Why I Care

I have been spending a lot of time (maybe 30 hours this week?) in conversations, email, and presentations to help save my kids school, which admittedly is very low performing.

We might not even be around in a year or two.  So you can see that Steve is not really interested in me spending all my time on this--his main concern is that I am never going to stop and then my heart will break if it doesn't work out.  I am already done with this kind of work, I simply considered it triage for now.  He also wondered if I am fighting for what the school is or fighting for what I want the school to be.  Maybe some of both?

So why do I care if it really does not impact our family for much longer?

1.  Two-way immersion schools are the main way to provide literacy for kids who speak Spanish at home.  Many of these children come from homes with little or no education and then are placed in schools where they are learning to read, write, and speak English.  Research is clear that you have to be first fluent in your own language before transferring those skills.  Many people argue that this is America, we should teach English.  Agreed.  So teachers can either bang their heads against a wall and try to teach children who are to a certain extent doomed to fail. OR they can provide students with literacy in a language they recognize while ALSO providing a second language to a bunch of kids who speak English at home.  Win-win.  These same people who argue the point about English, btw, seem resentful of the Latino population "draining resources" from the public school system.  Note many of these same people are not complaining about the uneducated language-learning population keeping our grapes and strawberries down to a nice, low price.  Or that they are padding the social security funds because they use fake SS#s on which they never collect. 

2.  See #1.  Many community members complain about the language gap but do nothing about it.  Does anyone know the correlation between Hispanic English language learners and high school dropout rates?  They performing at a much lower level nation-wide than our black impoverished students, btw.  They also are populating our prison system.  So why take a gamble on this one?  Also, clear correlation between education levels and decreasing violent crimes in case that surprises you.

3.  See #2.  I want my property, my children, and my produce to be safe.  Literacy is one of the most important factors in increasing quality of life for the poor and if the people who have resources to fight for these issues really ought to do so.

4.  My children speak Spanish.  They understand it.  Is it to the level I would like to see yet?  No.  But when we read the scriptures in English and they don't understand a word I can say it in Spanish and half the time, it gives them a whole new perspective.  Their standardized test scores are high in Spanish AND English and it gives our family a uniqueness that others don't experience--the ability to tell inappropriate jokes in TWO languages. 

5.  The school art program, the PE program, the gardens, teachers who believe in their ability to solve problems and train them to do so, and a family community at the school that embraces the weirdness in our family is unmistakeably irreplaceable. 

6.  Incredible teachers and a good principal who is supportive of innovation, change, and improvement.  People like her are hard to find and even harder to keep.  If this district lets her go, it will absolutely be their loss.

7.  I am not crafty or talented in homemaking--my dwelling has always been a source of embarrassment to me because it is constantly in disarray.  Landee can testify that this is not a new lifestyle for me as much as I would love to blame my four kids and husband. Even hiring a maid would be an embarrassment because you probably wouldn't be able to tell.  We have improved over the years but still it is a struggle for me.  I am not particularly spiritual, obedient, patient or loving--but I AM good at this stuff--school stuff.  And if there is one area I can use to wear out myself in the work, it is in education.  Is this not a worthy cause?

Needs v. Wants

When we got married 11 years ago, we were given towels and Anchor Hocking sets.  We got some other nice things, more unique, but definitely the number one gift was towels and a few of those glass sets.

We got so many towels that we traded them in for a set of pots and pans.  What I really wanted were these nice non-stick calphalon sets.  They were somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 or more for the set.

We got instead a $99 Farberware stainless steel set.

This is the story of my life, to want something of higher, more expensive quality but to end up with something cheaper.

This evening, however, I was washing my dishes and noticed that my pots and pans from the Farberware set are still shiny and new.  I have a solitary piece of calphalon, an item my mother bought when she was living alone here in SB AFTER Steve and I were married.  So this pot is about 7 years old.  Take a peek at the comparison:

Here is a close-up:



Calphalon:

Farberware, stainless steel:

These pots have lived through burned rice, unwatched syrup, burned candy, water left to boil for hours, etc.  There is no scorch that has left a single drop of notice on this stainless steel pot.

Can someone please explain to me why the set valued at 5 times this shiny gem was worth so much?  And why would anyone buy it?  And why do I stil want those Turkish towels that landee has in her guest bathroom when the regular kind would probaby last just as long?

Role Reversal

Contrary to popular belief, my husband wears the pants in the family.

I work, true, but ultimately it is his decision that makes us the nomads that we are.  We are pursuing his dream of living in a 2-bedroom apartment with 4 kids.

