket, etc.

What was hiding on the top drawer of the guest closet? If you keep the file box with you, you can note things as you think of them. If you purchase items from a specialty shop, contact them and ask if they still have records of purchases. Stores gave us records of Thomas the Train toy purchases we made for our son along with duplicate receipts of custom framing jobs I had ordered.

In order to receive the difference between actual and replacement value, we had to purchase replacement items and submit receipts. I numbered receipts and kept photocopies in a folder.

Rebuilding. Our home wasn’t completely destroyed. The rebuilding happened in 3 steps.

-Pack out. House contents are sorted between those which are salvageable and those which must be dumped. A clean up crew pulled belongings from the house and told me whether items went in their truck or to the dumpster.

For items to go into the dumpster, I noted them in my notebook section and also took photographs of them in sets, in case I needed more reference later.

For the photos, try to take pictures of brand labels, etc. Be as specific as possible. If a shelf held 10 cups, 8 plates, and 4 bowls, list them exactly like that. Brand names and age will help too.

During this pack out stage, you will probably already have to begin to make purchasing decisions for the rebuilding phase. Four days after our fire, we chose replacement kitchen cabinets because we were told they would take the longest to arrive. As we shopped for items, we deliberately made choices which were not special order.

At the same time, don’t rush too quickly. We lost all of the blinds in our home and happened to still know the people from whom we purchased the house. They confirmed the old blinds were custom made, and as a consequence, we replaced the blinds with new custom treatments.

Get ready to make several choices quickly – in our case, our biggest choices included doors, blinds, paint colors & types, floors, light fixtures, ceiling tiles, faucets, sinks, cabinets, wallpaper, borders, furniture, window treatments, and appliances.-Demolition.

After pack out, areas that must be rebuilt are demolished.

-Rebuilding. The demolished areas are rebuilt. Try to be present as much as possible during this step.

-Return items. Items which were taken out to be cleaned/salvaged were returned. Pay close attention during this step. Some things which may have been taken to be cleaned may not return in the same condition in which they left. My son had 6-month-old bedroom furniture which returned with smoke stains.

We were told if we let the movers carry items into our home, we were accepting their condition. Richard and I both went through all furniture and large items to check them and refused some items. We were luckier than most because we were able to return to our home three months after it burned. Our crew was on the job, almost every single day after the fire. We made it our business to be there, with them, as much as possible. The following are some things that helped us the most.

-Help From Friends. We couldn’t have survived without the help from friends. One friend, an engineer, went through our home after the fire to evaluate the condition of ceilings and walls which our contractor originally said didn’t need to be replaced. The engineer said a bedroom ceiling had been warped with water damage. A brother-in-law who is a gas lineman helped us push for safer replacement gas lines in our home. We argued both items, which were decided in our favor. When they demolished the ceiling of the bedroom in question, they discovered mold growing. We’re more than grateful we pushed for its destruction instead of going with their first opinion.

-Hospitality. We chose to view the fire as an opportunity to welcome workers. Every day we had workers at our home, we provided a cooler of iced water bottles and soft drinks for them to drink. The workers appreciated the gesture. We wanted them to feel welcome and respected in our home. Our hospitality inspired them to work harder and help us find ways to rebuild our home better.

-Witness. I collect crosses and crucifixes that are mounted throughout our home. During the fire, the walls behind those crosses didn’t have smoke stains. For weeks after the fire, every room had at least one light-colored cross on a wall. Almost every worker who came into our home commented at least once that we went to church, and we had some great conversations with them.

-Negotiation. We didn’t rebuild to match exactly what we had had before. Rooms switched purposes, so when we returned we would think of the house as a new beginning. An old storage room was converted into a larger office for Richard. We added extra insulation wherever possible, upgraded light fixtures, and put new ceilings into part of our basement.At the same time, we tried to remodel as simply as possible so we could return home faster. Our insurance company gave us some wiggle room. For example, our upstairs carpet was ruined and removed, and we discovered oak floors beneath them. We negotiated with insurance that instead of their replacing our upstairs flooring, Richard refinished our oak floors himself at our expense, and we purchased flooring for our basement on the insurance claim instead.

-Replace Slowly. If your state insurance laws and insurance company will let you, replace non-essential items slowly. This time, you can buy exactly what you want. We used a card table and then a loaned kitchen table for over a year before we finally found the table we wanted. If the kids had had a preschool card game set, we replaced it with an older grade level set instead.-

What To Do With Kids. Our kids were 5 and 7 when our home burned. We homeschool and had gotten two weeks into our school year when the fire began. Their schoolbooks, my husband’s business, and our clothes are all that we salvaged. The first weeks, when everything was most dangerous, friends kept the kids. After that, we tried to involve them as much as possible. We let both kids make the choices (within reason) for their new bedrooms. They learned several new vocabulary words: receipt, claim, toxic, demolition, and more. For two months, their formal school day began at 6:30 a.m. and ended around 9:00 a.m. so I could go to our home and monitor reconstruction.

The best thing both kids learned from the fire was to work quickly and efficiently. That skill is one they still have, four years later.Don’t Look Back. You will make mistakes, lose things, and forget others. One mistake we made was miscommunicating paint colors. I asked about one color for our upstairs, and Richard thought I only wanted it for our bedroom instead of our entire first floor. He happened to hate that shade of white but thought he could stand it in one room.

Some losses will be harder than others. Richard’s hardest loss was his portfolio. He’s an artist who lost 30 years of artwork. During our pack out, I grew numb and tired one morning and paid little attention to a metal box that was thrown into a dumpster. That night, I realized it was a keepsake box with every memento of a lost baby. Richard offered to dumpster dive until he found it, but I refused. His safety was more important than memories. We had to let the dead bury the dead and move forward. The next morning, as I arrived at the house with our kids, a driver was hauling the loaded dumpster to our landfill.

Have Fun. Some how, some way, find ways to add humor or fun to a difficult process. After that dumpster was removed, another one replaced it. While it was still empty, before our work crew arrived, the kids and I made a target practice game inside the fifteen-foot dumpster. We found some plastic items ready to be tossed. The three of us went into the empty dumpster and threw them – 10 points for the back wall and 5 points for the sides. It helped vent all our frustration and diffuse a rough morning for me.We have a large fenced backyard, and the kids enjoyed playing outside a lot during reconstruction.

Life Continues. It’s four years later now. The closets are full again, and you could never tell there was a fire. The kids rarely speak of the minor disaster that consumed our lives for almost two years. It’s still a watershed, and we measure time in terms of “before the fire” and “after the fire.” We thank God for the many friends who prayed, helped, and carried us through the storm of trouble so we could rebuild our home and begin again.

Mary Bieverwww.marybiever.comworkshops@biever.com

Oldest Person

A woman, listed as the world's oldest person, has died. She was 115.

The director of the home for the elderly where she lived says Hendrikje Van Andel-Schipper died peacefully in her sleep and "was very clear mentally, right up to the end."

The director says that with physical ailments increasing, the woman known as Henny, said "it's been nice, but the man upstairs says it's time to go."

Henny was born in 1890 and celebrated her 115th birthday on June 29th. Her status as "oldest person" was recognized by Guinness Book of Records last year.

She advised others who wanted a long life to "keep breathing" and eat pickled herring, a favorite dutch snack. Her husband died of cancer in 1959.

Guinness spokesman Sam Knights says the oldest authenticated person now is 115-year-old Elizabeth Bolden of Memphis, Tennessee.

Tired of Working for Peanuts

Back in May, attendees of AFT Early Childhood Education Teacher Summit delivered a petition and bag of peanuts to all 535 members of Congress on behalf of thousands of activists across the nation, to send a clear message to elected leaders that early childhood educators are woefully underpaid – in short, that they work for peanuts.

