Albert Delgado: Whittier School - CPS

Treat Educators as Professionals...

Tue, 20 May 2003 23:17:44 GMT

Organizational Learning is No Accident makes an important point: effective learning requires time to reflect...and our "right now" form of communication (email, IM, etc.) doesn't allow reflection time...making it difficult for people and organizations to change (time being an important component to acclimate to changes).

[elearnspace blog] My hypothesis is that blogging or any other disruptive technology tool may be appropriate for educators to put their thoughts and ideas onto digitial paper. We need more voices from the field of teachers who successful despite tbeing oppressed by politicians who have no notion on how to constructivetly help educators in the field nor about how children learn.

The Whittier School Manila Hub

Wed, 14 May 2003 11:33:52 GMT

Right now, I am focusing on working on the Whittier School Manila Hub and slowing figuring out our Plone server. What seems cool about Plone is that one can show off as much as one wants to and yet maintain a private area on one account. Most of my time is spent working on Manila and catching up on the new additions. I am working with a community organization on developing a space we have provided them . I am also trying to document my march with Manila and Plone on our Praxis with Manila and Plone weblog.

Manila Praxis at Whittier School

Mon, 05 May 2003 11:54:24 GMT

Started a Praxis weblog on using Manila. A space to plan, take note and get a better handle on Manila use in my school community

Erin Clerico and Bryan Bell Bloggin in Chicago

Thu, 13 Feb 2003 11:31:56 GMT

Making room for disruptive and emergent technologies.

The Digerati are a dispersed tribe, found on all campuses and recognized by burning zeal for the latest developments in emergent and disruptive technologies, many of which are viewed with suspicion --or at least with caution-- by their colleagues. These early adopters are tinkerers and evangelists. They can be found in many places on campuses, exploring innovations that have potentially transformative influence upon teaching and learning. They pay heed to conduits of information that others may not see the point of. They develop and exercise extramural links that are essential to their sanity and productivity, and that ensure a continual flow of inspiration. Individually, they often feel that they are working in a vacuum, that most of their colleagues don't understand their motivations or what they do. They (well, we) desperately need to be better connected to what's happening in similar institutions... [Hugh Blackmer]

I read this as a pretty good description of what the cluster of Webloggers who work in the field of education and learning is doing for me. The educational Blogger Network could really serve the "need to be better connected". Bringing together people who would otherwise "feel that they are working in a vacuum" should be one of our priorities. [Sebastian Fiedler]

[Seblogging News] AMEN! Lets see what comes out of the Bloggin Chicago with Erin Clerico and Bryan Bell at the National Writing Project's Blog Design Team training today and tomorrow. I can't believe it. Today the training is at Whittier School, where I work, in the heart of the Latino barrio of Pilsen in Chicago. We will be blogging the sessions at the EBN Manila site. http://www.bayareawritingproject.org/eBn/

Who Died and Left You In Charge?

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 12:03:08 GMT

In our public elementary school located in the heart of the barrio of Pilsen, we have started a dual immersion program. According to cognitive science there are benefits to learning more than one language. With a focus on looking at the psycho-social-cultural well being of our latino children, it makes sense for them to maintain thier first langauge which connects them with their parents, elders, and culture. We do not need children losing thier first language and risk suffering further alienation that can lead to deviant behavior. When we look at the direction of where the school should go, we have to seriously listen to the community, the silent majority who are immigrants and who's first language is Spanish. Sorry, my fellow educators, we are GUESTS! Even though I am a Chicano, I am a guest in Pilsen. My academic history is a list of parochial schools and private universities (exception being Cal State LA.) Due the fact that I can speak the King's Engish without an accent ( which is supposed to be a plus in our society), the detractors may say my voice lacks authority on this touchy issue because I am not from Pilsen. True, just as most of the detractors of such a program. Lets cut to the chase. Lets be honest and ask the question, Dear parents, do you want your children to be academically literate in both Spanish and English? Please raise your hands. When our parents signup in Kindergarten, they sign the papers authorizing such services. The question for us as educators, is whether we can all step up to the plate. This entails more collaboration and the need for one another's support during the school day. This means myself included!

