National Poem in Your Pocket Day 2011 - click for details
The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends.
Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores. Create your own Poem In Your Pocket Day event using ideas below or let us know how your plans, projects, and suggestions for Poem In Your Pocket Day by emailing npm@poets.org.
Put Poems In Pockets
In this age of mechanical and digital reproduction, it’s easy to carry a poem, share a poem, or start your own PIYP day event. Here are some ideas of how you might get involved:
Start a “poems for pockets” give-a-way in your school or workplace
Urge local businesses to offer discounts for those carrying poems
Post pocket-sized verses in public places
Handwrite some lines on the back of your business cards
Start a street team to pass out poems in your community
Distribute bookmarks with your favorite immortal lines
Add a poem to your email footer
Post a poem on your blog or social networking page
Project a poem on a wall, inside or out
Text a poem to friends
Help us expand the list: send your ideas to npm@poets.org.
Poem In Your Pocket History
Poem In Your Pocket Day has been celebrated each April in New York City since 2004. Each year, city parks, bookstores, workplaces, and other venues burst with open readings of poems from pockets. Even the Mayor gets in on the festivities, reading a poem on the radio. For more information on New York City’s celebration, visit nyc.gov/poem.
Poems have been stowed in pockets in a variety of ways, from the commonplace books of the Renaissance to the pocket-sized publications for Army soldiers in World War II. Have a story about the marriage of the poem and the pocket? Send them to npm@poets.org.
I just stumbled into National Poetry Month and National Poem in Your Pocket Day a few years ago, gearing up to use The Ride of Paul Revere on the anniversary of his famous ride. How are you using poetry in your job?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
But I can’t resist putting the video here, because I know a few old-timers would be confused by the link, and some people will think they don’t have the time to make two clicks instead of one.
So, here, in its Seussian glory and demand for Flash Animation, is TeacherSabrina’s story of D.C.’s late Queen of the Schools, Michelle Rhee, and her desire to get D.C.’s kids to score well on an increasing battery of tests [Got a good joke about assault and battery we can insert here?]: “Rhee the Reformer: A Cautionary Tale.”
Where anyone can find an ice floe in Texas is a powerful question, but the search will be on to find some soon, if the budget approved by the Texas House of Representatives cannot be fixed.
Texas House Democrats sent out a notice shortly after the vote, explaining some of the cuts:
An hour ago, Texas House Republicans forced through some of the most destructive budget cuts in Texas history. On a party line vote, 101 House Republicans trampled on the priorities of regular, middle-class Texas families. [1]
Tonight, Republicans voted to:
Eliminate 335,000 Texas jobs in both the public and private sectors, threatening our fragile economic recovery [2]
Lay off up to 100,000 teachers and school support workers, crowding dozens of kids into unruly classrooms [3]
Kick 100,000 kids out of full day Pre-Kindergarten [4]
Close half of the state’s nursing homes, leaving thousands of seniors with no place to go [5]
Create a ripple effect that will force local governments like cities, counties and local school districts to raise taxes [6]
Cut off access to financial aid for thousands of graduating high school seniors [7], while forcing up college tuition through cuts. [8]
They didn’t have to cut this deeply into the priorities set by most Texas families. They chose to make the deepest cuts public education since the creation of our school finance system in 1949. [9]
For months, Republicans have been yelling “Cuts! Cuts!” and they have ignored the thousands of office visits, letters, emails and phone calls of average Texans protesting these hurtful cuts.
Democrats offered plenty of creative solutions that would keep schools open, spare nursing homes from closing, and keep our promise to graduating seniors who have worked hard for a chance to earn a college education. Republicans shot them down one by one in favor of deeper cuts.
Anybody can swing an axe and slash budgets across the board. Texas needs people who can lead, set priorities, and protect those priorities.
Remember, Republicans chose to make these cuts.Help us hold them accountable for costing jobs, hurting families, and for choosing to sacrifice the future of too many Texas kids.
Fewer teachers when more are needed, bigger classrooms when smaller classrooms are needed, less health care in the state with the largest uninsured population of any state, the highest proportion of uninsured people.
Texas Republicans chose the meat cleaver over the scalpel to try to balance Gov. Rick Perry's $27 billion deficit. Many cuts appear targeted to do the most damage possible to education and other "liberal" state functions. Cleaver prop from YourProps.com
Prisons, highways, state parks, and other programs suffered serious cuts, too.
Had a foreign power done this to Texas, it would be considered an act of war. How will Texas citizens respond?
No television cameras. No professional photographers. An employee of American Airlines, Andres Otero, standing by, caught the event, probably with his phone camera.
