Pretzel sticks

    I found an article on my feeds that reminded me of my popcorn story. Some 4^th graders at an elementary school in Burlington, Vermont, were given their daily snack in a brown bag. The snack was pretzel sticks. When the kids opened their bags, however, they found a wide range in the amount of pretzels—some had up to 50, some had none, with the rest having the range in between. Kids were interviewed afterward. One girl who got 15 ate them all, claiming the kids with none were too far away from her to share with and she didn’t want to get out of her seat. A boy who didn’t get any in his bag got some pretzels from the girl next to him, which he was grateful for, because he said “she had a million.”

    Kids are really in tune with injustice. As a teacher, it often drives me nuts. When I was a kid, every time we lined up someone was being accused of “cutting.” Now, apparently the term is “budging.” Since kids go in and out of my room all day, I hear, “Mrs. S, _______ budged!” at least three or four times a day. The thing that I think is incredible is that kids will announce this about a student who is nowhere near them—someone who budged a friend three people back, or someone five people up ahead. Never mind everyone is going to the same place and will end up there within seconds of each other…

    I can just see those 4^th graders with the pretzels. What a great way for kids to understand the REAL unfairness in the world, and maybe look at the world as a place a little bigger than their place in line.

Analytical sentence examples

Hi Everyone,

 I got both of these examples out of the magazine called “The Week.”  The first one is from an article about what’s happened to Hillary Clinton’s campaign:

“While [Hillary] ran as a ‘pseudo-incumbent,’ with no theme or message other than ‘We’re back,’ Obama ran as the candidate of ‘change,’ and organized doggedly in every state, large and small.”

The second was an article about why human beings kiss–not very analytical, but oh well! 

“Men tend to think kissing should lead to sex no matter what. Women, on the other hand, use kissing as a way of assessing men’s worthiness through biochemical signals and hints about his emotional makeup.”

JMS

Summer Food Service Programs (Explanation Piece)

            Many people are familiar with free and reduced lunch programs in public schools.  Some public schools also offer breakfast for students, so students are able to receive ten meals a week for little or no cost.  But what happens to these students in the summer?  Many families are faced with high food bills that they have difficulty paying.  That is why the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) is available all over the United States.  Children eighteen and under can continue to receive breakfast and lunch during the summer at no cost to their families. 

          Most SFSPs are combined with a summer activity program like summer school or day camps.  These are called enrolled sites.  Children can also receive meals at open sites, which are set up in low income communities and open to area children based on census information.  Finally, there are sites for children of migrant workers; these sites can serve up to three meals a day instead of the typical two.  Sites can be in schools, parks, churches, camps, housing projects, even Indian reservations.

The SFSP is handled by the US Department of Agriculture, under the Federal Food and Nutrition Service, but most states run their own SFSP through educational agencies.  I was able to find sites that serve summer meals in my area at the Indiana Department of Education’s website.  I found that both Monger and Woodland Schools of Elkhart, where I teach, are open sites based on school data.

There are many ways to get involved in SFSPs.  One way is to become a sponsor.  Public and private nonprofit schools, organizations, camps, universities and colleges are all eligible to become sponsors, as well has units of government from local to State level.  Sponsors attend state training, locate possible sites for meal distribution, hire staff, arrange for how meals are made available and prepare claims for reimbursement.  A second way to become involved is to run a site.  Running a site is more hands on than the sponsor—these people supervise meals as they are distributed, are responsible for keeping daily records of meals served, food storage and site sanitation.  For people and organizations that do not have the facilities or financial ability to be sponsors, volunteering is always welcome.  Volunteers that facilitate camps or other activities are just as important as those who prepare the meals the participants eat. 

 Summer Food Service Programs are beneficial for parents with low incomes who come to depend on the free meals their children receive throughout the school year.  These children receive nutritious meals that help them stay strong and make them prepared for the upcoming school year.  The programs help organizations like day camps and summer schools provide meals to add to their programs.  They also provide a place for children to go in their own communities that are safe, where they will have quality summer activities.  With many sites all over the country, children can continue being nourished through the summer as they have been during the school year, and with the many opportunities in these programs, adults and organizations can easily become part of the process. 

