This is my second attempt at blogging. The first, "Educator Exhales" (lame name, I know), was a reflection on my first year of teaching. I loved taking the time for reflection, but found myself in a precarious position, not knowing for certain if it was safe and ethical to be posting information about my students out in cyberspace.
This blog will be a bit looser in structure and I expect will be a place to share stories about teaching & traveling, as well as highlighting the good work that family and friends are doing to fight the good fight...
Just so ya know...
I promise NOT to use this site for:
1. posting my two cents on Lost or any of my other shows.
2. Venting about roomate, co-worker, school, boy, person on the subway issues.
But, I may use this site for:
1. anecdotal stories while teaching
2. questions that arise from teaching
3. reflections on work that I'm exploring
4. lotsa photos of perty place I've been
5. links to articles, etc that connect to what I'm doing.
6. lotsa bragging about the good things my little sisters, other family members and friends are doing
Ok, enjoy.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
what book are you?
A site to find out what book you would be:
http://bluepyramid.org/ia/bquiz.htm
Here is a roundup of results:
Jen Holmes and Libby are The Poisonwood Bible
Rebecca is A Prayer for Owen Meany
Jake is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
I am Lolita
* this is somewhat alarming as a teacher when you read the description.:
Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are
obsessed with sex. What really tantalizes you is that
which deviates from societal standards in every way,
though you admit that this probably isn't the best and
you're not sure what causes this desire. Nonetheless,
you've done some pretty nefarious things in your life,
and probably gotten caught for them. The names have
been changed, but the problems are real. Please stay
away from children.
http://bluepyramid.org/ia/bquiz.htm
Here is a roundup of results:
Jen Holmes and Libby are The Poisonwood Bible
Rebecca is A Prayer for Owen Meany
Jake is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
I am Lolita
* this is somewhat alarming as a teacher when you read the description.:
Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are
obsessed with sex. What really tantalizes you is that
which deviates from societal standards in every way,
though you admit that this probably isn't the best and
you're not sure what causes this desire. Nonetheless,
you've done some pretty nefarious things in your life,
and probably gotten caught for them. The names have
been changed, but the problems are real. Please stay
away from children.
the spirit of giving
I know I'm a bit behind on this story, over a year, actually, but Jake was just telling me the other day about Warren Buffet's philosophy on philantrophy and his take on this idea of the genetic lottery vs. the self made man and I think it's really fascinating. Wow. $40 billion dollars. That's huge. The Gates Foundation is certainly worlds apart from any other philanthropic organization out there today. Being a teacher, I can see what a tremendous impact they have had on urban education with thier New Vision schools. Cheers to Warren Buffett, the Gates and the possiblility that this will surge a new wave in foundations and philanthropic activity. I only hope others don't go with the hording it away for some 30 years model.
Here is the link to the Fortune magazine article that announced this donation:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/25/magazines/fortune/charity1.fortune/
Here is the link to the Fortune magazine article that announced this donation:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/25/magazines/fortune/charity1.fortune/
articles about new Arabic public school
The Khalil Gibran International School is supposed to open it's doors Sept. 4th, but is getting alot of heat at the Dept. of Ed by hot heads who think that the school will be an indoctrination camp for radical Islamic belief. Ironically, the school is named after a Christian Lebanese-American poet.
A couple articles on the school listed below:
Associated Press
Extra Security for NYC Arabic School
By COLLEEN LONG 08.29.07, 6:34 PM ET
NEW YORK -
An Arabic-themed public school will open next week with extra security after months of protest by some who say it will be a training ground for radical Islam.
Enrollment is nearly full at the 60-student Khalil Gibran International Academy, which will require its students to take Arabic as a foreign language, said Department of Education spokeswoman Melody Meyer on Wednesday.
Sixth-graders will be the first to attend the school, which will add a grade each year to end up with 500 to 600 students in grades 6-12. It joins a number of small public schools in the city that have themes, covering areas from the arts to social justice to Chinese language.
