If you are interested to read my Open Letter to the new interim Board of Education CEO, Terry Mazany, please go to the BeyondToday.org website where it is posted. I was amazed and delighted to hear Mr. Mazany being interviewed on Bob Edward’s NPR radio program last Sunday.  In it, he reveals himself as a thoughtful and progressive educator, and perhaps signals that the dawn is coming after the long dark night of No Child Left Behind, test-and-punish mandates.

Pete Leki

To: Terry Mazany, CEO of Chicago Public Schools
Date : December 29, 2010
Subject: How to Fix Public Education; an Open letter of Greetings and Hope

Dear Mr. Mazany
This is an open letter to you and my community to welcome you as the new, if temporary, leader of the Chicago Public Schools.  The example that you set, by volunteering your services for the token salary of  $1 per year speaks to your dedication and the unique perspective you bring to this job. You join the scores of parents  and neighbors in our community that selflessly give their time that our school and community should be better and more whole.  Thank you for your service.

I know what to do to improve our schools ~ all of them. I didn’t come up with these good  ideas. They were passed on to me from some visionary educators that have carried them on from a millenniums-old tradition that includes John Dewey, the craft guilds of the middle ages, farm families and indigenous tribes everywhere.  The most important feature of this venerable and proven approach to education is that it educates the whole child within the context of a caring, learning, working community. It is really that simple. When a child is surrounded by a community that is working together to improve our prospects in this life, when academics are linked to real life problems, initiatives and solutions, education come alive, and students need no external motivation to seek knowledge, experience and skills.

This has been the method employed by all working, effective communities since we left the caves. Young people are our students, but they are also our  extended family, our village.  If what they are learning in school is not en-meshed in what is vital to the life of their family and neighbors,  it becomes a battle of wills between schools and child.  If the lives, knowledge, experience and resources of our communities, however humble they might be, are not a welcomed resource in the school, families and their children will find themselves alienated and lost.

The methods of this kind of education have been thoroughly elaborated and documented by well known educators and researchers (see references below). This kind of education works, but its currency rises and falls with the tides of political struggles within the government.  Chicago in the 1990’s were a time of joyous and energetic school reform, with unprecedented powers given up to Local School Councils. Local school leaders slowly and  cautiously took up the reins of leadership. Supported by generous grants from the Annenberg, DeWitt Wallace, Prince and other foundations, they  began the joint adventure of learning how to build a successful neighborhood school. At that time innovation was rewarded by the BOE.  Long-term partnerships were sealed between local schools and Education Departments in our Universities. Lengthy and sometime lavish (for teachers!) professional development opportunities gave teaching staffs the chance to work with colleagues, consider their own practices, and courageously make changes in order to set the intellectual flame in their students ablaze.  Parents were invited to the PD table to hear the debate among the practitioners and the theorists, authors and researchers.  The doors of the schools were thrown open for the world to enter, and for their students to venture forth on real, and vital explorations.

This was our experience at Waters Elementary from 1991 through 2000, where I served as chair of the LSC, parent educator through National Louis University’s Center for City Schools, and later as full time ecology coordinator.  Our Principal, whom we hired and evaluated, created a space for teachers to renew themselves and their practice, searched out and provided support for vigorous PD, field outings, and collaboration. Teachers were re-assured and urged to pursue “the good stuff”, the teaching and learning experiences that captured their students’ curiosity and innate desire to learn more. High stakes tests were required by the State, but they were never the focus of instruction, not even rudimentary test prep. And yet, our small, 95% poverty, 90% Hispanic, local, shamelessly run-down school showed a steady march upwards in test results. Scores and scores of our parents learned, through participation in workshops, the elements of the school’s teaching philosophy: collaboration, book circles, writing and sharing, acting on social concerns, integrating the subject areas, performing in the arts. These are same activities that their children were involved in at school everyday. Parents became part of the teaching and learning team.

