I'm Back!

So, it's been four months. Sorry for the long absence. A very long absence.

While teaching in itself creates a natural state of imbalance in one's life, the last four months of trying to figure out what's next has created even more chaos. Needless to say, many weeks have gone by with no time for blogging. Blogging helps keep me balanced, so I'm making a resolution--a March resolution--to blog more. Hence, I should have more balance in my life--right?

Anyway, I have so much to blog about. Much has happened in the last four months. In the coming days, I'll try to get it all written down.

Mr. Wilson is M-I-A

Sorry for the long absence. I thought I was finished with law school applications, but have decided to apply to a few more programs. Needless to say, writing essays is taking ALL my free time after school.

Until I can type more, here's a brief update on some things:

-I was notified several weeks ago by my principal that I will be receiving a $1,000 grant from the district. I applied for the grant for a Social Studies project I have written for the sixth grade. I'm really excited about the project - especially since it now has the funding to happen! Basically, we'll be surveying the student body, compiling our data, and hanging a flag in the cafeteria for each country represented at Miller. I'm hoping to convince former Secretary of State James Baker to come speak at the unveiling of our new re-dedicated cafeteria (I mean, we go to the same Houston church - that's gotta mean something, right?). I'll keep you posted.

-I'm applying for a Masters of Public Policy program in addition to law school. If I make it into a certain unmentioned law school up North, I'll hopefully be able to work towards both a JD and MPP in four years.

-Hillary Clinton comes to Houston this Thursday and I won't get to see her. A TFA friend has told me that her principal told their staff that Hillary will be touring their school Wednesday. This is the same school that was reported in the NYTimes earlier this year as threatened with being closed down by the school board if they didn't meet AYP (Bush's federal education requirements... Adequate Yearly Progress). I think Hillary will be touring my friend's classroom. Ah! Why not me?!

Who's Your Candidate?

A friend sent me a link to a great website concerning presidential politics. You assign a point value to several hot-button platform issues and take a brief quiz on current issues. Then, the website tells you which candidates most closely share your political beliefs.

It's pretty cool - check it out!

www.glassbooth.org

Dennis Kucinich came out on top for me... pretty surprising considering the fact that I find his candidacy to be ridiculous. Hmm... what does that say about me?

Teacher Tenure Makes No Sense

There; I said it.

For some reason, America (the land whose education record is not so hot on the international stage) has decided that teachers deserve a break after working for a specified amount of time. This break being a relaxed set of performance standards.

How in the world does it make sense to provide schoolteachers with tenure? In any other line of work, professionals are routinely held accountable for their performance, especially workers who have been on the job for decades. I think the same standard should exist for schoolteachers.

The sad truth is, as far as public education goes, tenure has created a system that shields poor-performing schoolteachers from accountability. The process of firing an under-performing schoolteacher with tenure is massively bureaucratic.

I was glad to see today, however, that NYC is doing something about it. Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein have hired a set of specialized lawyers (I know, it sounds like the beginning of a quintessential nightmare) to aid principals in removing these tenured schoolteachers who have until now been kept in place by overly bureaucratic policies and powerful teacher unions.

I think this is a very important step in reforming America's system of public education.

The link to the NYTimes article can be found below.

Education
A New Effort to Remove Bad Teachers
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Published: November 15, 2007
The Bloomberg administration is beginning a drive to remove unsatisfactory teachers and is hiring lawyers and consultants for the effort.

GA/Auburn

This past weekend, I went home for the GA/Auburn game. It was definitely the best game I've ever personally seen and/or watched on TV. There was more electricity in the air than I've experienced in my life.

The Georgia Blackout was in total effect. Perhaps my favorite part of the game happened at the end though.

Here's the video...

Boys (and Girls) Need Hands-On Learning

I read this great article today in the New York Daily News. A former Bronx TFA corps member discusses the need America's young boys have for hands-on learning that encourages them to take things apart and then reassemble them.

I've definitely experienced this first-hand in my classroom. Whenever I provide experiments in class, the boys that are the worst-behaved (the fighters, the ones who use profanities, etc.) perform the best. Immediately, they become enthralled in the lesson and relish the opportunity to get their hands dirty.

I try to keep this in mind as much as possible so that my teaching doesn't become textbook/worksheet driven.

Boys will be boys - so let them build with their hands

By MATTHEW CLAVEL

Wednesday, October 17th 2007, 4:00 AM

Be Our Guest

It was my second year teaching in a Bronx classroom, and Timothy was one of my toughest fourth-graders. Prone to tantrums and showing dismal academic skills, he had already been in trouble with the police. I waited with dread for Timothy's reaction to our bridge-building activity.

Our lesson involved simple ingredients: marshmallows and toothpicks. After a quick overview of engineering principles, I split the class into groups, each of which was responsible for building a bridge. I would judge the bridges based on how long they could stretch when the desks beneath them were pulled apart.

