Our children have been dealing with so much this past year…
And I believe, it is extremely wrong to expect them to perform their best when they take any standard test…this Pandemic year!!!
In addition to how well a teacher is doing…. teacher evaluations rely on this data…
And moreover, because of the big business of Educational Testing companies influence on education, government mandates that our children be tested…
It is unconscionable!!!
However…here in Florida…they are listening to parents, teachers, and those concerned for our children…
New order allows Florida high school seniors, 3rd graders to graduate without passing state exams…
Florida high school seniors will be able to graduate this year and 3rd graders can move on without passing the normally required state assessments, according to a new executive order signed Friday by Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran.
Students everywhere have been adversely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic over the last year when schools closed and later reopened with virtual or in-person options.
Corcoran signed a new emergency order Friday that addresses a wide range of pandemic-related setbacks students have faced, including whether they take year-end assessments.
“Emergency Order-02 protects our seniors and empowers local school districts and schools to make the important decisions on graduation, promotion and whether to opt in to school grades and improvement ratings,” Corcoran said in a statement.
Gov. Ron DeSantis echoed those thoughts in a statement released by his office.
“Over the past year and beyond, Florida has led on prioritizing the education and wellbeing of our state’s students,” DeSantis said. “This emergency order will empower students, families and teachers with data on students’ progress and growth and provide them with the necessary tools to create the best educational experience for each individual.”
Under the order, school districts will be permitted to waive the state assessments required for graduation this spring on a case-by-case basis.
“Local school districts, in consultation with parents, are in the best position to evaluate the academic progress of each student and then make individualized decisions related to students progression and graduation in keeping with the best interest of each child,” the executive order reads….Even if they do not have an end-of-course exam….
Again, based on an individual basis, 3rd grade students will be able to move up to 4th grade without an English Language Arts assessment score or a Level 2 ELA score…
Those students will be promoted to the next grade “if the district is able to determine that a student is performing at least at Level 2 on the ELA assessment through the good cause exemption process provided in s. 1008.25, Fla. Stat., or other means reasonably calculated to provide reliable evidence of a student’s performance,” according to the executive order…
However, school districts are also required to begin remediation efforts with priority to students at risk of being retained for summer learning programs.
The executive order also addresses school districts’ concerns about school grades or ratings, which can impact funding.
Under Corcoran’s executive order, all schools will maintain their pre-pandemic grades unless a district opts in and applies to the Department of Education to have one or more 2020-2021 school grades recorded.
Schools participating in Florida’s voluntary prekindergarten education, or VPK, program will be required to have 200 hours of instruction for summer 2021 instead of the normally mandated 300, according to the order.
Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar released the following statement Friday in response to the order, saying teachers also deserve some grace:
“The new order lifts a heavy burden from our students. It’s only right that they should be exempt from dire consequences when they take standardized tests this spring. This has not been a normal school year, and a test should not cost kids the chance to graduate or be promoted. However, teachers did not get the same kind of consideration. Test scores still will be allowed to impose very real costs on them through their evaluations. The educators who have served Florida’s students throughout the pandemic also deserve to be shown some grace. They have faced unprecedented challenges this school year.”
My hope is that government put our children first…
Not big business, nor those who want to reform our schools without really addressing the needs of our children…Ask a teacher!!!
This is a significant amount of money’: COVID-19 relief bill would send nearly $170 billion to schools..…Jillian Berman
The Covid Relief Bill passed, and will now be enacted!!!
This is historic!!! Our children will be able to get back to their routine of going to school, and being able to socialize with their friends…
They will be able to finally have the opportunity to receive an education they so deserve!!!
Our schools will have the necessary funding to provide the safety protocols, along with the ability to vaccinate all essential staff…And there will be the necessary funding to hire more teachers and staff!!!
What a dream coming true!!!
