Teachers' Facebook campaign raises $12,000 to help deaf student further education

February 11, 2013  |  

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MEGHA SATYANARAYANA/DETROIT FREE PRESS

By Megha Satyanarayana

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

     When Adela Garcia moved to Pullman in western Michigan, she was 10, deaf from birth and had never seen American Sign Language.
To communicate in her Spanish-speaking world, she used gestures and a sign language that only her family understood. Eleven years later, Garcia, 21, has a 3.8 grade point average and a letter of admission to Gallaudet University, the world's only liberal arts college for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. She's in Washington, D.C., at the university's English Language Institute, honing her English so she can tackle her freshman year of classes. But staying in school has been one challenge after another.
Days before the spring semester started, Garcia lost the grant that was supposed to pay for her English classes. She told the Free Press through an interpreter that she was disappointed, but determined to stay positive.
Back in Michigan, her teachers in the Van Buren Intermediate School District were stunned -- they said coming back to Pullman would mean fewer post-high school opportunities. So, in the span of two weeks in January, Garcia's teachers turned to Facebook and raised more than $12,000 to make up for the grant and get her into that spring semester.
On Jan. 25, the last day her fees could be paid, Garcia learned she could attend her spring semester English classes. That day, she posted a video message that was captioned to the people on Facebook who helped her stay in school. "Hello, I'm here in class," she signed, smiling broadly, with subtitles below. "Finally for raised money for college. Thank you so much to everyone. Love you all."
One of Garcia's first teachers, Amy Fleischmann, said the young woman is not only the first person in her family to go to college, but the first to graduate from the district's program for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in Lawrence. She teared up as she described why she and Garcia's other teachers turned to friends and strangers to help pay for their student's future.
"We see such potential in her and we know she can do it," said Fleishmann, "There's not opportunity for her here. She's paving the way."

Starting at square one

On Garcia's first day of school, Fleishmann and her other teachers were challenged -- the little girl had spent several years in Mexican schools with no services for deaf people. She not only had to learn American Sign Language (ASL) to take any course from math to history, but she also had to learn English, upon which ASL was based.
"We pretty much started at square one," said Fleischmann, now a teacher consultant with the Van Buren Intermediate School District.
Garcia, who was born in Washington, moved to Mexico with her mother when she was very young. After returning to Michigan,
she was eager to learn. Through things like cooking and scrapbooking, she started learning English words and the signs that went with them. But every night, she went home to Spanish. To keep English fresh in her mind, she said, she watched television with closed captioning on. She studied in the evenings. And, slowly, English began to click.
"The first year of school, I did not understand anything," said Garcia in sign language. "Once I learned how to communicate and express myself, it really skyrocketed."

Broadening horizons

There isn't a lot to do in Pullman, said Garcia. The unincorporated community is in Lee Township, about halfway between Allegan and South Haven.
It's a one-intersection settlement, said Allegan County Clerk Joyce Watts, and in the most agriculturally-rich county in Michigan, Garcia's area is an exception. "Lee Township has some of the most beautiful lakes," said Watts, "but it's clay. It's not good farmland."
Yet the area is attractive to both poor and rich people, because of nearly nonexistent property taxes and building codes. Chicago retirees live next to lifelong Pullmanites who live next to farm workers in an area that lacks a centralized water system.
"You have very marginal dwellings and very beautiful homes," Watts said.
Garcia said for fun, kids play in the woods and go to the mall. But not many kids from her area go to college, and with limited options in Pullman as a deaf person, her teachers decided it was time to expand her horizons.
An opportunity came to visit Gallaudet during her junior year, and Garcia and four others in the program for deaf students raised the money to hop a plane to the nation's capital. She wasn't sure what Washington, D.C., was going to be like, but she was ready for the chance to explore.
At Gallaudet, Garcia was entranced. She said everywhere she went, hands were flying, and in the gestures, she could understand what was going on.
"I walked in and was like, there were so many deaf people signing -- the teachers, the students -- it was a dream come true," she said.
Fleischmann said the visit was a one-of-a-kind experience for the students.
"It opened the student's eyes to options outside of our small town," she said. "The kids were able to go to Subway and order their sandwiches because everyone signed."
And Garcia was hooked. Back in Pullman, she continued to study, baby-sitting her nieces and nephews while her older siblings worked. In her senior year, she applied for undergraduate admission with the goal of studying graphic art and design. She was accepted, but conditionally. Her English still wasn't strong enough to do college work, the university said, despite the strides she'd made. To get to that level of English proficiency, she needed more English classes and decided to enroll in Gallaudet's English Language Institute. At the end of the summer, she bid Michigan farewell and moved into a dorm in Washington, D.C., to study English all day, nearly every day.