Here’s the picture, published in the obscure Queens Gazette:
Congressional Medal of Honor Winner Rodolfo Hernandez received a salute from active duty military, as he boarded an American Airlines flight to Washington, D.C., for Medal of Honor Day, March 25. Photo by Andres Otero, American Airlines
California-native Corporal Rodolfo P. Hernandez served in the U.S. Army, and saw action in the Korean conflict. He and his unit came under attack near Wontong-ni, Korea, on May 31, 1951. Here’s the citation, from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society:
Cpl. Hernandez, a member of Company G, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. His platoon, in defensive positions on Hill 420, came under ruthless attack by a numerically superior and fanatical hostile force, accompanied by heavy artillery, mortar, and machine gun fire which inflicted numerous casualties on the platoon. His comrades were forced to withdraw due to lack of ammunition but Cpl. Hernandez, although wounded in an exchange of grenades, continued to deliver deadly fire into the ranks of the onrushing assailants until a ruptured cartridge rendered his rifle inoperative. Immediately leaving his position, Cpl. Hernandez rushed the enemy armed only with rifle and bayonet. Fearlessly engaging the foe, he killed 6 of the enemy before falling unconscious from grenade, bayonet, and bullet wounds but his heroic action momentarily halted the enemy advance and enabled his unit to counterattack and retake the lost ground. The indomitable fighting spirit, outstanding courage, and tenacious devotion to duty clearly demonstrated by Cpl. Hernandez reflect the highest credit upon himself, the infantry, and the U.S. Army.
Congressional Medal of Honor awardee Cpl. Rodolfo P. Hernandez - Congressional Medal of Honor Society image
Cpl. Hernandez received the Congressional Medal of Honor on April 21, 1962.
No, I had not heard of Medal of Honor Day, either.
Here are some details from MedalofHonorNews.com, so you can get a head start on next year’s observation:
National Medal of Honor Day is officially observed on March 25th. The Medal of Honor is the highest distinction that can be awarded by the President, in the name of the Congress, to members of the Armed Forces who have distinguished themselves conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of their lives above and beyond the call of duty.
“This holiday should be one of our most revered. Unfortunately all too many Americans are not even aware of its existence.” Home of Heroes
The date of March 25th was chosen because the first Medals of Honor were awarded to members of Andrew’s Raiders on March 25, 1863, for their actions during the “Great Locomotive Chase.”
“Hard times ask us to put a greater good before our own interests. It is sometimes physically or emotionally painful. Yet throughout history, you will find common men and women who fought selflessly in a variety of ways for something so much larger than just their own benefit.
Today, we’re fighting terrorism and the spread of tyranny. We’re challenged by market upheaval, joblessness and perhaps hunger. But the human spirit is resilient and can withstand more than sometimes we are able to immediately comprehend.
It’s up to each of us to not lay and wait for better days, but instead look for opportunities to make the lives of those around us better. National Medal of Honor Day is not a celebration. It is a solemn time to reflect on the freedom we enjoy, its price, and how our own bravery can improve the world around us.”
Home of Heroes, a premier resource of Medal of Honor information on the internet suggests:
“National Medal of Honor day is celebrated in some communities, however for the most part the occasion comes and goes with little notice. As a patriotic American there are a few things you can do to commemorate this day:
Fly your flag with pride and patriotism on this day.
Remember our heroes. As a gesture of your appreciation, why not take just a few moments in the week prior to National Medal of Honor Day to mail a “Thank You” card to one of our living Medal of Honor recipients. You can find a list of the living as well as information on writing to them among the pages of the Home of Heroes website or contact the Congressional Medal of Honor Society who will forward the letter to the Medal of Honor Recipient.
Inform your local media. Most newspapers aren’t even aware that this special day exists. Why not tip your local media to the occasion. Before you do, check out the Home of Heroes database for Medal of Honor recipients from your city and state as well as any who might be buried in your city. This information can give your media a “local angle” that can increase the probability that they will consider doing a story to remind Americans of our heroes.
Consider doing something in your local schools, or even on a civic level, if there is a Medal of Honor recipient living near your location. School ideas at the Home of Heroes website.
