Past Elections
Current Temperature
Monday, May 5, 2014
15 African-American Male Teachers Explain the Inspiring Reasons Why They Teach
Photos and comments from 15 Black male teachers are worth sharing. Where are the men in our classrooms?
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
LSC elections & thoughts on the state of education
Monday and Tuesday are days for LSC Elections. Monday was LSC election for elementary schools and Tuesday are such days for the high schools.
It was my intention to post the above flyer over the weekend unfortunately it seems I kept running into a snag with regards to posting it online whether through Blogger or the FB page. Anyway if you're living at least in the Roseland Heights or West Chesterfield area you may have found this in your screendoors or mailboxes. Sharon Banks-Pincham represents the community on the LSCs for both Gillespie Elementary and Harlan Community Academy.Hopefully you were able to be informed of the LSC elections on Monday and were able to vote. Hopefully you're able to vote on Tuesday for LSC members at your local high schools.
Speaking of education, on Monday Rich Miller of the Capitol Fax ranted about the state of education in Illinois. Many of us are concerned about the state of education in Chicago especially for the K-12 set. So he starts out with a piece comparing charter schools with the neighborhood public schools and states:
Obviously, there’s very little difference here, which will cause some to scream “Then why do we need charter schools at all?”And then more food for thought. Miller opines about CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett stated aim of ensuring 100% of graduating CPS students to be college-ready or college-bound:
I make no apologies for disliking the industrial education model. I prefer choice. I think people ought to have choices.
And, like with neighborhood schools, not all charter schools are meh. Some are quite good. Sometimes, experiments fail. We shouldn’t be afraid to experiment. What’s needed is an overall improvement in all schools.
First of all, that’s just not true or else lots, lots more would be done to improve the schools. Secondly, this over-emphasis on taking tests (with the resultant uproar over what are likely quite meaningless results) and driving kids to attend college is philosophically wrong-headed, whether in Chicago or the suburbs or Downstate.What direction do you think education policy should go?
* Don’t get me wrong here. I do not think kids should be discouraged from attending college, but why saddle a student with tens of thousands of dollars of debt just for the sake of having a so-so degree from a so-so university?
Why not foster the development of more high schools, charter or otherwise, that focus on tech/trade careers? Do you know how much operating engineers make?
* When a system’s entire focus is “100 percent college-bound” you’re not giving students nearly enough choices. Period.
...
Teach them to be good citizens. Teach them how to comprehend language and to do math. But give them choices in how to get there.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
DNA Info: Wi-Fi Hot Spots, Laptops to Be Loaned by Libraries Under Pilot Program
What do you guys think of this idea? Is this workable in the longterm?
The Chicago Public Library is planning to lend out wireless hot spots and laptops in one of the first programs of its kind in the country.
"Wi-Fi lending is a pilot program that we are interested in exploring in order to make the Internet available to people without this technology at home," said Brian Bannon, commissioner of the library system.
The system's "Hotspot at Home" initiative has been in planning stages for a while, but received a boost when the library decided to apply for funding through the Knight News Challenge grant competition earlier this month.
The details of the pilot program are still being hashed out, but will likely start out at 12 branches that are in communities where home broadband usage rates are the lowest.
As with checking out books, DVDs or fishing poles, anyone with a library card in good standing would be able to take home the devices.
Monday, March 17, 2014
The hope dealers
Last week students of Morehouse College went on spring break. Also last week a group of 14 Morehouse students led by Roseland resident & Corliss High School alum Corey Hardiman came to Chicago forgoing the usual spring break rituals - i.e. going to the beach - to engage in service on the South Side of Chicago. I'm going to share some of the media that I have found of these young men doing good in Chicago in early March
Mary Mitchell discusses these young men in a recent column:
Also this article from the Tribune also discusses this service project. Below it's illustrated how well students who go to Roseland area high schools perform on the ACT tests:
Now here's some other media. Audio and some videos!
To start these men of Morehouse - Hardimon and two of his classmates - were interviewed on Chicago Public Radio's Afternoon Shift about their activities [AUDIO]
ALSO, Mr. Hardimon was featured on a report from ABC7 on their service during their spring break service this past week:
"My father was a dope dealer, why can't I become a hope dealer" Man! I like that a lot!
IN ADDITION, a [VIDEO] from the Chicago Tribune published on March 11th so probably not long before these men of Morehouse started their service project. They were shown reading to elementary school students and telling them about the "Five Wells" of Morehouse College.
