Rockaway Theatre Company Weekend Update: Last days to see Boeing, Boeing

NOTE: RTC has sent out a notice that due to the slimebags in Congress Gateway National Park, where the theater is located, is shut down. So amongst all the other stuff the incredible work these people put into the show is in jeopardy this weekend. Luckily they performed the last 2 weekends and I taped the performance last Sat night. It is up on the web in a private space for the RTC (can't make it public due to copyrite stuff - or so they tell me).

This is what I wrote before the notice from RTC came in.

I've seen the show twice and am going back this weekend. Three of the actors are NYC teachers, including MORE supporter Steve Ryan from Leon Goldstein HS, where co-director Michael Wotypka (who I know from way back in his TJC days) also teaches. And 2 of the major players in the theater, Susan Jasper and John Galleace, also taught at Goldstein before retiring. The nebbish is played by great comic actor David Risely who played Felix when I was in the Odd Couple. Steve - on the right - plays the lucky - or unlucky guy - trying to manipulate 3 fiances.

Here is my blurb in this week's Wave.

Take 3 beautiful stewardesses, mix them with a debonair boyfriend they all share, add in his nebishy best friend from Wisconsin and a live-in French maid - naturally since they are in Paris - and a sumptuous apartment with lots of doors - and for very good reason - and you end up with "Boeing, Boeing", the latest side-splitting comedy produced by the Rockaway Theatre Company. The show is in its final weekend at the Post Theater in Fort Tilden. Don't miss the final opportunity to see our amazing local and imported talent (from Brooklyn). The production follows a long-line of fine plays directed by Peggy Page and Michael Wotypka, who also have the distinction of providing me with my acting debut – and denouement – in the Odd Couple two years ago.

See video highlights of Boeing, Boeing at: https://vimeo.com/75933374

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Shame on "Journalists" Supporting E4E Closed Meeting Where All Had to Sign "The Pledge"

When the so-called ed press takes part in a naked propaganda event to promote an organization funded by billionaires to put forth their anti-union, anti-real reform education. (Ask E4E what they think about a campaign to reduce high class sizes?)

Panelists included journalists Ben Max (Decide NYC), Lindsey Christ (NY1), Sarah Garland (Hechinger Report) and Sarah Darville (GothamSchools).

What does this say about these journalists? Teachers who do not agree with the E4E position are banned. We know that E4E supports every Bloomberg ed deform position and those allowed to attend must agree with the E4E position. So what are people who call themselves journalists doing there? I don't care about the others but I am disappointed in Lindsey Christ.

E4E-NY: The Next Education Mayor

E4E-New York teachers gathered on Thursday, September 26, 2013 to ask local journalists questions about the mayoral race and what it means for teachers in NYC.

1. Thursday's panel was moderated by teachers Lilly Ruiz and Nick Lawrence. 

   http://www.educators4excellence.org/news/2013-09-storify-e4e-new-york-teachers-ask-whos-the-next-educ

   
   

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Thursday Oct 3: Rally to Save I.S. 2 Staten Island

And the beat of co-location goes on.

 

Thursday October 3^rd @ 5:30 pm
(Outside I.S. 2 on Midland Ave)

Followed by a DoE PUBLIC HEARING @ 6:30PMat I.S. 2 in the Auditorium
We need every student, parent, teacher, elected official and community member on Staten Island to raise their voice and be heard!

Laura E. Timoney
(O) 718.987.6411
(C) 917.667.2711
Laura@Timoney.com

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Video: Leonie Haimson and Jia Lee at CEC 15 High Stakes Testing Forum

Everyone knows Leonie. More and more people are getting to know Jia, who represented Change the Stakes and MORE on the panel. Amazing that I only met Jia in April 2012 when she attended a GEM/CTS forum with Carol Burris, Leonie, Gary Rubinstein and more. I'm posting the video in small chunks. More to come.

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Video- Inspiring Brooklyn New School Principal Anna Allanbrook: BNS Principal's weekly letter 10.1.13

How come so many progressive principals like Anna Allanbrook and Carol Burris have become heroes to so many teachers while we look at our union leadership with disdain? I was inspired last night when I taped the panel at Anna Allanbrook's remarkable statement with Shael Polokow-Suransky, not only one of the chief Tweedies but second in command to Walcott standing a few feet away.

