GoBigEd

Posted 10:09 AM by Susan Darst Williams

NEWS BRIEFS:
RETIRED OPS SPECIAL ED EXPERT DICK GALUSHA
TO RUN FOR STATE SCHOOL BOARD

Omahan Richard Galusha, 72, has filed for the Nebraska State Board of Education seat now held by Omahan Joe Higgins. Galusha is an Omaha Public Schools retiree, and Higgins is a Westside Community Schools retiree. Galusha is a Republican; Higgins, a Democrat, is former president of the Nebraska State Education Association

At OPS, Galusha was a teacher, counselor, administrator, principal of the J.P. Lord School, and head of psychological services. He also served on the OPS Board of Education for 10 years. His wife, Pat, also is an OPS retiree, and their son Wes is coordinator of student services for the district. Another son, Rick, recently sold Homer’s Music & Gifts.

In an interview, Galusha said he wants to serve on the state board to help resolve the school finance controversies and make some needed changes to the testing and accountability systems now in place in Nebraska. He said they are not of service to parents in evaluating educational quality, and not accurate and impartial since individual districts were allowed to devise their own assessments.

INNER-CITY OMAHA GIRLS
EXCEL IN ENGINEERING CONTEST

A team of nine girls from Girls Inc., the social service agency in inner-city Omaha, placed third out of more than 60 teams in an “Ocean Odyssey” competition in Ames, Iowa, sponsored by Lego, the building blocks company.

The Omahans were the only all-girls team. They used computers, robotics and blocks to illustrate a plan to place water jets at the bottom of the Missouri River to make the endangered pallid sturgeon believe it is the spring rise, so they would mate.

Neat, huh? See more about this great agency at www.girlsincomaha.org

OMAHA LEARNING DISABILITIES GROUP
FOCUSES ON BULLYING PREVENTION

The Omaha Learning Disabilities Association met Tuesday for a 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. meeting on bullying prevention. The video, “Last One Picked, First One Picked On” by Rick Lavoie was shown, followed by a discussion.

Kids with learning disabilities are more susceptible to bullying, but there are strategies parents and teachers can use to help them respond assertively to bullies, according to the group.

It meets on the third Tuesday of the month at First Christian, 6630 Dodge St. Learn more about the group on www.hometown.aol.com/omahaLDA or contact them, OmahaLDA@aol.com

QUOTE FROM A STAR TEACHER:
SCHOOL IS ‘A LIAR’S WORLD’

A reader sent in this quote from a book by John Taylor Gatto, who had been named the New York State Teacher of the Year several years ago, but resigned from teaching in disgust, on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Gatto’s comment:

"Our form of schooling has turned us into dependent, emotionally needy, excessively childish people who wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. Our national dilemma is that too many of us are now homeless and mindless in the deepest sense—at the mercy of strangers.

“The beginning of answers will come only when people force government to return educational choice to everyone. But choice is meaningless without an absolute right to have progress monitored locally, too, not by an agency of the central government.

“Solzhenitsyn was right. The American founding documents didn’t mention school because the authors foresaw the path school would inevitably set us upon, and rejected it. . . .

“School can never deal with really important things. Only education can teach us that quests don’t always work, that even worthy lives most often end in tragedy, that money can’t prevent this; that failure is a regular part of the human condition; that you will never understand evil; that serious pursuits are almost always lonely; that you can’t negotiate love; that money can’t buy much that really matters; that happiness is free.

“A twenty-five-year-old school dropout walked the length of the planet without help, a seventeen-year-old school dropout worked a twenty-six-foot sailboat all by herself around the girdle of the globe. What else does it take to realize the horrifying limitations we have inflicted on our children?

“School is a liar’s world. Let us be done with it."

-- John Taylor Gatto
The Underground History of American Education
NYC Teacher of the Year - Three Times, New York State Teacher of the Year

BLAIR READING TEACHERS
MAKE SOME ‘OOPSIES’

It sounds like a terrific evening: the Blair Parents for Education hosted more than 300 people at an informal pasta dinner followed by kids’ activities in the gym. Meanwhile, parents could attend three informational sessions led by K-2 reading teachers, according to an account in the Washington County Pilot-Tribune.

The problem was, the event was called “Noodle Nite,” not “Night.” And one of the three sessions was entitled, “Site Words, Comprehension and Vocabulary.” The word should have been “Sight.”

That’s what happens when you don’t know phonics. You spell like a beagle, and it shows. The number of reading teachers in the State of Nebraska who truly understand systematic, intensive, explicit phonics, and how to teach it, is tiny.

The reading teachers in Blair have probably never even heard of the phonogram / igh / much less know how to spell it. Excuse the expression . . . sigh. :>)