“Members of Congress need to know that early childhood educators shouldn’t have to work for peanuts,” said Monica Tabares, a Head Start teacher from New Jersey attending the summit.

She and her colleagues recently affiliated with the AFT. “Low wages don’t just hurt early childhood educators like me. They hurt parents, children and anyone looking for high-quality early childhood care because very few people can afford to live on our wages.”

Partly as a result of efforts by the AFT and other early childhood education advocates, Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) last week introduced the “Focus on Committed and Underpaid Staff for Children’s Sake (FOCUS) Act” to help raise wages.

If enacted, the bill would create a grant program to help early childhood educators to obtain scholarships, pay increases, and health benefits.

“Low wages, which contribute to high staff turnover rates and deter new people from entering the field, are a roadblock preventing a high-quality early childhood education system from being created in our nation,” said Antonia Cortese, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

“One of the best ways to build and maintain a high-quality program is by attracting and retaining high-quality early childhood educators. This bill does just that.”

To further support these educators, the AFT convened a summit of working activists from around the country to discuss their most pressing concerns and find new ways of addressing them. Attendees discussed potential action plans for activism and advocacy.

“For too long, there has been a mismatch between the low wages and the high level of responsibility and importance of the work that early childhood educators undertake,” said Marci Young, deputy director in the executive vice president’s office.

“By working together, early childhood educators can better help the children they care for by creating new solutions to old problems, such as low wages, poor or nonexistent benefits, and bad working conditions.”

This is a wonderful beginning, a great initiative, but unfortunately
nothing will come of it because the importance of early childhood education is
the last number on the last page. We still don't understand what it is or what
we as a nation are supposed to do about it, and we sure aren't going to pay for
it.

Early childhood education is the holding tank between that cute crawling
infant to a child who can sit still more than five minutes.

Labor Day Blues

RELATIVELY SPEAKING

Plan now to avoid child-care panic

Maybe you know the feeling: It's Thursday evening and you just realized there's no school on Friday. What to do with the kids?

A little planning now could prevent that last-minute panic, says Charlotte Shoup Olsen, family systems specialist with Kansas State University Research and Extension.

Check the school calendar now and make note of holidays, teacher in-service days and other times students will be out of school or dismissed early. Arrange child care now, rather than trying to piece something together the night before.

Neglect

Some children don’t have any idea of what discipline is at all and it’s sad. They have no self control, no self esteem, and no means to get any. Everything is met with an angry, frustrated adult who piles on the negativity. There is no starting place in chaos; it’s just a wind of mess and noise, and the child responds with horrible behavior and tears.

Kids are kids. Sometimes they are going to mind, and sometimes they won’t. The goal is to make minding fun and rewarding so that a child begins to understand that good behavior results in positive goods and services and ultimately ends in that primary goal – a good and fabulous me.

But what’s the point of a “good me” when it’s never noticed, not respected, and growth and development met with the parents’ anger and frustration? “That’s good, Johnny, now shut up, my favorite song is on.” Up goes the CD and the child kicks the back of daddy’s seat, and daddy reaches around and gives the child a good crack. The child kicks over daddy’s coke and spills it on the fancy carpeting, and a curse is let out against the child. The child cries and receives another slap, and so goes the evening.

The saddest part of careless or no interest and no real discipline comes from home. When the focus is on the adult and not the child, when the cost of living is a tidal wave of self indulgence enhancing the adult’s life and not the child’s, when the child takes a back seat to nearly everything, of course the child is going to be lacking in social skills. He is so hungry for positive attention, for love, he will scream out in just about any unformed cry he can think of to cry.

Every year there are always a few children who just break your heart. You know no matter how hard you work and everyone around you works, the ultimate outcome will be a child who is still desperately in need of constant reconstruction simply because the parent continues to entertain himself at the child’s expense. The parent is the primary educator of the child. School is a compliment to a home, not a substitute.

Neglect is the number one child abuse issue.

When parents are the first family to arrive and the last family to pick up a child, and the child is obviously not ready for the day, it shows. Same clothes, no bath, no breakfast, it all shows.

When children come in with smoke-run on their faces – a chronic runny nose brought about by cigarette smoke, it can only mean that an adult’s habit comes before a child’s health.

When the teeth of a child are black with decay, neglect is the cause. A toothbrush costs less than a pack of cigarettes, and helping a child to brush his teeth takes less time than smoking one.

When a child hasn’t learned to eat with a fork, doesn’t know that one sits to eat, can’t manage a cup – even a half cup without spilling it, can’t toilet himself – thinks he can sit on the urinal, wash his hands, can’t understand the simplest request, it’s neglect. It’s a steady diet of French fries from the drive in, men’s rooms on the dash, and a regular audio intake of senseless booming from some quasi-music that hisses out of the radio like a bad dream.

When a child is four and has never worked a puzzle, has never even seen a puzzle, has never even heard of a puzzle, and does his first one, and his little face lights up, and he can’t wait to do another, it’s neglect.

When a child is nearly five and can’t hold a pencil, and doesn’t know what holding a pencil is for, doesn’t know what a letter is or cares, doesn’t know that we count – anything, and doesn’t know that we are not always the first or only, it’s neglect.

When a child can’t play, can’t stack blocks, doesn’t know that one builds a garage, a road, or that a train is supposed to run on tracks, because he had never been introduced to toys, it’s neglect.

Rearing a child is expensive, but it can still sensibly be done on a shoe string. Careful diligent parents can rear children on very little and do it right all the time. Those children who have little, if they have their parents’ love, have more than the affluent child with a house full of things.

But there’s also the child who has nothing and no one to share the nothing with, and for him the hope is that he will find a place who can teach him.

Oregon's Childcare

Oregon Advocates Try to Build Up Early Education

Solid preschool efforts can head off social problems later

TARA M. MANTHEY Statesman Journal

August 28, 2005

One-fifth of Oregon kindergartners entering school next month won't be ready to learn.
They may lack motor or social skills. They may be unhealthy, unable to speak well or won't know how to interact with their teacher.

Whatever their vulnerability, it's likely they'll start behind because they didn't attend a private preschool or qualify for the low-income Head Start program.

Advocates say Oregon, once a leader in pre-kindergarten education, now is falling behind.
Forty other states provide high-quality preschool to more children than Oregon does. Other states are expanding classes to children of all incomes, but Oregon struggles to finance programs designed for the poor.

An estimated 1,200 children living in poverty in Marion County can't get into public preschool because there isn't room. Of all the children eligible, these 57 percent are called "unserved" because there's no money for more classrooms.

It's the highest rate in the state. Polk County, with 53 percent unserved, comes in fourth.
Members of a broad group of political, philanthropic and business leaders hopes to change that. They are developing a campaign that paints pre-K as the best way to fight crime and strengthen Oregon's economy.

The group, Ready for School (members of the group are listed on Page 5A), hopes to persuade a tax-leery state to catch up to the rest of the nation. They'll start presenting nearly two years of research this fall, said Swati Adarkar, the executive director of The Children's Institute, a Portland-based education research nonprofit.

"Given all the resource conversations that are taking place in the state, we are really concerned that early education is being overlooked, and it can make the biggest difference," Adarkar said.

Because 90 percent of brain development occurs by age 6, experts say children who go without early childhood education miss a critical moment in their development, and they may never catch up.

At least three long-range studies have found that children who attended high-quality preschool become more successful adults.

Forty-two years ago, researchers began following a group of 123 low-income black children. They were enrolled the Perry Preschool, an intensive, two-year program.

Today, half of them earn more money and are less likely to use drugs or be arrested than their peers. Researchers have found that governments have saved an estimated $195,621 -- per participant -- in public costs in their lifetime.

The studies have drawn the interest of economists and employment specialists.

· Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis determined that early childhood education programs are a smarter public investment than subsidizing office towers, athletic arenas and entertainment centers.