Many were asking why he seems so different from other Tweedies in his willingness to meet and dialogue with people. Some say "ambition to be the next chancellor." Some think he is a nice guy. Some say he sickens them with his slickness. I am agnostic but will recognize his patience and willingness to take the heat. (See the video I posted of parents and he holding a back and forth in the lobby after the meeting.)

Here is the video of Anna, followed by the written text for you to share if you like.

Dear Families:

Many of you joined me last night for the District 15 Community Education Council at 7:00 at MS 51. For those who weren’t able to be there, I include here the transcript of my words:

As we reflect on the new state test results, we need to ask “Why?” Rather than guessing, I checked out the United States Department of Education’s website where I found frequently asked questions. One was, “How does testing help teachers?” We are told: “Teachers gain a great deal of information about the performance of individual students that enables them to meet the particular needs of every child.”

Never mind that results arrive in the summer when it is too late to use this data to change instruction.

I would argue that today’s test scores do not tell us very much. There are few surprises. If the test was too hard, the score will be low. Too easy, the score will be high.

This year we saw that although everyone’s scores went down, results followed the norm: schools with more poverty, special education and second language learners performed more poorly than others.

Another question at the government website was,”How is testing handled for children with disabilities and for those with limited English proficiency?” The answer? “No Child Left Behind requires that all children be assessed.” How insightful. No acknowledgement that these tests are completely inappropriate for second language learners and those with disabilities. We already know they can be two or three years behind grade level so it makes no sense to test them on material that may be two or three years above it.

Uncle Sam continues, “Some say that testing causes teachers to teach to the test. Is that true?” Embedded in the answer is the claim that, “If teachers cover subject matter required by the standards and teach it well, then students will master the material on which they will be tested. In that case, students will need no special test preparation in order to do well.”

That’s a big if. There was a time when test preparation was considered unethical. Now, preparation for the tests is standard and in fact, at my school, parents will ask if we are putting their children at a disadvantage when we don’t do test prep.

Yet another question asks, “Do tests measure the progress of schools?” We learn that testing data determines whether a school is meeting the state's standard of "adequate yearly progress." Today this data is being used not only to measure schools, but to rate teachers from ineffective to highly effective in part by calculating the amount of student growth on standardized tests. In fact, each child’s rate of progress could conceivably affect the careers not only of his or her teacher, but of other teachers in the school.

What gets lost in this discussion is testing’s impact on the child. I was fortunate to have raised my daughters before the era of testing. They took tests, but there was no prep and no true concern about performance. Yes, when the school year ended (and not in the summer) the score was included in the final progress report, but then it was forgotten. Never did it occur to a parent to blame the teacher.

No one considered that number to indicate eventual career and college readiness. We understood that

education takes time, that there was always a developmental span between children and that it was okay if some of them didn’t test well. We understood, too, that the score was simply another indicator. We had no desire for our schools to be like Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."

Early in the age of accountability, standardized tests were much easier. One year, a fourth grade class in our school received twenty-five threes. Twenty-five

individuals had been reduced to sameness. But we didn’t learn who could persevere in reading and math or who understood more complex ideas.

To some extent then, the rationale for harder tests makes sense. Many of us are familiar with William Butler Yeats’ famous quote, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”, but test makers assume that knowledge can be thrown in the pail and then retrieved. Educators know it doesn’t work like that. Children learn by connecting what they already know with new ideas. When we cannot actively make meaning, we do not learn or remember.

We understood the purpose of the new Common Core tests to dig deeper and to differentiate between our learners. Differentiate they did, but only because last year’s tests were hard to do well on because there was no connection to the children.

Javier Hernandez in the New York Times said many teachers complained of inadequate training to prepare students for the exams. This was not the issue.

One of our teachers, Katherine Sorel, wrote a piece for Schoolbook in which she said, “As a savvy test-taker, I could usually identify which choice Pearson considered right. And sometimes I couldn’t choose.” These kinds of tests are weak measures of the ability to comprehend complex material, write, apply math, or understand concepts. Nor do they tell us what students can do on real-world tasks.

Another significant change between the 2013 test and the tests that my children took is the length of the exams. My children spent less than one hour a day. Now, children must be tested for three days for each subject. The test is seventy to ninety minutes long and even longer for students with IEPs. One of my teachers commented, “My students tried to rise to the occasion, but found it totally grueling and some just wrote 'something' to finish. Heads on desk, shifting in their seats, no amount of pretzels could help them keep their otherwise sunny dispositions. And I'm exhausted: I'd much rather be teaching. Either you can read and write critically on your grade level or you can't - three days is unnecessary and cruel.”

