Earlham CollegeThe First Stop on Jeremy's Spring College Tour

Earlham College is 660 miles from just outside the Holland Tunnel, on the Jersey side, where we gassed up on our way out west. Although the trip took nearly one whole day (11 hours) of driving and two tanks of gas, the school is definitely worth the trip!

Earlham is a small college in Richmond, Indiana, minutes from Dayton, Ohio. The school was founded by Quakers in 1847, and, like Guilford, has a philosophy strongly rooted in Quaker beliefs and values. The school sits on 800 acres, some wooded, and is made up of Georgian style red brick buildings. The overall architectural theme is one of simplicity, and although the campus is not the most beautiful we have seen, it has an extremely pleasing look and is peppered with lots of old, tall trees, many smaller, colorful flowering trees and lush green lawns in between. The buildings are clustered around a quad affectionately called “The Heart,” making the walk from one to the next relatively short.

A prospective student visiting Earlham is given a schedule created by the admissions office. Celeste just signed up for a tour, but Jeremy attended a class at 9am, (computer science-artificial intelligence,) went on a tour at 10am, and was interviewed at 11.

At 12 there was a lunch tour and all of the visitors and their parents who were visiting that day walked to the dining hall and we all ate together at two big tables! It was so welcoming and, well, fun! We made many new friends and chatted with people visiting Earlham form all over. Celeste and I actually toured twice, once with Emma and once again with Mallory. Interestingly, there is no info-session. It is up to us to speak to people and gather facts and information about the school ourselves. So we chatted with almost everyone we met. It makes for a warm and very personable experience.

What makes Earlham so special, in my opinion, is that it is a little oasis in the middle of no-where. It’s a beautiful college in the middle of a lesser known little town in an area of the state that is open and flat, and lacks the beauty of mountains or rolling hills. And, Earlham is full of friendly, sophisticated, liberal, like-minded folks who seemed to have gathered in this out-of-the-way place to make a great school that does wonderful and important things. Earlham is, hands down, the most racially diverse school I have ever seen, and it has the most diverse soccer team of all. We were told that only a small percentage of students hail from the immediate area. The bulk, like 80%, come from other places, and many, maybe 18% are international students. It seems Earlahm attracts a certain caliber of student and facluty to gather in this magical place. This makes for a rich and diverse student body, and an interesting place to be.

I must mention the beauty of the buildings, both inside and out. The student center, for example, is open, bright, clean and wonderfully appealing-something that stood out especially after our next tour. There is a student art gallery inside! The living and learning areas are pleasing and comfortable-I saw no cinder blocks! I wish I had photographed the large, bright dining hall that everyone calls SAGA. There is just one, and everyone eats together at big round or rectangular tables at specific times. Students who miss a meal can use their card at a coffee shop. I've always believed that schools with one dining hall help build community that way.

Jeremy had a lovely meeting with the men’s soccer coach, who met him at lunch with other players. Afterwards, he took us around to his office and then down to the soccer fields. He spoke at length and with pride about his school and his team’s accomplishments. He has been at Earlham for 31 years, and plans to continue on for at least a while longer. He invited Jeremy to return in the fall for an overnight and to see a game.

Next time, Jeremy will be flying…

Dear Mayor Bloomberg, 3.23.12

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

I wanted to tell you about what happened in our class this week. I'd have written sooner, but I was busy marking classwork from this past week, on my Saturday.

Late in the day on Thursday, a student in my class noticed bugs in another student's hair. At dismissal, the babysitter of the child with bugs in her hair was asked to notify the parents immediately so that the child could be treated for lice. The babysitter called the school later to get the child's mother's work number as the child's father, who arrived home first, had never seen or heard of lice, did not know what to do about the lice, and was unable to offer money to the babysitter to get supplies to treat the lice. The mother was not able to come to the phone and was not due home until 10pm.

Fearing that the mother would unwittingly send the child to school on Friday, untreated, and risk spreading the lice throughout out the class, I called the home at 7am the next day, hoping to prevent the child from coming to school. From the comfort of my own house and in my pajamas, I began to explain the treatment options available to her: coming the hair out twice a day and wrapping the head in butter to sleep and smother the lice at night, or calling a professional nitpicker to address the problem. I also assembled a collection of lice fighting materials: a nit comb ($30 value), Pantene conditioner (to aid in nit removal,) a bandana, and winter green oil (to apply to the scalp) just in case the mother needed to borrow any or all of these things.