· A commonly quoted Head Start study says states could save $7 in future social-service and corrections costs for every dollar doled out now for pre-K education.

· The Children's Institute in Portland calculated that four students could attend a public Oregon university -- including tuition, books, room and board -- for the cost of incarcerating one juvenile.

Some states have responded by expanding public preschool to many or all children.

Oklahoma and Georgia already offer universal early childhood education.

Governors in Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, New Mexico and Tennessee all proposed dramatic increases this year.

Illinois increased programs for next year by $30 million. That's on top of $60 million set aside earlier as officials prepare to open the program to every child, according to the national Pre-K Now organization.

Californians are rolling out expanded programs community by community. In Florida, voters mandated universal programs in the last election.

Roy Miller, president of Children's Campaign Inc., coordinated that effort. He said it was successful because high-quality preschool was promoted as the most efficient way to prevent crime.

Even though Florida lawmakers are struggling to finance the mandate, Miller said he would push the unfunded constitutional amendment again because he knew it was the only way to get the program started.

"We can afford to take care of our kids," he said.

Likewise, in New Mexico, Lt. Gov. Diane Denish and early education supporters started slowly, building up support before successfully passing a bill to create a pre-K program. They also settled for less money than hoped in order to start the program, Denish said.

Oregon jumped into early childhood education in the late 1980s. It modeled state classes after the federal Head Start program. At that time, 5 percent of eligible low-income children were served in the Oregon Pre-kindergarten Program.

That level rose to 62 percent in 2001, before the recession forced cuts across state budgets.
Oregon ranks in the bottom 10 states for degree-holding pre-kindergarten teachers. About 37 percent of teachers have at least a bachelor's degree, compared with 73 percent nationally, according to the Yale University Child Study Center.

A dearth of high-quality preschool is limiting the state's economic output, just as insufficient transportation systems or housing markets would, according to a study released this week.

A third of Oregon children are placed in paid child care between birth and age 5, the University of Oregon Extension Office found. Yet, just 3 percent of child-care providers in Oregon meet rigorous national standards for accreditation.

The situation is inhibiting parents' ability to work and limiting the development of young children, the study said.

tmmanthe@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6705

Dallas Has a Great Idea

Pre-K Center Build for Very Young Children

By VERONICA VILLEGAS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

When more than 400 of the littlest pupils in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district arrived at the new Pre-K Center for their first day of school this week, they discovered a facility designed and built just for them.

Large classrooms with big windows, a library with tiny tables and chairs, a special gross motor development room and even tot-size toilets are just a few of the amenities at the new early childhood center built on the campus of the district's Community Learning Complex.

The Pre-K Center at the Community Learning Complex, 1812 Pearl St. in Carrollton, serves children in northern Farmers Branch and southern Carrollton. Half-day sessions run from 7:50 to 10:50 a.m. and 12:05 to 3:05 p.m.

For information on enrollment at the Pre-K Center, call 972-968-6600.

For information about other classes and programs offered at the Community Learning Complex, call 972-968-6527.

"It's a space for 4-year-olds to do what 4-year-olds should do," said Charles Cole, assistant superintendent for Student, Family and Community Service. "Everything from 8 o'clock in the morning until 3 o'clock in the afternoon is geared around them."

The $5 million facility is the beginning of a plan to expand the school district's pre-kindergarten program, which is funded primarily with federal money, school officials said.

Those plans include extending the program to a full day instead of a half-day and building more specialized facilities to accommodate the expansion. The district already has pre-K classes at nine elementary campuses, and a second pre-K center is under construction north of the Bush Turnpike, school officials said.

The district expects to serve about 925 pre-kindergarten children this school year, and the demand grows every year, Dr. Cole said.

The program is available to children who primarily speak a language other than English in their home, meet the income guidelines for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program or are homeless.

"The philosophy is that these students need special, early attention in order to be ready for kindergarten and first grade," Dr. Cole said. "We want them, when they leave this program, to be at the same level as other students who have benefits and resources at home that they don't. Our goal is to equalize the playing field."

Eva Medina-Walker, the Pre-K Center's principal, said the new school – which offers six bilingual and six English as a second language classrooms – makes that job much easier.

"Everything here is geared just for them," she said. "We have really large classrooms that can handle all the centers – home living, dramatic play, computers, listening station, water and sand table, and circle time space – that these children need."

In addition to fine-tuning school readiness skills such as dexterity, fine and gross motor skills, and literacy, students also will be introduced to physical education.

"We want them to exercise," said Ms. Medina-Walker, who has a background in early childhood education and English as a second language programs. "What we want to do is provide the child with physical activity they might not get at home."

The gross motor development room provides the place for that to happen. With its special soft-surface flooring and equipment, students can run, jump, bounce and play to their heart's content, Ms. Medina-Walker said.

Families also are encouraged to get involved. The Pre-K Center is on the campus of the Community Learning Complex, at which parent education, English as a second language, citizenship and GED preparation classes are available.

Dr. Cole said he is proud of the new center because it gives first-time students and their families the best possible start.

school is going to be in a beautiful facility with caring teachers and an instructional program that addresses their needs," he said. "What better way to learn to love school?"

Veronica Villegas is a Fort Worth-based freelance writer.

Germany in Desperate Straights

We always think of the US as a dismal hole when it comes to children in inner cities, but when we think of crisp clean Europe, we think of a vacationland of good living. Here's an article that shocked me.

One of the shocking aspects of the recent harrowing death of a seven-year-old girl in Hamburg was the fact that hers was not an isolated case. So why does child neglect still happen, and what can be done to prevent it?

Jessica spent her short life in a tiny, unheated backroom of a top-floor apartment, where the windows were kept permanently shut and covered with black plastic. When she died, she weighed just 9.5 kilos (20.9 lbs). The autopsy showed she'd been eating carpet fluff and her own hair to quell her hunger pangs. Her mother, 35-year-old Marlies S., only called an ambulance when Jessica went into a coma.

"Her last few weeks alive must have been hell, " said a police officer.

Neighbors and social services were unaware of the child's existence. When she had failed to attend school at the age of five, Hamburg's education authority sent an official to the apartment where Jessica was registered. After three attempts to establish contact, the authority decided the family must have moved and gave up.

She isn't the only child in Germany to have met a painful death at the hands of indifferent parents. In the past five years, at least eight children have died under similar circumstances.

According to the Berlin Criminal Office, an average of 200 cases of suspected child neglect per year are reported to the police in the capital alone.

"A lot of cuts are being made to the social services, but, at the same time, their cases are piling up," Ekin Deligöz (photo) of the Green party said. She heads the Bundestag's child commission and oversees the government's recently unveiled "National Plan of Action for a Child-Friendly Germany." "One reason for the increase is that there's been a change in attitudes and more and more people are getting referred to the youth welfare office," Deligöz explained.

Recent years have even seen social workers acting with excessive haste. "Youth welfare offices are regularly criticized for over-reacting," said Uta von Pirani, director of Berlin's youth welfare office. "They're often accused of taking children out of families too quickly." But she says they can't win. "Either that, or they're accused of acting too late or not at all," she added.

According to Katharina Abelmann-Vollmer from the German Child Protection Association, the number of cases of child neglect is not actually rising. "What's changed is public sensibility. People are more shocked about violence towards children than they used to be, and the spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child approach is no longer acceptable."

In some respects, Jessica was also a victim of Germany's recent slide into mass joblessness.

"Germany's widespread unemployment is taking its toll on the nation's children," pointed out Deligöz. "The divorce rate is climbing and we're seeing more and more patchwork families."

"In Hamburg, a child loses its right to a kindergarten place if its mother is unemployed," she went on. "For as long as Jessica was in care, her situation was under control. Obviously, the staff would have been the first to notice anything suspicious -- if she'd shown signs of starvation, for example. Had she been able to stay there, her case would never have gone unnoticed."