I paced the classroom nervously for a while. Then I glanced at Timothy. Hunched over a table with his group members, he was entranced. He and his teammates were on their way to building a long, unwieldy looking, but surprisingly strong frame. The boy was a natural; I was stunned - and delighted. Timothy's bridge would be one of our competition's highlights.

That was seven years ago. I now teach fifth grade at an elite private boys' school in Manhattan. My students learn in a laid-back atmosphere. Our budget is generous, and I recently obtained permission to buy old-fashioned Erector Sets - giant boxes full ofthousands of metal and plastic pieces. After scouring the city forthese outdated kits, I managed to find some online. My homeroom quickly became enamored of them.

The fact that students in a poor public school and those in a wealthy private school both found themselves entranced by simple building exercises ought to tell us something: The powerful desire to engineer with one's own hands is a dying science and art among today's young people.

That's a sad state of affairs, particularly for young boys.

Imagine you are a boy in an inner-city neighborhood. You're interested in motors, buildings and cars as most boys are, but there's almost no focus on these kinds of things. Instead, you are subjected to long reading periods that focus on mundane texts. You see virtually no reason to stay in school a minute longer than necessary.

That picture is all too real. My large Bronx school offered few opportunities for kids to run around; during my first year, there was just one gym period a week. The idleness was particularly hard on the boys, who seem to need to blow off steam more than girls do. No wonder maintaining classroom order was a constant struggle.

Many at-risk kids are naturally handy and love to do what they're good at. But because we devote so little time and attention to manual and construction-related interests, we leave them adrift, antsy and hungry for something more.

Much is made nowadays of the economic demands of the new century - as though the only growth industries are software and microchips. But last I checked, the U.S. is going to need far more architects and builders as well. Look around: New York is in the midst of an unprecedented building boom. The U.S. auto industry needs help, too.

Weekly exercises with screwdrivers and Erector Sets would also strengthen teamwork. And kids would be encouraged to find solutions to problems on their own. In affluent communities today, the excessive presence of tutors has discouraged kids from thinking for themselves - and in low-income neighborhoods, too many kids fall behind and just give up.

Stuck with the mind-set that college is for everyone - and apparently oblivious to the fact that boys will be boys - we neglect vocational programs. As a result, not only will plenty of potentially excellent (and happy, and well-paid) plumbers, electricians, carpenters and auto mechanics never discover their calling - but millions of kids will grow up utterly unable to do or appreciate even the most basic manual labor.

I have not kept in touch with Timothy, but I hope he has succeeded. He would make a great carpenter.

Clavel, who was a Teach for America corps member for two years in the Bronx, now teaches in Manhattan. This is adapted from the forthcoming issue of City Journal.

Last week, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times wrote a very interesting opinion article about my generation. He discusses how we're creating a new life stage between adolescence and adulthood.

October 10, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Generation Q

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I just spent the past week visiting several colleges — Auburn, the University of Mississippi, Lake Forest and Williams — and I can report that the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed.

I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.

One of the things I feared most after 9/11 — that my daughters would not be able to travel the world with the same carefree attitude my wife and I did at their age — has not come to pass.

Whether it was at Ole Miss or Williams or my alma mater, Brandeis, college students today are not only going abroad to study in record numbers, but they are also going abroad to build homes for the poor in El Salvador in record numbers or volunteering at AIDS clinics in record numbers. Not only has terrorism not deterred them from traveling, they are rolling up their sleeves and diving in deeper than ever.

The Iraq war may be a mess, but I noticed at Auburn and Ole Miss more than a few young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Many of those not going abroad have channeled their national service impulses into increasingly popular programs at home like “Teach for America,” which has become to this generation what the Peace Corps was to mine.

It’s for all these reasons that I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.

There is a good chance that members of Generation Q will spend their entire adult lives digging out from the deficits that we — the “Greediest Generation,” epitomized by George W. Bush — are leaving them.

When I was visiting my daughter at her college, she asked me about a terrifying story that ran in this newspaper on Oct. 2, reporting that the Arctic ice cap was melting “to an extent unparalleled in a century or more” — and that the entire Arctic system appears to be “heading toward a new, more watery state” likely triggered by “human-caused global warming.”

“What happened to that Arctic story, Dad?” my daughter asked me. How could the news media just report one day that the Arctic ice was melting far faster than any models predicted “and then the story just disappeared?” Why weren’t any of the candidates talking about it? Didn’t they understand: this has become the big issue on campuses?

No, they don’t seem to understand. They seem to be too busy raising money or buying votes with subsidies for ethanol farmers in Iowa. The candidates could actually use a good kick in the pants on this point. But where is it going to come from?

Generation Q would be doing itself a favor, and America a favor, if it demanded from every candidate who comes on campus answers to three questions: What is your plan for mitigating climate change? What is your plan for reforming Social Security? What is your plan for dealing with the deficit — so we all won’t be working for China in 20 years?

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.

Maybe that’s why what impressed me most on my brief college swing was actually a statue — the life-size statue of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi. Meredith was the first African-American to be admitted to Ole Miss in 1962. The Meredith bronze is posed as if he is striding toward a tall limestone archway, re-enacting his fateful step onto the then-segregated campus — defying a violent, angry mob and protected by the National Guard.