The Organization of American Historians Speaks Out on Academic Freedom and Defends OAH Member and University of Wisconsin–Madison Professor William Cronon
For more information, contact:
Katherine M. Finley, Executive Director
Organization of American Historians
112 N. Bryan Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47401
ph 812.855.7311; fax 812.855.0696
The Executive Committee of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), led by President Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of History at Columbia University, issued the following statement on March 30, 2011, supporting academic freedom and deploring the recent efforts of Wisconsin politicians to intimidate OAH member and professor William Cronon:
The Executive Committee of the Organization of American Historians deplores the efforts of Republican party operatives in the state of Wisconsin to intimidate Professor William Cronon, a distinguished and respected member of our organization and currently the president-elect of our sister association, the American Historical Association. As a professional historian, Professor Cronon has used his extensive knowledge of American history to provide a historical context for recent events in Wisconsin. Requiring him to provide his e-mail correspondence, as the Republican party of Wisconsin has now done, will inevitably have a chilling effect on the capacity of all academics to engage in wide public debate. The timing and character of the Freedom of Information Act request for Professor Cronon’s e-mail correspondence leave no doubt that the purpose of this request is to use the authority of the state to prevent William Cronon from freely exercising his rights as a citizen and as a public employee.
Cronon, a professor of environmental and U.S. western history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has come under fire from the Wisconsin Republican party. A longtime member of the OAH and a former member of its executive board, Cronon is the incoming president of the American Historical Association. He has been thrust into the spotlight for his March 15, 2011, blog post and for a subsequent op-ed piece in the New York Times, critical of the Wisconsin legislature and Governor Scott Walker. The OAH Executive Committee believes that the action of the Wisconsin Republican party in requesting e-mails sent by Professor Cronon will have a negative impact on academics who engage in wide public debate.
Ready to start dialing? It’s time to dial to save your country.
MoveOn.org asks Texans to phone their U.S. senators for help:
Dear Ed,
Heads up: Congress is debating a budget plan that would be devastating to Texas. Will you pass this along?
Senators Kay Hutchison and John Cornyn need to hear from all of us about it right now, before they cut a deal in the next few days.
Please spread the word about all of these proposed cuts to Texas:
$98 million would be cut from federal funds for clean and safe water in Texas.1
12,000 Texas children would be immediately cut from Head Start, which provides comprehensive early childhood development services for at-risk children ages zero to five.2
$391 million would be cut from Pell Grants, affecting all 664,000 higher education students with those grants in Texas.3
Job training and employment services would be effectively eliminated for 5,800 dislocated workers, 99,000 low-income adults, and 16,000 youths age 14 to 21.4
$10 million would be cut from law enforcement assistance, taking cops off the beat.5
It’s especially galling when the same budget protects tax breaks for corporations like GE and the very rich.
Just last night the news broke that Congress may be close to striking a deal on the budget. Now is the only time we can influence the outcome.
Can you call Sens. Hutchison and Cornyn and ask them to oppose these cuts in the budget? You can pick one of the cuts in this list to highlight in your call.
Senator Kay Hutchison
Phone: 202-224-5922
Senator John Cornyn
Phone: 202-224-2934
Click to report your call. Then pass this email along locally!
The cuts that the Republicans are proposing would disproportionately hit those who can least afford it in Texas, and it’s up to us to stop them.
Thanks for all you do.
-Daniel, Amy, Milan, Tate, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. “House Bill Means Fewer Children in Head Start, Less Help for Students to Attend College, Less Job Training, and Less Funding for Clean Water,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March, 1, 2010 http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3405
3. “House Bill Means Fewer Children in Head Start, Less Help for Students to Attend College, Less Job Training, and Less Funding for Clean Water,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March, 1, 2010 http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3405
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
Want to support our work? We’re entirely funded by our 5 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.
Meanwhile, the Texas House of Representatives scheduled the start of debate on H. 1 for Friday, April 1 — the budget resolution that would gut Texas schools and higher education, and set Texas on a course of decline that will make California’s troubles look serene by comparison.
NEA’s Texas affiliate, the Texas State Teachers’ Association, asks teachers to call their Texas representatives to weigh in against the drastic budget cuts (and you can call, too):
March 30, 2011
House Bill 1 is an assault on the public schools!
This Friday, April 1, the Texas House of Representatives is scheduled to begin debate on House Bill 1, its version of the state budget for 2012-2013. If this bill were to become law in its present form, it would cut almost $8 billion from public education and, with it, tens of thousands of school district jobs.
Unfortunately, this is no April Fool’s joke.
It is, instead, the proposal of a state leadership that would rather plug a huge hole in the state budget by firing teachers, packing kids into overcrowded classrooms and closing neighborhood schools than by adequately investing in our state’s future.
NOW is the time to call your legislator and let him or her know what these budget cuts will mean in your classroom, your school and your community. We must stop House Bill 1, and your call is critical!