But identifying problem cases isn't always enough. Jessica may have been one of Germany's "invisible children," but there are many other cases where kids recognized to be at risk still fall through the net because of inadequate cooperation between education authorities and the youth welfare offices.

"In future, we will alert the youth welfare office every time there is grounds for suspicion that parents are failing to send their child to school," said Hamburg education senator Alexandra Dinges-Dierg in the wake of Jessica's death.

Such a move might have saved this particular child's life. As it is, an acute lack of communication from department to department is widely acknowledged to be the main obstacle in Germany to creating a functioning alarm system against child neglect.

"What we need are colleagues who are ready to work together," said Abelmann-Vollmer from the Child Protection Office (photo). "The problem is there are too many parallel systems. All too often, the health services, education authorities and youth welfare offices work as rivals. Their various responsibilities are firmly demarcated, and staff are too unwilling to let their tasks overlap."

Jessica's case prompted Dinges-Dierg to call for tightening the law enforcing school attendance. This would allow an official from the local education authority, accompanied by a police officer, to enter homes where children are registered who either fail to attend school or have been absent for extended periods. As it stands, parents can refuse entry.

But many believe changing the law isn't the answer. "Ensuring children can lead good lives is not a question of introducing new legislation, it's a question of creating a more child-friendly society," insisted Abelmann-Vollmer. "We need recognition for working parents and more support structures for them to turn to."

Germany's ageing population and dwindling birth rate are symptomatic of another issue. Children are increasingly marginalized here. Unemployment, poverty and social isolation are all factors that leave many parents unable to cope with the demands of bringing up children -- moreover, without the traditional help of the extended family.

"The Child Protection Association believes child-rearing is the responsibility of the whole of society," argued Abelmann-Vollmer. "It's not that you should call the police when you hear the family next door arguing; it's that you should offer to look after their children so they can go buy the groceries."

Deligöz is more reluctant to pass the buck. "The concept of the family has changed," she said. "We no longer live in extended families, and society has had to take its place. But we can't make society responsible for everything."

Von Pirani expressed similar sentiments. "Family is a very private matter in Germany," she said. "That explains why there was no one close to Jessica who could alert anyone to what was happening. That was what was lacking. We can't expect the state to keep tabs on everyone and everything."

Germany Demands Reforms of Kindergarten

I found this interesting because the very word kindergarten is a German word.


A new government report released Thursday demands reforms to the pre-school education system, among them improving the training of teachers in kindergartens -- a situation that's badly in need of change in Germany.

In recent years, there's been a growing realization in Germany that kindergarten isn't just a place for children to romp and play, but also where they begin to learn the ropes of reading, writing and arithmetic-- skills that are usually associated with school-age kids.

A slew of international studies have made it clear that the early childhood years are optimal for kids to learn basic skills thanks to their inherent curiosity and help them perform better when they enter primary schools at the age of six.

It's little wonder then that the new children and youth report issued by the German government on Thursday recommends allowing kids as young as two to enter kindergarten, and changing the way kindergartens and schools are traditionally viewed in Germany.

"In future schools must provide for more supervision and upbringing, while kindergartens and day-care centers should increase their focus on education," Thomas Rauschenbach, director of the German Youth Institute (DIJ) and head of the seven-member commission that drew up the report for the German government told the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. "All children profit from it by the time they complete two years," Rauschenbach added.

Teacher Training The Weak Link

Growing awareness of the importance of early childhood education has in turn focused attention on the role of kindergarten teachers -- and revealed it to be the weak link in Germany's education system.

That's because, unlike in most other EU countries, kindergarten teachers in Germany only need to complete a three-year training program to work as an early child educator, and not the full post-secondary education required from primary school teachers.

Critics point out that the lack of sufficient training leaves kindergarten teachers unequipped to provide children with intellectually-stimulating games and basic playful lessons in natural science, mathematics and reading. "The teachers at our kindergartens still see themselves first and foremost as babysitters," one Frankfurt mother recently told the weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

The latest children and youth report recommends training kindergarten teachers to university level to ensure better preparation for their twin roles of educators and supervisors.

The training of kindergarten teachers has been a subject of debate and criticism for several years in Germany with several experts, social scientists and even the Green party and the teachers' union pushing to raise the qualification barriers for hiring new teachers.

There are signs that things are gradually changing thanks to a few initiatives by some universities to offer new specialized study courses on "pre-school education training" that trains teachers to work with children right from birth until the age of six. But there aren't many takers because the courses are rarely state-funded and thus cost money.

The problem is further complicated by the fact that matters of education in Germany are regulated at state level with different states sometimes pursuing conflicting policies. Education ministers from the 16 federal states did agree on a common framework last year to improve the education levels of kindergarten teachers in order to better promote young children, but so far nothing concrete has come of it.

Germany Lags Behind Other European Countries

Even as politicians fail to resolve the problem, a look at other European nations shows that Germany is already a laggard in the field -- a fact that explains its disastrous performance on the PISA test.

Children at "nursery schools" in Britain and "ecoles maternelles" in France are already groomed playfully in dealing with numbers and the alphabet, while Belgium, Italy and Holland have clearly defined what children should be able to do at the end of their pre-school period -- count and even read.

Even in Hungary and Norway, the curriculum for kindergartens invites children and parents to choose between specializing in different topics, with the emphasis being on music, playing instruments and reading notes.

Canada Reinstates Deadly Attention Deficit Drug Addarall

I just love this. It came from Jeannine Virtue and her blog which is linked on the sidebar - It's ADHD Blog.

Canada Reinstates Deadly Attention Deficit Drug

Adderall Xr, which was forced off the Canadian market last February, is being reinstated.

The reversal of the Canadian regulator's decision came after a panel of experts reviewed the drug's safety data.

Health Canada pulled Adderall XR off the market on Feb. 9 after learning of 20 cases of sudden death and 12 of stroke in people using the drug.

Fourteen of the sudden deaths and two of the strokes were in children. A number of the cases involved children with structural heart defects.

The drug was put back on the market because "there was not enough evidence of an increased harm from Adderall compared to other therapies available."

Health officials expect to have the product back on pharmacy shelves within the next two to three weeks.

Pink Eye

One of the children has come down with pink eye or conjunctivitis twice. Contagious, you say, but that's not always true. Only some people get pink eye, and in the same breath, only some people respond to the usual cure.

Sulfa drugs are wonderful from a parents' perspective, but they don't always work. Sometimes they cover the symptoms, and that's all. Then the complaint comes back with a vengeance.

My family is allergic to sulfa, and it manifests itself in a large rash, but it also manifests itself in half finished business.

One of my daughters was treated for a bladder infection at age two with a sulfa drug many years ago. She had the same infection several times and finally had to have a kidney ex-ray. It was a horribly traumatic experience because the child was so shy, she fainted at the sight of a stranger. That horrible hospital experience was a double nightmare.

When the tests came out, the medication became the suspect, and she was placed on another drug, and there was no recurrence of the infection ever.

It was said at the time that the drug masked the symptoms and didn't really cure the infection. Of course I was furious; I'm still furious. Putting a child through that ordeal because better care wasn't taken is a shame.

It's something to think about.

Glue as Discipline

Glue is a wonderful discipline tool. On Wednesday a very difficult child decided to anoint himself with glue, spreading it out across his hands like hand cream. “I have to go, go, go, to wash my hands,” said he with his paper undone.

“No,” said the teacher knowing that the child was finding a way to disrupt her class, “You can get a tissue.”

Well everyone knows what a tissue and glue is like, and in a few minutes so did the child. He was entrapped in a mess of glue and tissue which covered his hands like a paper glove. “I have to wash this off,” said the child who still hadn’t looked at his paper.

“It will come off,” said the teacher, “You just have to work at it.”

