Better Helping ELLs....

The North Penn School District in Lansdale, Pa., is using an instructional method called Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol to teach English learners their core subjects while teaching them the English language. Using a $1.7 million Keystones to Opportunities grant, the district trained 30 ESL and core subject teachers in the method. Strategies include having students work in small groups and repeat what they are learning in their own words to help them understand the subject content as well as develop their English skills.

North Penn takes new approach to teaching English

Thursday, January 24, 2013
By Jennifer Lawson
jlawson@journalregister.com

There are more than 50 native languages spoken among students in the North Penn School District, and this language diversity has been slowly expanding over the years.

The most common non-English native languages are Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Gujarati, Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese, according to Marilyn Loeffler, coordinator of English as a Second Language and Sheltered Instruction and Observation Protocol.

Some languages are so obscure, they’re spoken by only one or two students.

“There are many, many dialects within the continent of Africa, and many within India as well,” Loeffler said.

Families emigrate to the North Penn area for a variety of reasons, Loeffler said, including better educational opportunities and medical care.

The district will also get an influx of students from certain areas depending on what’s happening in the world.

“For example, when Egypt was going through unrest in the past few years, we saw an increase in students from Egypt,” said Donna DeTommaso-Kleinert, a 29-year veteran of the district who currently teaches at Penndale Middle School.

Not only do students need instruction in learning English, they also must be able to understand their mainstream content courses, such as science and social studies, which is often a bigger challenge, Loeffler said.

As a result of a $1.7 million Keystones to Opportunities grant, the district is expanding its practice of Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, which is a framework for planning and delivering instruction in content areas to non-native English speakers.

Last summer, 30 teachers — both ESL as well as content teachers — were trained in SIOP.

Due to the popularity of this approach to teaching, another 60 teachers will be trained this summer.

The principle behind SIOP is language is gained faster while learning content, because the language is placed in context and used in meaningful ways.

Using a planning framework, teachers modify the way they teach so the language they use to explain concepts and information is comprehensible to non-native English speakers.

“By sheltering, it’s sheltering them from failure,” Loeffler said. “It’s giving them the skills they need to understand what is happening in their content classroom. Reading and writing isn’t just used in reading and writing classes. It’s taking these skills an English teacher uses and bringing it across the board.”

A teacher that uses SIOP has more interaction with the students, Loeffler said, noting that sitting back and listening is not an effective way to develop language.

For example, a teacher might ask the students to look at the person next to them and explain a concept.

“A key concept of SIOP is the phrase, ‘You need to verbalize to internalize.’ If you can verbalize it, say it, explain it, it’s part of your being. If you can’t explain it, you’re never going to be able to get it.”

A teacher who practices SIOP will have clearly defined objectives for every lesson, DeTommaso-Kleinert said.

Then the teacher will “put scaffolding in place,” such as providing background information, showing pictures and graphs.

Students will often work in small groups, as well as independently.

SIOP methods aren’t just for non-native English speakers — they can be used in all classrooms.

“We’ve seen a lot of success [with SIOP] across the board,” DeTommaso-Kleinert said.

Non-native English speakers are in ESL classes for three or four years, on average, Loeffler said.

To test out, they must pass a state exam demonstrating English fluency.

North Penn School District students will be taking the test from Jan. 28 through March 1.

The results will be available in the summer, Loeffler said. This could be a way for the district to assess the effectiveness of SIOP.
 

URL: http://www.montgomerynews.com/articles/2013/01/24/north_penn_life/news/doc50fd9dd16e54f643988467.prt

© 2013 Montgomery News, a Journal Register Property

No Harm in Veteran Teachers Retiring....

Studies find student achievement doesn't suffer even when teachers take advantage of early-retirement incentives. Read on; I found this article very interesting!

No Academic Harm Found in Early Retirement of Teachers

By Sarah D. Sparks

 

San Diego

 

Boosting early retirement in cash-strapped districts doesn't hurt students' math and reading scores, according to new studies released at the American Economic Association meeting here, but pension-incentive programs may cost schools some of their most effective teachers.

Separate studies of teachers in California, Illinois, and North Carolina paint a complex picture of the choice increasingly faced by education leaders: Keep your most experienced—and expensive—teachers, or encourage them to retire to ease budget woes.