Above the archway, carved into the stone, is the word “Courage.” That is what real activism looks like. There is no substitute.

Fundamental Change

I write this at the brink of frustration and sheer exhaustion. I went to bed late last night after spending the weekend working on school stuff, got to school super early today, didn't take a planning period or break of any kind, stayed late today, and STILL have a 'to do' list that's a mile long!

We, as a society, have made the job of a teacher way too difficult to still expect the miracles we demand of them. And I'm feeling the brunt of this difficulty in my lack of sleep.

I don't write this to gain anyone's pity or sympathy. I simply want others to see how incredibly absurd the current state of our system of education is.

Even more so than last year, I've come to the ultimate realization that if we are going to strive for drastic improvements in our school system so that our children will be able to compete in a global economy, we are going to have to make some major changes on a very fundamental level.

First and foremost, we have to make the school day longer and shorten summer break. There's just no other way around this one. We don't spend enough time in school. There are numbers that show how far fewer days are spent by American students in class than our global competitors - I'm too tired to look them up right now, but they exist. Google them.

Second, we have to split the workload we give teachers in half--at least! I say this in all seriousness. When we give teachers 3 or 4 or 5 or even 6 classes to prep for, it is simply ludicrous to expect teachers to produce amazingly creative and hands-on lessons, stay on top of grading, have plans at least two weeks in advance, stay in constant communication with parents, and actually enjoy their jobs. There is not enough time in the day!

If I only did school work during my contract hours - the time that I'm actually getting paid to work - I'd be fired very quickly. Simply put, I wouldn't be able to complete any of the administrative mandates required of me.

If teachers are going to become better at their profession, they need more time for reflection, planning, parent contact, in-service training, and observation of colleagues' best practices. None of this can be done in the current system, when I for example have a mere 45 mins to plan for the next week, make all my copies, schedule and conduct parent conferences, read and respond to all emails (this is the only time in the day I'm legally allowed to read email), and take a restroom break. And that's only if I'm not called in by an administrator for a meeting during this time.

Teachers are miracle-workers, but they're not superhuman.

This is #1 and #2 on a list that I will surely be adding to as the year progresses (and I get more sleep).

More Clinton News

Today, the American Federation of Teachers, the largest teacher union, formally endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

Hillary was quoted saying, "Teachers are on the frontlines of shaping the minds of our next generation. With every child they teach, teachers help to ensure a brighter future for our country. In welcoming every child through your doors, in giving every child a chance to succeed, it's our public schools and teachers that transform that rhetoric into reality every single day."

According to AFT, they "represent 1.4 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers, paraprofessionals and other school support employees, higher education faculty, nurses and other healthcare workers, and state and local government employees."

I'm pumped that Hillary got the endorsement and truly believe she is the best candidate to represent educators, but I wish she and the other major candidates would come out with a point-by-point plan for how they plan to "fix No Child Left Behind" as they so often are quoted as saying.

TFA & Bill Clinton

TFA and Bill Clinton--two of my favorite things.

This weekend, Clinton is hosting his annual Clinton Global Initiative in which leaders from around the globe are invited to New York City to discuss today's most pressing issues. Before leaving, they must also make a tangible commitment to doing something over the next year to help solve those problems.

One of the commitments made during this year's conference:
In a $25 million, three-year partnership, Teach for America, Teach First, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and Amy & Larry Robbins Foundation will establish an independent teachers' corps. Initially, programs will be set up in Estonia, Germany, India, Israel, South Africa and two others countries to tackle educational disparities. (Reuters)

Click here to read the TFA press release.

Why Teach For America?

This Sunday, The New York Times Magazine will run a college edition that features an article discussing the need for Teach For America. The writer (Negar Azimi) discusses McReynolds Middle School in Houston. I have many friends teaching there, and I actually presented a professional development session at McReynolds this summer for TFA corps members.

At first this article seems like a good plug for TFA. It mentions many data points that TFA routinely touts as proof of our effectiveness. But, after finishing the article, you see the writer is actually contemplating the need for TFA in general.

In the article, Azimi writes, "[M]ight it be more productive to try to alter the structure that produces failing schools and high teacher turnover rates rather than to spend those resources on pulling in talented young people who tend to leave teaching after a few years?"

So, here's my problem with the majority of TFA's critics. Most of them attack TFA by dumping all the problems of America's educational system onto the shoulders of TFA, saying that since TFA is not fixing everything wrong with education in America, it is accomplishing nothing.

TFA doesn't aim to directly change America's entire system of public education, at least not in the short term. TFA isn't trying to replace every veteran teacher in America with twenty-something newbies that have all the answers to teaching and will remain in the classroom the rest of their lives. TFA is trying to fill a critical gap, and ask some provocative questions (like how best to actually train our nation's teachers) along the way.