All during story time, the child worked to get the glue and tissue off his hands. He was quiet, respectful and actually listened for a few minutes to the story. When the story was over, the glue had dried and had pealed off the child’s hands.

The next day, the teacher figured the child would avoid smearing glue all over his hands. But the child did the same thing. “I have to wash this mess off,” insisted the child.

“Just get a tissue,” said the teacher. The child looked at her as if she was crazy. It was a duel to the end. The child spent the next story time pealing glue off his hands.

The consequences of a deliberately disruptive action rested not once but twice on a child. Did he really think that he could do the same thing twice and because he had been duped the first time, would be excused the second time? Not at the Garden School.

If that’s the case, then if he lashes out and hurts someone a first time, should he be excused the second? The responsibilities of someone’s actions count every time, and that’s what the little boy is learning.

I love this story. I love being consistent with the kids. The bigger the rock, the higher the climb, the greater the joy when we reach the top.

Are Children Ready For School

I've had this report for a couple of months. I thought it was more interesting now than in May because now is when kids go back to school. Actually, I don't think it's interesting at all. I know as an educator I'm supposed to find this stuff fascinating, but in all honesty, I think it's terribly dull. I suppose it's dull because what this report does is line up statistics so that more money can be poured into an education program that is simply not working, and I find that more of the same.

I have a lot of thoughts on why it's not working, but that's not applicable here. The question stated here is are children ready for school? What we find out is that poor undereducated families have a rougher time understanding what schools are supposed to be doing than affluent, educated people. Is that worth millions of dollars to find out? I think it's a given. But here's the report:

Ready for school?

As States Grapple with How to Prepare Children to Succeed in School, a Report Last Spring Shows How 17 States are Using Indicators to Track Progress.

Research shows that too many young children enter kindergarten with physical, social, emotional and cognitive deficits that could have been minimized or eliminated through early intervention. This report entitled Getting Ready: Findings from the National SchoolReadiness Indicators Initiative, shows how identifying indicators ofschool readiness and tracking progress on those measures can lead tomore effective policies and investments in early childhood.

The National School Readiness Indicators Initiative provides a set of indicators that policy makers can use to monitor school readiness and early school success," said Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow, Economic Studies Department, Brookings Institution.

The states participating in the Initiative are: Arizona, Arkansas,California, Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine,Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island,Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin.

"State policy makers play a critical role in allocating resources tosupport the school readiness of young children. Increasingly, statepolicy makers are asking for results-based accountability in makingtheir funding decisions.

While policy makers may recognize the importance of early learning and school readiness, they also need measurable indicators that enable them to track progress," according to Lisbeth Schorr, Director of the Project on Effective Interventions at Harvard University. Each state developed indicators that were based on the child development research and that fit their policy context.

The states formed teams made up of representatives from governors' offices, state legislators, state school officers, heads of departments of education, health, and social services, child advocates, researchers, and business leaders.

The Initiative's web site at www.GettingReady.org highlights the individual state reports on school readiness produced by each of the 17 states. In order to share the information widely among key policy makers, the Initiative partnered with five national organizations: the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the National Conference of State Legislators, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Education Commission of the States and the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Based on the experience of the 17 states, a core set of commonindicators was identified that can be used to measure progress towards school readiness and early school success. The school readiness indicators that are included in this report were selected because they have the power to inform state policy action on behalf of youngchildren.

They emphasize the importance of physical health, economicwell-being, child development and supports for families. The core set of indicators are attached and address all the domains of child development (physical development, social and emotional, language and literacy, approaches to learning and cognitive development).

Indicators are grouped according to key areas that can be affected by policy action, including:

Ready Children: Describe characteristics of children's health anddevelopment.

Ready Families: Describe children's family context and home environment.

Ready Communities: Describe the community resources and supportsavailable to families with young children.

Ready Services: Describe the availability, quality, and affordability of proven programs that influence child development and school readiness, including health and early education services.

Ready Schools: Describe critical elements of schools that influencechild development and school success.

"The regular tracking of school readiness indicators enables policymakers and community leaders to identify areas most in need of intervention, track the results of investments, and monitor trends overtime," said Elizabeth Burke Bryant, Executive Director of Rhode Island KIDS COUNT.

"The goal of the School Readiness Indicators Initiative was to develop indicators not just for data's sake, but to inform and influence policy decisions to improve school readiness."

What's News at the Garden School?

Well... Mrs. St. Louis and Miss Judy celebrated 40 and 35 years of marriage last Sunday and Monday. Miss Molly and her sister Katy threw a wonderful party for everyone at Franco's in Newburgh. We had a marvelous time.

We have several new students who we are very proud of. They have come from a variety of places in Evansville, mostly awful, and the children all need to learn how to come to school, and they are making wonderful progress.

It's always remarkable to note that most places don't teach children how to wash, sit at a lunch table or play responsibly with a toy. It takes about ten days to re-teach those things, but once they are in the notebook, that's where they stay.

Washing is an easy process: Because we are so very dirty from the pea gravel playground, we apply liquid soap to dry hands and arms - right to the elbows - like hand cream. Then we stand at the sink with gushing water and remove the soap-dirt combination. When the soap is gone, so's the dirt. Then we wash the face, dry with a paper towel and THEN we get a drink. If your child suddenly washes to the elbow and has a wet face, you know where he learned it. We instruct children that if you come in from outside -WASH.

Lunch is a hoot. We have one child who has probably never experienced a fork. He holds the fork in his arm joint by the elbow while he pushes food into his mouth with his hands while he tries to wear his cup. Don't worry, most of his milk is in his lap.

And these kids are eaters - they eat anything. Today they devoured grilled cheese sandwiches, left over ham and hot dogs, pineapple, salad, watermelon, applesauce, cottage cheese, and celery and cucumbers with sour cream dip. Tomorrow we will be having homemade chicken pot pie.

We are also always shocked by how children don't know how to play outdoors. The initial whine about "I don't know how to play outside," really is quite a local disgrace.

In the pet room, we have nine brand new baby guinea pigs born in the last week. They are quite adorable and viewable in the southwest pen.

We have a nest of rabbits in Mrs. St. Louis's room, and something special in there. There is a runt who is two inches long. His siblings are five inches long. If he makes it, we will probably keep him now that Carl has gone to the vet. He's a natural which is my favorite rabbit.

We are studying Maps and where I am on the map in Geography, Creation in Religion, and Miss Rachel is doing random science. Miss Stacey is working on lessons on manners which we desperately need.

Speaking of Miss Stacey, we are going to make some changes at the Garden School. We will be building her a little classroom where dress up is. It's a new idea and needs a lot of work.

One of the things that is beginning to really bother us is the noise. That building is wonderful to teach in when it's quiet, but the outside noise, the inside noise, the extra noise is sometimes so distracting, it's hard for teachers to concentrate, so we are going to begin to enclose some of the space. I think everyone will just love it.

Mr. Robbie will be doing the work for us. He's a marvel - can do anything. First we're going to do the floors, and add Miss Stacey's classroom. Then it's onward and upward. The ceiling's the limit.

JL

Proton Therapy

Lots of parents and friends casually ask what our son does for a living. I tell them he is in cancer research and therapy. If they are more interested than that, I tell them that he puts together proton therapy units for a Belgian company. Proton Therapy units treat cancer a new way. His team has worked on tumors where there is little if any hope. Their success rate is excellent.

I've put Brendan's Company's web page HERE for you to look at. It's an important thing to know about and share with your doctor because you never know when cancer will strike, and this is available in few places.

We are lucky enough to have one at Indiana University. There is one in Boston at Mass General, one in California, and Brendan's team is putting a unit together for the University of Florida in Jacksonville.

Last year, his company built a unit in China, and Brendan was the site manager.

Take a look HERE.