Overcoming obstacles

Gallaudet's English Language Institute has five levels of study students go through to master English, said Ali Sanjabi, a operations staff member at the school. Garcia tested at Level Three and must pass Level Five to have the best chances of scoring well on the ACT and Gallaudet's proficiency exams.
Students take anywhere from one semester to three years to master enough English and American Sign Language to be able to do college work, Sanjabi said. Garcia said she hoped to be done in two semesters and finished her first in December, going from Level Three to Level Four. That's when she lost the funding.
Fleischmann said the vocational agency that gave her the grant didn't feel she was progressing fast enough, even though she was only one level from proficiency as the spring semester started.
"It was like the rug was pulled out from under her. It was just obstacle after obstacle," said Fleischmann.
She and Rebecca Sidders, another teacher, said they couldn't let Garcia come home. So the women reached out to everyone they knew on Facebook. They shared her story and encouraged her to post to the page. The money started coming in.
One of her donors was Jacqueline Deneau, 62, of Hartford. After seeing Garcia's video in her Facebook feed, she decided to donate to the young woman, even though she didn't know her.
"This girl is trying so hard to get educated," said Deneau. "I just had compassion for what she's gone through."
As they reached the $10,000 mark with just a day or two spare, there was another setback. The grant had been pulled before all her fall payments had been made. In addition to the $10,000 for spring tuition, there was suddenly a bill for $2,000 more in fall payments.
Sidders and Fleischmann made one final plea, and people from Michigan to Oregon and everywhere between pitched in.
Garcia's last bill was paid. She went to class and her teachers were able to relax. Garcia, their first graduate, was back to learning and living in a world she has made so much bigger than those few hand gestures from when she was 10.
"She's had to adapt so much," said Fleischmann. "It was a little overwhelming. For her to be -- 11 years later -- college bound, is really amazing."
Contact Megha Satyanarayana: 313-222-8767 or megha@freepress.com

Novi Freshman scores hockey goals and Make a Wish

           Coaches are always speaking about character. For Novi freshman Ryan Rabinowitz, a hockey player on the Wildcats freshman team, he already has the character trait pretty well licked. In a video story posted below, Rabinowitz and ten other students turned a character building program at their elementary school into a real life experience. In the process, they have helped Caitlin Fokken who was struck with four strokes after receiving a vaccination. Their story is listed below. 

http://youtu.be/aCqb99rJtns

Detroit Public Schools post improved MEAP Scores

Video story is below.

DETROIT -
Detroit Public Schools students scored record gains on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program Test for the fall of 2012, with improvement in 17 out of 18 assessments.
DPS increases outpaced statewide progress, “closing the gap,” in 14 out of 18 assessments administered.
Gains were especially significant in reading and mathematics.

In reading, students made gains ranging from 3 percent to 11.3 percent in all grades 3 through 8.
One particularly impressive result is that DPS students bested their statewide peers in grade 8 reading by 7.1 percent. In Mathematics, improvement in students’ proficiency ranged from .5 percent to 6.7 percent in grades 3 through 8.
Gains were also seen in Science, Writing and Social Studies in all grades, except one.
“These test results are great news, but we know we have more work to do, as a district and in every school,” said Emergency Financial Manager Roy S. Roberts. “Detroit Public Schools’ goal is to ensure that every child is successful, and we are doing everything in our power to make that happen.”
“These gains aren’t due to any one silver bullet,” said Karen Ridgeway, Superintendent of Academics. “They are due to a comprehensive academic plan that includes robust professional development for our teachers and all academic staff, constant data analysis and regular alterations to teaching strategies to meet the needs of every child individually.”
Some of the academic plan highlights included:

• Individual Learning Maps, which are academic blueprints for every child based on what they have learned and where are their strengths and weaknesses
• Netbooks for use by every student in grades 6-12 and a robust technology curriculum
• Take-home Netbooks for grades 8-12, with parent consent
• Extended time in Reading and Mathematics instruction for all elementary students and double-dosing of subjects, where needed
• Parent Engagement initiatives, including workshops and eight neighborhood Parent Resource Centers, and take-home academic toolkits
• Lesson plans based on the Common Core State Academic Standards so that all classrooms, using their own teaching methods, adhered to standards of what children are expected to know and be able to do at each grade level in each subject

Additional professional development includes a new high-tech platform called PD 360, a system which allows teachers and staff to access a library of over 20 videos from experts on a variety of educational topics and lessons.
The coming attractions for the second semester of 2013 include:

• Updated Individual Learning Maps
• Assistance and training to help parents and students understand each child’s academic data
• New workshops in the Parent Resource Centers on data analysis
• More robust professional development for academic staff and increased use of differentiated instruction based on researched best practices and data analysis
• New easy-to-use Individual Learning Maps in the form of tri-fold brochures with each child’s academic data showing what they have learned and what they need to learn.

• http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/Detroit-Public-Schools-says-students-district-wide-score-record-gains-on-MEAP-test/-/1719418/18493806/-/2qfayk/-/index.html

KLAA2013 Cheerleader Highlights from Conference Championship

Below is both a 30 minute show of the KLAA Cheerleaders and a 2:30 minute Oakland Press recap that I shot.
http://youtu.be/PC_lAzJwuOg  Feature Story

1 camera highlight show of selected groups
http://youtu.be/BrUpMK9Gar4


http://www.theoaklandpress.com/

Destination Imagination (DI) Team uses public service as their challenge

   When Waterford Enrichment Coordinator Betsy Grossnickle forms teams by connecting parents with willing children, it is often hard work and occasionally a sales job to form teams. But Grossnickle's influence has one team helping her recruit future DI students and parents to form teams. This team from Pierce Middle in Waterford hopes to build future dreamers and doers who use their imagination and creativity and this turns parents from instead of doing their children's projects to being amazed at what their children can think of. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72x_nOZzEzw

