Students Celebrate National Engineers Week. The Anderson (SC) Independent-Mail (2/17, Jackson) reports, “Some Clemson Elementary School students filled the Hendrix Student Center at Clemson University on Tuesday to celebrate National Engineers Week. Mary Beth Kurz, professor of industrial engineering at Clemson University, said a total of more than 150 first- and second-graders from the school participated in learning exercises from stargazing to understanding artificial knee and hip replacement technology.” Kurz said, “Our goal is to encourage students to like math and science. If they begin to understand the importance of math, then they will be ready to study engineering in the future.”

News 8 Austin (2/16) reported on “Discover Engineering Week” in the Austin area, which will give students “a hands-on and updated view of the engineering industry,” and will include visits from industry professionals who “will talk about the importance of engineers in society and provide interactive features for students and teachers.” Another News 8 Austin (2/16, Iglehart) story reported, “IBM is one of the companies participating in” the initiative. Yesterday, “IBM trained volunteers for the program and taught various activities to get students acquainted with the life of an engineer. … Each activity gives students an idea of how important engineering is to their community and the impact it can have on their daily lives.”

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Read-i-cide, n. The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools. In Readicide, Kelly Gallagher takes a hard look at instruction that discourages students from reading, and offers suggestions on how teachers can cultivate lifelong readers.

Please be advised that I have scheduled emergency individual building meetings throughout the district. Annette has also scheduled a meeting with the security guards for Wednesday. That meeting will be held at the Asbury Park High School in room 113 at 2:30pm. This will be in addition to the breakfast workshop we will be holding for the Custodians, Maintenance men as well as the Security Guards on Saturday morning, March 27, at 9:00am in the morning at Langosta Lounge on the Boardwalk in Asbury Park. The following dates and times of the meeting are as follows:

Monday, March 8, 2010 – Bradley Elementary: 2:30pm

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 – Asbury Park High School Library: Immediately following the Superintedent’s meeting

Thursday, March 11, 2010 – Thurgood Marshall Cafeteria: Immediately following the Superintedent’s meeting.
Monday, March 15, 2010 – Barack Obama Elementary School Cafeteria/Auditorium: 2:30pm.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 – Asbury Park Middle School Cafeteria or Library: 2:30pm.

Please advise Melanie from the Annex that they can attend any of these meetings. Also, word must be given to the Alternative MIddle School to attend one of these meetings, preferably the Middle School meeting. Barbara from the ITC and Gena from the Board Office, please advise your members of these meeting dates.
I STRONGLY URGE EVERY MEMBER TO ATTEND THESE MEETINGS. WE ARE IN SERIOUS TROUBLE AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO STAND TOGETHER TO PROTECT EACH OTHER.

If you have any questions, please contact me.
John

Superintendent Is Willing To Negotiate With Teachers After Mass Firings.
The AP (3/3, Henry) reported that Central Falls, R.I. Superintendent Frances Gallo said “she’s willing to negotiate” with the Central Falls Teachers’ Union after firing all the teachers from Central Falls High School, “one of the state’s most troubled schools.” Gallo “said an offer made late Tuesday by the Central Falls Teachers’ Union gives her hope the issue could be resolved without mass firings. The offer includes support for a longer school day and providing before- and after-school tutoring for students.”

The Washington Post (3/4, Anderson) reports that “the decision last month to replace the teaching staff at the end of the school year cast the spotlight on a new Obama administration policy: To qualify for a share of $3.5 billion in federal turnaround aid, local officials must close the struggling school or replace the principal and start over with a new academic game plan and perhaps a new staff.” However, The Post notes, “Experts say there is little evidence to determine whether firing teachers en masse will improve a troubled school.”

Instead of drilling students on what’s wrong with a sentence, Jeff Anderson invites students to use mentor texts and make editing a meaningful part of the writing process in Everyday Editing. See how to weave editing into writer’s workshop and get 10 lesson sets covering everything from apostrophes to verb choice. Click here to read Chapter 1!

In the Classroom
Middle School Teacher Ties Mosaic-Building Exercise To Geography Lesson.
The St. Petersburg Times (3/4, Ritchie) reports that through mosaic-building, J.D.

The Asbury Park Board of Education meeting will be held at Bradley Elementary on Wednesday, February 24, 2010, at 6:30pm.
Please make every effort to attend. There will be RIFs on this agenda due to serious budget cuts within the district. Come out support your staff members, colleagues, family members and friends.

Prepare for budget elections
With all the problems facing the U.S. economy and the economy in this state, with record foreclosures and rising unemployment, your local association must be prepared for a difficult school budget election season. Contact your UniServ office to check on the date for a “Pass the School Budget” workshop in your county.

Are your members registered to vote?
You can start your school budget campaign by ensuring that your members are registered to vote for the April 20 school budget elections and by working with your administration and parents to register parents to vote. Visit the Division of Elections website for voter registration forms and the addresses to which they can be mailed.

Vote by mail for your school district’s budget
Don’t forget how easy it is to vote in New Jersey! You can vote by mail and it counts the same. No need to wait in line at the polls; you don’t even need an excuse as you did in the past to vote by mail. Simply print out and complete a Mail-In Ballot Application and mail it to your county clerk. Once you fill out the application you will receive, prior to Election Day, a voting ballot in the mail. Remember, if you apply for a Mail-In Ballot, you cannot show up at the polls on Election Day to vote.

