Ed Notes Online: Rick Steves Sicily

Showing posts with label Rick Steves Sicily. Show all posts

Sunday, October 26, 2014

We Return from Sicily - Updated With More Photos

Palermo: View from hotel rooftop terrace at breakfast

We left on a 10-day Rick Steves tour of Sicily on Oct. 8 and returned last Sunday night. And what a time we had -- how great to be traveling in October while all of you are still working.

As I promised Bob Astrowsky, one of my favorite Unity people, I would say - thank you for my tier 1 retirement package - which unfortunately you decided to end in 1973 when you agreed to multi-tier pensions - like what are we up to now, Tier 12?

There were over 20 people on the tour, including a lawyer/Tea Party guy from Indianapolis, a big gas pro-fracking lawyer from Dallas, a big pharm guy from Florida and I was the designated

Big Pharm and Tea Party, now Marxists

leftist and oh what a time we had arguing, debating, learning from each other. There was also a retired airline pilot, a woman who does FIRST LEGO events in Ohio, a retired kindergarten teacher from the midwest, a businesswoman from Oklahoma who was, amazingly, liberal, an aide to a NY State Assemblywoman, a retired psychologist and speech pathologist, just to name a few. How great to get out of the narrow world of edtalk.

I learned so much from everyone. Some had an extensive knowledge of history and culture and it was like going to school. Note all that pasta accumulating in my belly.

Me and 2 lawyers - tea party and big oil/gas - I urged them to order bottles of fracked water

These guys knew so much about everything, proving that when leftarian meets right there doesn't have to be a food fight.

All the guys

And the ladies

And of course some things are the same all over -

The universal language

Here is my column in the October 24 edition of The Wave.

School Scope: Sicily

Excuse the bad writing. I’m still jet-lagged after returning from Sicily. (What’s my excuse the rest of the time?) Well, I’ve never seen a better 10-day period of great weather, though we could have used a bit less heat. Naturally we made some wrong decisions on clothing and found ourselves washing stuff throughout the trip but we were still down to the nitty gritty by the last day and when we opened our suitcases when we got home, the laundry walked out on its own and directly into the washing machine.

I could tell you all about the astounding food, the awesome views and the interesting people on our Rick Steves tour. But this is a School Scope column and education is our beat. As an undergrad history major with an almost Masters in the subject, I thought I knew the subject. But I knew little or nothing about Sicily, which if you are geographically challenged, is a triangular shaped island just off the southern tip of Italy on the western edge. Check out a map and see how close it is to Tunisia in Africa, with the island of Malta between them.

Sicily has one of the largest active volcanoes in Mount Etna, which we visited. And earthquakes. We also visited a winery nearby where we took home 2 bottles of high quality Etna wine. We visited mountain towns and coastal towns and spent some time in Palermo, the largest city. We also went to Syracuse, which at one time in the ancient world was the most populous city in the western world.

Here is the skinny on the pretty amazing long view of Sicilian history. Sicily has traces of civilization going back thousands of years. Look at a map and see how it is situated smack dab in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea between Southern Europe, Africa and the Middle East and you get an idea why Sicily was at various times under the control of the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantium after the fall of Rome, then Arabs, then Normans (French/Viking people), assorted others, followed by Spain – those lovely people who brought us the Spanish inquisition which drove a flourishing Jewish population out of Sicily, then the Italian Bourbons and finally in the 1860s when Italy was unified and became a nation. Sicily still enjoys some autonomous status compared to the rest of Italy. And then of course there’s the Mafi… sorry, gotta run.

Norm continues to blog at ednotesonline despite taking a recent oath of Omerta. If you don’t see him around, well…..

Taorima - I think

for Brian

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"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Extended

Sunday, October 26, 2014