ADropoutNoMore

head
of
class
A Dropout No More
Picture this: A fifteen-year-old girl attending an
overcrowded high school in a big city is struggling to stay focused.
School seems dull, irrelevant, and, most of all, uncaring. No one
seems to notice whether she’s there or not, whether she understands the material, or whether things are unstable at home. While
her overworked teachers and distracted administrators put out bigger fires, she silently disappears—another high school dropout.
Kimi Kean, principal of ACORN Woodland Elementary School,
in Oakland, California, understands this situation very well—and not
only because she can empathize. It was her experience, too.
“I completely fell through the cracks,” she says of her sophomore
year, when she dropped out.“I didn’t feel like anyone knew me, like
I had a connection to anyone.”With little more than a single counselor per grade level, Kean adds,“it’s not like you have someone to
check in with who can make sure you’re OK.”
Kean’s story is not uncommon,but her 180-degree comeback from
dropout to leader of one of the state’s five highest-improving schools
14
EDUTOPIA JULY/AUGUST 2006
is: ACORN Woodland scored an astonishing increase of 120 Academic
Performance Index points in one year and nearly 300 in five.
Her remarkable turnaround began when she earned a highschool-equivalency diploma a year after dropping out and moved on
to college. While attending the University of California at Berkeley,
Kean got involved in the East Bay Asian Youth Center and cofounded REACH!, both nonprofit organizations that provide academic support to at-risk youth, and in 2004 she won a spot in New Leaders for
New Schools, a training fellowship for educators primed to be principals in low-income urban districts.
“I felt like I could understand when kids weren’t feeling good
about themselves or about school,” Kean explains.“I know firsthand
how that can have such dramatic consequences for their education.”
Now Kean uses that understanding to make big strides. She
knows every one of her 300 students and every family by name, and
she says,“Each kid needs to know that there’s someone at school
who cares about them.” —Sara Bernard
OLIVIER LAUDE
A teenage Kimi Kean felt no connection with school. Now she runs one.
Sub-IT
Central Xchange; pricing starts
at $1.75 per absence
www.centralxchange.com;
1-888/364-8998
Calling in sick? With this automated
substitute-placement system, teachers
can swiftly search for appropriate
stand-ins. Once instructors report their
absence online or by phone, Sub-IT
matches teachers’ needs with qualified
subs in its database, who are then notified. The first person to accept an offer
lands the job. Sub-IT stores information
such as credentials, personal preferences,
and skills. With no upfront fees or expensive equipment, the service may herald the
end of your school’s weekly sub scramble.
STAND
High School Resource Kit
Students Taking Action Now:
Darfur; free; email
[email protected]
www.standnow.org/hsc
Echoes of your students’ Holocaust
history lessons play out today in
Sudan’s Darfur region, where genocide goes unchecked. Nearly 200,000
civilians have been killed, and millions
displaced, as government-backed militias wage a campaign of rape and murder. The
youth organization Students Taking Action Now:
Darfur (STAND) reaches out to high schools to
help students stand up to stop the slaughter
through this kit, which includes background information, an educational PowerPoint presentation,
and ideas for getting involved. Kids can take a
STAND so we can stop saying, “Never again” again.
Immune Attack
Federation of American Scientists; free
www.fas.org/immuneattack
The deep, inner worlds of the human
body—where good and evil microorganisms face off in realistic-looking tissue
structures—act as playing fields in this
real-time PC strategy game. Users float
among red blood cells, squeeze through
cell walls, and scan and tractor beam
various objects, teaching their immune
systems to fight off bacterial and viral infections; more difficult diseases are confronted
at advanced levels. Biology and immunology
have never been taught quite like this.
Meet the Letters, Numbers,
and Shapes
BILL DUKE
Preschool Prep Company;
$14.95 (DVD), $12.95 (VHS)
www.preschoolprepco.com
1-866/451-5600
A green square with legs? A blue number
2 with candy-cane-striped socks? Using
a simple but powerful combo of repetition and visual cues, letters, numbers,
and shapes come to life, providing an
engaging way for preschoolers to learn
the building blocks of education.
25
Extra
Credit
Good stuff for the class.
