Thank you notes, and Ms Ruiz got frustrated.

This is a is a shot of the Juniors with Flat Stanley who has come to visit me from San Antonio. I am to take photos of Flat Stanley in Tacoma and send them to my niece’s teacher. Anyway, the Juniors decided to pretend that they were flat, which is why they are all lying on the floor. That was Juwan’s idea.

Long day, very tired. Here’s what I can remember about CLASS today.

The kids were supposed to have binder checks today, but our binder checker wasn’t here, so we had to reschedule that to Thursday. Please encourage the students to take notes in their classes and to get their binders organized.

Development Director, Kelly Merry, visited both sections of CLASS today to introduce herself to the students and explain to them a little project she needed from them which was for them to write a thank you note to some people who attended our Instruments of Peace breakfasts. The students cheerfully wrote the notes, which as usual is greatly appreciated.

We discussed our upcoming field trips. Then we did an ACT practice drill and reviewed that.

The seniors also wrote thank you notes and then we had to have a serious discussion about their grades which resulted in them asking me at least five times why oh why they have to write Cornell notes? I answered very patiently telling them that Cornell makes them interact with the material four times which makes it more likely to stay in their head and that it gives them an easy, organized study guide. They didn’t buy that and kept asking until I just told them it was a class requirement and I was done talking about it. Note this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. I think I need some of my college students to talk to them and attest to the value of Cornell notes.

Tomorrow I am going to Stadium to recruit some new Hilltop Scholars current grades 9 – 11. Trevor and Daniel and their significant others stayed late and helped me put together everything I need for tomorrow. They are the BEST!

Restarting This Blog!

Here is a photo of me and two of my mentees, Devin and Chyna. They are both Juniors and I have known them both since they were in 8th grade. My, how they've grown. And what a joy it is to be a part of their lives.

Joys: Seeing my students compare the notes they took in my class to the notes of the intern and analyze how well they did compared to him. Baby steps.
Hearing Will (sometimes Peace Custodian, sometimes Peace musician and director extraordinaire) tell me the story of proposing to Taneisha. It gave me goosebumps. He had other people involved like Taneisha's daughter and sister, the restaurant waiters were all in on it and he even had a musician! (Of course.) So sweet.

Concerns: One of our alums is having trouble focusing on her studies, another is threatening to go to NYC to open a cupcake business (I think she's kidding). Also really concerned about some of our students lack of access to health care and food! If parent doesn't or can't provide either of these, the kid is just sunk. It's very painful to watch, we intervene when/where we can, but it never feels like enough.

Here's what we did in CLASS:

Today the Freshmen and Sophomores practiced their note taking. Intern Shawn took notes during class and so did the students. At the end they compared notes.

We reviewed the students midterm grades (which are not pretty) and discussed how they got this grade and what they need to do to improve. We also discussed our upcoming Field Trips and activities, which are:
Wed., April 20: 11am to 7pm trip to Starbucks corporate headquarters and dinner
Friday, May 5: 3:30-5:30pm Living Legacy Project, Creative Brainstorming
Friday, May 13: 6-9:30pm Archbishop Desmond Tutu

We then reviewed the reading we did on Wednesday from John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success.

Students have a make-up assignment to do that is due on Wednesday:

Think of a song that motivates you, another song that calms you, and another song that cheers you up.
Attached are three note cards.
On the first note card write the name of the song that motivates you and a few of your favorite lyrics.
On the second note card write the name of the song that calms you and a few of your favorite lyrics.
On the third note card write the name of the song that cheers you up and a few of your favorite lyrics.

Foss Fiasco

I sent the email below to Tacoma School District leadership on Thursday, September 23. On Monday, September 27 I received an email from Toni Pace, Director of High School Education requesting a meeting. I have yet to hear from her assistant to set an appointment.

Two parents of Hilltop Scholars have also sent emails. One was told "we'll look into it and get back to you." The other just sent his email yesterday.

Greetings:

I am writing to request that Foss High School be given a math teacher, a Spanish teacher, and an English teacher. Not having these teachers on staff is limiting student opportunities to get classes needed to be a competitive college applicant. The following are specific concerns shared with me by Foss students and staff:

1. Students are being removed from Spanish 5/6 (third year Spanish) if they are not “full IB” students. As you know, two years of foreign language is the minimum requirement for college acceptance. Offering third year Spanish at Foss, but not allowing certain students to access the class puts them behind other students at Foss and other schools. It makes these students less competitive and may even block their acceptance to the college of their choice. In some cases, parents were not notified of this important schedule change.
2. Juniors are not allowed to take Algebra 1-2 and seniors are not allowed to take Geometry. Instead, these students are being placed in Applied Math. If these students want to go to community college, they will have to remediate Algebra and Geometry (on their own dime) in order to reach college-level math.

In addition, many of the classes at Foss have an unacceptable high student to teacher ratio and are over-capacity. This depresses teachers’ and students’ morale and continues to limit access for students who want a quality education. In particular, there are concerns about the following classes:

1. English classes are so over-capacity that freshmen and sophomores are being placed in On-Line English classes. As you know, the one-class failure rate of Tacoma freshmen is over 50%. I worry that giving them an online class is going to exacerbate the problem, especially if they are asked to take the class at home on their own.
2. World issues and history classes are over-capacity and students are being placed in on-line classes.
3. Algebra 3/Trig is over-capacity.
4. There is only one teacher teaching freshman science, so biology classes are now over-capacity.
5. Art classes are over-capacity so students are not able to access this required class.

