Inner City School Model Part 1

I have some thoughts on education.  I actually sat down a couple  years ago and wrote out a plan to help change the way our inner city schools are run.  I sent it to the president.......guess he hasn't had time to read it yet. It's pretty radical but it is based on sound educational foundation. 
The problems within inner cities are humongous.  I  have no magic formula to solve them, but I do think a return to the roots of education and the common good would help more than what is being done today. 
I have a new student teacher this week. Nice quiet kid.  He worked at an inner city school for his Junior Practicum.  He was appalled at the whole scene and felt his job was not wanted or appreciated there,  he felt denigrated both by the students and by the parents. He was disgusted because he wanted to do a good job and couldn't. He learned something that I learned a long time ago.
I started out teaching in the inner city, and the problems were still the same.At 20 years old I was confronted with poverty, low learning levels, lack of family structure, lack of nutrition, lack of intellectual stimulation. lack of common courtesy and behavior.   Those same problems exist today, over 20 years later <grinning to the people who know my real age, i said OVER 20 years ago ha ha>.
Its hard for teachers in these situations to do it all, but that is what we ask of them.  At the time I was there, much embezzlement of school funds was also occuring at higher administrative levels, and it was hard to even get copy paper when it was needed.  There were cockroaches in my coat closet. I doubt too much of that has changed even today.  Money that was meant for the students never quite reached them. No oversight, no help in the trenches, other than ridiculous mandates handed down from above.  Sound familiar?
Hard to fight these problems without a good plan.
So, here, I think, is a better way:
1. Convert one abandoned building in each neighborhood into an actual school house.  Retain the living room, stock it with soft seating, redecorate the formal dining room and a  provide a fully functional  kitchen.  Improve and expand the bathrooms.  Make each of the bedrooms a specific study nook: a computer room furnished with up to date equipment, a beginning library which will be added to each year, an art room fully supplied and a physical education/exercise room. An intercom system should also be installed. One large tv connected to the computers would be good to have.
2. Make the school day from 7am to 5 pm.  One of the problems for inner city kids is too much time on the streets.
3. The neighborhood school would accept all age students from 3 to 13 in that particular neighborhood.  The ratio of students to teacher and an aide would be 16 to 1.  However, no more than 48 students should go to one school.  The teachers are also administrators of that school. One of the aides should be a nurse.
4. The school is funded by a central city pot that is overseen and distributed by a community representative, a teacher and a parent representative from each neighborhood..
5. The school day would begin by today's group of "early" students and their aide and teacher preparing, serving and cleaning up for breakfast.  They will also be responsible through-out the day for lunch, morning and afternoon snacks.  This job would rotate among the three groups.  Everyone in the group participates by either setting up, cooking, cleaning up or planning the next days menu.  The older students will create a house budget and also order and pay for the supplies needed in the kitchen as part of their math and computer skill work.  Another group of students will be on "late" duty and clean up the school house before leaving for the day.  All of this leads to a feeling of accomplishment, shared responsibility, leadership skills, and caring for one another.Working towards a common good!
6. The school day schedule is developed by teachers and must include the regular school subjects of math, science, reading and writing, an independent study topic,  physical education, art or music, computer and study and rest times each day.  They will develop, coordinate, and teach an ILP  < individualized learning plans> for each of their 16 students.  They will be responsible for only their 16 students, and will keep progress reports on each.  One older student and one younger student within the group will be "buddies", with the older student responsible for helping the younger one in all areas of the school day.  Again, the 16 students working together are functioning as a team, where all are working together for the common good.
7. Each school will be visited at least once a month from a guidance representative, a parent consultant, and a city inspector.  The guidance person will develop team building and team sharing activities for the groups to practice.  The parent will discuss any questions or problems presented by the parents and the neighborhood and will be responsible for including parent volunteers in community building activities.These activities could be held on Saturdays and should include all the schools in a certain area.  Some ideas like tournaments both physical and mental, barbeques, etc.   The city inspector will note the cleanliness and supply inventory at each school house, and be responsible for helping the teachers and students of the house bring their house up to par.  If something does need to be fixed, another city worker should visit the house and not only fix the problem, but teach the students simple home repairs as well.
8. The teachers and aides have to be well paid for this to work.  Though the number of students they will have is low, the amount of work in developing the curriculum and tracking it for their 16 students and the actual length of the school day is high.
8. In a way, this is almost like a PEACE Core action but within our inner cities rather than sending teachers overseas.
It would take a totally committed group or city leaders, caring teachers and aides and helpful parents to make it work.
OK OK i told you it was radical.....but it could work!
BTW: I'd be happy to be the director of such a program if a city wants to hire me!  :)

Part 1 of Those Greedy Pigs.

