A Strong Community of Poets...

This IMOVIE is designed by Gail Harper Yeilding for the Images Project assignment for EDF 600: Urban Education taught by Dr. Tondra Loder-Jackson at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The photos were taken by myself and also pulled from newspaper articles. Newspaper sources are from The Birmingham News and the first bridge picture is from the Huffington-Post. Also, the picture at the Alabama Humanities Foundation was taken by a parent. I took photos from the newspaper in an effort to explore media portrayals of education with my own experiences.

The rationale for this project was developed from a reading titled, "Releasing emotion: Artmaking and leadership for social justice" by Laura Shapiro.

The goal of the movie is to display a community of strong poets and to display the ability of artmaking as a tool to challenge assumptions, release emotion, and to allow a learner to make meaning.

A guiding quote from the article which gave me inspiration: (Barone 2000) writes, "the strong poet is a strong storyteller, continuously revising her life story in the light of her own experience and imagination..."

Reference for the reading:
Shapiro, L (2006). Releasing emotion: Artmaking and
leadership for social justice: Making revolutions in
education (pp.233-250). Boston: Pearson.

Many thanks to the strong community of poets involved in this project!

Take this class if you haven't already and check out UAB's Center for Urban Education, http://www.uab.edu/cue

EDF600: Student Panel at Alabama Humanities Foundation

Upcoming stars from Birmingham City Schools, Shades Valley IB and Academies, and Vestavia City Schools welcomed us to the Alabama Humanities Foundation tonight to lead a discussion as part of our study of "Urban Students" for EDF 600: Urban Education taught by Dr. Tondra Loder-Jackson. For starters, what we discovered tonight was that "urban" might be a little more than urbane ;)

Locate many exciting programs and projects at http://www.ahf.net/

More excitement...

Another charter school that seems to be working, interesting!

Check this out, http://valoracademy.org

GO Mr. H.RAG!!! :) So impressed.

One System? Don't leave the table yet...

"Reinventing Our Community"

Is there a disparity in what city kids and suburban kids have access to?

Watch CBS coverage here:

Education Roundtable

Last Monday I had the opportunity to sit in on the Education Roundtable entitled, "Reinventing our Community" at the Birmingham-News. The room was full of excitement as Tom Scarritt facilitated a discussion that posed questions to a full room of diverse Birmingham stakeholders in education. Questions included: what the disparity looks like, what success looks like, if we had the will and from John Norris of Oakworth Capital, do we have a clear goal?

Dr. Craig Witherspoon, Superintendent of the Birmingham City Schools first made the distinction in educational opportunities and instead of an achievement gap, an expectation gap.

Jerry Tate, a Phillips Academy parent, advocated for the best technology and challenged all parents to become more involved. He also mentioned Phillips candidacy for International Baccalaureate as well as a need for the best teachers, correct leadership and a dropout recovery program.

Dr. Voltz of UAB's, Dean of Curriculum and Instruction at the School of Education mentioned the key to be teachers and a need to change the mindset of the schools. She also challenged for us as a community to begin to, "move the needle on student's achievement."

Leigh Perry from Ed Birmingham commented on what success looks like as well as a design for partnerships with schools and the business communities. Other emphasis included identifying negotiables and non-negotiables, knowledge or ability, engagement, thinking outside the box, leadership and trust.

Other memorable quotes:

"Will and vision go hand in hand."

"Alternative used to be a bad word."

"Tell your story... where are they, where are our students learning, they're at libraries!"

"We gotta do it!"

"Everyone is a child of somebody."

Education Roundtable, "Reinventing our Community"

Tom Scarritt, editor of the Birmingham news, on a series of conversations for our community:

This is exciting!

Education Roundtable Discussion

We Are All Ed: EdBirmingham.org

    Here's a movement that continues the work of Yes We Can! Birmingham by reporting the findings of community meetings across the city.  This website combines many efforts of stakeholders from all over Birmingham who are united by a desire to see our school system be successful.  Similar to Michelle Rhee's Student's First, EdBirmingham asks for input from parents, teachers, students, and community members on ways to increase achievement for the students.  By tackling issues of parent involvement, college and career focused schools, professional development for teachers, and pre-advanced placement initiatives, edbirmingham is a forum to get results through engaging everyone with a place that they can contribute for the good of all the community of Birmingham.  Calling for 3 simple things, money, time and heart, this could be the catalyst for what we so desperately need to give our students the schools and opportunities they deserve.  Be sure to view the notebook, a link at the top left of the homepage, http://edbirmingham.org/notebook.htm and sign up for the mailing list.