So while we do have some role-reversal going on, in some ways we are very much the traditional husband/wife.  Some examples:

--When we get a late notice for a bill, my husband calls me to ask if me if I know anything about it
--I work outside the home
--He knows what size shoe the kids wear
--I fix broken stuff around the house
--He walks the halls with the baby during church
--I have a fancy techy phone and he doesn't know how to check a text message
--He does the routine with the kids while I travel out of town on work

See?

So imagine my surprise when I post a comment on a blog about role reversal and someone responds with this comment:

Steve's reponse:  Boo!  Do we have such role reversal that even on line people just think I am your little wife?  That is why you should go by Lee Ann.

Heh.

So I did respond to her with this comment:

As a side note, Steve does take out the garbage, change the oil and get gas in the car, and forget to give me phone messages. 

Halloween Sneak Preview

Thank GOODNESS for mi stepmom, Jo, for sending some beautiful costumes
in the nick of time. Here is a very happy princesa spinning around.

Three Full-time Jobs

I have a job.

I have 4 kids.

I gotta keep their school open.


Someone get me a maid.

Stop, Thief!

What I really WANT to blog about: derailing meetings by talking about
unrelated things and then criticizing others ideas without offering
solutions.

What I will blog about: my stolen stroller.

I have (had) a beautiful McClaren stroller given to me by a good
friend about six weeks ago. It is lightweight, easy to carry and sturdy.

It is gone. From the back of my car.

I am hoping it was somehow misplaced and will turn up--if I had bought
it I would still be disappointed, but the knowledge that someone gave
it to me so generously makes me feel like a terrible steward. Was it
because I left my window slightly open because my fan went out? Why
was my stroller taken and not my purse? When did this happen? What
have I done to deserve this karma? Has my good luck run out?

Boo.

Please come home to me.

Sent from mi teléfono i.

Last Man Standing

The last man was officially ousted last night from the dessert competition.  The dessert is shown in the back, a lovely carrot cake with a nuts vs. no nuts option.

Alas, Steve's tasty cream cheese was overcome by Jeannie's homage to the lemon festival, complete with a lemon rind curly q:

Nicole and Alexis were neck and neck until the very end with Nicole's stuffed apples beating out the pumpkin and spiced apple filled bundt cake (original recipe tyvm) by one vote.

At the very top of the picture above you will spy a chocolate pie with a chocolate merengue topping that was super scrumptious.  Jaqui's treat was trumped by a Karen's homemade baklava which I tragically did not capture digitally.  I have tried to make baklava before and it is extremely tricky.  Only the likes of an engineer like Karen could pull it off with such precision.  Sorry no photo but maybe a kind reader will submit one...

The last and perhaps most fierce competition was between K. Dorny's cupcakes and Vivian.  Vivian, supposedly a fan of the young women she serves in church, unabashedly came in the door swinging ready to take on the young Miss D and used a recipe from Pioneer Woman to make a crowd-pleasing crust with cute little whipped cream star decor.  For the record, while Vivan will advance to the next level, Miss D had all the children at the chocolate sprinkles.  My children were astonished that anyone could beat a cupcake with sprinkles.  They also insisted that I recount the chocolate merengue because they were shocked that anything with that much chocolate could lose in general.

A good time was had by all and thank you for playing!  Here is the updated bracket for our next competition, Friday November 6th at 7 pm.  All are invited to taste as we get closer to the final four:

BYU Ballroom Dance

I didn't get a great picture but I had a ball last night. Literally a ballroom dance ball. For the second time in my life I attended a BYU Ballroom Dance concert sponsored by the alumni association.

If you don't already know this, the BYU Ballroom Dance team is like the Yankees of dance--conditions for a ballroom dance team at the Y and no other university will ever be able to catch up to match our team.  We are undefeated.  All the time.  Makes me so proud to be an alum. 

Anywho, we had a GREAT time last night and the 90 minute program felt like about ten minutes.  If you get a notice that these guys are in  your town, I highly recommend it, they are such crowd pleasers.

Bored Reflection

Wow I had a personally humbling experience last night.

I spoke on behalf of our community to let the board know that we really do qualify for charter renewal and I watched myself deliver one of the bumpiest 3 minutes of my speaking career.

I spent some serious reflection in which I was fumingly angry with myself looking at why I didn't prepare differently to meet this challenge. I did prepare--spent time as a board coming up with a message that my community wanted me to deliver. Had Steve take a look and help me tighten up my thesis (he is wicked good at that writing business) and even sent a video preview to Katie as my news mogul expert.