Once at school, my co-teacher, at my suggestion, called another parent, also a professional nitpicker, to come in and check the heads of all of our students. Fortunately she was available and came in. She spent an hour combing through heads in the back of the classroom, one at a time, while other children did their school work. She found lice in four heads. The parents of those children were notified as well, and will hopefully treat their children this weekend. The we sent out a class-wide email requesting that every family check their children regularly for lice. As you may remember, we are going camping on Wednesday, and cannot take children to camp with lice in their heads.

Does your teacher evaluation system, noting whether or not a child's test scores increase, measure these kinds of responsibilities that we teachers take simply for the sake of our students and their families? I hope so, although it doesn't seem as though it possibly can.

I hope you will think about some of the things I have been telling you about and that you have a better sense of what our jobs are really like. My goal is that you will be motivated to look at teachers as caring and devoted people who work very, very hard, and who deserve to be evaluated on their performance by some measure that uses more than a number, or a change in numbers, derived from a questionable set of assessments given over six days for a few hours in the spring, and regards us with the kind of dignity that you certainly demand for yourself.

Jennifer Hardy,
Classroom Teacher

Dear Mayor Bloomberg, 3.3.12

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

The teacher ratings came out this week. It seems there are a lot of innacuracies. I imagine if an important report affected you they way these affect teachers who get unfavorable ratings, you would be upset. It seems that you don't care about that so much. Too bad.

I wanted to write to you and tell you about my weekend, and last weekend, and next weekend. The photo above shows my living room. You'll notice it is full of papers. These are piles of my students' work. I lug this stuff home so that I can read through it all again in order to complete my progress reports. We present progress reports at Parent/Teacher conferences which we have scheduled for four days after school over the next two weeks. In our school, in our grade, we meet with parents for 20 minutes conferences. As we have 29 students, that's 580 minutes of meetings after school. We are lucky that the UFT has allowed us to have one half day of school to have meetings, but most parents work during the day and need to come at night-more than we could see in one evening. So, in my class we schedule three or four additional evenings.

Some teachers fill out checklists to chart student progress. In my school, we use a grade appropriate standards based check list, but we attach a narrative evaluation of each student's performance in each of seven subject areas. In my grade, we write these narratives twice a year. I am lucky because I teach in an ICT class, and I only have to write 16 narratives each semester. My co-teacher has to write narratives for 13 students plus her annual IEP forms. (Actually, we have additional meetings for the IEP students as well, but those are during the day, usually during our prep periods.) The other teachers on my grade, Steve and Ilana, each must write 30 narratives! The narratives I write about my students' performance in school are quite intense. I'd post one here, but that would invade a student's privacy. I would never want to do that. The shortest narrative I've written today is about 1,200 words long. The longest is over 1,700 words. I try to give the parents a complete overview of their child's performance in my class. It takes me over two hours, sometimes longer, to write each report. Plus I have to fill out the checklist, add in the attendance and lateness data, and, we like to include a photo or a quote from each child. In addition, I gather a packet of work samples to show families at the conference. This takes additional time as well.

This weekend, I took about three hours off from writing time to do a load or two of laundry, to go for a run and to watch my son play soccer. Thankfully, although my husband is also a teacher, he teaches a cluster class, music, and doesn't have bi-annual reports to write. He was able to grocery shop, fix a broken appliance, make lunches for after the soccer game and cook us some dinner. He is a good husband, and a good teacher. I hope you and your politician friends give him a good rating.

I was wondering if my extra weekend work, which is crucial for my students and their families, for which I am not paid anything extra, ever, at all, will affect my rating. I know it's meaningful, I know it's important, I know it helps families understand their child's strengths and weaknesses and how they can support their children with school work much more than the test score they will receive in the summer or fall of this year. But what I don't know is how you can really know how hard I, and thousands of teachers across this city, work to ensure our students' success, based on a number from 1 through 4, that these 8 year old children will get as a result of three or four hours of testing in April.

That's why I write you these letters: so that you will know.

