Friday’s Tragic Event

I can’t really express how I’m feeling about the Sandy Hook tragedy–its enormity overwhelms me: Family, faith, and community. Innocence of childhood. Teacher sacrifice. Gun violence. All of these ideas, expressed through such a horrific reality, keep rolling around in my head. All of us are teachers in one way or another, and many of us are parents: two soft underbellies, both exposed and in pain.

Former NYC Writing Project teacher-consultant Katherine Schulten, now editor of the New York Times Learning Network, has pointed to a number of good resources via her Twitter feed and the NYCWP listserv. She writes:

Hi all,
In case this helps, here’s what we have up on the blog.
For students: The Newtown School Shootings: A Place to Post Your Thoughts
For teachers: Resources: Talking and Teaching About the Shooting in Newtown, Conn.
(And we’d be thrilled if any of you wanted to post ideas, reflections,links, etc. there.)
Meanwhile, if you didn’t see it, the Twitter feed of Dawn Hochsprung, the principal at Newtown who was one of the victims, is lovely and heartbreaking. Just 100 tweets, but all about literacy, community, celebrations of the kids.
Thanks.
Katherine

A Lovely, Thought-Provoking Presentation at Inquiry, 12/7

In our first program presentation focused on an ILS value, the Writing Project shared its work at its annual Teacher-to-Teacher Conference as a way of exploring the value of “human capacity.” Their focus questions included:

• What does the Teacher to Teacher Conference suggest about the Writing Project’s view of human capacity?
• In what ways do you see us supporting the professionalism of teachers?
• What else could we be doing or do differently within the Teacher to Teacher Conference structure to support teacher capacity?

We wrote, explored various conference artifacts in a gallery walk, and offered responses to the questions. We then wrote again, and talked about the relationship between the presentation and our work in our own projects.

Here are a few photos from the meeting! Thank you, Erick, for photos 3-6!

We are typing up the notes from the reflection sheets and will share out this information at the next meeting, February 1. The Adult Learning Center will present at that meeting and the Writing Project will provide lunchtime snacks.

New Work, New Proposals

There’s a lot going on right now at the ILS… Folks from the Adult Learning Center are working on two important proposals for continuing funding. Both ask proposers to reference the common core standards and digital learning. Our work in different projects gets closer together all the time.

The Math Project is starting new work focused on mathematics in after-school settings — a new venue. It will be interesting to see what is the same as school-based mathematics and what is different in working with representatives of these programs.

The Writing Project is beginning new partnerships with a number of schools across the city and one in New Jersey, and experimenting with some new apps to support their on-site consulting in schools.

Mathematics Teacher Transformation Institutes hosted a terrific advisory board meeting last week, focused on ways to use the teacher leaders trained in the program to support other teachers in their own schools and beyond.

Reading/Clicking Around

Just this.

Final Words

Here’s the holiday message we sent around Lehman College last week. Thanks to Ashleigh for the design!

Happy holidays to all, and heartfelt wishes for peace and kindness in the new year.

–Marcie