I guess I didn't really tell people about this: I am enrolled in a Master's program at Grand Canyon University as an online student. I will have enough credits to keep my job for next year in about eight weeks. Hooray!

This is a picture of the mall at GCU

I fixed the pictures in the Loss of a Kiddo post. Please check them out if you didn't see them before.

A school district in Phoenix that includes infamous landmarks in recent national stories (see: Joe Arpaio's pink-clad prisoners picking trash on 40th St. and McDowell, protesters gathering at Pruitt's furniture on 36th and Thomas) has become the first in the state of Arizona to exercise the option of adding 20 days to their school calendar.

A 12-year old state law allows extra funds for districts that move to a 200-day schedule; so far no public schools have done so. Confronting social and political realities that include Mr. Arpaio's vigorous para-military border patrol, state-mandated Structured English Immersion classes that amount to de facto segregation (whites and blacks in one class, Hispanics in another, African refugees in a third), and schools with over 90% free- and reduced-lunch, Balsz District has made a bold move to reduce the learning disparity between students above and below the poverty line. While time off for wealthier students often includes extra-curricular learning activies, structured sports leagues, and overnight summer camps, lower income students face starker choices: trips to parks and pools (supervised or not), going to school campuses for pick-up soccer or to tag the walls with graffiti, walking for 45 minutes crossing 6 lanes of traffic to get to the library or just playing that video game again.

The schools of the Balsz District are more than reading, writing and arithmetic. They are sources of education from pre-school to adulthood, offering free services ranging from English lessons for anyone in the community to informal assistance with translating and creating resumes. Kids stay at school for a wide variety of activities despite budget cuts that left the district with no formal sports teams or public funding. They come back at night and on weekends for open gym activities or just to play on the playgrounds, and they bring their relatives and neighbors to campus for award-winning Family Night programs.

Unfortunately, even with far-sighted leadership and extra state funds for the project, Balsz District is still unable to make basic, common-sense choices about staffing due to cuts in the state budget. With no money to make new hires, great young teachers are being left at the bottom of the seniority ladder, becoming the first casulties of Reduction in Force letters and being asked to move campuses and grades with no regard for grade-level team communities or quality of instruction. Thanks to a partnership with Arizona State University, terrific young interns and student teachers have been funneled into areas of need, where they frequently come to stay. However, as ASU's skyrocketing tuition and dramatic changes based on state funding are implemented, fewer up and coming teachers will be aware of the small district in the crosshairs of poverty and community, latent racism and acceptance of new cultures, and hurricanes of transience that swirl chaotically around a hub of families that resist the pull of gangs, drugs, and the culture of cynicism and anarchy.

The 20 extra days of school in this environment will ultimately provide an extra year of instruction for students who manage who stay in Balsz schools from kindergarten to 8th grade. At the margins and in aggregate, this move is working for the benefit of the constituents who make Balsz School District a viable entity; a small, lean, innovative district in a culture of large, bureaucratic management of education.

Balsz District is an example for school districts nationwide who are looking to improve, not only the test scores of their students, but the lives and futures of their students and their community, and we feel that we are worthy and deserving of local and national attention for our efforts in the face of distressing financial news. Schools do not get earmarks; we don't have the bully pulpit of pocketed Senators and Congressmen looking to inject money into our swelling coffers. Schools are eking out an existence writing grants for services that should be provided by the state, every year glancing with trepidation at the latest news of budgets, attendance data, override elections. Will we be able to provide art, music, counseling, a full-time nurse, planning time for our teachers? Will we be able to staff our schools with two full-time, accredited administrators? The answers to these questions over the past few years, for Balsz and many other districts, has been resoundingly negative. We at Balsz are proud of having succeeded (4 of 5 schools are Performing according to state standards) in the face of tremendously difficult circumstances. If the money is there (guaranteed by the state, but who knows what that means) the teachers of Balsz District will be teaching a month after all the other schools have closed their doors, working to close the gap between the education Haves and Have-Nots. It is our hope that publicity for our situation and for our choice to extend the school year will help to persuade the politicians that there are schools making good choices, choices that benefit the students rather than serving the interests of the teachers. No longer can the joke be made here that the three best things about teaching are June, July, and August. If the money is produced, the doors at Balsz District will be open for at least one week of instruction in every month of the year.