I remember way back in the 60s when we all took to the streets to protest the war in Viet Nam and Big Business. We eventually made some headway on Viet Nam; Nixon resigned, the war ended.  Our people came home.  But i don't think we made any headway on what I like to call  "the destruction of America's economy by the military-industrial complex and big oil", to name names.
These two may seem like unlikely bed partners, but between them, they have managed to damage our economy and in turn  make the common people poorer than at any other time besides the depression:  To whit:
1. We spend more money on military defense than all the other nations in the world combined. This inanity is perpetuated by fear tactics.   The military leaders of this country would have you believe that there are governments in the world who are more dangerous to us than the USSR was in the 60s. Bin Ladin has been elevated to the same level as Kruschev!  Are you kidding me?  I dare Bin Laden to show his face and pound his shoe on the table at the UN and state that he would bury us.  Ain't gonna happen. He lives in a cave for god's sake, people!
Ok ok,  he is a terrorist for sure. And terrorism is now ballyhooed on the same level as nuclear destruction was in the past.  Terrorism sucks for sure, but it  is a type of "warfare" that is stopped more effectively by attacking the financial, technological and infrastructure of the groups rather than by invasion with guns..  Covert operations rather than overt operations
. To American soldiers, its hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys over there.  Bombs strapped to women and children?  Terrible, for sure.  But hard to fight by traditional means. Something happened recently that proves my point:  the computer generated WMD breakdown in Iran. Nerds did that, not guns!  YEAH Nerds! Can't set those bombs off without a computer program to do it, can ya  huh huh huh???  We need more of them involved to solve these problems. They actually have amazing weapons they carry right in their heads called BRAINS!!


2. Big oil still has us by what my Uncle Peter used to call "the short hairs."  Have you noticed how gasoline prices are creeping up again?  Have you noticed that there are almost no answers to WHY this is happenning? Could it be that the CEOS and their minions want another windfall year on the backs of the American people? Why yes!  It could!
Do you remember way back when we were in school we learned about some fat cats called "The Robber Barons".  People with names like Carnegie and Rockefeller, Vanderbilt? .  Are those names still around today?  YES, because even those so called robber barons knew that they should give back to the hands that feed them. So now we have Carnegie Hall and Rockefeller Center and Vanderbilt the railroad. We have the Carnegie Institute.  In other words, we have places that were built for the common good by these big wigs.
What have the oil barons of today given us?  The only thing that I have noticed are oil spills. They are so selfish with their money that they can't even maintain their own equipment!  And on top of that......Who needs 20 billion dollars a year? For what?  Some of them have bigger budgets than small countries!  Power and greed, power and greed.   I guess they think all that money is gonna somehow make them live forever.  What a bunch of misanthropes huh?
3. I am just getting started on the topic of GREED in America!   More to come!

Just starting out 1/27/11

This is my first adventure into blogging.  I have a lot to say about life in general and the common good in particular, and eventually I predict this blog will become just as famous as, say, Denis Leary's.
Today is a snow day.  Snow days have happened very frequently here in NJ this year.  Due to global warming.  Sounds contradictory doesn't it?  Many ninnycottonheads seem to think that because it is cold in the winter, there is no such thing as global warming!  Even some very famous politicians and celebrities think this.
Well listen, global warming has occurred many times over in the course of earth's history.   And it will occur again in the future.  The proper name for this is "interglacial warming".  We have ice ages and then we have warm periods in between.  Alligators have lived at the north pole in times past!  Cave men suffered through glacial winters when half of the USA was covered in ice!
So, guess what?  We are in one of those interglacial warm periods right now!
Scientists know this.  Sarah Palin does not.  The problem with this is that CO2 <and this blog does not include a subscript button> levels rise naturally during these warm periods.  But people make it worse due to things like BURNING fuels.  BURNING anywhere produces CO2, and since there are so many people burning so many things to get around and keep warm and watch tv, too much of that carbon dioxide is in the air.
Whether it will harm us or not is yet to be seen, although one prominent politician who now is a very tan leader, once said that we breathe CO2 every day, so it must be harmless!  Because I teach science and am a big proponent of evidence, I suggest we try to prove his theory,. We could maybe put him in a room with only CO2  for say, a few hours, and see how he fares.
One truism is that the warmer the air, the more water it can hold. This is what may be causing the abundance of rain and snow we are experiencing in the last couple years, which has lead to flooding in many areas of the world.  <yes Virgina, there are other places in the world that people live besides the Southern USA>
The bottom line here is that global warming is going to cause us some problems.  Many people here in NJ have had to make an unexpected expenditure this winter to buy a snow blower!  and we ain't seen nothing yet....there really is more to come.......