Institutional support for our experiment evaporated in the new millennium, when a new national administration demanded  test driven accountability, punishing schools with the most challenging circumstances and comparing them unfavorably with selective enrollment schools and schools in affluent suburbs. The tide of innovation and reform was replaced by  an atmosphere of threats and punishments, demands for data and accountability,  abandonment of  School Visions and partnerships in favor of  the demands of National, State and Local mandates.  Our school has struggled valiantly thru the cold winds of this first decade of the millennium, to stay true to our Mission and Vision of progressive education, in the face of these chilling demands.  Today we still hold the banner of  whole- child, collaborative, community-based education with strong University partnerships and a multitude of arts and science collaborators.  Many schools were not so fortunate as ours and were racked by high teacher and leadership turnover and  finger-pointing, set adrift  in a sea of recriminations.

Mr. Mazany, here is what schools need:

1. Stability ~ an opportunity to pursue their SIP, their Vision, with support and understanding over an extended period of time.  Teachers, students and the school leadership need to feel safe and nourished, not hounded and despised.
2. Partnerships ~ most importantly, with visionary University Education Departments that can bring their outside expertise, energy and creativity into a long term professional relationship with schools.  But also, partnerships with civic, environmental, arts and business organizations to provide extra funds, opportunities and sense of excitement and hope for the school community.
3. Families and communities must be invited into the school’s learning adventure. A climate must be built that welcomes everyone to learn and grow, to try new things without fear of recrimination. Schools that work well with families give their students the gift of out-of-class support and understanding, and help to create educational mobility and hope for poor and working class parents.
4. A recognition by the BOE and the Government that impoverished students from stressed out homes and unsafe neighborhoods cannot compete favorably with safe, healthy, well-fed and cared for children of the wealthy. Rather than blame schools,  teachers, and parents for students’ failures, authorities have to demand:

Full health care for all,
A job for anyone willing to work,
Affordable, safe housing for families in need.

These three things, if guaranteed by the government, would create the conditions necessary to make it possible for our local schools to bloom and flourish.

We are aware that the BOE or the City  cannot guarantee these things by themselves. But, if our educational and political leaders gave voice to these demands, their words would resonate powerfully up and down the streets and alleyways of our city. Rather than point fingers of blame at embattled schools, secure their neighborhoods and families with help, with life support systems.  Harvard researcher Alfie Cohen once noted that hi-stakes test scores correlate directly with the kind of automobiles owned by the community.  The testing we do these days is not about accountability, but about ranking: the creation of winners and losers, the sorting of  our miraculous and creative youth into winners who will “compete in the global marketplace for hi-tech jobs” and the losers who will descend into a life on the edges of our communities and those condemned to work forever at the bottom of  the service industry.

Our vision of education is not to “turn out” well trained workers to fill the “jobs of the future”.  It is to nurture creative, confident, curious thinkers and doers, who love their community and seek to find a better way to live and serve in it.  They will create the jobs of the future and a new world, based on the values that we have taught them: hard work, cooperation, mutual assistance, justice, kindness,  courage, creativity, joy, love of nature and art, and respect for all people, particularly the young and old.

Mr. Mazany, you are uniquely situated to speak out publicly in support of a new vision for public schools ~ one that calls on our government to provide the safe space and basic necessities for success, and challenges the schools and neighborhoods to take the future in their hands and make it beautiful.  I await your call!

Sincerely,

Pete Leki
2546 West Hutchinson
Chicago, Illinois 60618

Cc: Titia Kipp, Principal Waters School
Waters School Local School Council
BeyondToday.org
Waters School Eco-volunteers
Waters School Garden Newsletter
Riverbank Neighbors
Linda Luden, Chicago Public Radio
Gene Schulter, Alderman 47th Ward
Ted Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer Foundation
Richard Turner, People’s Gas
Catalyst, Foundation for Education

Footnote:
Methods That Matter, H. Daniels and M. Bizar, Heineman
Best Practices, H. Daniels, S. Zemelman
The Art of Teaching Writing, L. Caulkins
In the Middle, Nancy Atwell
Writing With Teachers and Children,  Graves
Invitations, Regie Routman
Punished by Rewards, A. Cohen

We are currently working with the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce, the Northcenter Chamber of Commerce, the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, and the local farmers to find ways to improve our markets. I would love to hear your thoughts. Please visit my website at www.ward47.com and respond to our new opinion poll regarding the markets.