Tune in to Reading
Electronic Learning Products;
contact [email protected] for pricing
discounts for educators
www.elpcorp.com; 1-888/357-8863
This Web-based program incorporates the best of SingingCoach, ELP’s
popular learn-to-sing software, to
boost word recognition, fluency, and
comprehension with various singing
lessons appropriate to a student’s
independent reading level. Combined
with a microphone and headset, the onscreen exercises, along with advanced
speech recognition, automatically determines
each student’s independent reading level and tracks progress.
Soon, kids will both carry a tune and read with confidence.
Percentage of the nation’s three million teachers who are men. The proportion of
male elementary school teachers (9 percent) and male secondary school teachers
(35 percent) has fallen gradually since 1961. Also, states with higher salaries tend to
have the most male teachers: Michigan ranks first (37 percent of teachers there are
male) and is in the top five nationally in teacher pay, while Mississippi ranks last
(male teachers comprise 18 percent of the state’s total) and is next to last in pay.
Source: “Status of the American Public School Teacher 2000–2001,” National Education Association
2006 JULY/AUGUST EDUTOPIA
15
head
of
class
Junior Clicks
Search engines aren’t just for curious adults.A growing number of “kidsafe” search engines use Internet filtering technology to prevent Web
sites with pornographic or violent material from appearing on a list of
results. Some are maintained by a staff, often composed of librarians,
who continually monitor the sites that pop up in searches to verify that
their content is fitting for students. Users may also report inappropriate URLs. Edutopia compared the features of several kid-friendly
search engines, conducting a number of searches on school-related
topics as well as such hot buttons as drugs, sex, and violence. —Cheri Lucas
catchy enough for impatient kids.
Test search: Results for “drugs” included
informative sites about both street and prescription drugs, including that of the National
Institute on Drug Abuse and organizations such
as www.stopdrugs.org. A query on “sex” led to
related articles at Salon.com, HBO.com’s Sex
and the City page, databases of registered sex
offenders, and an MTV site with articles on safe
sex and more mature content for teens.
RedZee.com
Overview: This site calls itself a “familyoriented site that restricts pornographic results.”
Ask for Kids.com
ian tiger?” splits the search into unrelated ones
for each term—and leads to just one fitting
option: NationalGeographic.com’s site for kids.
Test search: Seeking information on “drugs”
leads to a scroll-down menu of informative but
content-thin sites about the effects of drugs on
the nervous system from Neuroscience for Kids.
Hunting for “sex” led to two places: a resource
site at www.teenadviceonline.org and a brief,
dry biological description of sex.
KidsClick.org
Overview: This site, created by librarians in
the Ramapo Catskill Library System, in Middletown, New York, is maintained by the School of
Library and Information Science at San Jose
State University, in California.
Design and features: Conduct searches by
clicking on a letter or choosing from fifteen
main topic menus, plus submenus. Helpful links
lead to lessons on searching the Internet, a
resource page listing more kid-friendly engines,
digital libraries such as ThinkQuest.org, and
pages that compile images and sound clips.
Drawbacks: The site is comprehensive but
less interactive than, say, Yahooligans!, and
more straightforward, with less edutainment.
Test search: A search for “drugs” compiled
sites geared toward teens and adults, such as
that of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
A “sex” search pulled up a tutorial on genetics
and a PBS video on a growing embryo.
OneKey.com
Overview: The site, partnering with Google,
lists various kid-safe sites and blocks pornography and explicit sexual content.
Design and features: Sites are listed by
topic and include an array of destinations such
as online shopping networks, television stations, and even soap opera sites.
Drawbacks: The basic, no-frills design isn’t
16
EDUTOPIA JULY/AUGUST 2006
“Siberian tiger” gathers more than a dozen sites,
many from zoos. Users can download a desktop search toolbar that scans sixteen search
engines and connects to Radio RedZee.
Drawbacks: This site doesn’t fully protect
against risky Web hunts. A search for “drugs”
yielded sites such as StopDrugs.org juxtaposed
with ads and links to online prescription companies that allow minors to purchase products.
Test search: A search for “violence” gathered
sites on entertainment-software ratings and
about youth-violence prevention such as those
at www.safeyouth.org and www.talkingwithkids
.org. A search for “sex” yielded no results.