Cornell University researchers Maria D. Fitzpatrick and Michael F. Lovenheim, both assistant professors of policy analysis and management, tracked 54,550 Illinois teachers in grades 3, 6, and 8 before and after the state's "5+5" pension- incentive program, which took place in the early 1990s.
The 5+5 program allowed any teacher age 50 or older, and with at least five years of experience, to qualify for pension benefits immediately if he or she retired at the end of the 1992-93 or 1993-94 school year and paid a one-time fee. The average teacher who took advantage of the program had 29 years' experience, compared with incoming teachers who had on average less than three.

Moving On

 

Immediately after becoming eligible for pension benefits, the most- and least-effective teachers in North Carolina are the first to leave, a new study finds. By six years out, however, more-effective teachers are much more likely to retire than less-effective ones.

SOURCE: Patten Priestly Mahler, University of Virginia

 

Before the program, more than half the teachers in each of the three grades studied were veterans, with at least 15 years' experience. After, the average experience level at each school dropped by 2.6 percent for every veteran teacher it had before the pension buyout.

Some middle schools even ended up replacing their exiting teachers with fewer teachers overall.
Yet the less-experienced teachers didn't lead to lower test scores, Ms. Fitzpatrick and Mr. Lovenheim found. In fact, 8th grade scores in both mathematics and reading improved slightly, but the difference was significant.

Moreover, the poorest and lowest-performing schools saw the biggest test-score gains.

"We were very surprised; it took us a while to convince ourselves this finding was real," Mr. Lovenheim said. "I don't think it has been highlighted as a policy question to look at the end of teachers' careers, but these findings suggest that it may be an important thing to look at."

The Illinois results are bolstered by another new study, this time of California teachers, also released at the economics conference Jan. 4-6. Kristine M. Brown, an assistant professor of economics and labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that teacher retirements between 1998 and 2001 in the state were associated with increases in the proportion of students achieving above the national median in math and reading by 2 percentage points, on average.
In both states, "these teachers who are very close to retirement are just not as effective as younger [incoming] teachers," Mr. Lovenheim said, raising the possibility that pension systems that backload benefits or require a set number of years of service might demand an "educational cost of keeping teachers who want to retire in the workforce."

Raising the Middle?

However, average test-score gains may cloak the loss of some of a school's institutional memory, according to Patten Priestley Mahler, an economics doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville.

In a separate study of nearly 62,000 educators in North Carolina, Ms. Mahler found a teacher's likelihood of retiring jumped 17 percentage points after he or she became eligible for pension benefits, compared with just two years earlier, even though teaching positions often have younger minimum retirement ages than other professional careers. She agreed that many teachers may feel "pulled to stick it out a few more years" in order to receive their full pension benefits, even if they are no longer interested in teaching.

When teachers become eligible for their pensions, the financial incentives to stay reverse themselves, Ms. Mahler said: "They look at it and say, 'If I quit teaching, I can get 60 percent of my salary, so I'm only getting paid 40 percent to work the same 40 hours a week. My time is not as valued.' "

Yet in North Carolina at least, teachers did not respond equally to early-retirement incentives. The most- and least-effective teachers (as judged by their students' previous math and reading test scores) were 5 percentage points more likely to retire after qualifying for their pension than were teachers whose students had average performance.

Moreover, Ms. Mahler found lower increases in turnover for urban and high-minority schools.
"Those are the schools that are hardest to staff; they have people leaving all the time. These pension incentives just might not be keeping them around as strongly as other teachers," she said, "but then the ones who actually stick around and stick through it for long enough to be eligible for the pension may have other reasons to be teaching that aren't affected by the pensions."

Because so few teachers work under nonpension retirement programs, Ms. Mahler and Mr. Lovenheim both said it is hard to gauge how strongly teachers weigh financial versus other reasons to teach, such as altruism or enjoyment.

Jesse Rothstein, an associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not associated with either study, argued that teachers are not good at identifying their own effectiveness, making it difficult to target incentive systems to encourage only less effective teachers to leave.

States vs. Districts

Mr. Lovenheim also cautioned that the test-score increases found in the California and Illinois studies aren't substantial enough to make pension changes a major force for school improvement, particularly as they can set up a showdown between districts and equally cash-strapped states, which are left footing most of the bill for early teacher pensions.