To contact your state representative, call 800-260-5444, and we will connect you [That’s the number for TSTA members, but try it — I’ll bet they’ll accept your help!]. You can call any time, day or night, but you need to call before Friday. Leaving a voice message with your representative’s office is just as good as talking to a staff member.
It is important to include the following points in your conversation or message:
Your name, that you are a TSTA member and that you live and vote in their district.
An overwhelming number of people in your community – parents, teachers and other taxpayers – oppose cuts that would harm public schools.
Your own story, how laying off educators, cramming children into crowded classrooms and closing neighborhood schools would have a harmful impact on your students and community.
Ask your representative to find the revenue necessary to avoid harmful budget cuts, restore full education funding and end this assault on our public schools.
This will take only a few minutes of your time, and it will be time well spent. Your representative needs to hear from you before Friday!
Pick up your telephone and strike a blow for freedom, democracy, education and sanity in government.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
After the long-running, ever popular television series M*A*S*H ended, star Alan Alda got roped into hosting a science program on public television for Scientific American. Alda discovered he really likes science. He discovered he has a flair for talking about science, too.
With the constant discussion among scientists about how to overcome the War on Science, and especially how to combat the fruit loops, crank scientists, junk science purveyors and others who muddy the waters of understanding science, I thought this interview at a National Science Foundation function was interesting:
Alan Alda, award winning actor and Visiting Professor with the Center for Communicating Science, talks about his experiences with communicating science to the general public. Looking to close the gap between the scientific community and the public, Mr. Alda discusses what needs to be improved, and how science can be better understood.
Credit: National Science Foundation
Can Alda really do anything about saving science communication, rescuing it from the propaganda machines?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
In over 35 years of friendship and conversation, Walter Michaels and I have disagreed on only two things, and one of them was faculty and graduate student unionization. He has always been for and I had always been against. I say “had” because I recently flipped and what flipped me, pure and simple, was Wisconsin.
When I think about the reasons (too honorific a word) for my previous posture I become embarrassed. They are by and large the reasons rehearsed and apparently approved by Naomi Schaefer Riley in her recent op-ed piece “Why unions hurt higher education” (USA Today). The big reason was the feeling — hardly thought through sufficiently to be called a conviction — that someone with an advanced degree and scholarly publications should not be in the same category as factory workers with lunch boxes and hard hats. As Riley points out, even the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) used to be opposed to unionization because of “the commonly held belief that universities were not corporations and faculty were not employees.”
Throughout the day of March 22, teachers will be sharing posts entitled “Why Teachers Like Us Support Unions”. For those of you here to share, thank you for doing so. To submit your posts, click here.
For those of you not sharing, we hope you will take the time to read from an extremely varied and wide variety of teachers across the country and world. We ask that you read with open minds. You will read many different reasons for support, some of them contradictory. What all stories will share though is a desire to serve students. We all feel that teachers unions give us the best shot to give our students the best possible education.
Sometimes, state and administrative pressure to change school culture is counterproductive, sometimes destructive enough to derail reform efforts. How?
Despite their clear pleasure in working with the students, Kulla and Cherko said teacher morale throughout the building remains low, in part because of last year’s termination crisis and the resulting high-turnover among staff, and in part because student discipline remains a major problem.
“The kids, when they’re here, need to know this is a place of learning,” Kulla said. “Right now they don’t.” Cherko added that the layoff crisis was interpreted by many students as a sign that their teachers were incompentent. “I’m not sure they realize how nationally-driven what happened last year was,” he said. “They say, ‘The teachers got fired because they’re bad at their jobs.'”
The Central Falls administration certainly seems hard at work attempting to improve discipline and attendence; the fact that the numbers remain problematic show just how difficult it is to revitalize a school’s culture. The termination crisis, unfortunately, probably worsenend the problem by sending students and their parents the message that CFHS teachers are not respected professionals.
Northern Light Productions made the film for the “Canyon Visitor Education Center in Yellowstone National Park. The film offers a compelling overview of the ‘big picture’ geology that has shaped and continues to influence Yellowstone and its ecosystem.”
Big picture geology? How about making this film available to schools to talk about geology, geography, and history?
Yellowstone National Park annually gets about three million visitors. Yellowstone is one of those places that ever American should see — but at that rate, it would be more than 100 years before everybody gets there.
We need good, beautifully shot, well-produced, interesting films on American landmarks in the classroom.
How do we get this one freed for America’s kids, Yellowstone Park?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Here are some Headlines from newspapers over the years. Can you guess when they were written?
1. “Attack Mounted on Dropouts/City Sets Standards for Schools”
2. “New York’s Great Reading Score Scandal”
3. “Diagnostic reading tests are being given this week to 150,000 high school students as the first step in a new program—the largest and most systematic ever. …We intend to follow through…to overcome deficiencies.”