Thanks for RSVPing to the Chicago Climate Action. Tomorrow is the day when Chicagoans show local and global leaders that we want Climate Action Now! You’ll be part of this great green movement with thousands of people, if not millions of people, world wide as part of the International Day of Climate Action. We’ll be there Rain or Shine – if it’s raining we’ll be sending and even louder message as we march in front of the Fisk Coal Plant!

Chicago Climate Action
Saturday, October 24th
1-4pm
S. Carpenter and W. Cermak Rd
Pilsen, Chicago

Directions from the Pink Line: Get off on 18th St Stop, walk down 18th and turn right on S. Carpenter Rd

Directions from the Orange Line: Get off on Halsted stop, go north on S. Halsted Rd, turn left on W. Cermack, we’ll be at W. Cermack and S. Carpenter

Speakers:
Executive Director of Greenpeace Phil Radford
Alderman Joe Moore
Songs by Topless America
Youth and Family Activists from the impacted communities in Pilsen and Little Village

Activies and Education:
-Rally and March to the Fisk Coal Plant!
-March Leadership Training (before the event at 11:30-12:30pm at the venue) Sign-up here
-The Rolling Sunlight, a solar-paneled truck powering the stage
-Solar panels to warm-up coffee and hot chocolate for everyone
-Mock Wind turbines
-Energy Election ballots where you can vote for clean energy or dirty coal!
-Face of Climate Change Art Display – Bring a photo of someone you know impacted by climate change to add to the display

See you there!

Angela

Over the weekend we proudly added another $3000 in pledges to our
Flower Power total. Add that to the $5000 we received on our first PTC
Meeting night, and we have raised $8000 of the $60,000 we need to
ensure the existence of these programs for your kids next year.

Last week Waters parents united and successfully kept our 14th teacher
position at Waters from being cut. It is amazing what a dedicated group
of people can do! And also what can happen if needed funds do not
materialize.

With an approximate 250 families here at Waters school, we have
received pledges from only about 20 families.

You can and will determine the vitality or mortality of these Music &
Ecology programs. It is up to you, and all of us, as parents at Waters
school. Please help us watch the mercury of our thermometer rise by
contributing your pledge now.

Click here to pledge.  https://waterstoday.org/campaign7.asp

See the Full Flower Power Presentation and Music Ecology Video on our
school website.  www.waterselementary.org/flowerpower_video.html

We will celebrate our success at our FlowerPower Event in mid-
November, finalized date to come out this week.

Waters’ First Annual HOLIDAY CRAFT and BAKE SALE

Date: Sat. December 25th from 10:00 – 3:00 pm
Location: Waters School Hallways and Gym

Many of you have told us you want a table at our upcoming Artisan
Sale. Please, if you can buy your table now it would help our chairman
immensely so she knows how many more spaces she can sell!

Also, let any artisans you may know about this opportunity. We’d love
to have them!

Buy a table.
Let us know if you can bake something.

Next PTC Meeting:
Date: Tuesday, Oct 27 3:00pm Room 111 (library)

Don’t miss our next PTC meeting. We start with some general
information; then open it up with discussion. You can find out a lot
about what is going on at school.

Rain or Shine!!

A coalition of Chicago environmental groups has organized a major climate change protest at the Fisk Coal Plant.

Our Neighborhood Effort

As in the past, our community will first have a small local demonstration at Montrose and Western, then travel together to the city-wide event.

Oct24flyer

To make it easier for us to get more people to Fisk, we’ve got a bus coming to take us there.

RSVP for the bus

If you would like to join on and take a bus straight to the coal plant, please reserve your place on the bus right now. (you can also rsvp a maybe and then confirm with us later, we just need to know.) Please rsvp for the bus by emailing julie@beyondtoday.org or on our facebook event page. (login, then click here) We already have 15.

Paying for the bus.

Thank you to Chris and Nan Paron, Christiane, and others who donated towards this. If you can contribute, please let us know. It costs $125 total and we have $50 so far.

Where to be

11AM Montrose and Western for our local Climate Change vigil

Noon Western and Sunnyside for the bus to Fisk (reservations available)

1pm Fisk Coal Plant 1111 W. Cermak (Dvorak Park, northeast corner)

The city-wide event is shaping up to be one of the largest in the nation.

Learn more at HowGreenIsChicago.org

To find other actions in Chicago and other cities, visit 350.org