Wrap-Class Personalities

    Things are a week closer to the program, and I’m actually seeing all of my classes this week (yay!) Any of you who are teachers out there know that each class has a personality. Sometimes only a couple kids can influence the personality, for good or evil. I saw the 5^th grade class with Head Boy and Tooth Boy for the first time since that incident. They were awful! They sat in their chairs, wouldn’t sing, wouldn’t get enthusiastic about anything. Wouldn’t you know, they were the first class I saw of the day, and they totally deflated me. The worst part about it was, I could see those two or three kids painting this blanket of “I’m too cool to sing” over everyone else. Very discouraging.

    Then today I had 4^th graders come in ready to have a good time. They are far from afraid to let their voices be heard. I asked them to sing their guts out, and that’s what I got! Granted, it wasn’t the most melodious sound in the world, but I could HEAR THEM. I complimented them up and down about it—here’s hoping they will keep it up.

    One consolation—after a few emails back and forth with the teacher I’m doing the program with at Woodland, I see he’s having the same problems I am—delays and canceled school messing up his plans, lethargic 5^th graders (is it a disease or something?) and feeling crunched for time. I think we are both chalking this program up to a more of a learning experience than anything else.

    Lessons I’ve learned so far:

1. Plan a spring program as close to spring break as possible, so you get the maximum amount of practice time with the kids.
2. PLAN ON MISSING CLASSES BECAUSE OF DELAYS AND CANCELLATIONS.
3. Get kids singing as soon as possible. (This sounds like a “duh,” but I had them work on motions first, and I think it was a mistake.)
4. Don’t add extra stuff to the program (i.e. recorder songs) until you have a year of performances under your belt.

Three weeks and counting…

Popcorn on the Floor – Final Draft

    Social Studies held little or no interest for me in 7^th grade. That didn’t mean I didn’t work hard—I always tried to be a good student—but I didn’t care what India’s main export was or how trade in Europe could effect how much my parents pay for things. People didn’t have enough food to eat in Somalia—what could I do about it? I had frizzy hair and never said the right thing in front of boys—THOSE were problems.

    Mr. Moser was my social studies teacher. He was sarcastic and somewhat overweight, and had no trouble laughing at us when we acted like idiots (which was a lot of the time.) In true 7^th grade fashion, there were times I hated him, and times I thought he was great—often in the same day.

    I have only one solid memory of the subject I cared so little about, but it impacted me enough to stick with me eighteen years later.

    ”All right, kids, get the desks against the wall. Put your chairs in a circle.”

    Mr. Moser pulled out two sizes of cups—one about the size of a large fast food restaurant drink, and one about the size of a sippy cup. Then he pulled out a large bag of popped popcorn. We started getting excited. “Sorry folks, this isn’t for eating.” Groans.

    Mr. Moser divvied us up into pairs. Each pair was assigned a country. Some were in Africa, some were in Europe, there was of course the United States, maybe India or Australia—about twelve in all, seemingly randomly selected. “The large cup represents so many pounds of food, the small cup represents this amount of food,” he explained. He went to each country and passed out cups, saying things like, “Okay, you guys are India, right? India needs two large cups and one small cup to feed its population.” All the way around to each group. Here are your cups, this is how much food you need.

    Then he began to pass out the popcorn. To India, he gave enough popcorn to fill one big cup. “Hey, wait a sec,” Missy, a particularly apt pupil in the India pair, said. “You didn’t give us enough.”

    ”Ah ha…” murmured Mr. Moser mysteriously as he went on to the next group.

    Imagine Missy’s surprise when the United States group, who only needed a large cup and a little cup to feed its population, was given four big cups of popcorn! And wouldn’t you know, the most cocky, arrogant boy in class, Ricky, was part of the United States group. He laughed over his hoard greedily, and his partner, little Jeff Nobody, laughed nervously along.

    Mr. Moser finished and everyone looked around. Every group except maybe one was off—either they had more popcorn than they needed or not enough. “Okay, kids. You have ten minutes. At the end of the ten minutes you need to have enough popcorn to feed your country. It is up to you to figure out how to get what you need. I’m not going to interfere, so don’t come crying to me for help. You figure it out. Go!”

    We all sat there for a minute or so kind of stupidly. My country, Italy, had one small cup more than we needed. I knew I was lucky. Missy looked around for a minute, then started walking around to the groups with more than they needed, asking for their extra. Others who were in the same situation started to do the same. When someone came to our group, my partner and I gave away our little cup—we didn’t care as long as we had what we needed—but after that we severely guarded our necessary store.

