500 miles to DC

Salutations Readers, last year I walked alone, and this year I am on the organizing committee for the Save Our Schools March and Week of Action, (http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/)

Dr. Martin Luther King said: "The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals."

In 2011 we find ourselves faced with an educational reform policy NCLB/RTTT deeply rooted in efficiency... this is a policy that reduces our children, their schools and teachers to test scores.  I guess we could throw our hands up in the air, complain privately, and watch as another generation of children are lost.  Or better yet, we know silence and apathy are not acceptable when it comes to children - now is the time for action, on my part, your part, our part!

Readers, like the old Gospel song “People get ready, there’s a train a coming”,(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTL9myUqLMs) this SOS train is moving beyond endorsements, moving beyond supporters, moving beyond contributions, it is a call to action. We are 53 days from the Save Our Schools March and Week of Action in DC. 

Last year I walked 400 miles in 40 days to reach Washington DC to protest No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top policies.    On that walk I met with parents, teachers, reading specialists, special education teachers, and concerned citizens who told me that the educational policies of Secretary Arne Duncan  are killing the motivation to learn in their schools. The people I met shared their stories about schools where children are being tested or practicing for being tested for 8 to 12 weeks of every school year.   

Sadly some children are spending 60 days of an entire school year either taking, or preparing for the taking of standardized tests.  This translates to one of every three school days being spent on testing, or testing preparation.  Let's make one thing perfectly clear from the start testing is not teaching.

This policy is a moral outrage in my professional opinion.    Perhaps in the minds of  those in Washington DC, testing is what motivates students to learn.   Their legislative policies since 2001 are about sorting, weighing, measuring, and isolating our children, teachers, and schools. A policy rooted in separating the strong from the weak, and punishing the weak while rewarding the strong. In reality this is the most Un-Christian and Un-American educational policy ever devised, and it is an affront to the past 100 years of legal struggle for equality in our public schools.   

“No Child Left Behind” policy amounts to the largest disconnection in living memory between our nation’s leaders and our nation’s parents, children and their teachers.  Our leaders want to determine whether or not our children  are ready to compete in the world market. Children, parents and their teachers need learning to be meaningful.  Policymakers and politicians expect education to be efficient, and to them efficiency means testing. For parents and teachers meaningful means being prepared for life. Thus far, neither McGraw Hill, or Educational Testing Service have a test that measures a meaningful life. 

Fair Test,  (http://fairtest.org/let-them-eat-tests) in 2001, summed up NCLB as "let children eat tests". Just as the French rejected a queen whose answer to starvation was "Let them eat cake" I propose that we reject this "let them eat test policy"

The most tragic point however, about Race To The Top policy is, having spent close to one trillion dollars, ($1,000,000,000,000) there is little or no data to support these policies as having met with success. If Washington's education reform policy were sold as a medicine these reformers would be under arrest for faulty research, for harming children, parents, teachers, and local schools. Instead of having a discussion of this policy, we should be requesting an investigation of serous crimes against our public schools.

Just like that old  gospel song tells us “People get ready ~ you don’t need no ticket to get on board this train…all you need do is get on board.”

As for getting on board, my plans this year are to walk 500 miles in 50 days, but unlike last August when I actually walked to DC, this July I am working and instead will walk 500 miles close to home.  So my blogs this year will be coming to you from the CCSU Literacy Center, where I will do some of my walking on a treadmill parked outside the center. John Foshay and his students will be my June coaches. John recorded most of my walk last year. However my July coaches will be the children in our summer reading program. So expect a few new younger  faces  to be popping up from time to time in this year's Walking to DC blog.

I hope to post pictures, updates, and share letters of support written by the children to the Freedom Riders who are also coming to the Save Our Schools March and Week of Action from New Orleans. Guess you know this will be the summer of reading all about the Freedom Riders at the CCSU Literacy Center.

Lao Tzu the father of Taoism said:"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."

Today was my first of 20,000 steps, (10 miles), and the tune that moved me over the 2000 steps today was Joan Baez version of “If you missed the train I’m on”.

Sing the first two verses with me: 

“If you miss the train I'm on, you will know that I am gone
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles,
A hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles,
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.

Lord I'm one, Lord I'm two, Lord I'm three, Lord I'm four,
Lord I'm 500 miles from my home.
500 miles, 500 miles, 500 miles, 500 miles
Lord I'm five hundred miles from my home. “
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_K6z3HiRAs

 Walkers you know….”If you miss the train I'm on you will know that I am gone..You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.”