The school, named after a Christian Lebanese poet who promoted peace, is the first in the city to offer instruction in Arabic and on Arab culture.
"We need more Arabic speakers in this country, and that's part of the reason this school is being opened," Meyer said. Two of the five teachers hired at the school graduated from universities with federally funded programs aimed at boosting the number of schools in the U.S. teaching Arabic, she said.
Since the school was announced in February, critics have attacked the school as a potential training ground for radicals. Because of protests, it has had to move to a new building and its principal resigned.
An organization called the Friends of Gibran Council, which claims its mission is to advance the philosophy of Gibran, also formed this year in part to prevent the school from "hijacking the name of this great artist," a spokesman said Wednesday.
It was originally going to take space in an elementary school in Brooklyn. Parents at the school objected for a number of reasons, including whether the ideological controversy would create a security risk.
The Department of Education moved the school to operate within a high school and middle school in Brooklyn.
Khalil Gibran's first principal, Debbie Almontaser, left earlier this month amid criticism for her affiliation with a group that had T-Shirts with the word "intifada," an Arabic term commonly used to refer to the Palestinian uprising against Israel. She was replaced by acting interim principal Danielle Salzberg, a Jewish woman who does not speak Arabic.
Meyer said there are no special plans for the first day of school, but education officials are taking into account the controversy and will provide extra security.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
New York Times
August 21, 2007
Protesters Seek Leader’s Return to Arabic School
By JENNIFER MEDINA
About 200 demonstrators gathered in front of the headquarters of the city’s Department of Education last evening, voicing their support for the beleaguered Khalil Gibran International Academy. Many of them called for the reinstatement of the school’s founding principal, who resigned under pressure this month after she defended the word “intifada” as a T-shirt slogan.
The group — a mix of students, parents, teachers and activists from a wide range of organizations — blamed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein for the school’s struggles, saying they did not do enough to help the founding principal, Debbie Almontaser.
Ms. Almontaser, an immigrant from Yemen who had worked in the school system for many years and was known for her work with groups that promote interfaith religious dialogue, was repeatedly portrayed by some in the news media as an extremist.
“This is nothing more than demonizing and vilifying a woman and an entire group of people,” said Deborah Howard, a speaker at the protest and a parent who had worked with Ms. Almontaser on the plans to open the middle school in Brooklyn. “Anyone who knows Debbie knows that she is a woman of peace. I am furious that the Department of Education did not support her.”
To that, people in the audience began chanting “bring Debbie back,” as they did several times during the hourlong protest, which brought several school officials out of their offices at Tweed Courthouse headquarters. Danielle Salzberg, an educator who is Jewish and speaks no Arabic, was appointed last week as the interim principal.
A department spokeswoman said officials were focused only on opening the school in the fall.
August 15, 2007
How New Arabic School Aroused Old Rivalries
By JULIE BOSMAN and JENNIFER MEDINA
When aides to Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein were presented last fall with a proposal for an Arabic language and culture school, they thought the idea could be controversial. But they said they could not resist the appeal of a school that seemed right for the times and that would be a piece of the school system’s mosaic of dual-language programs.
Those intentions ran straight into the treacherous ethnic and ideological political currents of New York and were overwhelmed by poor planning, inadequate support for the principal and relentless criticism from some quarters of the news media, primarily The New York Post and The New York Sun.
The founding principal of the school, known as the Khalil Gibran International Academy, Debbie Almontaser, a Yemeni immigrant with a long pedigree in the school system, resigned on Friday under pressure after defending the word “intifada” as a T-shirt slogan. On Monday, the schools chancellor hastily appointed Danielle Salzberg, an educator who is Jewish and speaks no Arabic, as the interim principal, prompting taunting tabloid headlines like “School Bad Idea Even Before Hebrew Ha-ha.”
And Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was again explaining his administration’s handling of the school. “You don’t have to speak Arabic in order to run a school,” he said at an unrelated appearance yesterday in the Bronx.
“We don’t look at anybody’s ethnicity in anything else and we’re not going to start here. This is a school we should do, we’re going to do, and I’m sorry the last woman didn’t work out, but I think we’re better off going out and attacking the problem again, and I think we’ve got the right person.”
But supporters and opponents alike wondered how the administration had blundered so badly in a city where Mideast politics can be as passionately debated as in Tel Aviv or in Gaza.
“I believe there is nothing wrong with having a school related in Islamic culture,” said former Mayor Edward I. Koch. “ I don’t think there is anything wrong with the idea at all.” He added, referring to Ms. Almontaser: “They were too quick to fire her though. I thought she apologized and gave what she thought was an adequate response and is believable.”
The tumult continued yesterday morning, as dozens of parents and teachers showed up for orientation at the school in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. A staff member said that one parent asked Ms. Salzberg whether the children would be the focus of relentless media attention.
Indeed, just a few moments after she tried to assure the parents, they walked out to see television cameras outside.
“This is their midsummer debacle,” said Henry J. Stern, a former parks commissioner. “The idea was well-intentioned but utterly unreal.”
Certainly the school system is no stranger to ideological and ethnic ferment. School decentralization was born out of the clash in Ocean Hill-Brownsville four decades ago that pit black activists against the then-largely Jewish teachers union. Multicultural curriculums, the Harvey Milk school for gay adolescents, and the ousting of black and Hispanic school boards have all had their days of attention.
Ms. Almontaser was known as a community organizer in Brooklyn who had worked with interfaith organizations and helped organize peace rallies after 9/11. She was working with New Visions for Public Schools, a nonprofit group that helped start dozens of schools in recent years.
Khalil Gibran was intended to serve 60 students, all sixth graders, with just two classrooms.
Garth Harries, who is in charge of planning the city’s new schools, said the idea for an Arabic-themed school was appealing from the beginning.
“It had a particular focus, it had an international studies theme, as well as an emphasis on Arabic language,” Mr. Harries said in an interview yesterday. “That dimension of it was something that we saw as useful and enabling to that core goal of a quality rigorous core education.”
He said officials knew there could be problems ahead. “We were obviously conscious that this was a sensitive subject,” Mr. Harries said. “ That was something that the planning team had been aware of from the very beginning.”
But if they were aware, they did little to help and defend Ms. Almontaser, or even pave the way for the school with parents, many political figures and education officials said.
Only months after plans for the school were announced, a group of vocal parents and administrators at Public School 282 in Park Slope, which was to share space with Khalil Gibran, managed to have it moved elsewhere. Columnists in The New York Sun began attacking the school and suggesting that Ms. Almontaser was an extremist. Some high-profile figures, like Diane Ravitch, the historian of the New York school system, questioned why the city should have specialized language and cultural schools at all.
And Ms. Almontaser, with her limited experience as an administrator in the public eye, appeared unprepared for the onslaught.
“This is not a job where you want to learn on the job,” said one former high-ranking school official who did not want to second-guess the administration on the record because he still has dealings with the city. “If you’re going to be thrown into the deep end, what you need is someone who is an experienced official.” Ms. Almontaser gave an interview to The Post last week, and was asked about T-shirts sold by an organization that shares space with a Yemeni group that Ms. Almontaser belongs to. Her attempt to explain away the term intifada on the shirts began a weeklong onslaught of damaging headlines.
“I am surprised that in the few weeks before the school started, the principal — as opposed to a Department of Education official — would be talking to the press about an issue that doesn’t relate to the school,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, who has been critical of Ms. Almontaser’s remarks.
“She has no experience as a principal, and there was no support for her,” Ms. Weingarten said.
Education officials say that they were trying to keep the focus on opening the school. “We can’t control all the ways that the discussion goes,” Mr. Harries said.