"Hey, any increase in test scores is good if you can do it for low cost," Mr. Lovenheim said, "but this is not necessarily a low-cost change, because of the dramatic increases to the state budgets. I'm not sure the test-score increases are enough to pass the cost-benefit test."

Related Blog

Visit this blog.

Even without early-retirement incentives, more than a third of educators in the classroom today are older than 50, at or approaching retirement age. Teacher-pension funds in 41 states do not have enough money to meet their obligations, according to a study released in December by the National Council on Teaching Quality. The group estimates a $390 billion shortfall nationwide in 2012.
More states have been pushing back against district early-retirement promotions, the council found. Since 2008, half of states have increased the retirement age for teachers, 22 have lowered retirees' cost-of-living increases, and 21 have both reduced benefits and required teachers to contribute more to their plans.

Teachers may retire just to avoid dealing with district belt-tightening, even if they don't get a golden parachute.

For example, the research organization WestEd's Regional Educational Laboratory West found, in a separate 2012 study of California teachers, that for every $1,000 cut from per-student spending, teachers in the state were 4 percent more likely to retire.

Coverage of policy efforts to improve the teaching profession is supported by a grant from the Joyce Foundation, at www.joycefdn.org/Programs/Education.
 

Vol. 32, Issue 18, Pages 1,16

 

Related Stories

• "Teacher-Pension Systems Flagged as Cause for Alarm,"(Teacher Beat Blog) December 13, 2012.

We all need professional development!

Like it or not, as teachers, we are professionals, and like every other profession, we must find ways to learn, grow, and develop every year we are in the classroom. When evaluated, we must have specific professional development plans that speak to our professional goals, areas of strengths, and desired areas of improvement. 

January 2013 | Volume 55 | Number 1
Arts Education Matters Pages 8-8

Message from the ASCD President

Professional Development Must Be Part of Teacher Evaluations

Debra Hill

If you've followed the news during the recent Chicago teachers' strike, you know that teachers have voiced concerns about the key issue of teacher evaluation. The Education Week article "Straight Up Conversation: Teacher Eval Guru Charlotte Danielson" by Rick Hess states, "There's been a heavy emphasis of late on teacher evaluation, with states and districts making it a pillar of their efforts to rethink tenure, pay, and professional norms. States and districts have adopted systems that rely heavily on observational evaluation to complement or stand in for value-added metrics."

A survey of teacher evaluation systems in 14 large U.S. school districts, the results of which the New Teacher Project shared in the widely read 2009 report The Widget Effect, concluded that 98 percent of teachers were evaluated as "satisfactory." Based on such findings, many have characterized the old evaluation checklist system as somewhat flawed.

Several states have begun rethinking their teacher evaluation systems. These revised evaluation systems seem to have moved from using checklists and the approach developed by Madeline Hunter to an approach with multitiered models, such as Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching. The systems, which identify what good teaching looks like, are geared toward subject-area competency as well as teacher effectiveness. Many of these models incorporate professional development as a key component for continual growth for all teachers and are designed to have teachers engaged in their own learning.

If we are serious about developing highly qualified teachers, we need to recognize that high-quality professional development and teacher evaluation can be symbiotic—that is, depending on each other to endure and thrive—and therefore mutually beneficial.

Findings presented in the 2010 report The Status of Professional Development in the United States, by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, show that "sustained and intensive professional development for teachers is related to student achievement and gains."

Thus, changes in evaluation systems should move from either being a punitive "gotcha" or deeming everyone "OK" to ones that are designed to help teachers improve their craft and effectiveness through collaboration; self-reflection; and sustained, high-quality professional development.

Based on the knowledge about human growth, development, and adult learning we've acquired in the last decade, we know that when teachers continue to learn and grow through professional development, so do their students. Let's increase resources for teacher learning and revolutionize the way we approach teacher evaluation. 

Copyright © 2013 by ASCD

Are our students ready for college?

Why do U.S. students still lag behind students from other nations with their rates of college graduation? How can we better prepare K-12 students for the rigor, challenges, and expectations our institutions of higher learning have? Shouldn't it all begin today?

January 2013 | Volume 55 | Number 1
Arts Education Matters Pages 2-3,6,7

Create a College-Going Culture

Willona M. Sloan

Resources and Tools to Inspire and Inform

College and career readiness have been the focus of education policies and discussions for several years, yet U.S. students lag behind other nations in college completion. The infographic in the next article highlights the crisis at hand. Although many U.S. students may aspire to go to college, they sometimes find that they do not possess the necessary academic background to be successful in college-level courses, nor do they have the financial resources required or the emotional and social support needed to help them persevere.