Frontier 9 Starting from Scratch

Sat, 12 Oct 2002 18:43:46 GMT

Leveraging Frontier 9 on OSX for education purposes has been an adventure in frustration for two reasons. First, the lack of admin documentation for OSX is a big no no. Second, The website for Frontier on OSX hasn't been updated for over a year! How about a K-Log on administrating Frontier 9/ Manila on OSX! Would it make good buisiness sense for Userland to update this information. Would more organizations jump on the weblogging band wagon if was explained how "easy" it is to leverage this great piece of software for a variety of I should also get onto the topic of Apple's lack of support for educators on administering OSX for the Internet. Whew! The other problem I had was trying to get port 8080 open by the CPS Wide Area Network administrator. He had seen some red flags show up after a security scan on the ports of a domain in question was performed. After making some adjustments, even the second test showed a couple of red flags. Since time was passing, and I had not settled on where to park the Frontier Server, I decided to keep on port 80 and get to working. Maybe in the future Userland and Apple will get around to helping us OSX users configure OSX for the internet and get documents with screenshots from Userland on how to be a decent administrator. Christmas is coming soon. I hope I do not coal again on the OSX and Frontier front. http://www2.whittier.cps.k12.il.us/ is the parking space.

How much do we value, celebrate and affirm the culture and language of our students?

Sat, 21 Sep 2002 15:05:11 GMT

What do you call a school that has a student body that is 96% latino, with most being of Mexican heritage, and doesn't celebrate its rich cultural heritage like I believe it should. Fill in the blank _______. This question arose after the recent celebration of the Mexican Revolution at our school, which was a gallant effort led by less than a handful of teachers. This lead me to think of the following questions that should lead to some soul searching. How do we as a school celebrate and affirm the culture and language of our students? How do we as classroom teachers, celebrate and affirm the culture and language of our students? How do we resource teachers and technology specialists celebrate and affirm the culture and language of our students? How do we as Latinos on the staff promote our heritage? "Our" people in general have practiced bricolage (extending the term from Levi-Strauss), which is the ability to improvise with whatever tools one has available. Even with low wages and being discriminated against, our people have found a way to improvise to put food on the table, clothe themselves, survive and more. If we who are educated and have chosen to work in the teaching vocation, then is not more expected of us? So, there is no excuse on why I haven't, as an educator or technology specialist helped in the noble act of honoring our raza. I have to ask myself if I value my heritage and sharing the same. As I have been told, good intentions are not enough. This is not so much about a holiday, but more about what it means to be "other" in an oppressive society (Enrique Dussel - Argentinian Latin American Liberation Philospher living in Mexico). No, just being born Latino and living in a Latino barrio guarantees that we understand and appreciate our past and present culture. If we do not know who we are, how can we appreciate those who are different than us?

St. Procopius Elementary School

Sat, 31 Aug 2002 21:41:46 GMT

My daughter is now a proud member of St. Procopius Elementary School. Oh no! Another public school teacher with a son or daughter in a private school! I had very few options. Krista comes directly from Mexico. She speaks Spanish. The Mexican American Legal Defense Fund is suing my home school district for not meeting the academic needs of Latino Spanish speaking students. St. Procopius offers a dual language program that builds on her first language and will help her transition into English. I believe in an enriched and challenging curriculum. She is happy there and what can I say. Wishing the best to some of my favorite teachers here at Whittier School who are getting down to the business of starting our dual language program! If my daughter was in Kindergarten or first grade, she would be here at Whittier School!

Tue, 20 Aug 2002 02:57:59 GMT

Radio's Multi-Author Weblog Tool. Following up on Dave's post, I read about how the multi-author weblog tool uses RSS feeds to aggregate multi-author content. Cooool:

Everyone in the group writes with their own copy of Radio and publishes their weblog in both HTML and RSS. One of the editors takes responsibility for running the Multi-Author Weblog Tool, which joins all the individual feeds into a single weblog. This person is the webmaster of the multi-authored weblog.

Each hour when the news aggregator scans for new posts, any new items appearing in your author's feeds are automatically posted to the webmaster's weblog.

If you're the webmaster, it's important that you leave Radio running with the news aggregator enabled, at least during the hours when your authors will be writing new posts, since Radio can only update the weblog when the news aggregator scans for new items.

[Radio Free Blogistan]

A MoveableType Experiment Hopefully Coming Soon.

Wed, 31 Jul 2002 02:51:00 GMT

I hope to have a moveable type experimental blog set up at http://www.disruptivetechnology.net/blog/ within the next couple of days.