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and First Lady Jill Biden visit a school as part of the administration’s push to reopen schools. MandelNgan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images. As part of the COVID-19 relief bill passed by the Senate Saturday, schools from kindergarten on up will receive billions of dollars in funding… The money comes as K-12 public school systems and higher education institutions grapple with how best to cope with the fallout of the pandemic on both their students and budgets. Public schools at all levels rely on state and local government money for funding, resources that could be squeezed by the pandemic inducted downturn… At the same time, schools are wrestling with how to return to some semblance of normalcy as more widespread vaccination brings hope of emerging from the pandemic in the next several months… If the bill is approved by the House of Representatives and signed by Biden, the roughly $170 billion lawmakers are sending to educational institutions could help with these efforts. It comes on top of the $82 billion they received in COVID-related relief Congress passed in December and the roughly $31 billion they received as part of the CARES Act passed in March…
Here’s what’s in the bill for schools: Kg-12 schools: Lawmakers voted to send $128 billion to state and local education agencies, which mirrors President Joe Biden’s request for $130 billion for K-12 schools in the relief package he laid out in January.
“This is a significant amount of money,” said Terra Wallin, associate director for P-12 accountability and special projects at Ed Trust, an organization that focuses on education equity.“We think that it gets much closer to addressing the needs of schools than the previous relief packages have.” Schools will likely use some of that money to work towards safe, in-person reopening… School reopenings have become a flashpoint over the past several weeks as questions about whether Biden will meet a goal of reopening schools in his first 100 days and what exactly that means have surfaced… The Centers for Disease Control issued guidelines last month on the safe reopening of schools, which outlined a tiered approach to in-person learning tied to COVID-19 transmission in the community…In addition to the guidelines, the Biden administration has taken steps to push schools towards in-person instruction including launching a vaccination program for teachers in March and using the bully pulpit. On his second day on the job, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona joined First Lady Jill Biden on a tour of schools offering in-person instruction…
Though the Biden administration doesn’t have the power to reopen schools on their own — those decisions are made at the state and district level — the funding will certainly help. To re-open safely,schools may need to hire more teachers to offer smaller class sizes, redesign classrooms for social distancing, retrofit ventilation systemsand more… But the funding provided is aimed at addressing more than just the immediate challenge of getting students learning in person… Local education agencies have to use at least 20% of the funds, respectively, to deal with learning loss resulting from the pandemic…Schools could use this money on things like intensive tutoring, extending the school year through the summer, hiring more teachers, and more to address the learning loss students have suffered during this period, said Victoria Jackson, senior policy analyst on the state fiscal team at the the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank focused on the impact of budget and tax issues on inequality and poverty… The bill also provides guard rails to ensure that the funding for students who likely have been hardest by the challenges of remote school — those from underserved communities, including low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities and others — is protected, Wallin said…
The proposal lawmakers passed Saturday is the first COVID relief package to include a maintenance of equity provision… The requirement means that if states and school districts have to make cuts, they can’t cut any more from their highest poverty districts and schools than the per-pupil average…“The idea here is that it requires that states protect the highest need or highest poverty district and that districts in turn protect their highest need schools,”Wallin said…
Higher education: Congress will besending nearly $40 billion to colleges and universities as part of the relief package. Though it’s less than the $97 billion, the AmericanCouncil on Education, a higher education lobbying group, estimated schools and students would need, they praised it as the “largest federal effort so far to assist students and families struggling to cope with lost jobs or reduced wages and collegesand universities facing precipitous declines in revenues and soaringnew expenses.”Indeed, many colleges’ major sources of revenue — tuition, room and board, conferences, camps, parking and more — have been dinged as a result of the pandemic.
During the Great Recession, public colleges in particular struggled with cuts to state funding, “but colleges just didn’t lose revenue to the same extent,” as over the past several months, said Robert Kelchen, an associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University.“The big challenge for colleges is they’re not replacing the revenue they got from not having students on campus,” he said...Colleges across the country have made cuts in staff andPrograms to cope with the lost revenue, Kelchen noted. At the same time, they’ve spent money on COVID tests, technology and other infrastructure necessary to try and make campuses safe. If the bill becomes law, a lot of the money colleges receive from Congress “will be used to backfill what they’ve already spent,” Kelchen said.At least 50% of the funds colleges receive will have to go directly to students for emergency financial aid...The pandemic and accompanying down turn has put up obstacles in the way of attending and completing college, particularly for the most vulnerable students.
The relief package requires that colleges spend some of the money they receive on outreach to students to let them know they can get more financial aid if their circumstances have changed… The bill also allocates $91 million to the Department of Education to reach out to students and borrowers about financial aid and other benefits for which they may be eligible.