I am Ed Birmingham, and so are you.

Performance Assessment for EPR 688

Rationale for "30 Days of Slow Food and Poetry" on scribd.com, inspired by the $5 Slow Food Challenge!!!  Please feel free to use in your classroom.

http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/65669985?access_key=key-2nlzmft1vwpdk0azmm0y

"Empowering Teachers, Enriching Students."

Yesterday, I presented to the RMWP Leadership team a dream that many of my fellows and I discussed during our month as fellows in RMWP: 1-1 mentors for students in writing.  Being someone that benefitted both personally and professionally from RMWP, I was thrilled with the opportunity to dream.  What we came up with is a center at UAB for students from K-12 to come after school for tutoring, SAT/ACT prep, and enrichment which would be taught by fellows of the project.  Following models of Dave Eggers and Chip Brantley, we hope to bring to UAB a center for students and teachers to develop and share a love of writing.


     "Empowering teachers, enriching students."  This is the theme of a dream that RMWP’s leadership team discussed yesterday.  We will bring fellows and students to UAB's campus to apply RMWP concepts to a select group of K-12 students from all of metropolitan Birmingham.  Taught by fellows who are also teachers, students will get tutoring, writing support, and SAT/ACT prep in all content areas with writing as focus.  Simply put, teachers who teach writing must write themselves, and writing must be taught in all content areas.  It is a process and art which we want to include the youth on.  Please join us!  More info to come...


Thank you Dr. Perry, Bruce McComiskey and all the many dreamers involved in the project.  

StoryPeople Products:Broken Down

StoryPeople Products:Broken Down

Who ever feels like education is something like this?

this is a machine that's supposed to make people good & true & kind & the funny thing is that it works best when it's completely broken down so everyone has to stop what they're doing & get together & figure out how to fix it.

Democratic Classrooms | Teaching Tolerance

Democratic Classrooms | Teaching Tolerance

Article Webs on Reading Assessment

Accountability


Assessing ELL's


Peaceful Coexistence

Schoology.com

Tired of competing with social networking? Check out Schoology.com, a grading program designed in the same format as facebook. I began using this with the start of the new year in order to revamp and organize my classroom. I also believe it has the capacity to make what we do more transparent which I believe is an important link between students, parents and teachers.

Schoology has profiles just like facebook, privacy settings which keep it as a school community, a gradebook, attendance record, a discussion board, blog, and a test generator. Put simply, it combines social networking with learning management.

It has been amazing working on this with my students in the first week, and I hope to keep it up with a creative and transparent way of connecting learning to the real world.

Reviews from students so far include:

"This is a very unique way to do work in class. I think that the majority of the students will enjoy Schoology since it has the appeal of Facebook. We'll be able to turn in work and do assignments in a new way allowing versatility."

"I think this is a very good way for students and teachers to stay organized. Also, I think if the students cooperate with the program then it will turn out to be very good. Also, this saves the teachers from grading papers, the students from writing on paper, and it keeps the class quiet."

Another bonus, it has the potential to cut down the amount of paper used in your classes, along with the amount we are carrying home each night. Nearly everything can be done on this website!

Michelle Rhee, Producing Results FOR KIDS

The controversial persona of Michelle Rhee has become one of great hope in repairing the broken system of education which exists in America today. She is real. She understands the necessity of what needs to be done, and she understands what matters without having to say it. Her actions reflect her belief in one simple axiom, students first! She has since created a nonprofit group which seeks to continue much of the reform movements she began as superintendent of Washington, DC schools.

Anyone, and everyone should take the pledge and vote on four key beliefs about what effects first our students, our future when anyone discusses education policy today. Go to studentsfirst.org, and begin the conversation.

My favorite quote and something I try to think about daily when going into school, "You wake up every morning and you know that 46,000 kids are counting on you, and you know that most of them are getting a really crappy education right now." Then when asked to clarify, she responds, "I don't think they are, I know they are." While these words sting a bit, it definitely motivates and sends a direct message for the importance of education and the immediate and ever changing business of touching the future. It never is just the lesson plan or just the grad. exam, it is all relevant connected and important. If we don't think what we are doing is best for kids, then we must scrape it and keep going. As in life, the one thing constant is change, we must also see and be willing to do whatever we can to, "produce results for kids."