After viewing the process, a paraprofessional declared, “State sanctioned child abuse.” A teacher told me, ”I had at least one child in tears every day.” But the government website says only, “Although testing may be stressful for some students, testing is a normal and expected way of assessing what students have learned.”

One other concern that needs to be raised is the price of testing. Since 2008, we have seen reduced budgets with less money for basic supplies and substitute teachers. But not for testing and teacher effectiveness systems. Where is all this money coming from? Would we be more effective if we had more money for the classroom and less for “accountability”?

These tests hurt our struggling students. They have created a culture of competition amongst children, parents, teachers, and principals. The numbers become more important than the satisfaction of learning big ideas. We have given the message that we value more how children bubble in ovals than how they question or wonder about the world.

All for now,

Anna

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Borowitz: Panicstricken Tea Party Supporters Flee U.S.

October 1, 2013

Millions Flee Obamacare

Posted by Andy Borowitz at the New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/10/millions-flee-obamacare.html?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=borowitz&mbid=nl_Borowitz%20%28176%29

UNITED STATES (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of Tea Party loyalists fled the United States in the early morning hours today, seeking what one of them called “the American dream of liberty from health care.”

Harland Dorrinson, 47, a tire salesman from Lexington, Kentucky, packed up his family and whatever belongings he could fit into his Chevy Suburban just hours before the health-insurance exchanges opened, joining the Tea Party’s Freedom Caravan with one goal in mind: escape from Obamacare.

“My father didn’t have health care and neither did my father’s father before him,” he said. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let my children have it.”

But after driving over ten hours to the Canadian border, Mr. Dorrinson was dismayed to learn that America’s northern neighbor had been in the iron grip of health care for decades.

“The border guard was so calm when he told me, as if it was the most normal thing in the world,” he said. “It’s like he was brainwashed by health care.”

Turning away from Canada, Mr. Dorrinson joined a procession of Tea Party cars heading south to Mexico, noting, “They may have drug cartels and narcoterrorism down there, but at least they’ve kept health care out.”
Mr. Dorrinson was halfway to the southern border before he heard through the Tea Party grapevine that Mexico, too, has public health care, as do Great Britain, Japan, Turkey, Spain, Belgium, New Zealand, Slovenia, and dozens of other countries to which he had considered fleeing.
Undaunted, Mr. Dorrinson said he had begun looking into additional countries, like Chad and North Korea, but he expressed astonishment at a world seemingly overrun by health care.
“It turns out that the United States is one of the last countries on earth to get it,” he said. “It makes me proud to be an American.”
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Vote James for Public Advocate Today

All out for James. I don't have much time so check my blogroll for all the other bloggers supporting her. I also don't have time to republish the video I made of her at a PEP -- check the archives.

Here is James Eterno at the ICE blog:

VOTE FOR LETITIA JAMES IN TUESDAY'S RUNOFF (My View Only)

 

Get out the Vote for Tish James on Tuesday in the Democratic Runoff!

 

Letitia James fought the mayor's reprehensible school closing policies; she deserves our support.

 

Note this is my view only along with my wife and most of the family but not necessarily the position of ICE, Jeff Kaufman, MORE or anyone else.

 

I did write this segment for my Wave column published this Friday. I will publish the entire column on Friday. 

I am writing this just before going out to vote for Leticia James in the runoff for Public Advocate. So by the time you read this the election will be decided. I was disappointed that Phil Godfeder is/was supporting her opponent, Daniel Squadron. In his first campaign for office I ran into Phil outside Waldbaums and told him I expected to be disappointed in him on education issues like closing schools, charters, testing etc. I still haven’t made a judgment but I do support him on general issues. By endorsing the charter lobby-funded Squadron over James, who has stood up to big-chain charter invasions while Squadron has played politics, Goldfeder is making a statement on education deform – a disappointing statement. He is also making a statement on unions, mostly supporting James. I know, I know – loyalty to Chuck Schumer and all the other special interests backing Squadron. But still… James as a black woman lawyer from Brooklyn who has a proven record in the City Council, will be/would have been (depending on the results) a boon for all of the Rockaways, west and east ends – and the very growing and increasingly active middle. Once again, Rockaway –  A Tale of Two Cities. Or maybe three.

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