FINALLY, a report from a local Atlanta station from before these young men left for Chicago close to a week ago.
Mary Mitchell discusses these young men in a recent column:
Corey Hardiman and his crew could be kicking up sand this week in Florida.Hardiman said he was inspired to do this by a literacy project he did in Philadelphia as stated in the Mitchell's column.
Instead, Hardiman and 14 other students from the historically black Morehouse College are in Chicago shoveling snow — and delivering hope — to young people who have been impacted by the violence on the Far South Side.
Hardiman grew up in Roseland where he attended Lavizzo Elementary School and Corliss High School.
Now about to graduate from Morehouse, where he attended on a Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholarship, Hardiman returned to his alma mater this week as an alternative to the spring fling most college students are enjoying.
“Dope has plagued our community for so many years, it is time to give out hope,” Hardiman told me. “Dope is for sale, but hope is free.”
...
Hardiman, 22, raised about $4,500 to pay for the bus tickets
Also this article from the Tribune also discusses this service project. Below it's illustrated how well students who go to Roseland area high schools perform on the ACT tests:
In Roseland, the picture for black males is even more dire than the national portrait. According to Chicago Public Schools data, there arefour high schools that serve students in Roseland. At Corliss, Harlan, Fenger and Julian High Schools, only a little more than half of the student bodies went on to graduate in 2013, statistics show. The average ACT score at those schools was about 14, which is considered poor. The average score in the state last year was 20.Wow, it's been years since I took the ACT and well my score was slightly above the average score for thos local high schools and much lower than the average score for this state. Although let me just admit that it's been years and who knows how they score the test these days. Assuming the ACT changes like the SAT.
Now here's some other media. Audio and some videos!
To start these men of Morehouse - Hardimon and two of his classmates - were interviewed on Chicago Public Radio's Afternoon Shift about their activities [AUDIO]
ALSO, Mr. Hardimon was featured on a report from ABC7 on their service during their spring break service this past week:
"My father was a dope dealer, why can't I become a hope dealer" Man! I like that a lot!
IN ADDITION, a [VIDEO] from the Chicago Tribune published on March 11th so probably not long before these men of Morehouse started their service project. They were shown reading to elementary school students and telling them about the "Five Wells" of Morehouse College.
FINALLY, a report from a local Atlanta station from before these young men left for Chicago close to a week ago.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Morehouse College Glee Club coming to Chicago this month!
morehouse.edu |
The Morehouse College Glee Club is coming to Chicago March 21, 2014 at Harris TheaterAlso refer to the flyer below! Full disclosure, I'm an alum of Morehouse College although currently not a member of the Morehouse Chicago Alumni Chapter.
Ticket information can be found at www.HarrisTheaterChicago.org
Support Morehouse College and the Chicago Area Morehouse College Alumni Association in our quest to raise scholarships for deserving students in their matriculation at the college
For more information on the Morehouse College Glee Club www.mcgclub.org
www.morehousechicago.com
Friday, February 28, 2014
It's that time of year...getting into a high school
Wow! The drive to get into a high school is still strong or at least not find themselves in a neighborhood school that doesn't often promise to deliver academically. Years ago in the 8th grade I failed to get into a decent high school because my parents strongly believed it was better for me safety wise to attend a neighborhood school.
Although the difference between then and now is that well the high school I attended all four years - GO FALCONS - is doing much better now than it had been when I attended. That's not to say there still aren't issues but from what I can tell current leadership there is doing some good there.
Of course in the 21st century I've learned competition is strong to get into CPS' selective enrollment schools such as Walter Payton, Jones, and North Side College Preps. Those schools are listed in this DNA Info article as the most difficult to get into.
All the same what's written in that article is a portrait of what it takes to get into the city's top performing high schools. In addition we see what's offered at many high schools throughout CPS. Programs have been expanded even at those "dreaded" neighborhood high schools.
You know this is truly an expanded universe as the top school back when I was in the 8th grade was Whitney Young Magnet. That school was intimidating because it was for the smart kids and it wasn't for me. I only wish I had been willing to compete back then! Well that was then.
Although the difference between then and now is that well the high school I attended all four years - GO FALCONS - is doing much better now than it had been when I attended. That's not to say there still aren't issues but from what I can tell current leadership there is doing some good there.
Of course in the 21st century I've learned competition is strong to get into CPS' selective enrollment schools such as Walter Payton, Jones, and North Side College Preps. Those schools are listed in this DNA Info article as the most difficult to get into.
