Snow Day 2: School Project Group Meeting Cancelled

Area schools and public libraries are closed today, so we will cancel this month’s meeting. Next week Kirsten and/or I will send out an e-mail blast (and post here as well) updates on our hot topics.

At the February meeting we will actually begin enrolling families for 2009! In the updates next week we’ll let everyone know what types of documentation they will need for enrollment.

See you on Art Hill!

Poem: To Be Of Use

Debra Cole, a dear colleague who started the dual-language program in rural Beardstown, IL (pop. 5800) sent the following e-mail after learning our facilities set back last week.  Thanks Debra for keeping our work in your heart!

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Dear Rhonda and Lisa – I was reading the SLLIS blog this AM, the exciting research Lisa is undertaking and the seeming set back with identifying a location, and thought I’d share with you a poem by American poet Marge Piercy (you may already know it!) It was first shared with me at Christmas time by Gloria and Carla (my WIU cohorts in hard work!).  Thanks for the “work that is real” you are undertaking for SLLIS.

To Be Of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

SLLIS server not so slow afterall

Apparantly our server is working just fine for everyone/ every location outside of my office.  When the wintry mix started to fall this afternoon I left the office early and as soon as I opened the laptop at home my SLLIS account filled up with my afternoon e-mails.  René, our tech support extraordinaire, thinks that the firewall at Grand Center is blocking sllis.org (our webpage wouldn’t load while I was in the office either).  Hopefully he and the Grand Center tech guru can figure it out and restore my settings soon.  In the meantime, if your e-mails bounce back with a firewall error, try me at the gmail account.

See y’all tomorrow, weather permitting.  If we decide to cancel tomorrow’s school project meeting we’ll send out e-mail, blog, text, phone updates.

Stay warm!

SLLIS server slooooooow

For the past week we’ve been experiencing delayed e-mails (in and out) for the sllis.org accounts.  I apologize to anyone who has received bounced back/blocked e-mails.  The main sllis.org webpage is also slow to load.

Our tech support is aware of the problem and is working on it.  In the meantime, if you need to reach us call the office 314.289.1520.  Alternately you can reach me at La Crèche’s e-mail account lacrechestl[at]gmail.com.

I look forward to checking in at tomorrow night’s School Project Group meeting.

¡Hasta manana et à demain!

R

Where are you located?

Last week during the final lease negotiations it became clear to our facilities committee that the owner/developer of the Papin space was not ready/able to finance the build-out for our lease space.  In typical SLLIS fashion, we immediately went out to look at other properties, had the team from Christner draw up rough space usage plans and are aggressively pursuing a new location.  Those of you who’ve been with us for a while will remember that we considered the Manchester/MacCausland area early on in the process.  An Office Max recently closed in St. Louis Marketplace and is the appropriate size for a 1-2 year incubator site.

January 15th was our milestone, internal deadline for signing a lease for July 1 occupancy and August 17th first day of school.  Industry professionals tell us that a building in recently occupied white box condition, like this Office Max, can be built out in 60 days.  The owner’s drawings for the space appear more professional to my lay-eyes and we have drafted a new lease for negotiations.  I would love to have good facilities news at next Wednesday’s School Project Group meeting.

Inhale. Our school is not our building. Exhale. The lack of equitable access to facilities hurts more than ever in times like these.

Best Foreign Language Picture

During meetings last weekend advocates suggested that I see The Class and Slumdog Millionaire because they had powerful connections with our school vision.  Imagine my delight when both films were nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Oscars!  Thanks Shark Fu and Donayle!   Has anyone seen the other nominees?

Who’s eligible to attend? (again)

Yesterday a member of our school project group called me with concern about the county-to-city transfer residency guidelines.  Today I met with Bruce Ellerman, CEO of VICC, to clarify residency eligibility for county residents.  The pertinent take-aways are:

• Ladue is clearly eligible for county residents to attend our schools
• The restriction of areas of certain school districts only applies to city-to-county transfers
• VICC is prohibited from providing transportation to our students (there are some exceptions to this that we can discuss if you’re interested) because their funding can only be spent on sanctioned desegregation programming
• When the deseg statutes were scheduled to expire in 2009-2010, the participating county districts voted to extend their participation for another five years because the city schools were in the process of  losing their accrediation.  In 2013-2014 county schools will accept their last starting class of city students.  At that point the county-to-city transfer would also cease.  All students enrolled by 2013 will be allowed to continue their education in the ir transfer school districts, but their siblings will not be allowed to join.