Although college may not be the end goal for every student, K–12 schools can create environments that foster interest in college matriculation and offer students the appropriate information to assist them in planning their academic schedules and extracurricular activities so they will have necessary course credits and qualifications to be competitive college applicants. Creating a college-going culture means explaining the benefits of higher education to students and instilling in them the skills they will need to overcome challenges.

The following resources from nonprofit organizations, higher education institutions, and K–12 programs are designed to inspire, inform, and motivate students and put them on the path to college completion.

College Board

"A college-going culture builds the expectation of postsecondary education for all students—not just the best students," says the College Board website. "It inspires the best in every student, and it supports students in achieving their goals."

College Board provides the guide College Ed®: Creating a College-Going Culture, which covers the basics of how to establish an environment that values college aspirations and offers administrators several strategies for designing and implementing a large-scale program to support these aims, as well as tips for conducting community outreach and talking with parents. CollegeEd® is the College Board's college-planning and career-exploration program for middle and high school students.

College Board also offers the interactive website for students You Can Go to College, where young people can watch testimonials from college students who discuss how they navigated the labyrinth of the college admissions process. The website also provides a directory to help students locate nearby colleges and a step-by-step tool that walks students through planning for college.

Jobs for the Future: Early College Strategies and Resources

The recent study Taking College Courses in High School: A Strategy for College Readiness from Jobs for the Future looks at the effects that dual enrollment programs, which allow high school students to take college-level courses, have on student achievement. Researchers analyzed data from tens of thousands of Texas students who completed college courses in high school, and found that these students attended and completed college within the state at much higher rates than students with similar backgrounds who did not take college courses in high school.

According to the report, "A growing body of research suggests that allowing students in high school to complete even a single college class could significantly increase their chances of attending college and eventually graduating." The report offers strategies for states and school districts looking to implement such initiatives.

Jobs for the Future also offers a state-by-state analysis of dual enrollment programs and strategies aimed at preparing low-income students for college completion. Find out how your state is doing.

Also check out the comprehensive Early College High School Initiative website at to learn more about how to create programs that blend high school education with college coursework to compress the time it takes students to earn a high school diploma and complete the first two years of college.

Pathways to College Network

The Pathways to College Network is, according to its website, "an alliance of national organizations that advances college opportunity for underserved students by raising public awareness, supporting innovative research, and promoting evidence-based policies and practices across the K–12 and higher education sectors." The network promotes the use of research-based policies and practices, develops new research, and attempts to align efforts across middle and high schools and higher education to promote college access and success for underserved students.

The Pathways to College Network is directed by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, which is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing access and success in postsecondary education around the world. Pathways offers research on topics that include college access outreach programs, college readiness, and state and federal policies regarding college preparation.

Public Agenda

Administrators looking to assess their guidance counselors' efforts to move students on to the path for college will benefit from the Public Agenda report Can I Get a Little Advice Here?: How an Overstretched High School Guidance System Is Undermining Students' College Aspirations.

Public Agenda also offers an infographic on the college completion crisis. According to a Public Agenda survey, only 4 out of 10 young people earn a college degree by the time they are 35. Of the "non-completers," 7 out of 10 respondents said they did not know what a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is. The infographic also includes policy recommendations from completers and non-completers, such as allowing part-time students to qualify for financial aid.

Sallie Mae Fund's Kids2College

The Sallie Mae Fund's Kids2College program offers guides and tools for middle and high schools that hope to instill an interest in college in low-income and minority students.

The University of California, Berkeley's School/University Partnership Program

The School/University Partnership (SUP) program is designed to foster a college- and university-going culture in schools and communities in California's Bay Area. Through outreach efforts, innovative initiatives, and teaching and learning tools designed for kindergarten through community college classrooms, the program works with schools to inform students of the steps they must take to be ready to attend college in the California higher education system. The program works with school districts and elementary, middle, and high schools to increase access to the University of California and other California colleges and universities for students who have not traditionally been eligible to attend.