Education officials turned to Ms. Salzberg to take over the school. Robert L. Hughes, the president of New Visions, said she was chosen based on her experience with the school over the last several months.
“I think that the calculation here was that we wanted to make sure that there was continuity for the faculty, the students who had accepted the school, and the planning process that had been in place for the last six to eight months,” Mr. Hughes said. “Given those circumstances, Danielle was the natural choice.”
Ms. Weingarten compared Ms. Salzberg to a relief pitcher in the eighth inning of a baseball game. “She’s started a lot of small schools,” she said. “They had to find somebody quickly who would have the confidence of opening a new school.”
But once again a principal seemed caught by surprise by the attention as details emerged about her religious identity, where she goes to synagogue and her signing of a petition to Orthodox rabbis asking them to do more to help Jewish women whose husbands will not grant them religious divorces. A person close to Ms. Salzberg said she has been stunned by the media attention. The Education Department has declined to make her available for interviews.
Even as the department pressed on, promising to open the school on time despite the criticism, it was faced with a relatively low enrollment — 44 students, most of them black and Hispanic and only six with any Arabic-language skills, according to officials.
Some were left wondering whether the whole effort was worth the fuss. “It’s only worth it if you have gone into the Muslim community and found a tremendous desire to have a school like this,” Mr. Koch said. He said he also found the selection of Ms. Salzberg strange. “To put a principal totally unimmersed in the culture seems like spitting in their eye,” he said.
But Lena Alhusseini, the executive director of the Arab-American Family Support Center, a partner with the school, said yesterday, “I’m very excited about the school, and I’m looking forward to working with Danielle.”
A couple articles on the school listed below:
Associated Press
Extra Security for NYC Arabic School
By COLLEEN LONG 08.29.07, 6:34 PM ET
NEW YORK -
An Arabic-themed public school will open next week with extra security after months of protest by some who say it will be a training ground for radical Islam.
Enrollment is nearly full at the 60-student Khalil Gibran International Academy, which will require its students to take Arabic as a foreign language, said Department of Education spokeswoman Melody Meyer on Wednesday.
Sixth-graders will be the first to attend the school, which will add a grade each year to end up with 500 to 600 students in grades 6-12. It joins a number of small public schools in the city that have themes, covering areas from the arts to social justice to Chinese language.
The school, named after a Christian Lebanese poet who promoted peace, is the first in the city to offer instruction in Arabic and on Arab culture.
"We need more Arabic speakers in this country, and that's part of the reason this school is being opened," Meyer said. Two of the five teachers hired at the school graduated from universities with federally funded programs aimed at boosting the number of schools in the U.S. teaching Arabic, she said.
Since the school was announced in February, critics have attacked the school as a potential training ground for radicals. Because of protests, it has had to move to a new building and its principal resigned.
An organization called the Friends of Gibran Council, which claims its mission is to advance the philosophy of Gibran, also formed this year in part to prevent the school from "hijacking the name of this great artist," a spokesman said Wednesday.
It was originally going to take space in an elementary school in Brooklyn. Parents at the school objected for a number of reasons, including whether the ideological controversy would create a security risk.
The Department of Education moved the school to operate within a high school and middle school in Brooklyn.
Khalil Gibran's first principal, Debbie Almontaser, left earlier this month amid criticism for her affiliation with a group that had T-Shirts with the word "intifada," an Arabic term commonly used to refer to the Palestinian uprising against Israel. She was replaced by acting interim principal Danielle Salzberg, a Jewish woman who does not speak Arabic.
Meyer said there are no special plans for the first day of school, but education officials are taking into account the controversy and will provide extra security.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
New York Times
August 21, 2007
Protesters Seek Leader’s Return to Arabic School
By JENNIFER MEDINA
About 200 demonstrators gathered in front of the headquarters of the city’s Department of Education last evening, voicing their support for the beleaguered Khalil Gibran International Academy. Many of them called for the reinstatement of the school’s founding principal, who resigned under pressure this month after she defended the word “intifada” as a T-shirt slogan.