TFA isn't trying to single-handedly output all of America's teachers. TFA teachers are only committing to teaching for two years. Many (60%) continue to stay in education after this commitment (which the writer mentions), but just because some don't remain in the classroom doesn't mean that TFA isn't making a significant impact in the schools were its corps members are placed.

TFA is growing a network of alumni teachers who are unabashedly admitting that they will not necessarily stay for longer than two years. However, whatever career path they choose post-TFA, they will carry the experience with them. America's boardrooms, courtrooms, and operating rooms will be all the better for it. For with so many Americans advocating for education reform in non-education professions, we will truly be able to mobilize a nation to attack this multi-faceted problem from many different angles.

Why Teach for America

By NEGAR AZIMI

Published: September 30, 2007

A volunteer program for ambitious college graduates is great for the résumé. But is it good for the country?

Stephen Colbert, Perfect for TFA

Maureen Miller (not sure who she is, but she's written alot about TFA on her blog) writes a blog entitled Blog and Deliver.

In a recent post, she outlines why Stephen Colbert (comedian-host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report) is a perfect candidate for TFA. She breaks her analysis down along the six qualities of TFA's Teaching As Leadership philosophy. This is the philosophy we are taught during Summer Institute and are then measured against throughout the year. Based on TFA's work, they are the six habits of highly effective teachers.

Below is Miller's post. I think she makes a good case. I'd like to see what Colbert's response is.

Blog and Deliver
Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Say what you want about Joel Klein's policies: He's definitely sharp (and sharp-tongued) at the dais. In that sense Stephen Colbert's his ideal foil--a better match for his wit than, say, Charlie Rose, who moderated an hour-long infomercial for BloomKlein. Several weeks later Colbert called out Joel Klein for the pay-for-As plan, which he said applies "free-market forces to knowledge." How's that for satire?

In response Klein joked (lamely) that Colbert's focus on "real serious discipline" is exactly what city schools need. I'm not sure he was being all that facetious: Colbert's character embodies all six qualities Teach for America defines as intrinsic to "teaching as leadership." So what can we learn about school leadership from Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA?:

Set Big Goals. An exemplary classroom "big goal" should be ambitious yet feasible. The year's objective should be established on Day 1 and reiterated whenever possible. Small ceremonies celebrating progress should be conducted as often and as as possible, with immediate chiding for slacking. Colbert stays on top of the Nation with long-term projects like "What Number is Stephen Thinking Of?" and "Who's (Not) Honoring Me Now?" He is a master of tracking tools (e.g. "On Notice," "Dead to Me").

Invest Students and Their Chief Influencers. Early in the show's run Colbert identified key motivators who could cheerlead his platform (Stewart, obvi; Arianna Huffington, Nora effing Ephron). He established a "safe and welcoming environment" ("SWE") in which his constituents can test and shape ideas. They welcome his appeals to their better nature because he has earned their trust through past performance and personal charisma. Colbert mobilizes the Nation through peer pressure, which high-performing charter schools use to persuade stubborn holdouts to buy into classroom management plans.

Plan Purposefully.What better outline for backwards planning than "The Word"? Beyond that, the physical setting of a classroom should convey the urgency of the big goal. Colbert's self-conscious cult of personality template does that in spades. No element of the space should be left to chance: Each sector in the room should have some purpose, whether academic (the shelf) or motivational. Curriculum, too, should give students the impression that there are no surprises in the room. Aims should be explicit (strong chyrons), assessment should be frequent (end-of-week fireside chats), and assignments should be differentiated to reflect different learning styles in the room ("Ballz for Kidz," anyone?).

Execute Effectively. An effective classroom never goes off-message. Divide and conquer objectives: Assign room managers so you, Teacher, can focus on the vision quest. Colbert depends on Jimmy the director, Bobby the stage manager, Tad the building manager, and, off-camera, executive producer Allison Silverman, to do his "dirty work." He's the hands-on manager. It is never ambiguous who is in charge of the operation.

Work Relentlessly.Self-explanatory. Real-life Colbert confesses he hasn't seen much of his children since starting the show. In the two-odd years it's been around he's published a book and secured himself as a national icon all while producing and starring in 4 shows a week. According to Seth Mnookin in Vanity Fair, he even drives himself home to Montclair after the show!

Continuously Increase Effectiveness.Effective classroom managers are introspective. They can identify whether gaps in progress stem from internal biases, a knowledge deficit, or a lack of external resources. Rather than embrace his constituents' differences Colbert exposes his biases at the outset of every segment. Knowledge deficit not a problem when you do what you feel. And with the investment strategy in place he never has trouble securing what he needs to set the bar higher.

I'd really like the show to track Stephen and Melinda Gates Foundation's path to an "E.M.O." one of these days. They could call their flagship Freem ("it's freedom without the 'do'").

A Network of Movers/Shakers

I've been overwhelmed lately with getting my law school applications out the door (or through the Web, as the case may be) and have not updated in a while. Right now, I am like many of the second-year corps members in Houston--working hard to set up opportunities for the year following the end of my TFA commitment.