JillianBerman covers student debt and millennial finance. You can follow her on Twitter @JillianBerman.
This decision to leave it up to states is not a strong message for our children…Our children have been living through this Pandemic for a year…Their physical, educational, emotional lives have been disrupted…
Having the additional stressor of a standardized test…I question what would such a test measure???
Give our children time to get back to a stable routine before .. measuring their educational growth…
States will not be allowed to cancel federally mandated standardized exams this school year despite the pandemic, though they will be offered significant flexibility in how they give those tests and how they’re used, the U.S. Department of Education informed state education leaders Monday.
In a letter to states, the department said that it will not invite state requests for “blanket waivers of assessments” required by the Every Student Succeeds Act; states received such waivers last spring. However, the department said it would allow states to administer shorter versions of state exams in English/language arts, math, and science, or let states administer exams this summer or even into the next school year.
The Education Department also told states that it will allow them to seek waivers from federal requirements for school accountability, including the mandate to identify certain low-performing schools, for the 2020-21 school year. Such flexibility would include a waiver from the requirement that states test 95 percent of eligible students…
“It is urgent to understand the impact of COVID-19 on learning,” Ian Rosenblum, acting assistant secretary in the office of elementary and secondary education, wrote to states. “We know, however, that some schools and school districts may face circumstances in which they are not able to safely administer statewide summative assessments this spring using their standard practices.”
Rosenblum said states would still have to publicly report data by student subgroups, as required. He also specifically encouraged states to extend the testing window for English-language proficiency tests.
Rosenblum did not give a deadline for when states would have to seek flexibility from accountability or other requirements. However he also said the department recognized that “individual states may need additional assessment flexibility based on the specific circumstances.” He added that in such cases, the department “will work with states to address their individual needs and conditions while ensuring the maximum available statewide data to inform the targeting of resources and supports.”
Whether to let states cancel these exams has been a major question looming over the Biden administration. Leading Democrats for K-12 policy in Congress and others have said the tests are crucial to informing educators about how students have been affected by the pandemic. Yet teachers’ unions and some Republicans are among those who have pushed for students and schools to be let off the hook when it comes to these exams. States like Michigan and New York have sought testing waivers from the department for this spring.
During his confirmation hearing, Miguel Cardona, President Joe Biden’s nominee for education secretary, said that assessments are crucial to learning where students stand but did not take a firm position one way or the other on letting states cancel them. Before his nomination, Cardona, Connecticut’s education commissioner, told his state last year that he planned to press forward with annual state exams. Cardona has not been confirmed by the Senate.
Last year, former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said her department would not grant blanket testing waivers for this year, although that position no longer mattered after President Joe Biden won the November election.
In response to Monday’s news, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called the decision not to grant waivers a “frustrating turn” of events.
“It misses a huge opportunity to really help our students by allowing the waiver of assessments and the substitution, instead, of locally developed, authentic assessments that could be used by educators and parents as a baseline for work this summer and next year,” Weingarten said.
Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, encouraged states to apply for the waivers being made available, but also disparaged the value of the state exams during the pandemic: “Standardized tests have never been valid or reliable measures of what students know and are able to do, and they are especially unreliable now.”
Meanwhile, Carissa Moffat Miller, the CEO of the Council of Chief State School Officers, indicated support for the department’s approach to assessments this year.
“We appreciate that the Department will provide flexibility on how to administer statewide assessments and modify accountability systems as state leaders manage the continuing effects of the global pandemic,” she said. “In addition, we are pleased that the Department has committed to working with states that may need additional flexibilities.”
In my many years of teaching, my main focus was….to reach all of my children…
Along with the rigors of the required curriculum…I believed in order for young children to be successful…they needed to know I cared…
Since this new millennium, especially teaching children from a diverse African American background…
I believed…those children needed to feel pride in their history…not just in February, when Black History is part of the curriculum…
I felt taking those opportunities when I could to fit in to our day..
Talks about how their values of character such as: kindness, working hard, and … never giving up!
Are those qualities that people should be judged…
And not by what they look like…
I would always call upon that memory of
” Dr, Martin Luther King” …
And how much hebelieved and never giving up on this Dream….