http://youtu.be/z8LGwZx27Cc

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

From Teaching Tolerance Magazine Number 43: Spring 2013

Illustration by Chris Buzelli

In Meridian, Miss., police routinely arrest and transport youths to a juvenile detention center for minor classroom misbehaviors. In Jefferson Parish, La., according to a U.S. Department of Justice complaint, school officials have given armed police “unfettered authority to stop, frisk, detain, question, search and arrest schoolchildren on and off school grounds.” In Birmingham, Ala., police officers are permanently stationed in nearly every high school.
In fact, hundreds of school districts across the country employ discipline policies that push students out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system at alarming rates—a phenomenon known as the school-to-prison pipeline.
Last month, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., held the first federal hearing on the school-to-prison pipeline—an important step toward ending policies that favor incarceration over education and disproportionately push minority students and students with disabilities out of schools and into jails.
In opening the hearing, Durbin told the subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “For many young people, our schools are increasingly a gateway to the criminal justice system. This phenomenon is a consequence of a culture of zero tolerance that is widespread in our schools and is depriving many children of their fundamental right to an education.”
A wide array of organizations—including the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP and Dignity in Schools—offered testimony during the hearing. They joined representatives from the Departments of Education and Justice to shine a national spotlight on a situation viewed far too often as a local responsibility.
“We have a national problem that deserves federal action,” Matthew Cregor, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, explained. “With suspension a top predictor of dropout, we must confront this practice if we are ever to end the ‘dropout crisis’ or the so-called achievement gap.” In the words of Vermont’s Sen. Patrick Leahy, “As a nation, we can do better.”
What is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?
Policies that encourage police presence at schools, harsh tactics including physical restraint, and automatic punishments that result in suspensions and out-of-class time are huge contributors to the pipeline, but the problem is more complex than that.
The school-to-prison pipeline starts (or is best avoided) in the classroom. When combined with zero-tolerance policies, a teacher’s decision to refer students for punishment can mean they are pushed out of the classroom—and much more likely to be introduced into the criminal justice system.
Who’s in the Pipeline?
Students from two groups—racial minorities and children with disabilities—are disproportionately represented in the school-to-prison pipeline. African-American students, for instance, are 3.5 times more likely than their white classmates to be suspended or expelled, according to a nationwide study by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. Black children constitute 18 percent of students, but they account 46 percent of those suspended more than once.
For students with disabilities, the numbers are equally troubling. One report found that while 8.6 percent of public school children have been identified as having disabilities that affect their ability to learn, these students make up 32 percent of youth in juvenile detention centers.
The racial disparities are even starker for students with disabilities. About 1 in 4 black children with disabilities were suspended at least once, versus 1 in 11 white students, according to an analysis of the government report by Daniel J. Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.
A landmark study published last year tracked nearly 1 million Texas students for at least six years. The study controlled for more than 80 variables, such as socioeconomic class, to see how they affected the likelihood of school discipline. The study found that African Americans were disproportionately punished compared with otherwise similar white and Latino students. Children with emotional disabilities also were disproportionately suspended and expelled.
In other studies, Losen found racial differences in suspension rates have widened since the early 1970s and that suspension is being used more frequently as a disciplinary tool. But he said his recent study and other research show that removing children from school does not improve their behavior. Instead, it greatly increases the likelihood that they’ll drop out and wind up behind bars.
Punishing Policies
The SPLC advocates for changes to end the school-to-prison pipeline and has filed lawsuits or civil rights complaints against districts with punitive discipline practices that are discriminatory in impact.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the number of school resource officers rose 38 percent between 1997 and 2007. Jerri Katzerman, SPLC deputy legal director, said this surge in police on campus has helped to criminalize many students and fill the pipeline.
One 2005 study found that children are far more likely to be arrested at school than they were a generation ago. The vast majority of these arrests are for nonviolent offenses. In most cases, the students are simply being disruptive. And a recent U.S. Department of Education study found that more than 70 percent of students arrested in school-related incidents or referred to law enforcement are black or Hispanic. Zero-tolerance policies, which set one-size-fits-all punishments for a variety of behaviors, have fed these trends.
Best Practices
Instead of pushing children out, Katzerman said, “Teachers need a lot more support and training for effective discipline, and schools need to use best practices for behavior modification to keep these kids in school where they belong.”
Keeping at-risk kids in class can be a tough order for educators under pressure to meet accountability measures, but classroom teachers are in a unique position to divert students from the school-to-prison pipeline.
Teachers know their students better than any resource officer or administrator—which puts them in a singularly empowered position to keep students in the classroom. It’s not easy, but when teachers take a more responsive and less punitive approach in the classroom, students are more likely to complete their education.
The information in "A Teacher's Guide to Rerouting the Pipeline" highlights common scenarios that push young people into the school-to-prison pipeline and offers practical advice for how teachers can dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.
>> Avoiding the Pipeline
How can school districts divert the school-to-prison pipeline?
1. Increase the use of positive behavior interventions and supports.
2. Compile annual reports on the total number of disciplinary actions that push students out of the classroom based on gender, race and ability.
3. Create agreements with police departments and court systems to limit arrests at school and the use of restraints, such as mace and handcuffs.
4. Provide simple explanations of infractions and prescribed responses in the student code of conduct to ensure fairness.
5. Create appropriate limits on the use of law enforcement in public schools.
6. Train teachers on the use of positive behavior supports for at-risk students.
>> Toolkit: Want to deepen your understanding of the school-to-prison pipeline?
>> Check out our infographic
>> Read the PDF version of this article

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Doug Fister and Austin Jackson serve up lunch at Red Robins restaurant in Madison Heights

The Detroit Tigers Austin Jackson and Doug Fister were serving up lunch to fans. 

I get silly with Fister at Red Robin restaurant in Madison Heights. 
Video story at the Oakland Press and on You Tube.
http://youtu.be/huio0NRjXLA