    It was a good thing we did, too! People went to the United States group almost immediately. Lots of them. And Ricky loved the attention. “I’m not just going to give it away,” he said. “What’s in it for me?” Some girls tried to sweet talk him, and for Judy, who was cute, cute, cute, it worked. Not so much for the others, especially the other boys. Suddenly, Clint, who was Somalia, ran up and lunged, and got a big cup out of Jeff’s hands.

    ”Hey!” Jeff cried, feebly grabbing for the cup.

    A lot of the popcorn landed on the floor, but a lot of it landed in Clint’s cup too. We all looked at Mr. Moser, but he just shrugged and said, “Five minutes.” A few people grabbed handfuls of the fallen popcorn and ran back to their spots. Ricky was one of these.

    After that things got a little nuts. Other people tried to steal from other groups—and not just the big countries like the U.S., but even countries who barely had any to begin with. My partner and I stayed out of this. A couple of people tried to catch us off guard, but we were ready. We weren’t going to lose our popcorn stash. Popcorn was all over the floor, crunching under people’s feet, being ground into the carpet—people were yelling and arguing, hoarding or begging.

    ”TIME’S UP! Go back to your spots.” It took awhile for this to happen. There were several red faces. Missy was pouting because Judy’s cups were full and she was still short.

    Mr. Moser went around to each group to see what they ended up with. More groups had what they needed than when we started, but only two or three. One country who had started out with enough now didn’t have enough because they had been “robbed.” About four countries ended up with “starving people.” Of course, Mr. Moser reveled in this, “Well, India, you lose. Somalia, close, but you lose,” etc. He turned around and surveyed all the popcorn on the floor.

    Suddenly, he got surprisingly serious. “Kids, I passed out enough popcorn for everyone to have enough. And yet, look. India is starving. Somalia. Morocco. But here’s the kicker: there was enough out there for everyone, plus two large cups extra. Why didn’t everyone get enough?”

    ”Because Ricky wouldn’t share,” Missy snapped, and everyone laughed.

    ”Ricky’s not far from the real deal,” Mr. Moser replied calmly. “This is what I want you guys to get: there is enough food in the world for everyone. Enough with extra to spare. But it takes people who are willing to share. If they don’t…people die.”

I can still see all that popcorn on the floor. Wasted food. Wasted resources. Wasted lives. I pass Mr. Moser’s image to you. You and I can make a difference—even if it’s only one cup at a time.

summer feeding programs?

I mentioned on a previous blog about snow days how it occurred to me that there are parents out there who, on those surprise days their kids are home, suddenly have to provide meals for those children, and if some of them don’t get to eat anything because of it.  As I have continued to read feeds and blogs, this led me to consider these children during the summer months.  One article I read just mentioned that “In the summer, only 7 percent of kids eligible for summer feeding programs participate in them-leaving millions of schoolchildren to look elsewhere for food.”  I didn’t even know there were summer feeding programs available, and I wonder how many parents don’t either. 

            I read a separate Vermont article that was about families having to choose between heat or food in the winter, but it also mentioned summer food difficulties, saying

“food insecurity numbers go up in summer, when children who qualify for federally subsidized free and reduced-price school breakfasts and lunches lose access to those meals.  Low-income families have to provide 10 additional meals per week for each of their school-age children in the summer.  For a family of four, calculating the cost at the federal reimbursement rate of $4 per child per day, the extra food balloons the budget by $160 a month.”              Boy, to me and my little husband/wife budget, that’s a lot of money.   

            I’m going to look more deeply into these summer feeding programs, and see where they exist.  We’ll see what I can find…

Kids helping kids — good news!

Kids helping kids—this a good news!  I read two articles today about kids helping kids in poverty.  The first one came out of Boston: the Greater Boston Food Bank has been constantly asked to allow children to help by donating their time and effort, but because of the often heavy lifting of food and supplies that volunteers have to be able to do, the age cut off for volunteers has been 16.  Now the Food Bank has organized the Kids Who Care Program for children ages 10 to 15.  These kids, along with family members can pack 12-15 lb. brown bags full of food.  This will add 5,000 lbs. of food to the 30 million lbs. already distributed by the food bank.  The new program starts Feb. 20 and 21, when Boston public school kids are off on a vacation and will be able to help. 

The second article wrote about kids in the Northville school district in Wayne, Michigan.  Bi-monthly, students from the district go to a local Presbyterian Church to participate in a hunger packaging drive.  It is part of the Kids Against Hunger Great Lakes Coalition.  The kids measure out food for hungry people overseas.  (They also get out of class and get to have pizza when their done, but why not reward them for doing something good?)   