Using myself as an example of when I was a young child I would share that I would watch the news about Dr. King on television… and what a special man…he was…
…My children with eyes wide open felt that he was real , because Ms Sexton saw him!!!
I would also emphasize the story of Rosa Parks, as another real person, I also heard about when I was little, and her bravery in how she spoke out, and took a stand to something that was wrong!
I would also decorate our room with posters, and the children’s art portraying their black history…
All my personal anecdotes helped convey their history in a very relatable way…Making it relevant and hoping they too would be proud of who the are ; striving forvalues and achievement…
All our children, whatever their ethnicity… race… religion… would be…
President Trump is definitely not a proponent for children, and those who rely on our public schools for their education…
Just the fact his selection of Betsy DeVos , an unqualified, billionaire who has strong ties to religious, private schools…as secretary of education….
I knew our public schools were in trouble…
With the fewer resources and funding this administration has taken from public education…and putting those funds into privatization…
And Now…this week at the State of the Union, post Impeachment… President Trump had an opportunity to vindicate the past…
He most definitely did not… He made his State of the Union Speech…a bid for his reelection….His little regard for our public schools calling them government schools…is absolutely disgraceful!
Taking this momentous occasion as an opportunity to stage a young student, who he said attended a public school, to be a recipient of the Education Freedom Scholarship…so she would be able to attend a private school…(Which is reportedly false) …She is already attending a prominent private school!He then revealed that he for wanted Congress to fund 1 million dollars to that Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act- for those worthy students….Adding:
“Because no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government schools!
He also urged Congress to pass legislation,
creating a 5 billion federal tax credit program that would fund scholarships to private and religious schools… benefitting individuals and donors…
The scholarships would be funded by individuals and businesses who want to privately donate but who would then receive a federal tax credit…
The President did call for more vocational and technical education at the high school level…And the importance of the constitutional right for prayer in schools...
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers union, said in a statement: “Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos have made no secret of their antipathy for public education. Rather than strengthen the cornerstone of our democracy and the chief enabler of pluralism and opportunity, they choose to defund and destabilize it. No amount of rebranding vouchers and privatization as ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’ changes that...
This November….We will have an opportunity to vote in a very critical, presidential election… We can impact these detrimental changes since the election of Donald Trump…
One being…public education …There has been the ongoing process of weakening public education by both Republican and Democratic political influences since “No Child Left Behind” of the late nineties…and privatization…
However…. When President Trump chose an unqualified, Betsy Devos as the Secretary of Education….who is a strong proponent of charter schools… Our children who have relied on our public schools have truly suffered….
Our public schools are being dismantled… Due to those monies that would fund many of the necessary programs and resources helping children succeed in our public schools;
They are now being funneled to private schools…
In addition, there is a critical teacher shortage due to poor teacher pay, and the many obstacles teachers deal with everyday…
Such as the rise of gun violence in today’s schools… Thus arming teachers as the answer to the extremely important need for gun control… and gun safety in our schools…
Children live in fear each day!
Now 2020 is finally here!!!…
We have this wonderful opportunity to all unite behind a strong presidential candidate who will advocate for our children; being that strong supporter for public schools…
Itis my hope for our children that this election be the hope for our children… #Vote4Children🇺🇸💙🍎
Our children deserve a strong public school education…
Not since the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the candidate who would have prioritized our children, and their right to a strong public education….
And Donald Trump becoming President…a staunch supporter of the privatization of schools, and his choice of Betsy Devos…an unqualified supporter of privatization…as his secretary of education…
Because of their intent….Our schools are in crisis…Our children and public schools are systematically being dismantled… We have a critical teacher shortage due to unrealistic demands like arming teachers….and poor pay….And our public schools lack resources for necessary programs because their funds being diverted to…
Charter Schools…Profit and Non Profit… schools that do not have the oversight and same regulations and standards that public schools must adhere to…And our tax dollars fund…
With the upcoming presidential election in 2020, we certainly have a crucial opportunity to change all this for our children!!!