Elizabeth's Books

New Web page Opens


Elizabeth, the eleven year old daughter of a good friend, has a new web page out, and she is selling books through Amazon.com. She is a very enterprising young woman and you should visit her web page which is called Biever Readers and is a permanent link in the Shopping Links column on this blog.

You'll be glad you did.

Judy

Families and Their Focus

I spent yesterday in Court.

The question over child custody is one filled with many passions.

What matters to a court of law? There are no standard answers.

What is the bench looking for? Again, there are no standard answers.

The one undeniable goal for any family is to place the family focus on the child. It's not as simple and easy as it sounds. There are many adults who simply can't make a child the first priority because the struggle to survive is the first priority.

I read a lot of theology and philosophy because I like the challenge of complex thought. In order to be able to begin to enjoy something like complex thought, it's obvious that certain physical human needs need to be met.

These are safety, food, clothing, housing, and a sense of well being. Education of any kind requires that the basics be covered. People who are not comfortable because they are hungry, have no place to sleep, have nothing to wear, are going to focus on those things first, not education.

So, like the family who is comfortable, education becomes an important issue because there is time to invest in something besides the basics. Some families spend a lifetime just grasping for a roof, food, and a non-humiliating set of clothes.

When you look at a family who is dependent, who constantly has their hand out to anyone who is willing or even not so willing to supply the basics, who is dependent on the state for the basics, it's easy to see how education is not going to be a priority. It's going to be a secondary concern.

So in a court case that pits a dependent family against what amounts to an independent family, do things like education matter for the child?

In everyone's life there should be a time when he or she is the focus of the family. Usually that comes in childhood. A child can grow up as the center of the family life, gaining and growing and able to live the life of the child in innocence and a kind of childhood bliss that allows creativity and imagination to develop. Childhood is short enough. It matters in that the child learns certain important things about life: the positive approach to the passions because the greatest part of being in the human community is the ability to be positive and to have the creativity to turn positives to art, music, literature, and complex thought.

Then, when the child becomes and adult, he or she is able to dutifully engage in being the adult and is able to let his or her children have the center stage. He or she has had a turn, and now it's time to turn that turn over so the next generation can learn the same things.

When the family focus is on the adult instead of the child, the joys of life pass the child by. He is too keen on pleasing the parent, too keen on being the adult, keeping an eye on his parent's well being, worrying about the parent, the household, siblings, and whether there is enough of anything to go around. The very idea of creativity, art, music a postitive look at life is buried with an avalanche of daily chores and cares.

Recreation is usually an issue. "I am not getting enough for myself," cries the parent of a parent focused family. "More is never enough." And the child makes up for what the parent thinks he is not getting, by going without. In an extreme case, the child forfeits his childhood altogether for the sake of the parent.

When the child of a parent focused family grows up, he or she will either become the parent and steal from his children or continue to give the focus of the family away - to his own children. It will never be his turn to be the focus of anything. It makes saints and sinners.

As we look into the profiles of families, a thinking person realizes that the lives of saints and sinners are both common. Suffering is the human condition. The question is are we clearly going to see what's going on and stop it in individual cases, or are we going to blithely turn our heads and say it really doesn't matter.

Borneo

I love these out of the way places because it's really so close to home. Borneo (check out the geography link) is one of the most primitive places on earth, but at the same time, when you read an article like this, you could be reading it in New York City.

Thirty Attend a Childcare Conference

By Laila Rahman

Thirty officers from the Department of Community Development of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Education are attending a "Training Course in Monitoring Quality Childcare Services for Children from 0 to 3 Years" from August 22 to 26.

The five-day training was organised by the Department of Community Development and cost-shared by UNICEF and Regional Training and Resource Centre in Early Childhood Care & Education for Asia (RTRC Asia), Singapore.

Conducting the training are Ms Lynn Heng Soo Lee, Senior Training Specialist and Mrs Geraldine Zuzarte, Training Specialist from the Regional Training and Resource Centre in Early Childhood Care & Education For Asia (RTRC Asia).

RTRC Asia is a leader in the training and development of early childhood professionals locally and in the region.

Their vision and mission are to enhance the quality of care and education of young children and to support early childhood professionals, parents and others who work with children. The centre works with partners who share the same goal to contribute to the well being of children and families in Asean and beyond.

Through active training, consultancy, workshops and educational programmes, they continue to make the vision a reality. At the end of the workshop, participants would develop an understanding of how to identify the developmental characteristics of infants & toddlers; physically, emotionally, socially and cognitively, to identify the developmental appropriate practices for infants and toddlers in areas of adult child interaction, environment, equipment and materials, health and safety, caregiver and family interaction and programming, to examine the components of quality care for infants and toddlers, to identify the procedures for implementing quality checks and follow up.

Kathmandu Childcare

I couldn't resist this one. It just seems so far away:

Minister Sarki inspects child care centres KATHMANDU, NEPAL, Aug. 21:

Assistant Minister for Labour and Transport Management Golche Sarki carried out an inspection of child care centres and informal education centres run by the Ministry at Gaurighat, Jorpati and Mahankal area of Kathmandu today.

The Centres have been established with the objective of rendering care-taking services and providing informal education to the children working as laborers at the local carpet factories.On the occasion, Assistant Minister Sarki issued instructions to the employees of the Centres to render their services with added dedication towards the children.

Also on the occasion, various educational materials were distributed to a total of 224 children of the Centres.

Child Abuse and The Blog

I noticed that someone tried to hook up with this blog site by typing in "child abuse."

Every day I get fifteen or so email postings about childcare across the nation and world where a child has been abused, maimed, killed or sexually abused.

It would be very easy to post these stories, but child abuse is not child development, and I really don't think it fits well here.

The question stands: Why would you want to read about children being abused?

If there is a positive story, I will post it, but nightmares about kids is not what this blog is about.

On the other hand, there was a criminal story posted this weekend that held some interest. It's about medicating children in order that they sleep. Lots of parents over the years have given a taste of something to their own children when the absence of sleep makes a child uncomfortable. I have heard it recommended by doctors, but not often and not routinely.

The story here is about what happens when it's a regular part of so called child care, and administered by a provider unbeknown to the parents. I think it's worth publishing simply as something to know about for future reference.

My personal belief is that childcare is not the place for medication.

Story:

Tests found day care kids sedated

By GREG TUTTLE Of The Gazette Staff

The parents of three children who prosecutors said were sedated with drugs at a Laurel day care testified Friday at Sabine Bieber's negligent-homicide trial, including one woman who said Bieber considered killing herself if police came for her. Patricia Roma said her 2-year-old son was among the three children who tested positive for an allergy medicine that prosecutors said Bieber used to sedate children at her Tiny Tots Day Care.


Another child, Dane Heggem, died of an overdose of the over-the-counter medication on Jan. 31, 2003, prosecutors said.

Roma said she spoke with Bieber the day the Heggem child died at the day care and numerous times after the child's death as investigators were building a homicide case.

During one of those conversations, Roma said, Bieber said she was being unfairly targeted and would commit suicide if arrested.

"She said it was a witch hunt and that they were going to blame her because they wanted to blame someone for the death of baby Dane," Roma testified. "And if they were coming to arrest her, she would kill herself before letting her children see her taken away."

Roma also said Bieber described how she had "gone over their story" with her partner, and investigators would find no evidence to contradict it.

"She was sticking to her story, that was her story, and they wouldn't find anything different than her story," Roma said.

For the first time during the trial, which began Tuesday in District Court, Bieber appeared to show some emotion. She repeatedly wiped away tears as Roma spoke.

Roma was among a half-dozen witnesses who took the stand Friday. The jury also heard testimony from social worker Tana Johnson, who said Bieber tossed a small dose cup into a sink while being questioned at the day care two weeks after the boy's death.

But Johnson agreed with defense attorney Robert Stephens that Bieber may have been removing the dose cup after being told she was being cited for a violation because the medicine was accessible to children.