Sincerely, a NYC public school teacher,
Jennifer Hardy

Ohio University

Hi, this is Jennifer, Jenny's guest blogger, writing about my trip to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, with my daughter Rosa. Rosa is an aspiring photographer and we went to Ohio University to look specifically at two photography programs. Ohio offers photography majors in both their School of Visual Communications, which is part of the Scripps School of Journalism and offers majors in photojournalism and commercial photography; and in their School of Fine Arts where they offer a B.F.A. in photography.

Athens is located in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. It is a beautiful, although somewhat remote, area of Ohio. Ohio University is the oldest college/university in the old Northwest Territory. Founded in 1804, it is the reason for being of Athens and Athens is completely a college town. The campus is beautiful. There are lots of old trees and red brick buildings with lots of lovely old Victorian homes scattered around the campus serving as fraternity or sorority houses or campus offices. There is a business district adjacent to campus with bookstores, coffee shops, vegetarian and ethnic restaurants, a movie theater and,

naturally I suppose, a multitude of bars.

We spent a day and a half on campus and everyone we met was friendly and absolutely delighted to talk about the school. We spent considerable time with both of the department heads of the programs Rosa was interested in and they both were very willing to discuss her interest in photography and why she wants to pursue it at length. I have been on many college tours and it is rare to get that kind of personal attention.

Ohio University has about 20,000 undergraduate students. The student body is small enough so that there is a feeling of community, but large enough to offer a wide range of academic majors, loads of clubs and extracurricular activities, and lots of opportunities for internships and foreign study. The school is Division 1 in most sports and also has many club teams. There are three separate buildings for athletic activities: a new gym with a rock climbing wall and an indoor track, a natatorium with an Olympic size pool and an ice rink.

For the most academically advanced students, Ohio University offers the Honors Tutorial College which is based on the Oxford and Cambridge tutorial system. If students are admitted to this college they are basically free to design their own course of study and to pursue it with individual guidance from professors of their choice.

I loved Ohio University, but unfortunately my daughter did not. While she appreciated all of the individual attention she received, I think it is just too far away from home for her. I, however, think that it is a gem of a school.

More College Tours: SUNY New Paltz and Bard

This past Saturday, despite the threat of 3" of snow, Jeremy and I ventured north to see two new (for him) schools. It was my second visit to New Paltz, but my first to Bard. We lucked out weatherwise-there was no accumulation of the flurries we experienced and the sun came out in the afternoon. My cousin Beverly and her family accompanied us caravan style, and the whole outing was lots of fun.

SUNY New Paltz is a university comprised of 5 schools in New Paltz, NY, about 2 hours north of NYC, right on the Metro North Line. New Paltz, I saw for the first time, is a cute little Woodstock-like town.

The info-session at New Paltz has greatly improved since I was there with Elsa in 2009. Our admissions representative, Alcia, was clear, thorough and confident. She used a power point to speak about New Paltz and made the school seem very appealing, desriable and flexible. The average grade of the admitted student is A-, sort of tough for us!

Our tour guide, Raj, is a bio and pre-med student. We couldn't understand why Jeremy, Mr. Anti-science, was paired with him, but whatever. Raj was personable and humorous, and is also an RA, as is Elsa. He showed us his dorm and his room.

Capen Common Room

I was disappointed that Raj didn't make a bigger deal about the athletic center. I thought this building might hook Jeremy.

The Dining Hall

This is my favorite view of New Paltz: The Atrium

Here are the second cousins by the entrance sign.




We left New Paltz and drove into Poughkeepsie where our friends Jenny and Adam have the coolest restaurant, Soul Dog. Yum! We stuffed ourselves...

From Poughkeepsie, we drove about 40 minutes north on Route 9 to Annandale on Hudson, to Bard. The admissions office at Bard was closed on this day, but we secured a private tour with Elsa's dear friend and junior, Sophia. She showed us the student center, the admissions office, the althletic center and her suite in "The Village." Thanks, Sophia!!

Below is the famous Fisher Center whichwe did not see in daylight, so I took this photo from the internet.

Bard is by far the hippest school we have see so far. The students look like city kids, not suburban kids, which is what we have seen a lot! The majors and the curricula are artsy, for sure. The campus is woodsy and spread out. James, poet and creative writer that he is, felt immediately at home there. Although Bard is SAT optional, those that do submit their scores have scores that range between 650 and 740-a little out of our league. Sophia added that Bard students who do not submit scores do not do so because their scores are low... It was important to see the school, though, to see if this is the KIND of school Jeremy would like to find. IMHO, we already have, but that one is a bit far from home.