We have a strong chance to save our public schools if we elect a democratic candidate… one who supports our children who count on a public school education…There are now about 24 candidates who are in this race…
It is important to listen to the candidates, and how they plan to prioritize our children…with policies that will strengthen our public schools…And I do have my eye on a few…
One candidate that had impressive educational credentials…yet virtually unknown is Michael Bennet…a former school superintendent and senator from Colorado…
He was superintendent of Denver Public Schools from 2005 to 2009…Bennet was closely tied to the education reform movement;
Closing low-performing Denver schools ; changing the district’s merit pay system in a way that favors newer teachers. Both were decisions unfavorable to veteran teachers and some students….but he has since realized these mistakes …
During the Obama administration, as a senator, Bennet did help author the Every Student Succeeds Act, the overhaul of No Child Left Behind….
Bennet is a vocal opponent of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos!!!
Where he now calls for preschool for all…
Another strong candidate choice is Joe Biden…former vice president…As Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden is tied to the many education policies that Obama encouraged…
Although many of which were detrimental including: evaluating teachers in part through their students’ test scores, the expansion of charter schools, and common standards for what students should learn… President Obama has since regretted these policies, and did enact the Every Student Succeeds Act in December of 2015…
Biden’s plan is to implement more funding into public school education; tripling Title I funding, implementing universal pre-kindergarten, and doubling the number of health professionals in schools…
Biden also said he doesn’t support any federal funding going to for-profit charter schools…However his education platform doesn’t mention charters…
Another concern I had, although happened so long ago, was revealed during the first debate by California Senator Kamala Harris, asking Biden if he was wrong to oppose busing back in the sixties and seventies…
Biden’s answer…“I did not oppose busing in America,”… “I opposed busing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed.”
Relating to my own personal experience, as a young teacher during those critical years…I knew busing was the only solution to integrate our schools and federal intervention was most definitely needed!!!
His stance has evolved, and recently expressed in reinstating Obama-era desegregation guidelines that were repealed by the Trump administration in July 2018…
Biden has stated, the first thing he would do as president is to appoint a teacher as education secretary!!!
I have always thought highly of Cory Booker, the senator from New Jersey…. However he not always advocated for public schools…
Booker too has been a leader in the school choice movement.. promoting charter schools, test-based accountability for low-performing schools, and ratings for teachers linked to student performance…Healso has supported private school vouchers, a policy few Democrats favor. He is currently a cosponsor of a bill to reauthorize the federally funded D.C voucher program…
However… Booker has evolved too as many of the candidates…. even plans to run “the boldest pro-public school teacher campaign there is,” noting that his state’s teachers unions had previously endorsed him…
Booker now states… “I’m a guy who believes in public education and, in fact, I look at some of the charter laws that are written about this country and states like this and I find them really offensive,” !!!
Booker has also stated he wants to provide better health care access to low-income communities in order to give those children better health care, so they would be more successful in school…
Pete Buttigieg, is the young mayor of South Bend, Indiana and an up and coming… candidate…Who may be lacking in years of experience however an ageless wisdom that accentuates hisintelligence…
He too, as many of the candidates indicate wants higher teacher pay… More Federal funds allocated to Title I schools… Wants debt free college…Does not believe for profit-charter schools as part of his vision…And he strongly opposes Florida’s guardian program, which gives districts the option to arm their staff.….“It’d be such an enormous, condemnation of our country if we were to to become the only developed nation where this is necessary.”
Julian Castro former secretary of housing and urban development…is another candidate with strong ideas for children and public schools…and whose wife was a former public school math teacher for many years….
As mayor of San Antonio, Castro expanded Pre-K acess, having more children in high-quality early childhood programs…If elected president, Castro wants to create a grant-funded, universal “Pre-K for USA” program…
He’s even created a ” People First Education” platform which will fund $150 billion to grow technology in schools…. ending tuition in public colleges….Raising teacher pay by $10,000…and ideas for safety and policing in schools…
He would promote school integration through efforts to integrate housing and “voluntary busing.” … recalling from his own personal experiences…“Today we’re still grappling with so many of the same issues that we were grappling with 30, 40, 50 years ago.”