4. “The University of California (Berkeley) found that 30 to 40 percent of entering freshmen were not proficient in English.”
5. “Hope for the Blackboard Jungle: … Every year New Yorkers’ performance had been getting a little worse, until by YEAR? only 32 percent of the city’s pupils [were] doing as well or better than the national average.”
6. “Even Boston’s ‘brightest students’ didn’t know ‘whether water expanded or contracted when it freezes.’ And while 70 percent of this elite group knew that the U.S. had imposed an embargo in 1812 only five knew what ’embargo’ meant.”
7. “Tougher Standards in Our High. The average freshman is a year and three months behind national standards in reading.”
8. “City Pupils Remain Behind … Official Asserts the Tests Suggest Difficulty in Early Grades. Last fall 40.1 percent were reported on grade level or above … but in March, 43 percent … were reading at grade level or above”; and “Bleak drop out stats are raising concern.”
9. “Our standard for high school graduation has slipped badly. Fifty years ago a high school diploma meant something. … We have misled our students. … and our nation.”
10, “During the past 40 or 50 years those who are responsible for education have progressively removed from the curriculum … the western culture which produced the modern democratic state.”
The quotes above come from mainstream publications over the past 150 years. The earliest is 1845, the latest . . .
Teaching is a lonely profession, oddly enough. All too often teachers get stuck on an island away from other adults, away from socializing with colleagues even just a few feet away in the next room. Different from most other professions, teachers in most schools are required to function without basic support for much of what they do, or with minimal support.
Consequently, teachers organizing to support teachers is difficult and too rare.
Unions become vital organizations to fight against unhealthy social isolation, to fight for teachers, to fight for education.
On March 22 union teachers in New York will wear red as an expression of solidarity with and support for teachers under attack in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Indiana, and dozens of other places that we don’t know much about because, after all, brutal legislative attacks on teachers and teaching are so commonplace these days — “dog bites man” stories.
I was asked to join a group of bloggers who will blog on the importance of teaching, the importance of education, and why we support teacher unions on March 22.
If you teach and blog, will you join us? If you had a teacher who made a difference in your life, and blog, will you join us?
As we all know, teachers and our unions, along with those of other public sector employees, face unprecedented attacks in the national media and from local and state governments. It is easy for politicians and the media to demonize the “unions” and their public faces; it is far more difficult to demonize the millions of excellent teachers who are proud union members. Those of us who are excellent teachers and who stand in solidarity with our unions are probably no stranger to the question “Well, why are you involved with the union if you’re a good teacher?” It’s time for us to stand up and answer that question loudly and clearly.
On Tuesday, March 22, teachers in NYC will wear red in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and elsewhere. We also stand with teachers in places like Idaho, California, and Texas who are facing massive layoffs. We would like to take this stand on the web as well. We encourage you to publish a piece on March 22 entitled “Why Teachers Like Me Support Unions.” In this piece, please explain your own reasons for being a proud union member and/or supporter. Including personal stories can make this a very powerful piece. It would be great to also explain how being a union member supports and enables you to be the kind of teacher that you are. We want these posts to focus not only on our rights, but also on what it takes to be a great teacher for students, and how unions support that.
After you have published your post, please share it through the form that will go live on March 22 at http://www.edusolidarity.us. Posts should also be shared on Twitter using the tag #edusolidarity.
In Concord, New Hampshire, on March 11 and 12, 2011, apparently testing to see whether that little state has bad enough education standards before announcing a presidential bid, Michelle Bachmann butchered history and geography once again, according to the conservative Minnesota Independent:
“You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord,” she said, referencing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” an ode to the lives lost at the start of the American Revolution in Concord, Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.
How many bites at the apple does stupid get? Has Ed Brayton picked up on this yet?
New American did its damnedest to explain it away as a slip of the tongue — either assuming Bachmann is too reckless not to use prepared remarks for her first foray into New Hampshire (maybe a more serious indictment), or not paying attention to her written remarks (Was it just one more in a long string of really stupid slips of the tongue? Loose tongues sink as many ships as loose lips . . .); in another article New American falsely claimed a worldwide ban on DDT, falsely claiming the ban killed 30 million kids, and said that it disrupted food growing in America, though food crops hadn’t been sprayed with DDT for nearly a decade when its use was banned on agricultural crops in the U.S. alone. Accuracy isn’t in that animal
[On the slashing of arts education funding:] It’s especially discouraging when you live in a democracy where anything good is possible, if only we have the courage to deal with it.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 