I had a conversation with a TFA friend tonight (thanks Carmen!) that was really inspiring as we talked about all the anxiety in going through the admissions process of graduate/law schools. One of the main points we kept coming back to was how we are very confident that TFA has prepared us to excel in our graduate studies--it'll be a relief to be the student again!

We also talked about how exciting it will be to become a part of the TFA Alumni network, as sad as it will be to say goodbye to our close TFA friends in Houston. Whether in education or another sector, TFA alumni have repeatedly gone on to be movers and shakers in their fields of work. Just recently, the mayor of DC appointed a TFA alumna as the first chancellor of his realigned school system (Michelle Rhee - as reported by the Washington Post). Rumor has it that Obama's education advisor is a former TFA corps member. Hillary has a TFA alumna working on her staff as well. It's only a matter of time before a former corps member runs for office. Point being, it's an exciting time to be a part of the TFA movement, even if we are ending our official commitment to the program.

TFA as an organization is gaining immense "street cred" (as my students would say) lately that only helps propel its former corps members to excel. Time recently ran two articles calling for mandatory national service, mentioning TFA as an example of worthy efforts.

I mention all this because it makes me really excited to think about how many former TFA corps members will be spread across this great country working for change for many years to come. The more time that passes, the bigger the network becomes. Surely the tipping point of change is coming soon.

Ode to the South

Once again, a friend (shout out to Danny Rosenthal) has sent me an incredible article. This one is all about home though.

Enjoy!

drink

I Wish I Lived in a Land of Lipton …
What makes Southern sweet tea so special?
By Jeffrey Klineman, Slate Magazine
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2007, at 1:06 PM ET

"It's rough. It's been rough on that food. It's different eating here than it is at the house. Ain't got no sweet tea, and ain't got no fried chicken."
—Boo Weekley, PGA golfer from Milton, Fla., interviewed by the BBC on Day 2 of the British Open, 7/20/2007

You can't blame Boo Weekley for not knowing—before last month, the man had never left North America. And there are some fairly major associations between Great Britain and tea. But poor Weekley had the same awful realization most of us have when we leave Dixie: When you order sweet tea, you probably aren't going to get it. And even if you're lucky enough to find something bearing its name, it's probably not quite the same.

Drinking sweet tea is one of the oldest and most exceptional Southern traditions. As Dolly Parton's character in Steel Magnolias puts it, it's the "house wine of the South"—a clear, orange-to-red tinted tea brewed from six or seven Lipton or Luzianne tea bags, poured hot onto a cup or more of sugar or a pool of simple syrup, and then diluted into a gallon pitcher in the fridge. It's served over a mound of ice in a huge glass—so cold that you can watch your napkin drown in a puddle of condensation.

By "sweet tea," we mean "sweet." As one food technologist told me, some of the sweetest glasses can hit 22 Brix of sugar. That means that 22 percent of the liquid consists of dissolved sugar solids, or, to put it in more meaningful terms: close to twice what you'd find in a can of Coke. Still, there's a balance to the flavor—the tea is brewed long and strong, so it gets an astringency that can only be countered by lots of the sweet stuff.

Southerners, of course, have a taste for sugar that is demonstrably stronger than what you find up North. We like our pecan pie and pralines sweet enough to make the dentist cringe. All of the major soda companies—the Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo, Dr Pepper—started in the South. Bourbon, that sweetest of whiskies, is from Kentucky. A mint julep, that classic Southern cocktail, is basically a whiskey'd up sweet tea, with mint, ice, simple syrup, and booze.

One chef I spoke with—Scott Peacock, who spent eight years bunking and writing with the Grand Dame of Southern cooking, the late Edna Lewis—suggested that Dixie's taste for sweet may have evolved from the use of sugar as a preservative. Peacock's dad grew up in a small Alabama town where they didn't have much refined sugar. In towns like that, he said, they grew cane, milled it, and put it in jars. People anticipated the crystallization of the cane sugar with great excitement, eager to stir it into their tea.

Sugar worship might account for much of sweet tea's popularity, but I think its appeal lies in the ice. Southerners seem to have a particular fascination with ice. This may stem, most obviously, from the fact that the Southern climate is often steamier than a Rat Pack schvitz. In an early essay about Southern cuisine published by the American Philosophical Society called Hog Meat and Cornpone: Food Habits in the Ante-Bellum South, Sam Hilliard wrote that a container of cool—not even cold—water, pulled from a nearby spring, was a delicacy at the table. Tea was mostly a drink for the upper class, and early on, it was the rich who had access to the ice that came down on ships or in wagons, at least until icehouses were built in cities (Southern farmers had to wait for the arrival of the Model T). If ice was a luxury, then putting out a pitcher of ice-cold tea must have been quite a bit of hospitality. One historian, Joe Gray Taylor, wrote in Eating, Drinking, and Visiting in the South: An Informal History that the rural electrification—and, consequently, refrigeration—wrought by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s was "probably more appreciated for the ice cubes it provided … than for any of its other services."