One candidate who is one of my favorites...Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, now a senator fromCalifornia…who strongly advocates for our children and publicschools…
One of her education ideas is to propose federal funding to boost teacher salaries by an average of $13,000…and supports an increase school funding…Stood up for better working conditions in her state when California’s teachers went on strike…She has criticized Betsy Devos and has rejected the education secretary’s suggestion for arming teachers…
She is also proposing more federal funding to boost scholarships, research, and grants to historically black colleges and universities…And as a prosecutor, has prosecuted cases involving charter schools and truancy…
Amy Klobochar, senator from Minnesota…is one to watch…She was a front runner, but has fallen behind…
She too is a strong advocate for public schools….She wants in increase infrastructure by a trillion dollars to repair schools, increase teacher pay, make community colleges free, reduce rates on student loans, and expand Pell grants…
She is against private school vouchers and hold higher standards to charter schools…
Beto O’Rourke has become quite popular…He is a former representative from El Paso, Texas…He ran against Ted Cruz in 2018 for his senate seat…And now a vocal advocate gun reform…
He does support non-profit charter schools; believing they enhance innovation…Vocally opposes vouchers and taking funding away from public schools…
Beto’s children attend public schools and his wife was a former public school teacher…Now recruiter for new charter schools and launched a dual-language charter in El-Paso…
He is against high- stakes testing…Funding our schools with $500 billion that will help close the racial barrier inequities, and increase teacher pay … And for those teachers having at least taught for five years… debt forgiveness on their college loans…
Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont…is one of the most popular candidates espousing many of the progressive policies for the democratic platform…And was very powerful running in 2016 against Hillary…
Sanders has developed a 10-point platform called A Thurgood Marshall Plan for Education… outlining his program will include tripling Title I funding, and spending $5 billion on summer and after-school programs. He also proposes using federal funding to promote school integration…He has proposed making community college free for all…
He too has supported the teacher strikes…by paying them a starting teacher salary of at least $60,000… Restraining charter school growth by eliminating federal monies…and ban profit charter schools (which presidents do not have the authority)…
As a senator he voted against the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. In June, he introduced student loan forgiveness, expand what Pell grants can pay for, and eliminate tuition at public four-year colleges and universities.
Last is Elizabeth Warren another of my favorites…She is a senator Massachusetts…An advocate for progressive policies… although supports non profit charter schools…
Warren’s platform is progressive…She wants free community college…and student loan forgiveness…Her Pre-K plan will have a sliding scale for tuition, and those in poverty, tuition will be free… As of yet Warren has not shared her K-12 policy plan… In the past….She formally supported accountability testing…Which Warren now believes an education is not about testing…
She has shared she will appoint a public school teacher as her secretary of education…and has definitely stated her disapproval for the current secretary of education… Betsy Devos…
I have included Marianne Williamson, author and activist to be extremely interesting because of her philosophical ideas and approach to a political run for president…
Williamson believes that undereducation is a form of oppression…And wants a change…A whole-person educational system…and less testing…
These eleven candidates may be strong possibilities, and have some beneficial ideas for our children and public education… However there are thirteen more…We have our next debates on September 12 and 13… And there may be changes until those dates…and some may not qualify for the debates…
But the one critical factor I am counting on is …
Our children and their right to a strong public school education…must be that priority… 💙🇺🇸🍎
It will be up to all of us…united to support a candidate that will make that happen…
Mary Towers has been an inspiration to both; my professional and personal life…
Our story begins when I was hired by Mr. Bill Irby, principal of Alachua Elementary School, in Alachua, Florida; in the fall of nineteen seventy-three… I was hired for a paraprofessional position…
Before then, I had been a beginning teacher at Browning Pearce Elementary, in Palatka, Florida… traveling ninety miles daily… Alachua Elementary was fifteen miles from my home; so I accepted this position… I was assigned to tutor first grade students who needed extra support…Hoping that if a teaching position would become available…I would be hired…
Mary was one of the five teachers I was to assist in an open classroom; Learning Community A… LCA, as it was called; housed five classrooms, four of which were first grade and one was kindergarten; with over one hundred students separated only by partitions…I was to be placed with my small group, in the middle of this very large room divided by furniture and mobile chalkboards… Believe it or not, it it was not all that noisy…
On my very first day, I will never forget how I met Mary… I was walking through the unit, being introduced by the team leader, Chris Hirsch, to the teachers of the team in LCA… Mary being one of them, was very busy with a particular student…A little girl in her class was in the bathroom dealing with intestinal worms, and Mary was taking care of this most challenging situation…How impressed I was by how Mary was managing such a situation …
It was then, after a year, my wish came true…I did get reassigned to teach a first grade class!
