Step in the Right Direction has put up an update indicating the Globe and Mail has taken on this story. Just shows the power the blogosphere. As I said in my earlier post, the reason the N.B. government is doing so is still more about smoke and mirrors than reality.

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Recently, we had the Ontario Minister of Education, Kathleen Wynn promoting the latest buzz word in education – EQUITY. As I asked a previous article on that topic, what does that politically charged word actually mean? Well, as it turns out, in New Brunwick it apparently means that if students are doing well academically in an early French immerson program (which affects approximately 20% of students), the government will have to axe their program. Why? Because the rest of the province’s students (the other 80%) are not doing as well. Meaning, that for there to be equity, everyone has to be thrown in together — otherwise the politicians will call it a two-tiered segregated education system.

What absolute nonsense! Read this posting by Spitfire, who is a working on a graduate degree in Ottawa, to get all the details. It is mindboggling but hardly surprising. Spitfire says:

“The problem is the mentality that inequality in education is a bad thing. Why should we lower the bar to the other students and not give the opportunities to excel? While yes, 80% is a large number of students falling behind; however, I suspect that there are other issues, other than this French Immersion program contributing to the problem of NB students coming last in national scores.”

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There are a lot of parents in Canada and the U.S. who home school because they don’t feel the public system is geared towards academic achievement and excellence or when their children have special needs that are not being met in the public system. While the purpose of this article is not to question the choice to home school, I do wonder what qualifies a parent to take over the job of teacher in the home.

First and foremost, I respect parents who choose this route. Home schooling cannot be for the faint hearted. In my opinion, it must be very stressful, even while simultaneously rewarding, to spend all day, every day with ones own children, no matter how much we love them. That truly is 24/7 parenting. 

Moreover, teaching is an extremely technical job no matter who is doing it. In Ontario, for example, a parent who is the home schooler has to provide the local board of education with proof they are doing a good job. As such, they have to complete the same day plans, curriculum units, exams and marking, as any teacher would do. Specifically, Ontario Ministry guidelines stipulate that home schoolers be able to answer the following types of questions:

• Do you have an instructional plan, regularly planned instructional time, and a daily work schedule? Please provide details.
• What subjects are you teaching?
• What do you expect to accomplish with your child in English, mathematics, and other subjects this year?
• Is your instructional program based on the Ontario curriculum or on a different curriculum?
• If you follow the Ontario curriculum, which documents do you use?
• If you do not use Ontario curriculum documents, please describe the curriculum documents you do use.
• Please describe the typical kinds of activities that you provide for your child in the subjects you are teaching. Please provide samples of your child’s work in each subject area.
• What types of materials do you use to assist you in accomplishing your plans (e.g., encyclopaedias, textbooks, magazines, newspapers, television programs, materials on the Internet, computer programs)?
• Please describe the techniques you use to assess your child’s learning.
• Do you use community resources to support your instruction? If so, which ones?
• Do you network with other parents who provide home schooling? How?
• Please feel free to provide any other information that would help the board determine whether instruction is satisfactory.

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The good news is that there is going to be a parent education “advocacy” conference in the Greater Toronto Area on Saturday, April 26th, 2008.

Some background. Over the past year I have written several articles on the need for parents to be their own advocates when it comes to dealing with teachers, consultants and administrators in their children’s school board. You can read examples of those posts here and here. Yet, only recently did I find out that there is a parent advocacy association in Ontario and have no doubt, with parent and professional input, there could be similar organizations all across Canada.

In Ontario, it is called the “Ontario Association of Education Advocates” and it provides workshops, conferences and parent advocacy training. The April 26th, 2008 conference, for example, will be held at the Four Points Sheraton at 2501 Argentia Road in Mississauga. The keynote speaker will be Julian Falconer, the noted human rights lawyer and in the afternoon, there will be a number of different workshops available on such topics and issues as IEP’s, how to solve conflicts between home and school, becoming a successful reader, post-secondary transition programs and so on.

I’d highly recommend Ontario parents get involved in this association and if possible, take their training. Or, interested people from other provinces could attend to learn how to start up a similar association. I hope to attend this meeting myself and, if I can, I look forward to meeting many parents who visit here regularly.

Conference and registration information can be accessed through a PDF file at the OAEA website, as well as on my header bar. Parents can also get further information by e-mailing: help@oaea.ca

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Don Martin has an excellent article this morning in the Calgary Herald entitled “Childhood injury prevention must top to-do list.” I agree entirely that childhood injury prevention should be at the top of the federal government’s list of priorities. However, I would go one step further and suggest it be at the top of every parent’s list as well — without overdoing it.  Because, as Martin suggests, there is a fine line between over-protecting our children and straitjacketing them. 

“Short of mandatory helmets for all outdoor activity, obligatory life-jackets for wading pool paddles and airbag-equipped toboggans or tricycles, being a kid living outside a parental cocoon invariably means bad accidents happen.”

A new report was quietly released by the federal government yesterday, called “Reaching for the Top” by Dr. Kellie Leitch, that includes recommendations on how to reduce accidents through education and awareness. As Martin writes, the report makes an honourable attempt to strike a balance because accidents do happen, some preventable.
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As a retired educator, I recognize that teachers do a good job. As a taxpayer, I also recognize that teachers, whether elementary or secondary, are very well paid with excellent benefit packages (thanks in no small part to teachers’ unions collective agreements). And, I have always been open about the fact that both my husband and I benefit from those benefits.