Offering up a glass of sweet tea on a hot day in the South is as welcoming a gesture as passing the doobie at a Phish show. It's so ingrained in the Southern DNA—Marion Cabell Tyree included the recipe in a cookbook called Housekeeping in Old Virginia as early as 1879—that people now post videos online of their infants sampling the stuff. It's a frequent menu item for the condemned, as well as a centerpiece at church suppers. As an April Fools' Day prank in 2003, Georgia State Rep. John Noel introduced a bill that would have made it a misdemeanor for a restaurant owner not to include sweet tea on the menu. Most Southerners can easily tell the difference between fresh sweet tea and the stuff from concentrate—and unless their sugar jones is too strong that day, chances are they'll send the latter back.

It's a refreshing combination of sweet and cold, sure, but how does something that's simply tasty become the unofficial beverage for an entire region? Well, there's this: The South reveres its traditions, and sweet tea is one of them. Dixie has had some embarrassments in its time: There's that whole Civil War thing, the whole Judge Roy Moore thing, that whole Naples, Fla., Swamp Buggy Queen thing, to name a few. Getting your nose rubbed in your own traditions too many times makes you cling to those that aren't, well, illegal. And you revere them as much because they have proven resistant to change as you do for their particular qualities.

For me, personally—and I suspect I'm not alone—sweet tea is a primal link to my own Southern past. I grew up a Jewish kid in Atlanta, with a mom from Brooklyn, N.Y., and a dad from Cleveland. To assimilate with my classmates, I quickly learned to say y'all, talk about Herschel Walker, put honey on my biscuits, and enjoy sweet tea. While my parents made us drink an unsweetened mint tea blend at home, I strong-armed them into stopping by Po Folks on the way home from baseball practice. A middling Southern-style chain (we didn't know enough to eat at Mary Mac's), known for horrible phonetic misspellings, heavily larded chicken, and, most importantly, sweet tea served in Mason Jars, it was practically the only place I could get hooked up properly—at least, that is, until I began raiding the always-full homemade pitchers in my friends' refrigerators.

I may live in Massachusetts now, but I still consider myself Southern at heart. In the fall, I ask the bartender to let me watch the Bulldogs game. In the spring, I feel a potentially suicidal need to stop wearing a coat. And in the summer, I still look for sweet tea. Even on the rare occasion I can find someplace that has it on the menu, it's often slightly off. Maybe it isn't sweet enough. Maybe it's the lack of free refills. Whatever it is, it chills me.

Jeffrey Klineman is a freelance writer in Cambridge, Mass. His work has appeared in Boston magazine, George, Commonwealth, Razor, Self, and Penthouse.

Suing to Shut Down TFA

A friend (shout out to Sam Thompson) sent me a link to this article the other day. It's very interesting. It discusses a current law suit in a California federal court against the Department of Education, claiming that No Child Left Behind allows beginning teachers (i.e. TFA corps members) to enter the classroom before they are legally considered "highly qualified," as they are mandated to be.

If the court rules that first-year teachers with no formal training who concurrently complete a teaching program during their first year are not "highly qualified," it could theoretically put an end to programs like TFA. An outcome like this is HIGHLY unlikely.

As the article points out, the CA coalition suing NCLB should really take up case with the standards for "highly qualified teachers." Having completed my Alternative Certification Program, I can tell you that I learned more from one summer with TFA than I did in a year of education classes taught by experienced teachers.

Education programs teach to the ideal and not the reality that is our public education system. Programs like TFA have found a way to cut to the core of what skills a teacher needs, works hard to instill these skills in their corps members, and then routinely checks their progress with lots of data.

I should also say a word about the source of this article. The American is a magazine from The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative mirror-image to the Brookings Institution. More than 20 former AEI employees have accepted positions in Bush's administration and AEI itself has often been cited as being a leading architect of Bush's second-term public policy.

Like I said; interesting.

The link to the story is below.

Suing to Shut Down ‘Teach For America’
By Frederick M. Hess
The American
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
When education schools act like a cartel, children are harmed.

On Fire for Science

Today was a great day for science in room 417. I officially began my academic instruction today, the fourth day of the year, seeing how the first three days were spent reviewing routines, rules and procedures, not to mention completing the endless mounds of forms from the front office.

I decided that I wanted to do something today that would really capture my students' attention for the rest of the year, really turning them on for science this year. Over the summer, I presented a TFA in-service for first-year TFA'ers with another '07 Corps Member, John Won. We talked about how to make science a hands-on learning experience. In the process of preparing for the presentation, we traded our best hands-on lessons and today I used one of John's.

I'll let you view the video for yourself, but basically I used a rolling ball of flames to demonstrate lab safety with my students. To protect myself, I donned goggles, a hat, and an oven mit. I even had one student on "fire extinguisher duty." It was great.

I think you can tell from the video that the student reaction was resounding. It was a total hit. In fact, it was also a hit with the other teachers. Tonight, I'm writing curriculum so that the other 6th grade science teachers can present the lesson tomorrow and throughout next week.