Bret Sikkink
Balsz Elementary School
Special Education teacher
Autism Spectrum Disorder, self-contained
(515) 210-4540

Links:
Arizona Republic front-page story about the district
Balsz School District home page
Attached is a labeled satellite image of the district

Sorry for the sheisty photograph, but I couldn't really find much in the way of Creative Commons licenses for this specific pose.

Miss Bee taught her first yoga class on Friday!

It was great - there were six students, and pretty much everyone knew what they were doing. She planned her series of poses in the afternoon right before class, and I made the 80 minute mix of songs she was going to play. I think both of us were very happy with our contributions!

My favorite moment of the class was a transition that Miss Bee was very proud of. It was right in the middle of the class, and we had made our way back to Downward Facing Dog (there's a lot of that in Ashtanga). Then we did something called a Half Wild Thing, which means that we took one foot off the ground in Down Dog and twisted round. Then we took that foot and brought it all the way forward into Pigeon pose, seen in the picture. As we were doing that, a DJ Shadow song was playing called "Midnight in a Perfect World". I was so proud of Miss Bee's transition and happy at how my song seemed to be working with the class!

Listen to an extended mix of "Midnight". Highly recommended for yogic activity!


She got compliments and an ovation from everyone in the class when she was done, and one of the students who is also in the yoga teaching training asked for a copy of the mix!

Click here to download "Yogurt".
Tracklisting:

In other news:

-After the class we went to a convocation party for Miss Bee's best teacher friend Katie. Congratulations on your Masters!

-On Saturday we went shopping for some new winter clothes. I got some purple slacks at Goodwill and Miss Bee got a velour sweathshirt with a drawstring at the bottom to keep the wind out! Then at the Buffalo Exchange I got a pink cashmere sweater and Miss Bee found a gray cardigan with flowers embroidered on it - we're all ready for the Iowa Winter now. (...)

-We also went to a student's birthday party, complete with two pinatas, a brinca brinca (pictured below for you gringos), and of course, authentic rice and beans with some sort of oily roast beast.

-After the party we went to a pretty cool coffeehouse called Cartel Coffee Labs in Tempe to meet a few friends. Really awesome space, with mostly found and amateur art and decoration. The coffee itself was amazing, and very strong, from freshly (in-house) roasted organic beans brewed one cup at a time. Visit Cartel online for more information - those of you in Des Moines can try some with me, as we bought a pound of Brazilian whole beans.

-For the coup de grace, we went to see The Godfather at the Tempe Valley Arts theater. My favorite film on the big screen, in a newly restored version! Absolutely stunning.

...is very rewarding. There're just not that many free things in the world.

Here's the branch we go to. I saw a little dude from Miss Bee's old class (!) there today with his family. We looked at science movies together.

School, for those who wonder, is going very well. Mr. S. seems to be getting a little better each week. I'm starting to hit science on all cylinders, since it's pretty easy to interest kids in simple science projects. So far we've had "Movie Fridays" each week, which seems pretty trashy to me, but I've showed a related-to-our-Science-Topic video every time except when we watched the 45 min. Sideways Stories from Wayside School movie.

Any further work-related questions will have to be submitted in writing.



On the lifestyle side, Miss Bee is now attending yoga teacher training courses, for those who don't know. This means that twice a week Mr. S. is sitting alone in the apartment for several hours. So far I've done a little work, watched a lot of Twin Peaks, and gone to the gym while she's away.

So that's life. I'd love to tell more, but I don't want to ruin any good stories I might have to tell in person. Cheerio!

P.S., I picked up World Psychedelic Classics, Vol. 3: Fuzzy Sounds from West Africa on hold at the library, and on impulse I snatched the Criterion Collection DVD of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. The gym might have to wait tonight...