Lord, I am 500 miles from change,

Jesse

 

I love public education

I Love Public Education

I cried the first time my Mother left me at your door,

I would learn to love you with every morning cookie and container of milk,

I would love you more with every song we sang within your hallowed walls,

I found your love in every teacher’s smile in your halls

I loved the reverence and respect you showed our flag every morning.

When the evil darkness of assassination

took the life of President Kennedy  ~ you were there,

You calmed us, and helped us understand that although things could never be the same ~ our nation would be mended,

You kept us warm during the winters from 9:00 to 3:00 ~ when there was no heat in our old cold-water flat,

You were there when they murdered our heroes Martin and Bobby, and to help us wipe away our tears,

You ensured that although they were taken from our world ~ these two men would remain in our hearts forever,

You gave us hope through the riots and the protests,

You gave us color when there were no crayons in our homes,

You gave us poetry to ease our pain,

You gave us poetry to celebrate our lives,

You gave us history to give us roots,

You gave us geography, the stars and the moon landing ~ just to let us know we had no boundaries,

You taught us mathematics and science,

But most of all you gave us literature,

You gave us a love of books,

You handed us a little more of our dreams every single day,

You were there, year after year, as we spent our summer vacations under the cooling spray of fire hydrants ~ dancing in the streets,

As every summer ended we longed for another school year to begin,

You were beaming with pride at every graduation,

My loves still grows

I am confused by:

A nation’s leaders ~ who bash public schools at every opportunity,

An American media ~ that ignores 150 years of noble service to our nation’s children,

I find myself distraught ~ by the titans of industry, who blame you for every social ill, while they drink from the cup of plenty, time and time again,

I am troubled by their mantra of testing will save us,

I am saddened by their infatuation with fictional heroes like Superman, and how they pay homage to those with no real classroom experience,

I am bewildered by leaders who say teachers are the essential ingredients to success, and then in their next breath say our teachers are not good enough.

All I am~ I owe to you,

I can’t remember one single standardized test,

I do remember teacher after teacher telling us those tests were no measure of who we really are,

I remembered loving Mr. Bass’s reminders that poor boys and girls could be anything they dreamed,

His boys and girls were more than test scores,

We were his endless possibilities,

Yes, I love public education,

I love public education enough to fight for it,

I love public education enough to stand up for it,

I love public education enough to take it back from the

The billionaires club,

The politicians,

The policy makers,

The ones who only see test scores,

The ones who count numbers not tears,

The ones who refer to America’s children as “Data”

Yes, I love public education; enough to walk again to Washington DC this July,

Forever in your debt,

Jesse Turner

Before there was a race there was something more meaningful

At 2:30 AM she knocks on my bedroom door. Daddy, do you want to come and watch the eclipse with me? Does she really even have to ask? So I drag myself out of bed, and go down the stairs out into that freezing 24 degrees temperature. It's so very chilly and cold. My cup of coffee doesn't help warm me up. She is beautiful, she is 21 years old, and she stills wants her Dad to watch the first lunar eclipse on the winter solstice in nearly 500 years. This warms me up completely. The fact it is still cool to do things with her father alone makes this holiday season wonderful, but then the following morning I see the book she was reading waiting to wake me for the eclipse on the kitchen counter.
There it is, Roald Dahl’s Danny The Champion of the World the copy of the one I read to her when she was 7 years-old one Christmas in Ireland. These are the moments I live for in life. This book moment simply makes this my Christmas perfect.
The note 14 years ago said: Read to and with your child for some 30 minutes a night. This was the request from Mrs. Crowley her second grade teacher…Her note to parents simply said: read to and with your child for 30 minutes every night. It was hand written something unheard of in these days of the printer rules. Do this to encourage a love of reading, be a ham, play it up, and enjoy every moment.
How I the guy whose father never read anything to him, the guy whose father abandoned his only son at the tender age of 10. How I loved my 30 minutes each night with my only daughter. Some 14-years later I love watching the lunar eclipse in wee am hours out in that icy cold night. These are the gifts father’s pray for.
So parents, grandparents, guardians read to your children, read to them not to bring up their test scores, not even to make them better readers, but to plant a love of reading.
Lets pass on Mrs. Crowley’s message written from a time when children were more than test scores… Before the race to the top, and before NCLB. Do it to encourage a love of reading, be a ham, play it up, and enjoy every moment..
Thank you Mrs. Crowley second grade teacher from the valley of the mountain in the land of the sun in Tucson Arizona for these priceless gifts. Come to think of it didn’t we also watch a total eclipse of the sun with you as well.
Thank you, thank you, thank you Mrs. Crowley,
Jesse