Today really has me excited for the potential this year has to be a huge success in room 417.

Set the Pace in September

Texas went back to school on the 27th; quite a late start from previous years due to the legislature's passing of the 'Sanctity of Summer Bill' (my title). Texas ranks in the Top 10 of the lowest-performing states in terms of public education, but thank God we get our state-mandated, extra-long summer break!

Regardless, we are back at school and back in the full swing of things. On the way home from school today, I heard a great story on NPR that does a fantastic job of summarizing why I'm so tired at the end of each day at this point in the beginning of the school year.

Listen for yourself; the link is below.

September a Fresh Start for Students, Teachers

All Things Considered, August 29, 2007 · Commentator and teacher Emily Wylie explains why she dresses and acts differently during the month of September than any other time of the year.

Rosenthal Brothers Road Trip

Danny and brothers three (Jeremy, Brian and David) have almost finished a week-long trek from Houston to Los Angeles. They've been blogging their adventures and have some great pictures.

The link: http://blog.djrosenthal.com

KIPP in The Wall Street Journal

My roommate Kyle has been receiving a trial subscription of the Wall Street Journal this summer. The other day I noticed an article about KIPP schools in Arkansas. It speaks to the expansion taking place at many KIPP locations, most notably in Houston.

It also speaks to the incredible impact these charter schools (founded by and staffed with many Teach For America corps members and alumni) have had within incredibly rural communities.

Following is the full text of the article.

Smart Growth

By KANE WEBB
August 4, 2007; Page A6

HELENA, Ark. -- A walking tour of this Mississippi River town's past, present and future could start at Bubba's Blues Corner at the south end of Cherry Street, a whisky bottle's throw from the Mighty River. Bubba Sullivan has a little of everything in his shop, including a healthy dose of Helena blues history (free of charge) and old 45 rpm records (25 cents each). Keep walking past the broken bottles and dilapidated buildings until you're across from the old train depot. Turn into what looks like a strip mall store that might sell wicker chairs and scented candles (or in this town, second-hand clothes and garage-sale trinkets).

And then welcome to one of the best schools in Arkansas, maybe the South. A school that's so good both candidates for governor last year -- Democrat Mike Beebe and Republican Asa Hutchinson -- couldn't utter a sentence on education without mentioning it. It is the KIPP Delta College Preparatory School. (KIPP stands for Knowledge Is Power Program, a Brooklyn-born system of 57 charter schools nationwide.) It is filled with kids eager to be there even though the school meets almost all year long and every day but Sunday.

Scott Shirey runs the place. He's 31 years old and a native of Massachusetts. He filtered through the KIPP system and came out to Phillips County, one of the poorest in the country, where he started Delta College Prep five years ago with 65 students and the support of community leaders desperate for something -- anything -- to jumpstart their tired town. All else had failed -- from government handouts to gambling across the river.

Helena's KIPP school is working in two ways. First, it's educating the kids. An important task for a school, don't you think? Before KIPP, Helena's kids were getting scores around the 17th percentile in language and 18th percentile in math on the Stanford Achievement Test. Only a few years later, those same kids are averaging around 76th and 82nd, respectively. Last year, KIPP's eighth-graders scored in the 91st percentile in math and the 84th in language on the SAT. As fifth-graders, those same kids scored in the 29th percentile in both math and language.

KIPP is also helping to revitalize this impoverished area. The school's current downtown location was the first new construction in Helena in 10 years. Now that the school has grown to 315 students in grades five through 10, there's talk about expanding.

Actually, there's a lot more than talk. Just last week, the national KIPP charter school outfit in San Francisco named Luke VanDeWalle the principal of the new Delta College Prep High. Mr. VanDeWalle, an Illinois native and graduate of Purdue University in Indiana, is a former member of Teach for America. For the past three years, he's been teaching math at Mr. Shirey's school -- and doing quite a job. At last report, 93% of the Delta College Prep students scored proficient or better on Arkansas's end-of-course exam in algebra. Soon-to-be Principal VanDeWalle's high school opens later this month in a renovated train station.

But maybe not for long. Led by local investors at Southern Bancorporation and Southern Financial Partners, the community is out to raise $20 million for a K-12 Delta College Prep campus. It'll consume several blighted blocks of downtown, now home to broken liquor bottles, crumbling sidewalks and weeds -- not to mention the abandoned buildings and long-abandoned businesses. KIPP has already secured the land through a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. Now it has to raise the rest of the money.

In a state under a court order to fix its public schools, there aren't many examples of educational excellence. But because KIPP schools are charter schools, they operate free of the bureaucratic baloney that chokes the creativity out of so many traditional public schools and their teachers. And Delta College Prep is a different kind of charter school. You notice it right off. World map-sized posters of students' test scores decorate the hallways -- the way you'd see a "Go Team!" banner at a public high school.

"We're comfortable discussing data," Mr. Shirey told me. "We aim for absolute transparency," which sharpens the attention of both students and teachers.