And then, opening up the very next year in nineteen and seventy-five; one of the most special of my teaching opportunities opened up!
I was to team with Mary Towers, a professional relationship lasting nine years…. ending in 1984…when Mary retired…
This special opportunity arose in the summer of seventy-five, when Mr.Irby, offered me a co-teaching position with Mary, in a newly federally funded, early childhood education program called ECPC… The Early Childhood Preventative Curriculum Program...
This innovative program was designed as an intervention for diverse, young children who were screened in kindergarten, exhibiting difficulties with their learning…
This center based program was designed with no more than sixteen students, assisted by a full-time aide who would be responsible for the reinforcement associated with specific activities; that would build upon the deficits, diagnostically determined through pre and post tests through the child’s auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and tactile learning styles…
Mary and I each had our own group of children assisted by our full time aide.. Our class was housed within the large classroom in LCA…which now had mobilized walls separating each of the five classrooms; providing the children less distractions…
Our morning time was devoted to four specific centers that incorporated the curriculum:
Reading; Follow Up Reading, and Language Arts activities: Listening; and last “Willy Worm” an aide directed center with specific activities prescribed by the pre and post testing…
The reading curriculum utilized, the SullivanProgrammedReaders…a successful program of the time…. teaching children decoding skills in reading context within a linguistic progression of sound-symbol relationships...
Teaching those nine years with Mary really flew by!!…Sadly both our Team and ECPC Program ended with Mary’s retirement... Mary and I can look back and be quite proud of what our children accomplished from the Early Childhood Preventative Curriculum Program…
Many of our children went on to have successful lives; some going into local politics and a few playing collegiate and professional football…
Mary made this for me…when she retired…1984….
As I have reflect on our years together, this special relationship provided me the knowledge and experiences I learned from teaching with Mary…enabling me to evolve into a strong teacher…
Not only has Mary been such an influence on me professionally…Personally, Mary has been a guiding support even more so…
Having lost my mother when I was a senior in high school…I always felt a little lost…Mary was close in age to what my mother’s age would have been…And having such a warm connection with Mary…I always believed my mother, placed Mary in my life for a special reason…I have felt blessed to have Mary in my corner for these forty plus years…
Through the many years I have learned so much about Mary’s beautiful family; especially now that her husband’s recent passing,..Her four children never leave her side…
Mary will be one hundred this year, and she still lives in the same house that she and her husband built after World War II; on land that has been in her family for generations … There are always family gatherings with her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, other family members and close friends …
What I dearly appreciate truly about Mary is about service and sacrifice, pertaining to her husband Frank Towers ….their story; how they met and married during World War II…Frank was a true hero of the War…He was a commissioned officer in the 30th Infantry Division during the Invasion at Normandy and helped in the liberation of the Jewish Holocaust survivors on a train from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp….
Mary was still actively involved in my life even in her early nineties…The years passing we have kept our special lunches just to keep in touch…
Then when I began teaching at Idylwild in 20O7…She and her husband offered to assist me in my move to be closer to Idylwild…Utilizing their large van and Frank’s technological skills….with my computer…
Mary would even volunteer in my classroom…I so loved and appreciated her help…
She did so much: she would help any child that needed assistance with their math or reading; at home she would make all the children flash cards for reading practice; bring in much needed school supplies; make our individual math packets… Our children and Idywild loved her…And in 2011 Idywild nominated Mary for “Volunteer of the Year…
With my retirement in 2015…I have moved to Palm Coast, to be closer to the ocean…
I am still loving and appreciating Mary…
And… so looking forward to coming back to Gainesville; spring and fall…celebrating our friendship with our special lunch dates…
Not since the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the candidate who would have prioritized our children, and their right to a strong public education….
As I have reflect on our years together, this special relationship provided me the knowledge and experiences I learned from teaching with Mary…enabling me to evolve into a strong teacher…
Janis Sexton...Teacher...Advocate 