Please make plans to attend one of the meetings listed below.
Congratulations to Kalisha George at King Middle School and Pam Givens-Brown at Therrell High School on being awarded the Georgia Progressive Reading Grant.
Capstone Digital, developer of personalized learning environments for students, announces the recipients of its Georgia Progressive Reading Grant, a program focused on improving literacy in schools.
“We’re thrilled to provide schools with an innovative digital solution that will encourage students to read more books, more often in an exciting digital environment” said Haygood Poundstone, Vice President of Capstone Digital. “These students will have access to their own virtual backpack with over 1500 enhanced digital books (non-fiction and fiction) at their fingertips. And, it weighs nothing at all!”
Recipients of the 2011 Georgia Progressive Reading Grant are:
Atlanta Public Schools:
- Therrell High School of Law, Government and Public Policy
- King Middle School
Bibb County Schools:
- Alexander II Magnet School (Bibb County After School Program)
Twiggs County Schools
- Jeffersonville Elementary School
- Twiggs County Middle School
- Twiggs County High School
myON reader provides students with a unique online environment where they have access to the largest digital library with reading supports, including audio, highlighting and embedded dictionary, gives teachers access to personalize reading programs for their students, and gives administrators the ability to monitor and forecast reading growth based on class, grade, building and district.
“The Georgia Progressive Reading Grant will serve as another opportunity and avenue for TCPS to realize our number one goal, to increase learning and achievement for our students. The myON reader will provide our students and other school system stakeholders access to an online digital library with reading supports. We believe this will encourage students to read more books, and develop and/or expand their love of reading.” Dr. Valya Lee, Superintendent, Twiggs County Public Schools
For more information on myON reader, visit www.TheFutureinReading.com.
We had a great time visiting King Middle School during its World AIDS Day activities, which included a collaboration between the school’s guidance counselors Shirley McCullough and Ronald Garlington and grad-student interns Yori Aiyeola and Anthony DeCosta and from Clark Atlanta University, a class exercise in Alison Isabelle’s art class, and the making of “unity chains” by students. So we thought we’d share these images from yesterday’s visit. Enjoy!
From L-R: Anthony DeCosta, Marquis Trammell, Elizabeth Escandon, Mariela Macias, Jonathan Johnson, Yori Aiyeola
King Middle School commemorated World AIDS Day with a series of activities designed to provide teachable moments about a deadly disease that strikes too close to home for some. The No Place for Hate school took a cue from the Anti-Defamation League and designed work for students that included a quiz about the disease, hosting 10 panels from the AIDS Quilt Project, and an art project by students that will create a separate quilt for the school to showcase in its hallway.
Guidance counselors Shirley McCullough and Ronald Garlington partnered on the activities with Yori Aiyeola and Anthony DeCosta, who are completing an internship at King as part of their work on a master’s degree in school counseling at Clark Atlanta University. They recruited four “student ambassadors” – seventh-graders Jonathan Johnson and Marquis Trammell and sixth-graders Elizabeth Escandon and Mariela Macias – who had recently attended a day-long Power Over Prejudice conference at Georgia Tech.
Students spent their homeroom hour taking a pre-quiz about HIV/AIDS that led to classroom discussion and then a quiz to review topics such as how to contract the disease and the difference between HIV and AIDS. They then created “unity chains” that spoke to the disease and the need for greater awareness, understanding and prevention. Students in Alison Isabelle’s eighth-grade art class then fashioned artwork inspired by four words – hope, love, unity and remembrance – that would be assembled as tiles for the hallway “quilt.”
UPDATE: Check out Tom Dunn’s profile in the AJC!
Inspiring doesn’t begin to describe the New York Times profile of King Middle School teacher Tom Dunn. The veteran defender of death-row inmates entered the teaching profession through Teach for America, and has been putting his unique blend of idealism and lawyer’s grit to help build the character in the young men at King Middle.
In the article Dunn quotes Frederick Douglass, who said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” We couldn’t agree more; the cover story in our upcoming Atlanta Educator focuses on how APS is helping turn boys into men.
In the article Dunn talked about he tried to humanize his clients before judges, how telling the stories of their lives made them more than a number. Then something happened …
After decades of accumulating such stories, Mr. Dunn said, he recognized a common thread: the lack of a supportive authority figure like a teacher, of a helping hand that might have meant “the difference between a good life and a ruined life.”
Illness forced his decision to leave the law. In 2006, he ignored a sore throat and worked through two months of grueling hearings in four cases back to back. Bacteria entered his bloodstream, causing toxic shock; the infection caused deterioration in his spine and led to congestive heart failure. He recovered, but not fully; this year, Mr. Kammer recalled, Mr. Dunn met with the staff and said: “I have the heart of a 70-year-old man. If I continue to do this work at the level I want to do it, I’m going to die.”
The same day that he left the center, he showed up at the Atlanta training program of Teach for America. During his training, he focused on special education, recalling that he saw learning disabilities “in nearly every case” on death row. He now works mainly in classrooms that blend special education students with the general population.
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