I Speak of Dreams

Thoughtful Kid

My house is heated with radiant heat, which is great.  When it works.  It's old, and an essential part has rusted out.  Delivery is sometime mid-December.

So what we have is radiant cold.  Last night the tempurature in the entry way was 36 degrees.  Today at noon it was 15 degrees warmer OUTSIDE than inside.

So we're heating two rooms -- the den and JumperGirl's bedroom -- with plug-in baseboard heaters.   I'm heating my bedroom with a hotpad at my feet and a pile of quilts.

JG just poked her nose into the den -- "Mommy, I thought you'd gone to sleep.  I was just checking that the heater was off."

Julie's Back!

Julie Leung of Seedlings & Sprouts is back blogging.  Hooray!

Cleveland: Identify and Remediate Youth

Last year, psychologists found that roughly three-quarters of the 117 Cleveland schools students in the county detention center showed signs of at least one learning disability. The court notified the district of its findings, but lacked the resources to determine whether school officials ultimately acted. Now, starting with McCarthy's $100,000 donation and vociferous advocacy, the Juvenile Court plans to expand on the 2005 pilot program. This time it will screen juvenile offenders, make referrals to school officials and then track what the district does in response. If the schools fall short, the court may have an outside contractor file suit against the district.

Wasted Years: One Boy's Story of Untreated Dyslexia

The Willoughby-Eastlake School District is slowly starting to use a reputable reading program for all students.  But it isn't universal -- "at least one teacher in each building" is too few.

Sadly, it is too late for a boy now in high school.

Victoria Hickman, 18, Alcohol Poisoning

Updated: see below the fold.  The college is still refusing to comment.

My deepest condolences to her family and friends, regardless of the cause of death.

A freshman at York College appeared to have died from alcohol poisoning, police said, but a spokesman for the college said it was premature to draw that conclusion.

"She was drinking at the dorm with other people, just drinking shots -- vodka -- not beer," York City Police Detective Jeffrey Spence said of Victoria Hickman, 18, of Pennsauken, N.J.

When others in the dormitory woke up Monday, they realized Hickman was not breathing and called 911, Spence said.

David Salter, the college's director of public relations, objected to the reference to drinking.

"Police officers made irresponsible statements, which may or may not be true," Salter said, adding that York College will punish any students found to have alcohol in their dormitories.

"We are a dry campus," Salter said.

Hickman's parents declined to comment Tuesday.

William Hyde, 20, Suspected Alcohol Overdose

My deepest condolences to his family and friends.

On Tuesday evening, November , 2006, William Hyde was at a party that involved drinking.  He was found dead in his bed the following afternoon.

http://www.wesh.com/news/10233678/detail.html?subid=22100409&qs=1;bp=t

MyDeathSpace.Com

Learning to Write Well: Draft, Revise, Revise, Revise, Revise

AKMA pointed me to Laurence Musgrove, who  pinpoints the weakness in most writing -- student writing particularly:

I believe most students equate writing with transcription because the texts they most often encounter are the perfectly polished written products found in books, newspapers, and magazines. Since the hard work of composing those texts is hidden from readers, they believe that good writers think up what they want to say and then copy down their fully-formed thoughts onto the page. Thus, many students think they can’t begin to write until they have decided what they want to say. This, of course, is no news to composition theorists and teachers of rhetoric. But an alternative approach is rarely presented to students.

No Child Left Behind: The Football Version

Via the very readable Dick Dalton

No Child Left Behind: The Football Version

Author Unknown

l. All teams must make the state playoffs, and all will win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time and in the same conditions. No exceptions will be made for interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL

3. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren’t interested in football, have limited athletic ability, or whose parents don’t like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th games.

5. This will create a New Age of sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimal goals.

If no child gets ahead, then no child will be left behind.

High Achieving Dyslexics: Richard Engel, Journalist

Richard Engel is

NBC News Middle East Correspondent and Beirut, Lebanon Bureau Chief. Engel, the only television news correspondent to cover the entire war in Iraq for an American television network from Baghdad, joined NBC News in May 2003. He was the recipient of the prestigious Edward R. Murrow award in 2006 for “Feature – Hard News” for his report on a Baghdad E.R.

Engel, who reported as a freelance journalist for ABC News during the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq, was NBC News lead Iraq correspondent from 2003 until his appointment to Beirut Bureau Chief in May 2006. He covered the war between Israel and Hezbollah during the summer of 2006 from Beirut and southern Lebanon. Engel continues to cover the ongoing war in Iraq as well as other assignments throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe.

He is also dyslexic.

American Journalism Review Article
Washington Post Article

Gift Suggestions

With the holidays coming up, Ronni Bennett has written a great list of gift suggestions --aimed at elders, but anybody really who doesn't want more "stuff".