However, that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize when enough should be enough, particularly given the declining enrollment in the public schools in Ontario. For example, in London Ontario, the estimates are that 1100 students will be lost to both the public and Catholic school boards in that city and that type of projection is happening all across Ontario.

So, I have been waiting (since the budget was released yesterday) to see just how the teachers’ unions would react — and for evidence of how the Ontario government was going to pay back the teachers and teachers’ unions for all their help during the recent Ontario election. Well, this morning, I got a hint of what to expect. ETFO, the elementary teachers federation, released a statement on their website titled: “Budget Allocation for Education but More Needed.” 
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While I might disagree with not spending some of the Ontario surplus on corporate and business tax relief  — to tell investors Ontario is open for business and new jobs – I do approve of money for skills training. When people lose their jobs, particularly those who are unskilled (corrected) but in highly paid manufacturing jobs, they need to learn new highly specialized skills for the new economy — a reality that may not always be possible.

In fact, the centerpiece of Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan’s budget yesterday was $1.5 billion for a three-year skills training program. My hope is that it is not money wasted. My hope is that whoever is given these funds to develop and provide skills training programs does their homework. And, what I mean by homework is that a thorough workplace and economic analysis be done to find out what jobs are needed now and in the near future. Far too often in the past, people have been retrained in skills that were obsolete by the time they got their training finished.
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So, when is cheating not really cheating? Has the goal post moved or is it the changing technology that is making defining cheating that much harder? And, what exactly are study groups and peer tutoring and when are they considered cheating?

For example, is it okay to work with a group of fellow students if you are working in a university library or at the kitchen table? Would that be considered a study group? Or, if only one or two people are working together, would that be considered peer tutoring? Or, is it cheating?

Or, is it only cheating when you are working online — a relevant question given the fact that a group of Ryerson students found out the hard way that the powers that be at Ryerson think so? In fact, a student administrator of a Ryerson Facebook site is now fighting allegations of cheating that Ryerson has made against him.

As many of my regulars know, I used to teach university. It used to be relatively easy to spot plagiarism or copying. I had a good memory and would remember previous papers that I had marked. I also had a good eye for recognizing when writing style changed, typically improved, all in the same paper. In all my years I only actually found three people who eventually admitted to cheating. They had a note put on their university record, a note that would stay for life. That threat hangs over the head of the Ryerson student mentioned above.
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Update: Carly’s story was on CTV’s W5 last night, Saturday, March 22nd at 7pm. It was and is a very uplifting story. The CTV tape of the program will be delayed due to copyright considerations but apparently will be available in about a week. When it is, I’ll post it here at COTM. In the meantime, here is updated CTV information.

(H/T to MadMacs of Bytown.)

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What a beautiful story and a true miracle of medicine and technology. A young girl with severe autism by the name of Carly Fleischmann, aged 13, learns how to use a computer to communicate. Although Carly cannot talk, the techology, along with her determination, has given her a voice — her own voice that would otherwise have been silent. And, in so doing, the computer has not only allowed Carly to invite people into her world of emotions and sensory experiences, it has also given her life challenge and meaning. It is a fascinating story to say the least.

Before I retired from teaching university, I also ran a special needs private practice on a part-time basis. What I did was rather unique (here is a book I wrote on the subject of using compensations) and involved two phases. In the first phase, I assessed how children, youth and adults with disabilities could improve their literacy skills. Then, during the final phase, I would implement (or staff at a board of education or agency would do so under my supervision) a program of rehabilitation or enhancement.  And, of course, I tried and used every conceivable piece of technology and learning strategy available that would make the outcomes successful.  
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There is an article in the New York Times today that states there was a highly unusual outbreak of measles in San Diego last month. Of 12 children who became seriously ill, not one of them had been inoculated against the disease — nine because their parents had taken advantage of an exemption and refused the vaccine and three because they were still too young to be vaccinated.

Interestingly, one parent, whose six year old son goes to school with one of the infected children, is quoted in the NYT article as saying:

“I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good.“ Yet, she also admits, “I cannot deny that my child can put someone else at risk.”

What this mother doesn’t seem to realize is that her child may put millions at risk if something were to spread quickly. Just remember how quickly the SARS virus moved from its first recorded case in China in November, 2002 – clear around the world to Toronto by the spring of 2003. 

This refusal by parents to vaccinate their children is getting worrisome because those of us who are older can remember when childhood diseases killed with regularity. In fact, it is possible most of today’s young and middle aged parents don’t even remember the more serious childhood killers like polio, diphtheria, whooping cough and typhoid fever, let alone German measles, chicken pox and mumps. In fact, one of my kindergarten aged childhood friends died in the 1947 polio epidemic and her extremely sudden death and my subsequent quarantine has stayed with me for life.
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This Sunday is going to be particularly special. It is not only Easter and time with extended family, but it is my birthday as well.  That is very surprising because the closest I have ever gotten to Easter weekend was to have my birthday fall on Good Friday — with Easter Sunday on March 25th.

So, I did an Internet search on the topic and discovered that the last time Easter was on March 23rd was in 1913 — three years before my own mother was born. And — listen to this – it won’t happen this way again until 2160 (or depending on the source, not until 2228)!

So, I plan to enjoy it with family. So, whether or not you celebrate Easter, have a nice long weekend everyone!

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