The search continues in April...

Dear Mayor Bloomberg, 2.7.12

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

In case you were wondering, the first day of the 3rd Grade Museum of China went very well. We opened the museum after lunch, at 12:30, and closed it at 3:00 in time to dismiss our students at 3:20. We had a fairly good turn-out and lots of positive feedback from parents, grandparents, administrators, colleagues and students of all ages. As you know, my area was the shadow puppet performances and I oversaw and supported three different plays. As creating shadows in a classroom is dependent on direct light and objects that block the light, in our case onto a screen, it was necessary to darken our classroom by pulling down our shades. Fortunately, all three sets had recently been replaced-thank you-and they work much better than they have in previous years. Unfortunately, a parent helper broke one of them as we were opening them back up at the close of today's museum-a custodial requirement each day. A work request to repair the broken shade would not have enabled it to be fixed in time to darken the room tomorrow for the second day of the museum. So, the parent and I fixed the shade ourselves.

I'm not sure how well my students will score on the State Tests that we will administer this spring which will, theoretically reflect upon my effectiveness but I do know that I am RESOURCEFUL. I hope that you appreciate that fact, too.

Sincerely,

Jennifer

Dear Mayor Bloomberg

For a long time, I have wanted to write weekly letters to the mayor to tell him what it is really like to be a teacher in a NYC public school. In my opinion, our mayor is anti-teacher, anti-union and anti public school. I don't agree with his assessments of how most teachers work, I don't agree that there needs to be an evaluation of teachers' effectiveness that is tied to standardized testing, and I don't believe that teachers' pay should be linked to the "success" of the students' performances on tests when there are so many other influential variables at play. So here we go:

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

I want you to know that my colleague, Diane, and I worked at school in our classroom until 8:40 Friday, February 3rd. We were preparing our room for our upcoming museum, February 7th and 8th. Perhaps you can stop by. We were thrown out at that time by our custodian, who wanted to lock up. We had more cleaning and organizing to do, but were not able to. We were not the only teachers in school, either. Other teachers on our grade who are also participating in the museum, were there cleaning and setting up late into the evening as well. Steve was planning to go in for a few hours today, Saturday, to clean and set up his classroom.

What took us so long? Yes, we dismiss our students at 3:20, but it is only after the children are gone that we have the ability to get work done. We began by just tidying up from weeks of project time, during which we collect tons of research and materials for students to use to make models and projects to show others what they have learned about ancient China. Some of the projects include a Great Wall of China, a bridal litter, porcelain pottery, models of bronze vessels, two models of a Chinese Scholar's Garden, models of the Terra Cotta Warriors, models of bronze weapons and more. As a result, the room has papers (drafts of captions students have written about what they learned, how they made their projects and reflections about what they might do differently next time,) and models all over, as well as extra sheets of cardboard, old clay, glue guns, pebbles, pipe ceaners, paint-well hopefully you get the picture. Next we had to mount and hang the artwork, calligraphy and informative posters children made that will be displayed in the museum. After that, Steve and Ilana went down to the art room and outside to collect clay plates that children had made and fired in an outdoor kiln project earlier in the week. Those plates will be on display in the museum, but right now they are sitting in the middle of the classroom and will have to be moved before our students, all 30 of them, come to school on Monday morning. Once we were all back together, we teachers sat in the hallway on the floor, exhausted, and planned next week. We organized which projects will be displayed in which rooms and planned out how to label the classrooms. Oh dear, those signs need to be made. Oh well-Monday! Then we had to make a schedule for 90 children, in two teams, to clarify when they will "work" as docents for 20 minutes, and when they will have breaks for 10 minutes to view the museum themselves. Oh, did I mention scheduling the three shadow puppet plays that will be performed? Those have to be rehearsed and staged on Monday and Tuesday morning.

We also had to spend some time planning the upcoming Read-A-Thon fundraiser we are holding to raise funds for a camping trip that we take each spring. Three days in the Poconoes (for which we teachers receive NO extra pay and is NO vacation,) and transportation costs about $300 per child which the city does not fund. Each year, we raise the money ourselves. After we teachers met and planned, we had to search through our computers to find the necessary documents to send home so that families will know the dates of the Read-A-Thon and how to record the names and addresses of the 20 or so sponsors they are to collect to pay our students to read. After we assembled the documents, Ilana graciously went down to the teacher's room to make copies for all three classes. Fortunately, our school copier was working!