Chicago Public Schools, how about some weblogs for educators and techies.

Sat, 20 Jul 2002 20:55:06 GMT

OK Chicago Public Schools. The CIO of Utah State is offering his workers weblogs, or better said Knowledge Logs! "I believe that the 900 or so IT employees of the State of Utah would benefit from speaking and listening to each other more. I think we need groups of specialists inside various departments to communicate with others in their specialty and without. " I think I mentioned this same point in an earlier entry in letting the Chicago Public School know that they really need to aggregrate (RADIO) the knowledge, the hard won knowledge of educators who have sacrificed time at work or home with no pay in order to understand the inner game of integrating technology into the curriculum in a meaningful way, understanding the workings of all flavors of Windows, Macintosh and Linux, and those who undertand how to manage their networks with different network tools. Lets give theses folks some blogs now! Lets share the knowledge... To be continued..

Slacking Tech Sensei

Sat, 20 Jul 2002 20:47:33 GMT

This is for Pat D, says that I am slacking since school got out. No original pieces. Oh yeah got to get my category links up! It is kind of slow since my greatest inspiration are our early elementary educator team.

Fri, 19 Jul 2002 17:12:38 GMT

Knowledge Management. An interview with Robert Buckman of Buckman Labs in Singapore's Business Times [via Mohan Narendran's comment on John Robb's blog]: We found that over 90 per cent of the knowledge in the company was in the heads of our people and it was changing every minute of every day. It [E M E R G I C . o r g] I am blogging a blog that points to a comment on my blog. Say that ten times fast. Regardless, this is a great article that says basically that KM as it is practiced now is wrong. It only deals with explicit knowledge, which represents only 5% of corporate knowledge. The value is in finding a way to share the 90% of corporate knowledge in people's heads. The answer, of course, is K-Logs. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Fri, 19 Jul 2002 17:06:09 GMT

Knowledge Sharing

A new buzzword that makes a lot more sense that Knowledge Management. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Whittier School Elementary School Teachers visit Edison Language Academy in Santa Monica.

Wed, 17 Jul 2002 18:16:26 GMT

Whittier School Elementary School Teachers visit Edison Language Academy in Santa Monica.

We met with some of the Staff members of Edison Language Academy. Steve Martinez - Principal Mary - Community Liaison Edison Two-Way Dual Language Program - Jim Cummins model with spanish immersion model. 90/10 model Spanish is Target Language & English Language Development. Pico Cooridor - Port of Entry for Latinos Santa Monica - Divided by Highway

Early 80's

Lack of parent involvement Challenges Low Scores Gang Issues 98 percent hispanic 99 percent Spanish Dominant

Mid 80's School Closings Was selected to be closed. Parents and teachers were united in a movement to keep school open and go honor the heritage language. School organized. Found a model 1985 - Teacher and Community members drew up plans to sell a dual language program. Decided to phase it in grade by grade. 1986 - Started the dual language program. Decided to phase it in grade by grade. Committee had the research to back up the concerns of their parents. K-1 plan. English minority Staff - Each year 2 teachers were displaced. Be sensitive to staff and staffing issues. English Only - options to go to other schools. No transporation provided School recruited students Gentrification - Now English Dominant Families want to have their children to become biliterate because they know the English language development will not suffer. Kinder 60/40 population (Spanish/English dominant) Challenge to keep program honest to model. Get Spanish dominant children to make sure there are appropriate models in target language. If one cannot challenge the population one can change the instruction. Some schools Increase the English Exposure in Kinder...

Middle school has a strand that is an extension of Edison Dual Language School. State mandated curriculum - textbooks series. 80 and 90's "Do your own thing" mentality. New adoption in math Houghton Mifflin New adoption in Language Arts 2001 Scholastic in Spanish Scholastic in English

Transitions: Primary,Middle,High School

Whittier should think about the children as they transition to middle school. Communication must be done with upper grade schools. Two Way schooling must be done from Pre-K to 12 for these programs to be successful. One of the options we need to do is maybe to go to a closed campus academy status...

Intensive Classroom for children on with a ratio of 1/4 teacher to students. for students on the verge of failing. --

Parent Reach-out

Community Liaison staff person Parent Participation Parent Accountability (tardy, homework, conferences) Communication Community Liaison works as a parent and teacher advocate. Recruit in Pre-Schools

Bilingual Advisory Committee

Parent Training Demystifying the curriculum or classroom practice. Role playing

Questions

How do we get teachers on the same page? A lot of information to parents. English development issues Informational sessions and taking them into the classroom to see language development. Orientations must be very clear to parents! This is a serious committment over the length of K-12.