So before I make it sound like I didn't even get the words out, first let me say that I delivered the message the board crafted for me. I stood up in front of the board and a large number of our school community and spoke aloud what was on my paper.

So I had this whole message prepared for the board about the data and then the Superintendent acknowledged us early on and told the board that he would be giving them some information and he figured that is why everyone in the room was in attendance. I appreciated what he said but it also made what I had to say seem less important to them. I was highlighting information that they thought they were going to get in another form. I hope someone heard something I said.

I stumbled a bit--you know, nerves and all--but the crowd was significantly smaller than groups that I have presented to before. If I can orchestrate a balloon drop in front of a crowd three times that size you would think I could speak for 3 minutes to a smaller crowd but I still was nervous. Only instead of getting over that first 15 seconds it just got worse and worse.

So what went awry? Well after serious introspection I feel like I should have crafted a 30-second message even though they allot for 3 minutes. Why? Because rather than listen to what I came to say, a few of the board members were staring at the clock above my head and pointing at the time and whispering to each other. I almost wondered if there was a scene happening behind me and partially turned around at one point but I just drilled on through.

I wish I would have said something about being distracted or just stopped speaking like I would have in a classroom. Teaching has ruined me from speaking to disengaged people.

So all in all I am sure it was fine but I just was so disconcerted at my public speaking failure and my lack of ability to control the situation.

I guess we will find out whether or not it made a difference. Ugh.

I feel like I let my community down but at least I told them that I was not a good public speaker before they sent me up there.

:EDIT:
Local newspaper picked it up the story if you want to read about it here

Why Test Scores REALLY Matter

The superintendent of the school board came to our Governance Council (my kids school, Cesar Chavez) meeting this past week to let us know he recommended school closure to the board instead of renewing our charter (expiry date Oct 12). I recognize that the district is hoping for an increase in *revenue by eliminating the charter as it is perceived as skimming funds from the district budget first.

Putting aside the charter piece for just a minute, the argument that the Super has made to us is that our school has the lowest test scores in the district and therefore is low performing.

He is correct, the school has the lowest test scores in the district. Overall. BUT bilingual education research shows that students at the lower grades will NEVER get high scores. Why? Because half of the school is getting instruction in Spanish. These schools are designed to increase literacy in the child's first language and THEN they can transfer the skills slowly over time and begin to see pretty good numbers, say, around 6th grade. Because our school has a very small population of 6th graders, the very low scores at 2nd grade (again consistent with research) will never pull up the scores of the upper grades, capiche?

So... why am I blogging about this now? The school district is considering closing a school that is meeting the requirements as laid out in the charter and appear to be ignoring their agreement with the school (MOU) to look at data other than the state tests.

The MOU states that the district can look at other data (including STAR tests) to determine that we are academically consistent with other schools in the community. We can prove that by looking at our 6th grade scores alone (and comparing our 4-6 grades in general) but the district seems to be less concerned with the long-term positive effect and more concerned with how they look in terms of data. In other words, who cares what the long-term benefit is to my child on a continuum through 6th grade, we only care about the 2nd grade score of your child and make decisions based on discreet scores instead of looking at the big picture.

Scary.

I wonder what kind of world we have become that we care more about the short-term effects of data and ignore the long-term effect of employable skills, multi-language and literate populations, and critical thinking skills that are inherently pieces of the curriculum when students are learning to immediately apply a skill to the world around them.

*Many people don't realize that the only difference between a charter and a non-charter school is the way money is spent. The charters receive their funding directly from the property tax base. Let me illustrate:
For example, say the state has a formula of $5000 per pupil. In a charter school, the school gets the majority of this money to operate. If they have several young teachers, the overall salary might be less so they can spend that extra money on text books. Or perhaps school materials.
In a non-charter school, the district might say "okay so you have 100 students, you get 5 teachers." In other words, the district operates a budget by setting formulas. This works in a collective sort of way so that they can average a teachers salary so that a person who has been teaching for a long time won't be denied a job simply because their salary and benefits might cost the specific school more money, make sense?

Journey and Stress

So I had a busy week of travel with a grand total of 11 airport stops from Sunday to Saturday. It was a great week professionally for me in which I had dinner two nights with one of my favorite teachers, two nights of brainstorming and creative planning with one of my favorite co-workers, and two nights out with one of my favorite schools. I had a great week because something we planned crashed and burned and we took the failure and made it amazing. That is always painful/wonderful.

But this is the serious part:

Some of you know that I am president of the Governance Council of the board of the kids' school (we essentially make sure that the goals are on track, I sign checks, the staff contracts and we evaluate the principal, etc.)