Bieber is charged with felony tampering with evidence for the incident. She also is on trial for negligent homicide and three counts of criminal endangerment. She faces a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison if convicted. The trial is expected to last through next week.

Roma was the last of three parents called to testify Friday. The criminal-endangerment charges against Bieber allege that she gave their children doses of diphenhydramine to manage their naps. The drug is an antihistamine commonly known by the brand name Benadryl.

Deborah Ludwick said her son attended Tiny Tots Day Care in January 2003 at the age of 8 months. She said it came as a surprise when investigators told her tests showed the baby had the allergy drug in his system.

"I had no idea where it came from," she said.

Her son did not need the medicine, and she had not given Bieber permission to give it to him, she said.

Monica Stricker's 4-year-old son also tested positive for the drug. She said her son had been "sluggish all the time" but became "alive again" after Tiny Tots was closed after the death of Dane Heggem.

"It was like he was a different kid," she said.

The prosecution began its case Wednesday with testimony from Travis and Calista Heggem, who said their son was healthy before his death and they did not give Bieber permission to give him the antihistamine.

During opening statements, defense attorney Robert Stephens said Bieber denies giving the children the drug to make them sleep and Dane Heggem's death could have been caused by an undiagnosed heart condition.

Grandparents't Tea

I’m already fielding phone calls about Grand Parents’ Tea. It’s an annual event in September for getting to know grandparents and encouraging them to be more active in the children’s school life.

With more people working outside the home, it’s hard to coordinate a party that includes everyone, so we make a special event every September just for Grandparents, but mom and dad are invited too.

The Tea will be on September 16 at 3:00 and include cookies and tea.

If it’s nice, we can go out on the patio which means the playground.

Getting to know the grandparents has always been a real pleasure. We are constantly grateful for all the help and care our grandparents offer us. I wonder how many of them know that they can have lunch with us any day simply by dropping by. We eat at 12:30 and we love the company.

Grandparents often ask, “What can we donate to the school?” The best answer right now is “Anything you want,” but things like candy, apples, bags of carrots for the animals, little $1.00 picture frames for the art shows, cat food, books, playground balls, paper towel, cookies, and things like that really help not only the expense of running a school like ours, but helps keep the errands down.

If grandparents like to work with children, they are always welcome to come by and do some reading or spend a few minutes telling a story. We’ll do crowd control, so you can have a straight shot at teaching.

When we start fall field trips, grandparents are always welcome to come. We go out the farm and take a hay ride which is a lot of fun. We also go to the haunted library for story time during the Halloween Season.

We’re a family place, and we welcome any and all contributions of time, talent and treasure.

Childcare is Not Boring

Rearing a child is not a dull experience. There are lots of selfish parents who think their lives are the only lives that count, that the very idea of spending time and energy on someone as insignificant as a child is beyond any expectation – at least for them.

Lots of selfish parents pass the job onto their spouse – could be the mother passing the work to the father, or the father passing the work exclusively to the mother. And what this narcissistic parent is saying is: let someone else do the work, let someone else build these children’s lives, I’m busy taking care of myself.

“Isn’t the fact that I’m here enough?” I’ve heard that one. “Isn’t my paycheck enough?” Heard that one too. The answer is no. And more times than not when an unselfish spouse is married to a selfish one, the children are short changed. One overworked parent carries the entire burden of rearing the children, much like the ant, and the other parent, the grasshopper simply amuses himself.

The parent is the primary educator of the child, and when the parent absents himself for any reason, the child’s formation is in jeopardy. The family is not set up to pamper one member while the other members go without.

Yet in a world of quick divorce and many marriages, that seems to be the ticket. “Make my life uncomfortable, and I’m leaving.” So the worker parent sacrifices everything for the one, and the grasshopper ends up leaving anyway out of guilt or because he or she is gets tired of a work horse partner. And if they stay, they stay with a chip on their shoulder which makes everyone uncomfortable.

Partnership in marriage comes from a deep desire to build something with someone. To build a life, to rear the next generation with someone you love. It’s an investment in the future, “a building up of riches” anyone can be proud to take into the next world.

Yet there are times when it all gets confused, and that confusion comes out of narcissism or a desire to love the self first and foremost. Then, the partner who is rightfully asking for the attention promised in the marriage vows becomes the enemy. Treating the spouse like an enemy amounts to deceit. It leaves the burden of what marriage is supposed to be about - real and genuine care - to a single parent, it leaves a partner alone with all the responsibilities of marriage and none of the rewards.

When I hear from someone how rearing a child is boring, I cringe. I wonder about all the other lacking pieces of life and wonder just how unhappy the bored adult is in all the other aspects of his or her life.

Eastern Standards a Done Deal

I was stunned to read this. It's the Garden School revisited in a town next to where my daughter in law was reared. It didn't cost 22 million dollars to begin the Garden School. It only cost $160.00. But they didn't have Judy and Edith, and in there lies the difference. Read about what they do. They should have called us. Could have saved the state a lot of money.


Collaboration Key At Almost-complete Friendship SchoolTeachers Prepare Curricula as Ribbon-Cutting.

By PATRICIA DADDONADay Staff Writer, WaterfordPublished on 8/20/2005


Waterford — Ten kindergarten and 20 preschool teachers are preparing for a learning experience as new to them as it will be to their students.

The mix of veteran and new early-childhood teachers and instructional aides will spend next week boning up on math, literacy and science curricula, learning to use new laptop computers and organizing classrooms at the Friendship School, which has its ribbon-cutting Wednesday.

The $22 million public magnet school on Rope Ferry Road will welcome 466 preschoolers and kindergarten students from New London and Waterford on Aug. 31. The school is designed for very young urban, suburban and special needs students.

Interim director Kathy Suprin said team-building, goal-setting and “putting heads together” will be the focus not only next week, but in weeks to come.

In their new instructional environment, teachers will work with up to 18 students in interconnected classrooms arranged in “pods,” or clusters of three — two preschool classes and one kindergarten group. From offices behind the classrooms, teachers will chart student progress in portfolios and reports to parents.

The design fosters “co-teaching” in which one of the teachers in a cluster has expertise in special needs, while the other two teachers and three or more instructional aides have backgrounds in special and regular education. Together, they share the duty of teaching the entire class, said Doreen Marvin, director of development at LEARN, the regional educational agency that spearheaded the project.

“So often, in a school, the kindergarten teacher is the only kindergarten teacher,” Suprin said in an interview Wednesday. “We'll have 10 kindergarten teachers in the same building. That will be a first.”

Other firsts for the region include three consecutive years of early childhood education in one setting and a faculty with more than two-thirds of teachers qualified to teach special needs students, said Marvin.

The Friendship School faculty includes two preschool teachers and a speech pathologist from the Waterford school district and four kindergarten teachers and one preschool instructor from New London. Some veteran teachers developed the new curriculum and participated in the hiring of the instructional aides, said Suprin and Marvin.

“We have a great blend of people to teach (students) that they're not very different from each other,” added Suprin. “We're making differences invisible. And that's the time to start, with three-year-olds.”

To be hired by LEARN, teachers had to be state-certified and familiar with the state Department of Education's “frameworks for early childhood education,” which encourage development of a career ladder in the profession, recognition of accomplishments, and interaction with the communities they serve, according to the DOE Web site.

In addition to meeting state standards, the school plans to seek accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Skills the teachers are expected to have and to foster in one another include devising “developmentally appropriate activities” for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds in science, literacy and math, and principles that cross all subjects, like discovery, Suprin said.

An example would be to get a child to compare the size of building blocks, then build a wall the child could climb over without knocking it down, Suprin said.

Teachers also have to be able to work closely with families, said Marvin, since the parent is the child's first educator. Parents can visit in adjoining observation rooms, where they can see how their child acts when he or she thinks parents are not around. They're also welcome in the classroom.