Bruce was quite helpful and gracious and explained that the vast majority of their requests are for city-to-county transfers, which clarifies why that information is featured more prominently on their website.

To clarify the eligible county districts for Non-African-American students are:

* Affton
* Bayless
* Brentwood
* Clayton
* Hancock Place
* Kirkwood
* Ladue (omitted from previous posting)
* Lindbergh
* Mehlville
* Parkway
* Pattonville
* Ritenour
* Rockwood
* Valley Park
* Webster Groves

First SLLIS research project

It’s been an exciting few weeks! Approval for the first SLLIS research project – about parent involvement in education – has been received. Moreover, the date for Missouri charter authorization rapidly approaches. At that time, the real work of enrolling and engaging parents will begin in full force. That’s not to say SLLIS hasn’t been hitting the streets – and the events and the day cares and the preschools – for over 2 years now. Most recently, the team has spoken with organizations ranging from the Child Development Center at UMSL to the Refugee and Immigrant Consortium of St. Louis. The goal is to make sure that all city families and care-givers from all socio-economic, language, ethnic, etc., backgrounds have the information that they need to make the best decision for their children’s education. SLLIS wants to make sure that all parents know about this opportunity to learn in another language and through the IB Primary Years Programme.  And what a time to think about engaging parents and reaching out, on this very day that our new President Barack Obama has made so clear that the way to change is to work hard serving others, and not “underestimate the power for people to pull together and to accomplish amazing things”.

The First SLLIS Research Project

The objective of this first research project connected to SLLIS is to analyze the recruitment and engagement of families preceding and during the opening year (2009-2010) of the French and Spanish schools. Using observation and interview research methods, this project will address two questions: How is the SLLIS parent involvement policy designed? And what types of engagement does it encourage for diverse families? The results should help develop theory regarding parent involvement in education, as well as provide direct feedback to St. Louis area schools about how to best engage families.

Lisa Dorner

Salut o Hola: January 19-30

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 9am Kirkwood UMC Mom’s Day Out, morning drop-off table

Wednesday, January 28, 2009 School Project Group Meeting/info session 6pm at Buder Library (large conference room downstairs), childcare provided

Friday, January 30, 2009  Washington University Career Fair, Athletic Complex  9am-2:30pm

Employment advantages of being bilingual

This morning I received the following newsbrief from the Language Immersion in the Americas listserve through University of Minnesota.

–

From our colleagues at Center for Applied Second Language Studies CASLS:

Source:  California Language Teachers Association (CLTA) News Flash*

If you search for jobs at Monster.com at any time, you will find thousands of jobs for speakers of all languages. Here are some average findings (which may vary from day to day).

* At any given time, approximately 1000 employers nationwide are looking for French speakers. 200-400 of those jobs are here in California.
* There are approximately 500 new jobs available for German speakers. Nearly 100 of those are in California.
* If you speak Chinese, there are typically more than 800 job openings in the country, of which more than 300 are in California.
* If you speak Japanese, there are more than 1400 job openings in the country. In California, there are 400 employers looking for Japanese speakers.
* Spanish, of course, tops the list, with more than 8,300 jobs nationwide and almost 3000 jobs in California. With all languages combined, there are typically nearly 4000 jobs for bilingual individuals in California. That’s a lot of organizations, industries and companies that need employees with language skills. Are we preparing our students to meet this need?
* What kinds of jobs are these? Regardless of specific language needed, the jobs I find on monster.com <http://monster.com/> span all fields: medical, legal, computer technology, science and research, engineering, fashion and interior design, graphic design, editorial, administrative assistants, accountants, and many others.

from CLTA Advocacy Chair, Nicole Naditz

Johnson, L. CLTA News Flash, January 2, 2009.