Both articles mentioned the organization Kids Against Hunger.  I think I’m going to find more on this subject than I thought.   When I started looking at this child poverty/hunger issue, it seemed insurmountable.  I like that, the further I dig the more I can find of people making a difference, especially kids.  It makes me realize I can make a difference, too. 

Kids helping kids

    As you all know by now, I’ve chosen U.S. child poverty as my main focus for these blogs. Through my feeds I’m getting a LOT of stories. I thought narrowing it down to just the U.S. would be enough, but there are still many stories about children all over the country who have problems and those people who are trying to help them.

    Believe it or not, every week I find at least two articles on children helping children in poverty. I don’t know if this will continue, but I really like the idea. There are schools all over the country doing things to show their students the “bigger picture” and how they can help other kids.

    For example, in Lancaster, PA, the students at Locust Grove Mennonite School are foregoing Valentine’s Day parties and giving each other valentines and candy in order to save money to give to kids less fortunate than themselves. In fact, kids are doing household chores and errands to turn in money.

    The school has been doing this kind of fund raising annually for fifty years. They’ve partnered with a lot of different organizations over the years, and this year are partnering with an organization called Heifer International, something I’d never heard of. It’s an intriguing idea—you raise money and Heifer will purchase animals for people all around the world. The people they give the animals to then pass on the donation by giving the animal’s by-products (eggs from a chicken, milk from a cow, etc.) to other needy people. So the needy help themselves as well as others.

    The kids at the school are totally into the idea, and teachers have created an ark display to show the number of animals the school can purchase. Teachers even dressed up as animals in an assembly to get the kids excited.

    I really like the idea of pursuing this—showing children how they can help others—teaching them that the world does not revolved around them. It can also teach them that even at a young age one can make a difference.

A Disaster Plan – wrap continued

Getting this spring program off is proving more and more difficult. On Friday morning I was very determined to get as much as possible done with the classes I would see—3 fourth grades and 1 fifth. All was going well, when a teacher from the ESL staff (English as a Second Language) came in. Now, it isn’t unusual for one of these teachers, speech personnel or a counselor to come in from time to time and request a student. But she came and started reading off a LIST of students she wanted. I had ten minutes left with that class, and practically begged her to wait until my time was up before taking the students. She was really nice about it, and said that would be fine.

Keep in mind, Monger Elementary has the highest ratio of ESL students in elementary in the district—it may be the entire district, I’m not sure. When the next 4^th grade class came in, only six out of the fourteen were there because the rest were in the testing. Their classroom teacher felt really bad about it, but it was out of her hands.

I almost started to cry. To not see the kids the week before, and know I wouldn’t see them the week after because of a four day weekend—how am I supposed to get a program ready?

I did have my cry by Sunday evening, when I looked at the calendar and realized I would only see each class two more times before a dress rehearsal and the program. I had thoughts of canceling and postponing as I went to sleep that night. Monday morning we had a delay, but teachers are expected at the normal time during delays.

So, during my extra two hours I pulled up my boot straps and wrote up a “Disaster Plan.” I cut 2 songs out of the program and all soloists. I made up my plans for each class meeting. Now I’m just going to hope for the best and work my tail off.

Please, oh please—no more snow days on Fridays!

Marriage

I read an editorial today that came up in one of my feeds from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, titled “Marriage could be a tool against child poverty.”  The author, Patrick McIlheran makes a pretty good case to say that there are more single parent families that are below the poverty line than families with an intact marriage.  There are organizations at work in Milwaukee like the African American Healthy Marriage Initiative, the Milwaukee Fatherhood Initiative and the YMCA are all working together to promote marriage and help support marriages that already exist. 

“We have to make the case for people to reconsider marriage, says [one case worker]: ‘There’s too much out there saying why you shouldn’t marry.’ Given how marriage seems to protect everyone involved, society needs to crow its advantages, over and over.”

 The author isn’t saying that marriage solves every poverty question, but he is saying it’s something that’s worth investing time in that won’t take a federal grant to do. 

He ends by writing this: “ 

“Marriage, no matter how dented, remains the institution that societies have used for ages to create a stable, protected space for children. The underclass stands out, statistically, in eschewing it. If society’s looking for some means to break the cycle of poverty, it makes sense to take up the tool readily at hand.”

 We have a lot of views in our class that are all across the board.  I’d be really interested in hearing what you all have to say about this.