It's called the Kalamazoo Promise and it is funded entirely and in perpetuity by private, anonymous donors. Their goal - to send every school-aged child attending Kalamazoo Public Schools to community college, college or a university in the state of Michigan.

Many observers called it 'groundbreaking', 'a bold new experiment', and 'a model for America'. I call it a 'no-brainier'.

Ahhh...finally a little down time this week. The summer program is over and we are ramping up for our After-School programs. No light task, but it does allow for a slight reprieve.

To allow me to procrastinate the planning I need to do for the Education Department training week and ensure I'll be working under a tight deadline for no reason, I decided to change offices. It's a bigger office with more windows and more wall space. I can get all of the papers off of the floor and organize a little better.

As with all moving jobs, it allowed me to sift through stuff, throwing away the pointless, old stuff and discovering treasures I had forgotten about long ago. Some of the treasures were photos I'd enlarged or printed on regular paper and stashed away until I could find frames or reasons to use them. Now is that time.

After a few days of cleaning, sifting, and moving furniture, I began to hang photos. I found some frames that had been donated... but others were hung simply with "tacky" directly on the wall. Once I completed the move and had all of the photos hung, I looked around and realized the framing definitely gave it a little "umph," but it wasn't the frames that I was going for when I printed the pictures. It's the meaning behind each one.

Those of us who take jobs as teachers, educators, and social workers know what we're getting into when we sign up for the degree and the job. We sign on to higher salaries than people without an education, but lower than most degreed people make. But, for the most part, making the big bucks is not our intent.

In fact, the longer I'm in education, the more my job becomes a day-by-day battle to ensure children are receiving the best education possible with the resources we are given and the systems we are working against.

Recently I have heard a great deal of criticism of unions, in particular public employee unions, with much finger-pointing in the direction of teachers unions. Outsiders blame unions for protecting bad workers, especially bad teachers, who can’t be fired, according to the common understanding of what the function of a union is. Having been a member of, and active in, NEA, KNEA, and the local wherever I taught, I have always been puzzled by this concept of what a union is and does.

My father was a Teamster and even though the Teamsters were rife with corruption during the Jimmy Hoffa era, my dad’s union membership did my family a world of good. My dad was able to earn a good wage doing what many consider menial labor. While we weren’t wealthy by any means, we lived a comfortable life, and my dad retired early on a decent pension. By the time I entered the full time work force as a teacher, I knew that union membership was the way to go. Workers in unionized workplaces earn more on average and have better working conditions than those in non-union workplaces. Union membership brings with it the power of collective action that no one person can ever have.

Do I Have What it Takes to be a Nerd Girl? Probably not.

I am a Nerd and I a Girl. I love Science and believe in STEM outreach to under-served audiences by Many Means Necessary. I came across a blog post by USA Science & Engineering Festival that asked the question: “Do You Have What it Takes to be a Nerd Girl?”, and my initial reaction was I sure do. Nerd Girls is an engineering outreach program for girls and young women. Pretty sweet, huh? There’s a television show upcoming and this is the casting call for video auditions.

Lately most of what I have read about Facebook is complaints about security and privacy. It’s legitimate to worry about how a company might appropriate all the personal information exchanged by those who use the site. Whether all of that data is being adequately protected from stalkers and scam artists is important too.

But in the last forty eight hours I have also seen how Facebook users have turned a social network site into a support network for a beloved teacher. Today there are scores of former students reaching out to let Virginia Witte know that her battle with cancer is our battle too.

The newest version of this highly acclaimed directory is now available.

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Banning Silly Bandz is an example of how teachers and parents opt for an easy solution instead of using teachable moments. As a sexuality educator in faith communities and Christian ethicist who thinks a great deal about childrens' developing sense of moral agency and integrity, I'm always looking for opportunities to teach my children, out of my tradition of Christianity, how to treat others fairly, to recognize diversity as part of God's intention for creation, and how to communicate with others to build positive relationships.

It might seem laughable, but Silly Bandz provide us with that opportunity. Unfortunately, most schools have banned the bracelets (including my son's pre-school which prides itself on teaching social skills and how to be part of a community). Teachers and parents should take a step back and use this as a teachable moment.

Our kids have a lot of potential. They're bright, inquisitive, and active. The problem is, when there isn't something for them to do, they get restless and work to find a way to fulfill their need to do something. Unfortunately, this often results in them "experimenting" with things like, "What happens when I throw this paver (that was supposed to go to our garden) to the ground?" or "How hard do I have to throw this rock before it breaks that double-paned window?"

I don't think they have a clue that what they're doing are physics experiments. In their minds... and most times in ours... I think they're just vandalizing property... which is extremely irritating. But the reality is, whether they know it or not, they're experimenting. Our job is to channel that experimentation. And that's not always easy.

I want to say that parents should be more involved and aware of what their kids are doing. But during my social work internship, I was told that, "You can't 'should' all over yourself." So, instead of "should-ing" we've got to go to work.

“Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding line, and no way of knowing how near the harbor was. "Light! Give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.” ~ Helen Keller

In the 1980s, I was Karana, a young girl abandoned on the island of the blue dolphins. I crafted a hut from whale bones and hunted fish. In the 1990s, I watched Mr. Darcy intervene in the budding relationship between his friend and my sister. In 2009, as an American journalist in Paris, I discovered unsettling connections between my husband’s family and a young Jewish girl whose brother perished when the French police ripped her and her family from their home.

I admit these alternate lives were nothing more than luxurious dips in the dream worlds of literature. But I often wonder how different my life would be if I hadn’t had the opportunity to go to school and learn to read. Had I been born in a poor country, not attending school would have done more than deny me the joy of reading; it would have been a detriment to my health and well-being.