Also, an apology for the lack of recipe directions last time. I'll do better next time.

The first two are from this year, my students.

Felipe's workspace this year is Decked Out.

We did a puzzle together that he was quite proud of.

These next three are of my buddy Ismail. He's not in my class this year, but he does some hilarious things that we get pictures of.

Wearing Miss Bee's shades

Wearing Mr. Jason's shades

Wearing a pink toy on his head.

I wrested control of the camera from Miss Bee one day last week and took the following photos of my students. To introduce:

Felipe is a 5th grader. He's wearing a bike helmet for no good reason.

Alex is a 6th grader, Anthony is a 5th grader. We were listening to "I Feel Good" by James Brown at the time.

Alonzo is a kindergartner. He's wearing a bike helmet because he's riding a trike.

Logan is a kindergartner with a tendency to turn away from the camera.

I also have been using the built-in camera on my computer as a tool for having some fun together. Here are some highlights.

Felipe looks awesome in this picture.

Ditto Anthony.

Miss Bee dropped by the room.

This didn't actually hurt, although it appears that Alex is ripping my head off.

This was a complete accident - I was trying to show Anthony's mom the pictures we had taken and hit the wrong button. It turned out relatively awesome though.

Just a reminder to any readers that come to the site, the sidebar on the right contains an box with the last five items that I've shared in Google Reader. I try to reserve these for interesting intellectual reading that would be both time-consuming (to me) to write up, and also probably rather boring for the people who read my blog, basically just my family.

Today I've shared a piece from the Becker-Posner blog, whom I've covered before, about "bribing" poor children to stay in school. The post is by Becker, about a Mexican program that pays parents to keep their kids in school, and the recent NYC initiative to pay high schoolers for passing performance. Interesting reading. And of course, check out my other starred items while you're at it.

Incidentally, if there are any Google Readers out there, you can either subscribe to my shared items as an RSS feed, or you can "friend" me.

My colleague (and, um, girlfriend) is blogging again over at Miss Bee. She apologizes for the long wait. See her new post here.

To whet your appetite for elementary education, here's a quick anecdote. After school there's a madhouse of children going for cars lined up in the fire lane, walking home, self-immolating, etc. So the other day, one of Miss B's kids is being directed by his former kindergarten teacher to go to the car by me.

Ms. Kinder: "Saul, your car's over there. By Mr. S."
Saul: "That's not Mr. S. That's BRET!"

Same kid who cut a milk carton in half the day after Earth Day and wore it on top of his head like some kind of robot space cadet.

Oh, I found a picture of him...

Nothing doing here these days. No good pictures, lots of work. Anyways, I've created an online album dedicated to the autistic kids I worked with before.

Alfred: (He's the star of the show. So cute.)

Hannah: She and Alfred are six-ish.

Felipe: He's 10.

Anthony: 4th grade for reading class and PE!

Ismail: 7 or 8.

For a few more pictures, almost all of Alfred, head on over to my Picasa.

I couldn't think of any unifying theme for this one, just a bunch of photos clogging up the old hard drive space. (Not really, as they're very small.)

Meet Ismail Iman. He's one of the students I work with in the self-contained autism class.

This is the potato and baby bello mushroom flatbread my mom and I made when the parents visited:

Here's Miss B.'s class with me and another student of mine, Alfred.

This is a silly photo, for the record.

Here's a meal. Not sure what it is.

Rochefort 8. I had the 10 a couple months ago, didn't think to photograph it. Messing around with the settings on the new camera.


Here's what a new Hummer looks like parked in our apartment complex's spaces.

Me at a bags tournament, known as "cornhole" 'round these parts. Thanks to Leslie for the hat and the consignment shop for the sweater.

Macayo's Mexican cantina. Playing around with the color settings again.

This one isolates the yellows.

Let's see that again in red.

And the Macro setting.

A pitcher of margaritas is too much for us.

But nonetheless, down it must go.