After we met and planned, Diane and I resumed cleaning and organizing the classroom, including climbing on ladders to store stuff away, wiping down tables, sweeping and mopping the floor, scouring our sink-well hopefully you get the picture.

Because of the museum prep and having children up each day to finish their projects during our lunch period, I was a little behind on other paperwork. This morning, Saturday, when I got up, I finished writing our weekly class newsletter. I imported photos and a museum flyer to inform families of where and when to come. Then I emailed the flyer out to all of the parents in our class. After that, I updated our class website to include the newsletter and to post photos of the recent clay making and firing project. Later this afternoon, I went to Manhattan, to Blick Art supplies to buy colorful paper and a poster board to make a sign for the three puppet shows which will be performed. None of these supplies are available at school, and we are a school with at least some funds for teacher and classroom supplies-we are lucky. After Blick, I stopped by the restaurant where we will take our students on Friday to celebreate the completion of our China study to make the reservation and to plan the menu for 75 at $8 per person. Next week we will have to remind families, collect the $8 and find a way to cover the cost of the meal that some families will not be able to afford. Now that I am home, after I finish this letter, I will sit down and make the sign for the puppet show.

Tomorrow, I will spend marking and correcting homework that has accumlated during this busy week. I will have to also prepare my lessons, worksheets and homework for the periods that the museum does not cover next week. Thankfully, Diane does the bulk of this planning and makes and copies the homework sheet for the week for our class, but I must prepare the lessons I will teach. I must get everything done on time on Sunday so that I can get to bed early and be on time, 8:20 am, on Monday. If I am late, my time card will be pulled and I will clock in upon arrival so that my pay can be docked!

Thankfully the IEP meeting for a student transferring out of our class has been postponed until after the museum. It was originally scheduled during our lunch period on Monday which is when I will be having a dress rehearsal for ONE of the three plays. But we may also have to meet this week with one or both supervisors of the student teachers we have in our clasroom this semester. We will also have to carve out some time to meet with the student teachers themselves to help each of them plan the lessons that they are to teach this and next week.

In fairness to you, this is an especially busy period. We don't often have quite this many additional responsibilities. But, very, very often, our jobs require so much more than working 8 to 3, that I am motivated to inform you about what teaching children and our lives are really like. I am going to continue to write to you each week to keep you posted about our school year and all that we teachers at BNS do each day, each week, each month, every year.

How could you measure the caliber and the quality of the teaching work I've done in the past 24 hours by my students' test scores after 6 days of testing in May?

If you have questions or need more information, call me after 7pm. I'm usually busy working until then.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Hardy

BNS 3rd grade teachers planning and resting...

The finished sign for the shadow puppet plays.

Ursinus College

Our second college search continues...

Jeremy clearly expressed an interest in seeing some schools closer to home, but in warmer climates than NYC. We have put together a list using CLTL as a guide, looking for small, nurturing places in PA and MD. And, because of his athletic commitments this spring, it seemed prudent to visit schools open to seeing juniors early in the year before the soccer club season starts. We were very lucky weather-wise today as it was a spring-like 50 degrees as we toured the school. Ursinus was sunny and livened up as students emerged from their dorms to head to brunch at the main dining area. Jeremy, his cousin Celeste, and I were guided through the campus by a lovely junior named Kristin who was frank, informative and very friendly. This was Celeste's first formal tour and it was evident how much she enjoyed seeing the school. Highlights for both prospective students were the special freshman two-semester CIE seminar, the possible majors and class offerings, the housing options, the size, look and feel of the campus, and the friendliness of everyone we met today.
More photos of Ursinus:

Irene Visits Stratford Road

Although we were very lucky, a big tree fell down in front of the home of our neighbors Allan and Melanie. It's tragic to lose another big, beautiful, leafy tree, but lucky that it fell away from, rather than on top of, their house! Too bad it didn't fall 20 feet to the right! (There is an enormous, half constructed, cinder block house next to where the tree fell.)

The B103, A New Discovery