The group — a mix of students, parents, teachers and activists from a wide range of organizations — blamed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein for the school’s struggles, saying they did not do enough to help the founding principal, Debbie Almontaser.
Ms. Almontaser, an immigrant from Yemen who had worked in the school system for many years and was known for her work with groups that promote interfaith religious dialogue, was repeatedly portrayed by some in the news media as an extremist.
“This is nothing more than demonizing and vilifying a woman and an entire group of people,” said Deborah Howard, a speaker at the protest and a parent who had worked with Ms. Almontaser on the plans to open the middle school in Brooklyn. “Anyone who knows Debbie knows that she is a woman of peace. I am furious that the Department of Education did not support her.”
To that, people in the audience began chanting “bring Debbie back,” as they did several times during the hourlong protest, which brought several school officials out of their offices at Tweed Courthouse headquarters. Danielle Salzberg, an educator who is Jewish and speaks no Arabic, was appointed last week as the interim principal.
A department spokeswoman said officials were focused only on opening the school in the fall.
August 15, 2007
How New Arabic School Aroused Old Rivalries
By JULIE BOSMAN and JENNIFER MEDINA
When aides to Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein were presented last fall with a proposal for an Arabic language and culture school, they thought the idea could be controversial. But they said they could not resist the appeal of a school that seemed right for the times and that would be a piece of the school system’s mosaic of dual-language programs.
Those intentions ran straight into the treacherous ethnic and ideological political currents of New York and were overwhelmed by poor planning, inadequate support for the principal and relentless criticism from some quarters of the news media, primarily The New York Post and The New York Sun.
The founding principal of the school, known as the Khalil Gibran International Academy, Debbie Almontaser, a Yemeni immigrant with a long pedigree in the school system, resigned on Friday under pressure after defending the word “intifada” as a T-shirt slogan. On Monday, the schools chancellor hastily appointed Danielle Salzberg, an educator who is Jewish and speaks no Arabic, as the interim principal, prompting taunting tabloid headlines like “School Bad Idea Even Before Hebrew Ha-ha.”
And Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was again explaining his administration’s handling of the school. “You don’t have to speak Arabic in order to run a school,” he said at an unrelated appearance yesterday in the Bronx.
“We don’t look at anybody’s ethnicity in anything else and we’re not going to start here. This is a school we should do, we’re going to do, and I’m sorry the last woman didn’t work out, but I think we’re better off going out and attacking the problem again, and I think we’ve got the right person.”
But supporters and opponents alike wondered how the administration had blundered so badly in a city where Mideast politics can be as passionately debated as in Tel Aviv or in Gaza.
“I believe there is nothing wrong with having a school related in Islamic culture,” said former Mayor Edward I. Koch. “ I don’t think there is anything wrong with the idea at all.” He added, referring to Ms. Almontaser: “They were too quick to fire her though. I thought she apologized and gave what she thought was an adequate response and is believable.”
The tumult continued yesterday morning, as dozens of parents and teachers showed up for orientation at the school in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. A staff member said that one parent asked Ms. Salzberg whether the children would be the focus of relentless media attention.
Indeed, just a few moments after she tried to assure the parents, they walked out to see television cameras outside.
“This is their midsummer debacle,” said Henry J. Stern, a former parks commissioner. “The idea was well-intentioned but utterly unreal.”
Certainly the school system is no stranger to ideological and ethnic ferment. School decentralization was born out of the clash in Ocean Hill-Brownsville four decades ago that pit black activists against the then-largely Jewish teachers union. Multicultural curriculums, the Harvey Milk school for gay adolescents, and the ousting of black and Hispanic school boards have all had their days of attention.