Mr. Shirey notes proudly that he's run off three teachers this year but not many students, even though homework runs about two hours a night after a long school day. There's a dress code and detailed instructions about how to behave in class, right down to when to raise your hand. Parents and students and teachers all have to sign a "Commitment to Excellence Form" outlining life at Delta College Prep.

Teachers tend to be young and not from around Helena -- Mr. Shirey's staff has included recent graduates from Cornell, Purdue, Notre Dame, New York University and Spelman. Still, Delta Prep's Wyvonne Sisk, a teacher for 38 years, won a $10,000 Kinder Excellence in Teaching Award last year. Ms. Sisk had retired from teaching in nearby schools but was attracted back to work by this innovative charter school.

Earlier this year, the school received a grant from the Delta Regional Authority, a federal-state partnership devoted to regional economic improvement. DRA money typically goes to water systems and rail spurs, not schools. But to quote Pete Johnson, federal co-chairman of the DRA: "As we travel the region, we're holding up the KIPP school and Helena as examples of what children can accomplish when you go outside the restraints of the public-school system. . . . Unless you change the educational system in weak counties, you're not going to change the counties."

For its next act, KIPP is expected to transform downtown Helena (technically Helena-West Helena -- the towns recently consolidated) and revitalize the city center, while serving as an economic engine for an area with double-digit unemployment that's been losing population for decades. Since 1950, Phillips County has lost more than half its population. Down here, the goal after graduating high school -- if you graduate high school -- is to get out.

A school transforming a community economically and maybe even emotionally? It does sound kind of nutty. Unless you're here and walking the dilapidated landscape that could be the future home of the KIPP Campus. Unless you listen to Mr. Shirey. ("Those would be athletic fields," he says, pointing at a vacant lot.) Unless you see the kids at Mr. Shirley's school wearing "There are no shortcuts" T-shirts. Unless you check out those test scores. Then you think maybe anything is possible. Even in the Delta.

Mr. Webb is a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock.

Religion spurs Poverty in the South

Last week while I was working at the CDC, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released their latest KIDS COUNT report for 2007. This data set is often used by researchers as a pretty accurate assessment of data related to the health of minors. When I worked in poverty research at UGA, we used KIDS COUNT data all the time.

What is so troubling about this latest data set is the graph for teen birth rate. Teen birth rate is defined as the pregnancy of a female between the ages of 15 and 19. The numbers for the 2007 report are actually from 2004, as those are the most current numbers available.

With 63 births per 1,000 among females aged 15-19, the state with the highest teen birth rate is... TEXAS! This is horrible!

Some reasons for this outcome:

REASON 1: Texas has a large Latino population. According to AECF, the teen birth rate among Latinos (83 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19) is more than twice the national average (41 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19).

REASON 2: Texas does not require schools to teach sex ed, but if they do they are required to teach abstinence until marriage. This is a direct effect of legislators allowing religious preferences to interfere with their responsibility (both ethically and morally) to promote sound public health policy.

In other words, I feel religion is a primary cause for Texas' newest place atop the teen birth rate rankings. State legislators have allowed religion to cloud their minds, preventing sound legislation. What sense does it make to teach abstinence-only when you already know that Texas teens are having sex? Shouldn't we be more concerned at this point with making sure they are having safe sex?

Take a look at the map of the rankings and you will see that Texas is not alone. In fact, the top 10 states for teen birth rate are all located in the Bible Belt (states colored navy blue). Many of these states don't require sex ed (Texas-1, Mississippi-2, Arkansas-4, Arizona-5, Oklahoma-6, Louisiana-7, South Carolina-10, Alabama-11). However, almost all of these states require the teaching of abstinence if sex ed is taught (with the exception of Arkansas-4, South Carolina-10, and Nevada-12).

Only 6 of the top 14 states (all with a teen birth rate at higher than 20% of the national average) require the teaching of contraceptive use (New Mexico-3, Georgia-8, Tennessee-9, Nevada-12, North Carolina-13, and Kentucky-14)... that's less than half! By comparison, 5 of the 7 states in the next lowest category (states with a teen birth rate at 20% of the national average) require the teaching of contraceptive use (Florida-15, Kansas-16, Missouri-17, Illinois-18, and West Virginia-21).

Some people may say, what's the big deal? Well aside from the fact that we have a lot of teenage women pregnant, teenage pregnancy has a direct correlation to a life of poverty. According to AECF...

The consequence of starting out life as the child of a teen mother can be illustrated by the following stark comparison. The poverty rate for children born to teenage mothers who have never married and who did not graduate from high school is 78 percent. On the other hand, the poverty rate for children born to women over age 20 who are currently married and did graduate from high school is 9 percent.

What's the solution? Well, it's simple really. As a society, we have to get away from trying to infuse church doctrine into state policy. If we were all Christians, it'd be easy to have a theocracy and decry premarital sex. However, we are not all Christians, but we are all children of God. God preaches love of one another and tolerance of dissenting viewpoints. We should give our children all the options and allow them to work within their families and personal faith to figure out which is the best choice for them.

Until we do that, we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.