The Believing The College Dream curriculum created by SUP provides a plan for helping students understand why they should aspire to go to college and how to plan for admission and matriculation. The curriculum is designed to show students that college is attainable, and it aims to help students believe in their ability to succeed in school. For families, the curriculum provides information about how to set a college-bound attitude and support their children. The free curriculum and resource guide are available athttp://outreach.berkeley.edu/believing_college_dream.

Although the SUP-created College Tools for Schools web-based tool kit is designed for California high schools that are eager to expand college attendance rates, these resources are relevant for schools in any district. The kit includes an explanation of the financial aid process, a four-year academic planning guide to help students map out the prerequisites and course requirements needed to be eligible for college, and career exploration guides.

U.S. Department of Education

The U.S. Department of Education's College Completion Toolkit was released in response to President Obama's American Graduation Initiative, which established the goal that by 2020 the United States will regain its position as the nation with the highest percentage of its population holding postsecondary degrees and credentials. Geared toward governors and state leaders, the tool kit highlights strategies for increasing college completion rates.

The tool kit suggests that policymakers set college completion goals, develop an action plan, use data to drive decision making, embrace performance-based funding, align high school standards with college-entrance and placement standards, and make it easier for students to transfer between colleges.

Woodrow Wilson Early College High School Initiative

Developing a College-Going Culture in a Middle School: A Toolkit, from the Woodrow Wilson Early College High School Initiative, was created with WestEd to aid middle schools in this making culture shift. The tool kit includes materials such as student and parent survey forms; protocols for interviewing teachers, principals, and guidance counselors about schools' college-going culture; a case study that looks at a middle school's efforts to instill this initiative; and a directory of college-going culture resources.

Additional Resources

• The Policy Priorities issue "College and Career Readiness"
• The Educational Leadership issue "College, Careers, Citizenship"
• The ASCD Express issue "College, Careers, Citizenship" 

The Importance of Arts Education

I firmly believe that arts education should continue to be an integral part of a well-rounded, 21st century education program that serves to educate the whole child for success in school and beyond. Read on....

January 2013 | Volume 55 | Number 1
Arts Education Matters Pages 1-4,5

Ten Reasons Arts Education Matters

Elliott Seif

Arts education should continue to be an integral part of a well-rounded, 21st century education program that serves to educate the whole child for success in school and beyond.

K–12 education budget cuts have forced schools and districts across the United States to limit or eliminate arts instruction. Also, because the artistic disciplines are not evaluated through high-stakes testing, these classes are often vulnerable when time is precious and funds are limited.

Elliott Seif, an educational consultant, author, Understanding by Design® cadre and ASCD Faculty member, and Educational Leadership contributor, shares 10 reasons why we should strengthen and expand arts education in a 21st century world, not reduce or eliminate it.

Arts education can increase student engagement.

Let's face it—for the most part, children like arts education. It is hands-on, has immediate rewards, focuses on positive achievements, develops concrete products, and fosters collaboration. The arts provide many opportunities for students to show off and demonstrate their skills through authentic performance. The arts enable children to grow in confidence and learn how to think positively about themselves and learning.

Children learn positive habits, behaviors, and attitudes.

Learning a musical instrument, creating a painting, learning to dance, or singing in a chorus teaches that taking small steps; practicing to get better at something; being persistent; and being patient, even in the face of adversity, are important for children's growth and improvement. Students gain confidence as they try to accomplish things that don't come easily. In other words, learning an artistic discipline helps young people develop character. Students learn habits, behaviors, and attitudes that are necessary for success in any field of endeavor.

The arts enhance creativity.

Imagine classes in which students create original artwork filled with color that displays a creative use of space, they develop their own rhythms, or they write and produce their own plays. These classes provide a wonderful environment for fostering creativity, which is an important skill to have in a rapidly changing world.

Students sharpen their critical intellectual skills.

The arts foster higher levels of thinking that carry over to learning other academic subjects as well as to life outside of school. Through the arts, children learn to observe (What do you see in a painting?); interpret (How should we play this music?); see different perspectives (What is the artist's perspective? What is your perspective?); analyze (Let's take apart this play and study each part separately); and synthesize (How do all the parts of the dance fit together to create a whole?).

The arts teach students methods for learning language skills.

As students learn to read notes, compose music, play an instrument, memorize dance steps, create a painting, and act in a drama, they are also learning how to develop new concepts, build vocabulary, and understand a new language.

The arts help students learn mathematics.

