ENVIROTHON COMPETITION

Folks:

Check this out and let me know what your thoughts might be.

Envirothon
http://www.macd.org/envirothon.html

Best,

Jim

What's Going Down

Hey People:
I told Maya some flexible times on Sunday, so she may drop by at any time. And since our Rep didn't do any leg work after we elected him, I decided to do some of my own and check up on an old friend. Renee lost her last job, found another, almost moved, then didn't, had a bit of trouble through january, and is still pretty stressed and she sayes everything is still out of order since the almost move, so she handed management over to Carol. I'm not to happy with the prospect if truth were told, because the last time we tried to do some work with her we scrapped the agenda and didn't get anything done, at least they found it educational but come on. This camp is going to happen! And we don't need any more procrastination!
~Kit Kat

Ahh, LEADERSHIP..........It's a wonderful and refreshing thing to witness!

Best,

Jim

Maya Agarwal (Sol Organization) to Visit Observatory

Folks:

I'm feeling better already, but guess who e-mailed me back and is going to be in Michigan this weekend...

You guessed it Maya Agarwal!

This is Awesome! By the way she asked for a time to show up, What time should I tell her? Saturday or Sunday.

And could you forward me a complete Address to the Observatory, (I have your card but it's in my portfolio at OTC and we're on break for that, or if you want to go ahead and get a map from map quest here's her address: You will want a map from where she is staying locally.

McMath-Hulbert Observatory (248-335-4791)
895 N. Lake Angelus
Lake Angelus, MI 48326

Maya Agarwal Director of Programs Sustainability Education Center, Inc. 307 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1201 New York, NY 10001 T (212) 645-9930 ext*827 F (212) 645-9931

~Kit Kat

GREAT Agri-science Meeting at OSTC/NW

Guys:

Please take a look at this and share your thoughts regarding same. Perhaps we can make this work for Mr. Smith's building plan.

Ford offers energy tech school contest: Ford Motor Co., National Geographic magazine and ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition said Thursday that they had joined in a contest offering elementary school students the chance to design a sustainable, eco-friendly school.

The prize? $100,000 for green renovations at their schools. Obviously a wide variety of advanced energy technologies will be on the table.

For more about Ford's program, visit www.nationalgeographic.com/gogreen/ford

The deadline for entries is April 7. The contest also includes a teacher's guide, student guide and a classroom poster.

Best,

Jim

What will this Camp look like?

Freedom to choose activities.
Activities:
Ham radios (Mark. Henry. Oscar)
Sub (robotic or otherwise)
Nature Trails
Swamping
Livestock management
Horse care
Gardening + advancements
Forensics
Telescopes (+ History)
Landscape
Water Quality/ Experiments & Testing
Photography
Clay Work
Weaving
Computer Tech
Games (Free Time)
Wilderness Survival
Basic knowledge on sustainability will be worked into Activities.
Choosing sleeping arrangements:
Oakland Universities Dorm Space
Tents Available/other
Will have a few basic projects worked in that have to do with what the kids have been working on, have a few things to boost confidence.
Still need to work out a few kinks though like length, kids, groups, teachers, mentors, overall cost, we also need to make sure all of us can pitch in.Please edit when you can.

~Kit Kat

Reinventing High School

Folks:

February 1, 2005
EDITORIAL

Reinventing High School

The achievement gap between rich and poor students is narrowing in some states, thanks to the added resources and better instruction that are a result of the No Child Left Behind Act. But that good news is largely limited to the early grades. Progress is stalled in high schools, where more states are slipping behind than are making progress, and American teenagers have lost ground when compared with their peers in other industrialized nations. The United States, which once led the world in high school graduation rates, has plummeted to 17th - well behind France, Germany and Japan.

The American high school is a big part of the problem. Developed a century ago, the standard factory-style high school was conceived as a combination holding area and sorting device that would send roughly one-fifth of its students on to college while moving the rest directly into low-skill jobs. It has no tools to rescue the students who arrive unable to read at grade level but are in need of the academic grounding that will qualify them for 21st-century employment.

New York City recently embarked on a plan to develop a range of smaller schools, some of them aimed at the thousands of students whose literacy skills are so poor that they have failed the first year of high school three times. The plan is to pull these students up to the academic standard while providing some of them with work experiences.

The National Governors Association has begun a high school initiative that calls for remedial services and partial tuition reimbursement for students who complete community college courses that lead to technical or industrial job certifications. The White House, rushing to get ahead of the parade, recently announced a high school project of its own. And other school districts are tinkering with gimmicks like cash bonuses for good grades.

The emerging consensus is that the traditional high school needs to be remade into something that is both more flexible and more rigorous. But the rigor has to come first. Many states are still setting the bar for reading performance abysmally low in the primary grades, paving the way for failure when children move on to high school. State education departments have fudged vital statistics on graduation rates, as well as the teacher qualification data they have reported to the federal government in ostensible compliance with No Child Left Behind.

The federal Education Department failed to push the states toward doing better under the disastrous leadership of its departing secretary, Rod Paige. No matter how hard localities try, the best-designed high schools in the world will still fail unless the states and the federal government finally bite the bullet on teacher training.

That means doing what it takes to remake the teacher corps, even if it means withholding federal dollars from diploma mills pretending to be colleges of education, forcing out unqualified teachers and changing the age-old practice of funneling the least-prepared teachers into the weakest schools.