Behavioral Issues Provide them opportunities to be successful Benchmarks communicated with parents Pair up children. 2nd graders have a spontaneous translation 3rd grade transfer is relatively smooth in second semester.

Disruptive Technology bones website posted

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 23:14:30 GMT

Posted template for Disruptive Technology website http://www.disruptivetechnology.org

Steps Toward Critical Literacy Development

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 22:39:03 GMT

Asks Students to collect proverbs from their parents or grandparents. Cultural Knowledge and Wisdom Proverbs built around themes like the important of relationships, cooperation, collaboration. Students work in pairs , students enage in dialogues to decode the meaning of the proverbs. learn literal then implied meaning. Speaking and Listening Domains Teacher prompts Students then went home to get parents understanding of the proverb. Then students write in pairs a story that follows the proverb.

Co-Constructing Knowledge Work on pairs on poster paper. Go back home to get cultural meaning and explanations from parents.. Performance - Back to school night.

The Fourth

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 20:56:38 GMT

The Fourth "R" Real Communication Through International Global Learning Networks.

CLMER 2Way Assistance and Resource Center http://www.clmer.csulb.edu/ Technology assistance for Dual Language Two Way programs --- Conocimiento Introdce yourself to the person sitting next you and discuss: What is REAL communication? How do you know when you are REALLY communicating? ---- From Teacher Brainstorm

Our Challenges Developing Target Language

Research materials

Up to do date material

Time to ingegrate

Management of Group

Compatibility Mac/PC

Integrating Technology Challenges

Technology access for teachers and parents.

Technology Literacy for parents and teachers.

Lack of Computers

Professional Development for technology literacy

Technology support

Our Challenges

From presenters.

lack of materials

Diminishing stuent participation

Lack of language models

Lack of student motivation to speak the language

Meeting Standards in the target language

Meeting SAT9 Needs.

Two Types of Classroom Netowork Class to Class Partnerships Teacher negotiating and collaboration Multi - Class/Group AProjects Centralized and Organized Projects

Nossos Antepassados Project

Adaption of Class to Class Letter Writing Project with Schools in Portugal

Standards embedded in the project

Vocabulary and concept development Writing Strategies Written and Oral Language Writing Conventions

Small group More rewarrding More personal and motivating More conducive to meeting students individual needs

Lessons learned Time Frame- Semester Long Technology Challenges- Organization of Communications - Use Chart or record of ongoing communications.

Future

Video conference fo immediacy of contacts Curriculum Support from schools in Portugal Classroom projects and /or learning experiences exchange Cultural Package Exchange

Cultural Pluralism

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 16:36:07 GMT

Cultural Pluralism

Featured General Speaker Kristin Brown Featured General Speaker Center for Language Minority Education and Research , CSU Long Beach De Orilla a Orilla http://www.orillas.org/welcomee.html

"You cannot lift a stone with one finger: it takes a whole hand."

Bambarra (Indigenous language spooken in Mali) Cooperation Short phrases based on practical wisdom ---- What is the climate that is built in the classroom. From traditional invidiualistic and competitive pedagogy toward constructivist and finally toward transformative pedagogy (Paolo Freire).

Social Assumptions

What are the implications for socail interactions in the classroom. disempowered communities to empowered communities which stress fairness and justice. TEACHER STUDENT INTERACTIONS Academic engagement and identity investment. ---- Framework for Collaborative critical inquiry (Friere,Ada,Cummins) --- ISTE Nets Standards & State Standards Take a lesson from their site such as.... Using a Beenie Babies Project (An example) What is the message sent to children. Latino Parents said that investment they would make would be in their children's education and in passing on the richness of their culture. Math Ratios and Biography in the Library for third graders Categories race, sex , ethinicity and mortality. Conclusions - Dead Anglo Men were in the majority. Students began to critically look at the results of their biography Students began to formulate question and hypothesis on why the lack of women, ethnic and living subjects biographies. Went to work in cooperative teams at the San Francisco Main Library Librarians now used the student's hard data to hopefully to be more inclusive in their purchasing of books. Students were engaged in an authentic learning problem.

