education

Resolving These Days of Violence

AmySue Mertens — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:11:27 -0500

One of our most requested programs in Cook County is Conflict Resolution for Youth. Schools across the county express their difficulty in getting past conflicts to reach education each day. Students come to schools with complex issues including hunger, broken families, homelessness, fear, anger, and a lack of social interaction that previous generations take for granted.

Bluing

ArtsEdArn — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:53:38 -0500

A classic grade school science (or is it art?) activity calls for charcoal briquettes, ammonia, salt, water, food coloring, and bluing. What is bluing? Bluing is a dye used to treat clothing that has yellowed with age and use. Here is copy from the website for Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing:

Introduction to Tutor/Mentor Connection - The Rest of the Story

tutormentor — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:36:38 -0600

If you read something tragic in the papers, like a youth being shot, or a life being lost to gangs, drugs, or the cumulative impact of poverty, and you want to do something to change the future for kids born or living in high poverty neighborhoods, I encourage you to visit the www.tutormentorconnection.org web site and use it like a text book, as a resource, and as a guide for how you, your church, your business and/or your friends change what's happening in many inner city neighborhoods.

Chalk

ArtsEdArn — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:30:48 -0600

As chalk disappears from the classroom, and images of blackboards, chalk dust, and clapping erasers are replaced by images of whiteboards, Magic Markers, and dry erasers, and even these are replaced by computer screens and projectors, sticks of chalk and blackboards (which are actually usually greenboards in grade schools and high schools and brownboards in universities) remain icons in our collective educational imagination, as persistent as clip art graphics of little red school houses, school bells, and an apple for the teacher.

Liberia

ArtsEdArn — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:00:54 -0600

President George W. Bush visited Liberia on the 21st of February, 2008, the first visit by an American President in three decades.

The History of Homework

ArtsEdArn — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:16:00 -0600

One of the ways to understand the once and future role of the arts in school improvement is to poke around in the iconography of schools themselves. What is the history and meaning of bell schedules, of the intercom, of desks in rows, of asphalt playgrounds, of chain-link fences, of pencils, of erasers, of cursive writing, of blackboards, of whiteboards, of calculators, of computers, of notebook paper? Investigating the images and artifacts of public education maps the subjective terrain that arts education advocates work within.

Can I get a soy topper on my tax increase?

SaveChicago — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:59:27 -0600

A tax on bottled water? A proposed 10.5% sales tax in Cook County? When does it stop?

Mayor Daley has even been quoted as saying:

"I'm open to more innovative ideas on things to tax..."

Wouldn't it be cool if we could fund the Chicago Public Schools with something other than taxes?

Local businesses spend money to advertise. One day, all that money they spend will be with companies located in Silicon Valley. Our local economy will be devastated when all this money leaves the state and never comes back.

SaveChicago.org

Can I get a soy topper on my tax increase?

SaveChicago — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:44:13 -0600

A tax on bottled water? A proposed 10.5% sales tax in Cook County? When does it stop?

Mayor Daley has even been quoted as saying:

"I'm open to more innovative ideas on things to tax..."

Wouldn't it be cool if we could fund the Chicago Public Schools with something other than taxes?

Bela Legosi in the Daytime

ArtsEdArn — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:08:19 -0600

Bela Legosi’s Count Dracula, perhaps the most famous creature of the night, was filmed entirely during the daytime. The same movie set for the daytime Dracula was inhabited at night by an entirely different cast and crew to shoot the Spanish language version of Bram Stoker’s classic tale.

Cursive

ArtsEdArn — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:11:24 -0600

When we were little, and had just learned to print (with pencils so large that, as one comedian has described them, they needed to rest on our shoulders), we forged our first, enormous letters out of silky textured, fragrant graphite that positively slid across the page. I remember the distinctive sound of those thick pencils, traveling up and down the sheet, traversing the dotted blue lines suspended between the solid blue top lines and the solid blue bottom lines of each row of first-grade narrative, leaving graphite trails in their wake.