We are in a tight situation this week because, sadly, while I was out of town, the Superintendent announced that he has recommended that the school be closed (or possibly changed) as of the expiration date of the charter. Which is October 12th. I know, right?

So I have a meeting with the principal and the super (and some other person at the district) on Monday so we can talk about it.

It is a surprise. The reasoning is our test scores, which are low of course because it is a bilingual school. My kids are actually fine, they test probably a little lower than some of your children but they do great overall in both languages (both of the kids are in the top 20% of the country for native Spanish speakers, which sounds more amazing than it actually is because most kids taking that test are not literate in Spanish but anywho) and the kids at the school test well in 6th grade.

Research shows that in a bilingual model, test scores DROP at the lower grades and then pick up pace at about 6th grade. This is happening at our school yet the district claims we are not meeting our goals. We have steadily increased over the last three years and our 6th graders are testing higher than their peers at other schools in math. Do you know how rare that is?

I am extremely optimistic about this but professionally I HAVE experienced schools that were amazing and had good test scores get closed due to political garbage so I am a bit skeptical based on those feelings that are still burning internally.

I know that so many people just look at test scores to find out of a school is good but truly, sadly, deeply, the scores are simply a mark of your ability to read and answer questions. Too bad that simply isn't enough.

I won't go on and on but be advised that it is all I am going to think about for the next several days. I have three meetings scheduled and probably a lot of emails and phone calls.

I want to quote Martin Luther King, Jr. and point out that children of migrant farm workers and children of Ph.Ds go to school together and when in their native language, the field is leveled. Nowhere else in this county does that occur.

Dessert Competition Update

So we had a great night with some very tough competitors. First up we had a match between a Tres Leches and an Ooey Gooy Butter Bar:


























The tres leches got some rave reviews but in the end the Ooey Gooey got a single deciding vote to push Katie into the next round.

We also had two equally shaped chocolate cakes and the single deciding vote cast upon Bridget much to her delight (she had chocolate chips in the bottom of her cake for the win):


























In the front of the above photo the white dusted chocolate cake took on a multi-layered chocolate and whipped cream doozy served up by Cherry, who in the end won in a tie-breaking second round of blind taste testers (blind as in, didn't know either baker):




















The big unappetizing pile of chocolate mousse was up against the eye-popping oreo treat found inside this bucket here:


























But in the end it was the chocolate mousse that won by a single deciding vote. I ought to say right now that I felt that this was the great injustice of the night--and if the kids were allowed to vote this dessert would have absolutely killed the mousse. As the mousse maker I ought to be grateful for the advancement in the tourney but it was not exciting to win against this truly deserving item.

At the end of the day, I guess the lesson is that when you use a half a pint of real whipping cream you really can't go wrong.

Here is the updated roster for the upcoming competition in two weeks:













Hence the next matchup on Saturday October 17th at 7 pm (moved back an hour due to popular demand)

Nicole v. A. Dorny
Jeannie v. Steve
Holly v. K. Dorny
Karen v. Jacqui

Lesson learned from the one vote separation: Bring TWO friends to cast a vote your way.

The real hero of the evening, however, was this child who was able to finagle her way into the mud and really get down and dirty during the dessert fest. As if the chocolate weren't enough...

Early Morning Flights

My own variety of moonshine:

Happy October

Why I love October:

1) Travel slows down for me (only gone for one week this month!)

2) I love, love, love the cool breeze coming through my bedroom window at night. Not too cold, but the nice feeling of warm blankets combined with the fall crispy air.

3) I get excited about work projects that have been on the back burner for several months.

4) I facilitate a "Meeting of the Minds" which is when groups of teachers in the same subject area get together to discuss teaching. That is one of my favorite meetings of the year and I get to see all my teachers from different schools together in one place. I am super passionate about curriculum design and I get to work with that full-time. I know, I am a geek.

5) I like orange.

My friend and former freighbor Katie has her new bows up on her site especially for Halloween in case you need some Halloweeny bows or are looking for gifts for friends with girls. Her bows, btw, have been prominently featured on this blog for the last year on all pictures Meghan as well as the beautiful white boy she made especially for Bridget for her baptism. I like them because they are well designed and durable, and they stay on babies so well. Anywho, she is a very talented individual but I should stop talking about it and just post a pic for you to see for your self. Her website can be found here and her blog, which is one of my top ten favoritist sites of all time on the internets, can be found here. Sneak preview of her specialty october collection:






















Does she look familiar? She has been a model on this blog before, here, and also here, and most particularly here.