“They have an open invitation to be there any time,” Suprin said.

Public Education and the State of Confusion

I liked this article because it says what we all experience. Some links to the No Child Left Behind are on the links column.


Federal School Reform in Sad Shape

Friday, August 12, 2005

By WILLIAM L. BAINBRIDGE GUEST COLUMNIST

As a new school year begins, the political appointees in Washington, D.C., continue to demonstrate a profound and far-reaching lack of answers to the crucial questions surrounding U.S. public education. New data from their own National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAPE), heralded as the nation's education report card, show that the typical 13-year-old could read no better in the last school year reported (2003-04) than the student's counterpart five years earlier. Stagnant reading scores among middle-school students have caught the attention of educators. School officials are starting to target literacy programs geared toward adolescents after years of focusing mostly on younger children.

The failure rates do not include students who dropped out of school before the tests were given. Under the current administration, high school dropout rates have continued to skyrocket. Heightened public attention to the ways in which dropout data can be manipulated, such as the proven-to-be-fraudulent Houston Independent School District "Miracle," raise significant public concerns about the reliability of such performance measures.

We can just imagine the impact these non-completers will have on welfare, unemployment and crime rates.

Most parents don't understand the federal No Child Left Behind law. Those who try may review the rules on their state department of education's Web sites and read articles about the law. In great confusion, the pubic must once again turn to teachers and administrators to explain the law. The only thing parents can be sure of is that the law will keep changing.

Since President Bush signed this student testing legislation in 2002, with the support of prominent Democrats such as Edward M. Kennedy and George Miller, the U.S. Department of Education has changed the rules nearly every year. The political manipulation includes changes in measuring how much individual students learn in a year, measuring progress with students in special education and revisions in science rules. Even greater adjustments are expected when the law comes up for reauthorization in 2007.

Federal education officials claim they are trying to correct their previous mistakes. However, continually changing the rules makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, to measure the productivity impact of the legislation over time.

The law requires states to test students in math and reading/language arts in grades three through eight and once in high school. We are told that by 2014, each student will be expected to pass every test, an unrealistic goal. In the meantime, examination scores must increase steadily for all children and each subgroup of students, including minorities, low-income students, children with disabilities and those who speak English as a second language.

The federal government currently permits up to 1 percent of special education students, those with severe learning disabilities, to take an alternative test. Because of rule modifications, an additional 2 percent of students will apparently also be permitted to take this modified test. The change likely will affect students with moderate disabilities, but federal officials have not yet released the new school-year guidelines. Mounting evidence suggests the rules will continue to change yearly.

A more significant change being debated is a "growth model." Such a change could affect even more students. The federal law would still require schools to demonstrate that a specific percentage of students passed state exams each year. But a growth model would measure how well schools are teaching based on the improvement of individual students from one year to the next.

Ohioans, for example, could look at how a student performed on the state reading tests and see how much the child improved from the previous year. Those kinds of data give schools credit for increasing student achievement, even if test scores are low. More than 100 Ohio school systems reportedly are implementing growth models, but the integrity of the measurement process over time clouds the picture of understanding just how much progress is being made.

The No Child Left Behind law increasingly involves the federal government in virtually every aspect of local public education. In blue states and red states alike, the law continues to increase counterproductive tension between school systems, states and the federal government. The bottom line is federal reforms are not producing anticipated results because it remains impossible to legislate equal results for all students of diverse socio-economic backgrounds in all places.

This certainly demonstrates good reason to return to the true conservative tradition of local governance of education.

William L. Bainbridge is distinguished research professor at the University of Dayton and is president and CEO of SchoolMatch, a Columbus, Ohio-based educational auditing, research, data firm.

He can be reached at bainbridge@schoolmatch.com .

Old vs Young

A grandson was visiting his grandmother one day when he asked, Grandma, do you know how you and God are alike?"

I mentally polished my halo while I asked, "No, how are we alike?"

"You're both old," he said.

We ALL felt old this week as the new group filed in one by one. The old kids, who used to look so young, now look like high school kids. "Go fetch me coffee, child," which used to be a request of someone who came up to nearly my shoulder, is now the job of the kid who last year came up to my belt. "MMMM," I thought, "Wonder what will happen?"

In the kitchen, when we turn to one of the kids, our eyes aim high. "Where is she?" Then you look down, and there is this remarkably small child with an actual question or request.

It's the same every year, the only difference is personal and particular jolt as you realize that one that used to need help in the bathroom reaching the sink is helping to tie a shoe or the one who came to fetch the coffee.

Friendship between teacher and student never ceases to be a "senior" thing. I remember inviting three of my teachers to my wedding. "Sister Helen, I'm getting married, do you want to come? Here's an invitation. There's one for Sister Barbara and one for Sister Martha as well."

What she jolted at was not that the invitation was engraved at Tiffani's, but that the engraving bore the name of the teacher in the next classroom. Needless to say she came and we had a good laugh over it.

Thirty-five years later, I still understand what it means for a teacher to be friendly with the older kids and treat them a little differently. Befriending them is somehow their right as they achieve a certain classroom adn life expertise and they begin to grasp what it means to be a senior child and do all the work and know where everything is and how to do everything.

This year, we have a great group of senior kids. It will be a wonderful year, if we can just get those little ones to shape up. Somebody call the seniors!!!

Business and Day Care

25 Years of Caring - Via Christi's on-site day care is rarity in Wichita

BY PHYLLIS JACOBS GRIEKSPOORThe Wichita Eagle

"A snail! A snail! I found a snail!"

It's not exactly what you expect to hear on a summer morning when you stop by a day-care center.

But it created quite a stir at the Via Christi Child Development Center this week, where some of the "summer rec" students were analyzing pond water under a microscope .

The center, founded 25 years ago out of a need to attract and retain workers during a severe nursing shortage, continues to be a powerful recruiting and retention tool today.

"They have a great program, and it really works well for their employees," said Teresa Rupp, director of the Child Care Association of Wichita and Sedgwick County.

The center, located on Via Christi Regional Medical Center's St. Francis Campus, provides child care and early childhood education at subsidized rates for employees of Via Christi Health System.

During the school year, its students range in age from 2 weeks to 6 years old. During the summer and for a week at Christmas, there also are special programs for elementary school children.

This month, the center is celebrating 25 years of continuous operation as an employer-subsidized child care center, something still rare in Wichita.

"I can't think of another center quite like Via Christi's," Rupp said.

There are some other employer-run day cares in Wichita. Cessna Aircraft operates a center for trainees at its 21st Street facility. Wichita State University has a center for students and faculty, and McConnell Air Force Base offers a child development center.

Other businesses offer a pre-tax savings plan for child care expenses and in some cases provide matching funds for the money employees put into those accounts.

"Overall, you have businesses recognizing the need to help but choosing a method short of offering a center," Rupp said.

Back when the Via Christi center first opened, employer-sponsored day care was a concept getting a lot of attention. But over the next decade, most businesses opted not to run day-care centers.

"There are a number of problems," Rupp said. "If you're a very large employer, it's hard to have enough space for everybody. So you wind up with some employees getting a benefit that others don't."

"Then you have the fact that most businesses don't have experience at running a day care. It's not what they do, and it's difficult to do well and to make money."

Via Christi's program has endured largely because of a strong commitment from the religious orders that sponsor Via Christi -- the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother -- said director Beverly Adams.

"We've had very strong support from our administration," she said. "It's part of the mission."
With space for about 180 children, the center has a short waiting list, generally for infants, Adams said.

The center caters to the needs of hospital workers. For example it offers a longer day -- 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. --to accommodate 12-hour shifts and provides two-day minimum use for a slot. Its rates of between $107 and $162 a week are below today's Wichita market average for centers.

"We try to make this as friendly and as accessible to our employees as possible," Adams said.
"We foster a real family atmosphere and a sense of community."