All the same what's written in that article is a portrait of what it takes to get into the city's top performing high schools. In addition we see what's offered at many high schools throughout CPS. Programs have been expanded even at those "dreaded" neighborhood high schools.
You know this is truly an expanded universe as the top school back when I was in the 8th grade was Whitney Young Magnet. That school was intimidating because it was for the smart kids and it wasn't for me. I only wish I had been willing to compete back then! Well that was then.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Tribune: End of winter? We have records to break, more snow to shovel
Here's some info posted last month on resources during this latest cold snap! It seems this winter weather isn't going away anytime soon although thankfully the worst was over last month. This winter seemed to have broken some records. From the Tribune:
ALSO, for a brief time I took the weather widget down and now it's back up top in the sidebar. When I checked before writing this post it registered at only 8 degrees that's at about 12 PM on Wednesday.
The worst of winter should be over by the end of February. That would be Friday, when it will still be miserably cold. Then we'll get more snow, maybe a lot of it.AND....we can expect more snow to come this way by the weekend. Although hopefully not the amount of snow we had through the month of January and February.
Temperatures are expected to drop below zero overnight Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night as we again get hit with cold air "in abundance," in the words of WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling.
That's in keeping with a winter that has already delivered 22 days of lows below zero, Skilling noted. The 129-year-old record is 25 days below zero, a record that's clearly in danger.
Skilling says temperatures will average about 22 degrees below normal for the next five days, 20 degrees below normal for the five days after that, and 13 degrees below normal for the five days after that – which gets us into the middle of March.
This has been the third coldest winter in 143 years of recorded Chicago weather history, Skilling said, with about 7 days in 10 since November producing below-normal temperatures. Meteorological winter ends with February, marking the close of what is usually the coldest three months.
ALSO, for a brief time I took the weather widget down and now it's back up top in the sidebar. When I checked before writing this post it registered at only 8 degrees that's at about 12 PM on Wednesday.
Friday, February 21, 2014
EVENT: SMG Chatham 14 to host an Oscar viewing party
Photo of Chatham 14 by Wendell Hutson |
A charity serving children with disabilities will benefit this year from an Oscar-viewing party being held for the first time at the Chatham 14 Theaters.
The party will raise money for the nonprofit Variety the Children’s Charity of Illinois. The private organization partnered this year with Studio Movie Grill, which owns the Chatham 14 Theaters, for the event.
The viewing party starts at 6 p.m. March 2 at the South Side theater, 210 W. 87th St. Tickets are $40 per person or $70 for couples.
The 86th annual Academy Awards will be shown on one movie screen and 150 seats are available, said Venisha White-Johnson, director of operations and community relations for the theater.
"You will feel like you are at the Oscars with the red carpet treatment you will get. And who knows, there may be a few celebrities on hand, too," Johnson-White said.
Tickets must be bought online by Feb. 25.
Friday, February 14, 2014
AP: Multiple groups vie for Obama's Presidential Library
President Barack Obama |
There are also two potential bids on the Far South Side, one led by Chicago State University and the other by a group promoting the historic Pullman neighborhood. It was in those areas that Obama established his earliest roots in the city as a community organizer in the mid-1980s, setting up job training programs and defending the rights of public housing tenants.So far the main competitors are:
...
The Far South Side is a longshot given its distance from downtown, lack of transportation options and the gang violence that persists there.
And presidential libraries aren't guaranteed to lift the local economy.
The main point of tension is between the University of Chicago, where Obama spent 12 years as a constitutional law professor until his 2004 election to the U.S. Senate, and a group advocating for Bronzeville, the city's historic center of black culture, business and politics.We already know that Mayor Emanuel wants to submit only a unified bid for Obama's Presidential Library so the various groups need to come up with a good bid. And bear in mind one point of this article, "presidential libraries aren't guaranteed to life the local economy". That being said the library could easily either go to Hawaii where Presient Obama was born or to New York so time will only tell if Chicago will eventually succeed in its bid.
"They think that they can get whatever they want," Bronzeville organizer Harold Lucas said of the university. "If you compare the cranes in the sky and that opulent growth of this university to the surrounding, predominantly African-American community, it's a travesty. It's a clear tale of two cities."
Lucas and other critics of the university's bid say the school has been secretly working its White House connections at the expense of a plan that would benefit more of the city and honor the black community's role in electing the nation's first black president.
For its part, the university says it wants to work with neighbors on a plan to build the library off-campus in a part of the South Side where it can spur development. A university spokesman declined to comment beyond the school's previous statements.
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