Oral History Projects

Local history culture package for their partners in Boston. Geographic Guessing game (latitude and Longitude) Place of Birth Share en historical event ( Age) There next task was to research their roots. Go back to check parents and grandparents Study patterns of immigration. Move from discreet skills to engaging projects. ---

Standard Lessons on Writing

How would we help our students see themselves as writers. Premis is that real people write books What Makes the Writer Write? Learn motivation of authors for writing. Usually these lessons are euro-centric. In one project these were the results. What was the difference between the k-2 and 3-5th students. Who wrote more? The younger students write from their life. Older students wrote less because they do write from thier own experience. Are we mindful of the "hidden" curriculum in the schools? prompted writes preserve history through family artifacts Engage in dialogue chat. A paradigm shift ocurred > 'Meet the Author " to "We are the Authors" ---- Video documentary by student Video, Stills and text from published works. Wrote of work life in an asparagus factory Interview with translation of text ___ Students and school communities are busy working on similar authentic problems is for real. This is a powerful model for using technology wisely and with a real purpose in the educational community. Children become engaged not only with the inquiry but in their own community and heritage. We need to stop the alienation of our children by providing with a formation that enables them to be productive citizens. In the present climate, we that more than ever!

Dual Language 101

Mon, 15 Jul 2002 17:13:48 GMT

Dual Language 101 for New Dual Language Schools

Tenets of Dual Language Education

Two -Way Bilingual Education Juntos into the Future by Rosa Molina Research is begun on tracking former dual language school graduates. This is a serious business. Children's have a great capacity to learn more than 1 language. There are schools that truely follow the tenets of dual language models but, others call themselves dual language in order to get funding or really just practice dual language Lite. --- Movement is started in Florida by Cubans. Anglo parents started to send their students to these school because they noticed the benefits. (Center for Applied Linguistices 2001) - Early 1980's California Two way programs. 160 programs in 26 states Half are here in California with 131 programs, 67 school districts, in 5 languages. ( California Department of Education Language Policy Office 2002) ---

Two Way Program Goals

High levels oral language proficiency a literacy in both Spanish and English.

High academic achievement

Develpment of cross-cultural understanding and pro-social skills.

Definitions

Different bilingual program have different linguistic outcomes

Different models needed because of varying student populations and community conditions. Structured English Immersion Mobile students Bilingual Transition option Collier and Thomas Research 8 year effort.

Two Way Bilingual Immersion

Combines native speakers of a target language with English speaking students to develop a second language (bilingualism and biliteracy) for both groups of students. Special Considerations for mostly Latino schools. Have to explain that classroom was linguistically balanced.

Bilingualism in the US

Language is not neutral! Language is not neutral!

Most countries value the learning of more than one language - addidtive bilingualism U.S. devalues bilingualism - supports subtractive programs. Kathyrn Lindolm, David Dotson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Donna Christian

Rational for TWBI Programs

Additive bilingual environment for all students

Second Language best acquired by language minority students when first language established

Knowledge learned through one language facilitates acquistion of second language

Students will benefit from cognitgive advantages with development fo bilingualism and biliteracy.

immersion vs submersion

submersion is a subtractive process Primary language is at risk monollingualism is the end result

Immersion is an additive process Second language is added Bilingualism is the end result. ---- River Glen School Teachers are certified with high levels of Spanish. Middle school teachers are Spanish and ESL proficient. --

Salient Features

Program Duration 5-7 years ( elememtary + middle school)

Adequate exposure to second language. (academic register)

Focus on academic achievement (state standards and curriculum and the only difference is linguistic modifications)

Monolingual delivery (teacher will stay only in one language) Educators must

Positive and reciprocal climate

Home/school collaboration (take care of parents from the get go)

Quality of instructional personnel

Increasing the minority status of the language for all students (4th Grade - why is bilingualism important - careers) There should be a Montessori feel in that parents and teachers must respect the learning of the students. ---- Answer to Question regarding schools with very large Latino Spanish Speaking Schools. implications for All Latino Schools - Special considerations or heritage language schools.