Last spring and summer, my students from Peace Community Center presented “Voices from the Gap.” These are the same students who are coming to me with concerns about what is happening to them at Foss High School. They know about the Achievement Gap and they recognize that they are being underserved by Foss and by the Tacoma School District. It is disheartening to see a student who wants a good education try to access it and be turned away.

As I said above, Foss High School needs at the very least, an additional qualified, good math teacher, English teacher, and Spanish teacher. Otherwise, the school and the District are blocking access to learning and to college for its students. In the future, I suggest the school schedule be built based on students’ academic needs and requests. It doesn’t appear that happened this year.

Please let me know of any actions taken in the next week or so to rectify this situation. If there is anything we can do as a community to help with this problem, please let us know.

Sincerely,
Laurie Fisher Ruiz

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Laurie Fisher Ruiz
Peace Community Center
"Touching Lives, Extending Peace"
Education Director
253.383.0702 ext. 109
eddir@peacetacoma.org
2106 South Cushman Avenue
Tacoma, Washington 98405

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Beginning

Just started teaching CLASS last week. I am entering my second year of teaching this course. My freshmen are young, but trainable, my sophies are delightful and inquisitive, my juniors are like my very own children, and my seniors are brilliant. I can't wait to see how they all progress this year!

So far, we have done the basic stuff, like reminding everyone how to take Cornell Notes and organize their binders.

Our overarching theme this year is Prejudice. I decided to begin this theme by teaching the kids about 9/11. Just asking them questions today, I learned that they know a little about Al Qaida and Osama Bin Ladin, but some did not know that there were 4 planes involved and that the Pentagon was attacked as well. They were so young when it happened. Today I just taught them basic stuff like Al Qaida's responsible for 9/11 and Afghanistan was their training ground which is why we went into Aghanistan. There is so much more to the story, I know, but I have so little time to teach them!

I also learned today that one of my students is taking an online math class at Foss instead of taking a real live math class from a real live teacher. What the heck?

The assignment this week is for them to complete the Life Plan Assignment:

LIFE PLAN ASSIGNMENT

Your assignment is to make a timeline of your life. Indicate various milestones in your life by showing what age you plan to achieve these milestones. Some of the milestones you might not ever want (like marriage and/or children, or military service). If there are other milestones that are not listed here, please feel free to add them.

Be creative. These are going on the walls of our classroom.

Title your life plan with your name. Example: “Daniel’s Life Plan”

Milestones (in alphabetical order):

AmeriCorps Service
Begin career
Buy first house
College entrance (which college/university do you hope to attend?)
College graduation
First child
First job (part-time or summer job)
Fourth child
Graduate school (after you finish college)
High school graduation
Marriage
Military service
Second child
Third child

A great week for learning

This was a great week. I really enjoyed every class I taught.

The freshmen learned about how much sleep they need and how badly they are affected when they don't get enough sleep. For the next week they are keeping a sleep and food diary so we can track how they are treating their bodies with sleep and food.

The sophomores are learning about Coach John Wooden and his way of looking at success. We had some great discussions about whether success is determined by us or by other people and about the definition of success.

The juniors learned some strategies to help them with the ACT. The major one is "triage," which means to do all the easy ones first, then go back and do the ones that will take more time. Use the "letter of the day" as your answer for the ones you are guessing at.

The seniors had 2 classes on money management. We learned about checking and savings accounts and today learned about debit cards and credit cards. It's interesting how credit cards really punish you if you don't pay off the balance each month. But if you do pay off the balance, you can earn free rewards from the card.

It was a fun week and I feel like we are really getting into the "meat" of CLASS.

ACT Prep and Money Management

So here we go! Getting into the big stuff now.

The Juniors got a 500 page book on preparing for the ACT. It kind of scared them I think! lol. We looked through a test and learned some basic stuff. Will get into real strategy on Thursday.

The Seniors had their first Money Management class! It is being taught by a volunteer from Goodwill. The kids seemed engaged. We talked about checking accounts, how to choose a bank, etc. It was great!

Sleep and John Wooden

The freshmen will be spending some time thinking about sleep. Today they journaled about how much sleep they get and whether or not it is enough. Only one out of the five gets enough sleep. One has to get up early to take care of her other sisters. We read an article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010901561.html) about high school start times and teenagers unique sleep times which are largely dictated by when their melatonin rises which is usually between 10pm and 8am. (That's when they should be sleeping). But school here in Tacoma starts at 7:30! When I was teacher, I hated teaching first period because even though the kids were in their seats, they were not present mentally. 4 out of the 5 liked the idea of having a later start time for school.

The sophomores are about to start studying John Wooden's pyramid of success. Today they journaled about who had the biggest impact on their lives. Most of them named a family member. I am hopeful they will listen to Wooden's words of wisdom and incorporate them into their beings. We are working from the book "Wooden. A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off The Court."