Does your school plan to celebrate Read Across America?
Read Across America—a national day to celebrate reading—is slated for Tuesday, March 2. If you or your school has an awesome activity planned over the next several weeks, let the Cat know about it!

Most Elementary School Principals Say Recess Positively Impacts Achievement, Poll Shows.

The Christian Science Monitor (2/4, Paulson) reported that a new Gallup survey shows “more than 80 percent of elementary-school principals believe that recess has a positive impact on academic achievement.” Also, according to “two-thirds of the principals” polled, “students listen better and are more focused in class” after recess. “The findings support a growing wave of educators who are pushing to restore the place of recess in schools and, in some cases, to improve its quality.” Schools in some cities such as “Chicago, Atlanta, and Boston…have dropped recess completely,” amid budget cuts and an increasingly intense focus on test preparation.

Nancy Shute wrote in the US News and World Report (2/4) On Parenting blog, “Recess has almost disappeared from the curriculum at many schools, edged out by more math and reading work as schools push to raise scores on standardized tests.” But more and more research “shows that adding more play to the day, not less, improves the likelihood of better test scores and behavior.” However, Shute adds, “The news wasn’t all good. The principals said most of their discipline problems happened during a recess or lunch break and said that they would like to have more staff to monitor the playground, better equipment, and training in playground management.”

In the Classroom

Green School In Brooklyn Emphasizes Civic Involvement. The New York Times (1/11, A12, Navarro, Bhanoo) reports that throughout the US, a wide “range of green schools form a fledgling network, with some of them benefiting from state grants and mandates to incorporate environmental education into the curriculum.” At the Green School in Brooklyn, NY, for instance, places great “emphasis on civic involvement.” Also, “students are encouraged to delve into local issues that may affect them and their families” such as “water quality or the razing of low-scale housing.” Similar schools nationwide are partnering with “groups like the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation, which provide lesson plans or money for field trips, and…private and government agencies that are making concerted environmental efforts in communities and cities.” An accurate count of the “private, and charter and traditional public schools nationwide” that “have adopted an environmental theme” is not yet available, the Times notes.

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The 3 Habits of Highly Successful Reading Teachers starts with the premise that every student–even those that struggle the most–can learn to read. It guides teachers in providing daily practice with high-frequency words, letter sounds, and word-solving strategies, and using formative assessment to inform instruction. Click here to preview the entire book online!

In the Classroom
Aviation Class Structured To Promote 21st Century Skills. The Bismarck (ND) Tribune (1/11, Kincaid) reports on the aviation II class at Bismarck High School, which will recreate a “1902 Wright glider” for a class project in the coming year.

To: All Asbury Park Education Association Members

From: John Napolitani, President

Date: January 8, 2010

Re: Local Professional Development Committee (LPDC)

Please be advised that all terms for the Local Professional Development Committee have expired. There are six (6) positions on this committee, four (4) of which must be APEA members. The remaining two (2) positions are held by administration.

The purpose of this committee is to set up the Professional Development Plan for the entire school district for the following school year. This is an extremely important committee. The four (4) positions are two (2) two (2) year terms and two (2) one (1) year terms.

If you are interested in serving on this committee, please forward me your name and contact information no later than Friday, January 22, 2010. If more people request to be on this committee than there are positions, we will hold an election to fill these terms.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.
—————————————————————————————

Name: __________________________ Term: ____2 year ____ 1 year

Email: __________________________ Location: ________________

Pc: Michael Zajac, Recording Secretary
Paul Murphy, Corresponding Secretary
Robert Mc Garry, Director of Curriculum

Teachers Earn Extra Money By Selling Lesson Plans Online. The New York Times (11/15, A1, Hu) reported on its front page, “Between Craigslist and eBay, the Internet is well established as a marketplace where one person’s trash is transformed into another’s treasure” However, thousands of teachers are now “cashing in on a commodity they used to give away, selling lesson plans online for exercises as simple as M&M sorting and as sophisticated as Shakespeare.” Though “some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies in a time of tight budgets, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even home renovation, leading some school officials to raise questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms.”

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What Student Writing Teaches Us is a concise guide to using formative assessment effectively in K-8 writing classrooms. You’ll get practical suggestions for standards-based planning, offering a variety of feedback, student self-assessment, grading, and record-keeping. Click here to preview the entire book online!

In the Classroom
High School Students In Wisconsin Learn About Forensic Accounting. The Wisconsin State Journal (11/16, Cotant) reports that last week, 83 students from high schools in the Madison area attended a “seminar conducted by the IRS and staged at Madison Area Technical College” where they learned “about investigating fraud through forensic accounting — which uses accounting, auditing and investigative skills to look at a company’s financial statements.” They also “discovered the importance of taxes and what happens when people try to avoid paying them.” The program, called “Project Adrian Jr.

School will be closed on Thursday, December 24, 2009 and will reopen on Monday, January 4, 2010.

On behalf of the Asbury Park Education Association Executive Committee, we want to wish you and your family, a very safe and happy holiday season.