Notes from Keynote Speech

Mon, 15 Jul 2002 16:33:49 GMT

Bilitural competency makes children competent to live and work in multicultural society. Cross Cultural Competent Build Friendships across curltures and race Multicultural nation but not a fair nation. Teachers work at the hear of the battle. Political issues are being fought out in schools across the nation Public in general does not understand our movement California lost 2/3 of Bilingual Programs High stakes testing and validity fo tests for LEP students Heritage language and cross cultural compentencies are seen as luxuries. Alienation is a real problem for middle school and high school students. One is asked to drop their first language in order be "accepted" as Americans. Yet the media gives subtle messages anyway that they are the "other". Public Schools are toxic. Hurt family relationships by making the language divide. ---- The window of opportunity is very small. A lot is riding on the work being done now. Good data should be collected for further supporting bilingual education. We must be self - critical in order to make sure student learning advances. Dual language educators need to reach out and link to parents, young people who are alienated, educators outside of dual language bilingual educators, and communities seek an alternative way. ---- Across the nation their are programs and spaces for students to maintain their heritage and language despite the great challenges they face in implenting them. ---- Cambodians in Fresno, who had already suffered the cultural pogom under Pol Pot, have found a strong need here to redefine and rediscover who they are as a people. Alienation leaves people with a ... Without maintaining the heritage cultural and language will prevent the passage of memory from one generation to another, will prevent profund and necessary communication of wisdom, values and affection that is necessary between generations. --- Native American have a great challenge to recover centuries of damage doen to them by our American. There great challenge is to recover their language. Rough Rock school for and by navahos is an example of this fight for preservation. Cajun's in Louisianna have a state department that looks to preserving their French language. Any system or school that makes students ashamed of their families is very destructive and evil. 83,000 thousand students are learning French with the support of the state. They face similar challenges in changing curriculum to make higher scores on high stakes testing. === There will be a need for school's to collaborate in order to support each other on this journey. The importance of Title 7 Federal grants makes dual language programs possible to retool teachers with the necessary professional development. Alientation leads to children, teenagers, and adults to anti-social behaviors.

Chiapas to Long Beach

Sun, 14 Jul 2002 13:11:42 GMT

I am on my way to the Dual Language Convention in Long Beach. Hopefully, it will be worth it. I hope to meet some fellow technologists who are working with technoology in order to help students develop their language acquisition skills. There will be quite a few of us going from Whittier School. Knock on wood that all goes well and we come away energized and ready to take on the new school year.

Wed, 10 Jul 2002 03:20:41 GMT

A new Bryan Bell theme called Moveable Manila Blue. Bryan says: "CSS themes rock!" [Scripting News]

New Year's Resolution

Tue, 09 Jul 2002 03:21:08 GMT

Since the real new year starts in late August, I have made a few tasks or promises for myself over the next year. Learn the basics of: Frontier on Mac OSX, Unix on OSX, mysql, php, and get better understanding of stylesheets. That seems to be a lot but... what the hell. Oreilly just published a new book on Unix on MacOSX. We will be having a kicking Quicktime server souped up with a RAID set up customized by Mac Gurus. Time to Rock and Roll!

The Last Day!

Tue, 25 Jun 2002 12:35:38 GMT

Last Day! Today is the last day of the academic year for Chicago Public Schools. Yeah! As mentioned in an earlier entry, it is that tricky time of year when introspection has begun. Did I do enough? What can be done better? What was accomplished? Sometimes, we need fellow collaborators to participate in this. My friend Martha Zepeda had questions regarding the academic growth of her students. Since Martha has taught first grade, she knows what a child needs to bring to the table in order to get off to a good start in September. Her sounding board is her teacher aide, who is by every consideration a teacher in her own right. (Get that piece of paper Ruthie) Martha compared this years to last years. Last years kids were right on target academically because they came with better preparation for school. This years students were more needy as a group and lacked social skills. A lot of this year was spent on building the children's character, independence, learning how to work together, along with the academics. Martha was building the necessary foundation for her student's to succeed not only in school but more importantly in life. On the day of the Kindergarten closing ceremony, parents knew their children grew that year. That day and report pickup day, parents showed with smiles and tears of appreciation that learning did take place this year. They knew Martha came everyday to work school for her students. Martha with the help of Ruth, gave each child a beautfiul portfolio of their work and written messages from their classmates. Photos from throughout the year adorned the cover and inside each child's the portfolio. There was the evidence of their growth. I guess the best evidence is the way the children carried themselves by the end of the year. I end this academic year with this small snapshot in the life of a Kindergarten in the barrio. Martha says we may have a book somewhere here. :)