Ms. Almontaser was known as a community organizer in Brooklyn who had worked with interfaith organizations and helped organize peace rallies after 9/11. She was working with New Visions for Public Schools, a nonprofit group that helped start dozens of schools in recent years.
Khalil Gibran was intended to serve 60 students, all sixth graders, with just two classrooms.
Garth Harries, who is in charge of planning the city’s new schools, said the idea for an Arabic-themed school was appealing from the beginning.
“It had a particular focus, it had an international studies theme, as well as an emphasis on Arabic language,” Mr. Harries said in an interview yesterday. “That dimension of it was something that we saw as useful and enabling to that core goal of a quality rigorous core education.”
He said officials knew there could be problems ahead. “We were obviously conscious that this was a sensitive subject,” Mr. Harries said. “ That was something that the planning team had been aware of from the very beginning.”
But if they were aware, they did little to help and defend Ms. Almontaser, or even pave the way for the school with parents, many political figures and education officials said.
Only months after plans for the school were announced, a group of vocal parents and administrators at Public School 282 in Park Slope, which was to share space with Khalil Gibran, managed to have it moved elsewhere. Columnists in The New York Sun began attacking the school and suggesting that Ms. Almontaser was an extremist. Some high-profile figures, like Diane Ravitch, the historian of the New York school system, questioned why the city should have specialized language and cultural schools at all.
And Ms. Almontaser, with her limited experience as an administrator in the public eye, appeared unprepared for the onslaught.
“This is not a job where you want to learn on the job,” said one former high-ranking school official who did not want to second-guess the administration on the record because he still has dealings with the city. “If you’re going to be thrown into the deep end, what you need is someone who is an experienced official.” Ms. Almontaser gave an interview to The Post last week, and was asked about T-shirts sold by an organization that shares space with a Yemeni group that Ms. Almontaser belongs to. Her attempt to explain away the term intifada on the shirts began a weeklong onslaught of damaging headlines.
“I am surprised that in the few weeks before the school started, the principal — as opposed to a Department of Education official — would be talking to the press about an issue that doesn’t relate to the school,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, who has been critical of Ms. Almontaser’s remarks.
“She has no experience as a principal, and there was no support for her,” Ms. Weingarten said.
Education officials say that they were trying to keep the focus on opening the school. “We can’t control all the ways that the discussion goes,” Mr. Harries said.
Education officials turned to Ms. Salzberg to take over the school. Robert L. Hughes, the president of New Visions, said she was chosen based on her experience with the school over the last several months.
“I think that the calculation here was that we wanted to make sure that there was continuity for the faculty, the students who had accepted the school, and the planning process that had been in place for the last six to eight months,” Mr. Hughes said. “Given those circumstances, Danielle was the natural choice.”
Ms. Weingarten compared Ms. Salzberg to a relief pitcher in the eighth inning of a baseball game. “She’s started a lot of small schools,” she said. “They had to find somebody quickly who would have the confidence of opening a new school.”
But once again a principal seemed caught by surprise by the attention as details emerged about her religious identity, where she goes to synagogue and her signing of a petition to Orthodox rabbis asking them to do more to help Jewish women whose husbands will not grant them religious divorces. A person close to Ms. Salzberg said she has been stunned by the media attention. The Education Department has declined to make her available for interviews.
Even as the department pressed on, promising to open the school on time despite the criticism, it was faced with a relatively low enrollment — 44 students, most of them black and Hispanic and only six with any Arabic-language skills, according to officials.
Some were left wondering whether the whole effort was worth the fuss. “It’s only worth it if you have gone into the Muslim community and found a tremendous desire to have a school like this,” Mr. Koch said. He said he also found the selection of Ms. Salzberg strange. “To put a principal totally unimmersed in the culture seems like spitting in their eye,” he said.
But Lena Alhusseini, the executive director of the Arab-American Family Support Center, a partner with the school, said yesterday, “I’m very excited about the school, and I’m looking forward to working with Danielle.”
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