The arts require measurement, number manipulation, and proportional thinking, all of which foster mathematical thinking. Students also learn patterns (musical rhythms and dance patterns), spatial and geometric relationships (visual art patterns), and three-dimensional skills (making clay models).

The arts expand on and enrich learning in other subjects.

Works of art provide a visual context for learning about historical periods. Music, painting, drama, and dance help literature come alive. Graphic designs and drawings, such as those made by inventors and engineers, complement learning about scientific and technological principles and innovations.

Aesthetic learning is its own reward.

The arts teach young people about beauty, proportion, and grace. Students can examine conflict, power, emotion, and life itself. The power of the arts is in its wondrous ability to give us joy, help us understand tragedy, promote empathy, and make the written word come alive.

Students practice teamwork.

In developing a theatrical production, group performance, or any type of collaborative artistic endeavor, students practice the fine art of teamwork. As they work together, they learn to understand differences and diversity and realize the ways that teamwork contributes to a great performance. By also teaching students how to live and work together, the arts contribute to making schools safer and more peaceful learning environments.

Arts education is just the beginning.

The arts provide an important avenue where children can develop a passion for learning. Many children discover their talents and interests through the arts and are inspired to pursue careers in artistic fields.

Arts Education in Action

I just gave 10 reasons why we need to support arts education, but the proof that arts programs work is illustrated by the success of arts education programs in the real world. Recently I visited three schools in the Philadelphia, Penn., area in which the arts are making a huge difference both for individual fulfillment and academic success.

In one local suburban school district, which has a mixed ethnic and minority population, the arts are thriving. The district is committed to implementing arts education at all levels and makes the arts a priority for its students. Even in today's tough economic times, the district budget funds multiple teachers of the arts in every school.

At the elementary level, children in this district learn about well-known artists and their work, create their own artwork, and share their artwork on Artsonia, a website that describes itself as "the largest student art museum in the world." Every child in the district's middle schools has the opportunity to either play an instrument in a band or orchestra or be in a choral group.

Every year, the middle schools and high school produce student theatrical events that almost rival Broadway productions. Although this school district is not devoid of problems in other areas, its arts programs stand out as beacons of excellence that enrich student learning and help children succeed academically.

I recently observed another program in Philadelphia designed for returning dropouts. Students gain confidence that they can succeed and develop critical skills through participation in arts courses. Amazing student artwork hangs in the school's hallways and on classroom walls.

In another Philadelphia high school that I work with closely, students designed a beautiful mural for the library and they regularly compose music, hang their artwork throughout the building, and put on shows for parents and outsiders.

Give Students a Chance for Success

By reducing or eliminating the arts from our educational programs, we are reducing the likelihood of student success. We lose programs that motivate children and provide them with skills that help them succeed in school. We create an education system that "fails" more students. Our students lose a significant part of the educational experience that enriches their lives and helps them examine what it means to be human.

Teachers, boards of education, superintendents, principals, and the community all need to make a commitment to preserve and expand arts programs rather than reduce them. We can do this in many ways: train teachers how to incorporate the arts into their classes and curriculum; use members of the community and local arts organizations to help foster arts education; find grant funds to support the arts; and, ultimately, fund adequate numbers of arts educators in every school and every program.

Arts programs make a difference, and every child should have the opportunity to participate in a strong, multidimensional arts program. The reality is that the arts have a powerful influence on children and learning, and they can make a significant difference in children's lives. It takes understanding, commitment, communication, and hard work to make sure that the arts are an important and meaningful part of schooling. 

Copyright © 2013 by ASCD

Romancing the Wind Video - A must-see!

This is truly amazing…have a look when you get a chance…

The guy flying the 3 kites is in his 80s, and he's from Canada. He comes to the Washington State International Kite Festival every year. His skin is like leather as he normally flies with his shirt off. He is deaf, so when he flies we hold our hands up and wave them for applause. He flies 2 with his hands and the 3rd one is attached to his waist. 

You must watch to the end to see the amazing landing of that last kite! I'm sure most of us would have those kites so tangled up, you could never get them separated again! And of course, make sure the volume is turned up because the music is wonderful and totally reflects the soaring of the kites.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=nr9KrqN_lIg

Aren't teachers worth more than test scores?

I think so. So do others. Read on....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/10/08/things-educators-could-say-but-dont/

It truly underscores the folly of trying to measure teacher proficiency using test scores…