Yahooligans.yahoo.com
Overview: The child’s version of Yahoo!
includes sites “handpicked” and checked by
educators—rather than filtered with technology—and targets ages seven to twelve. Yahooligans! announces that it rejects sites that are
“sleazy,” “slimy,” “pornographic,” or “hateful.”
Design and features: The site, like Yahoo,
is colorful, interactive, and organized and fuses
educational directories of science and computers with entertainment links to music videos,
jokes, polls, and horoscopes, making it a onestop destination integrating academics with
fun. Parent and teacher guides offer resources
for Internet safety and literacy.
Drawbacks: Students may drift from schoolrelated research to entertainment content.
Test search: A “drugs” search compiled sites
from DARE, links to government sites such as
NIDA for Teens, and forums with more childaccessible information at the sites of PBS Kids
and Nickelodeon. “Sex” collected less than a
dozen results, including a BrainPOP.com cartoon about fertilization and birth, while the rest
led to sometimes dense discussions on meiosis. Typing in “violence” gathered results on
bullying and violence prevention.
HUGH D'ANDRADE
Overview: This kiddie version of Ask Jeeves
combines age-appropriate content and filtering
and “natural language” technology, allowing
kids to ask questions to narrow a search.
Design and features: This colorful, animated site includes an almanac that leads to
www.factmonster.com, a starting point for
research. A link to online clip art provides a
library of free images to deter students from
stealing copyrighted work.
Drawbacks: Some searches collect few
results. For instance, asking, “What is a Siber-
Design and features: A search for
Field Trips
Places to go, things to do.
July
Advanced Placement Annual Conference
July 12–16, Lake Buena Vista, Florida
The best practices, policies, and resources
for Advanced Placement teachers and
coordinators.
Next Stop:
The Goldfish Bowl
HOT LINK
• www.fish-school.com
Albert isn’t your typical smarty-pants soccer-playing kid. In fact, Albert isn’t a kid at
all. He’s a calico fantail goldfish that fourth-grader Kyle Pomerleau and his dad have
trained to do some very nonfishy things, including zipping through a hoop and pushing a soccer ball into a net—even doing the limbo by swimming under a bar. In
2004, Kyle won Albert in a fair at his school, Richland Elementary, in Gibsonia,
Pennsylvania. On a whim, he and his dad Dean, a software engineer, attempted to
teach Albert to do tricks using the same positive reinforcement and so-called shaping techniques commonly used to train dolphins, circus animals, dogs, and sometimes even kids—that is, desired behavior was rewarded: A pointy-tipped feeder
delivered the fish a food pellet after each trick or sequence of events was performed
successfully. A few weeks later, Albert was performing on command, and a small
father-son online business selling fish-training kits was born. In addition,Albert (short
for Albert Einstein) has landed a place in the next Guinness World Records, officially
listed as the fish having the greatest repertoire of tricks.“It’s quite an honor,” Dean
Pomerleau admits.“These fish are a lot smarter than we give them credit for.”
—James Daly
Building Learning Communities
Conference
July 18–20, Weston, Massachusetts
Top-of-the-line thinkers, educators, and innovators, hand picked by educator/big thinker
Alan November, join in the east for the seventh annual November Learning conference.
U.S. Department of Education
Summer Workshop
July 20–21, Billings, Montana
Celebrate the bicentennial of the completion
of the Lewis and Clark expedition with a
free professional-development workshop at
Montana State University—complete with
historians and reenactors—provided by the
U.S. Department of Education. Check out
the DOE’s Web site for regional workshops.
GIS Educational Technology Consultants
Summer Residential Institute
July 29–August 3, Jamestown, Colorado
Learn how to navigate the twenty-firstcentury globe and classroom with handson instruction in geographic-information
systems and global-positioning systems.
August
Educating Heart and Mind Through
Ethics and Character: The Timeless
Mission of Schools
August 2–4, Salt Lake City
Character matters—in education, business,
and society. Learn how to instill it in your
students.
JOSEPH FARRIS
American Community Gardening
Association Annual Conference
August 10–13, Los Angeles
This gathering of green thumbs features a
preconference workshop on garden-based
curricula, as well as tours of school and community gardens around the Los Angeles area.
“We’re teachers and want to go someplace
where we can have fun and not learn anything.”
Get Started For Web links about these events, go to
• www.edutopia.org/1567
2006 JULY/AUGUST EDUTOPIA
17