LANGUAGE ARTS-NEW MEXICO

Richardson Proposes High School Redesign

This week Governor Richardson announced his proposed "Actions to Redesign High School Education in New Mexico."  Until we know more details, it's difficult to tell what it means, but some of the changes being suggested look significant:

Components of Governor Richardson’s high school redesign proposal include:

Develop New Mexico’s High School Diploma of Excellence          

Increase drop out age from 17 to 18

Increase graduation requirements          

Create a statewide cyber academy

Increase funding for career technical high schools

Increase funding for Advanced Placement courses and teacher training          

Increase funding for Pre-AP to target students in underserved areas and better prepare them for high school

Change funding for senior year to create incentives for districts to make senior year more meaningful

Charge the existing Higher Education/Public Education Alignment Taskforce to create a statewide funding framework for students who are dually enrolled, as well as eliminate the 10th grade competency exam and replace it with a more meaningful assessment of high school proficiency and college readiness.

You can read the entire press release here.

Exciting Reciting

From Teacher Magazine, May 23, 2006:

The Spoken Word
The finals of a national poetry recitation contest bring students from every state to the nation's capital. By Craig Stone

Combine the versification of Emily Dickinson with the performance chops of Eminem and you’ll have something close to what was on offer at the finals of the Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest in Washington, D.C., on May 16. Fifty-one high school students from the 50 states and the District of Columbia—all winners at the state level of the competition and recipients of all-expenses-paid trips to the nation’s capital—gathered in the city’s historic Lincoln Theatre for a marathon day of poetry recitation and performance.

Treading the boards on which the likes of Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington once performed, each student took to the open stage—occupied only by a single microphone on its stand—and delivered one of three poems they were asked to prepare to a crowd that packed the lower level of the 1,250 capacity theatre. The students, many dapperly dressed in keeping with the classic décor of the theatre, were judged on such criteria as volume, presence, evidence of understanding, and level of difficulty by a panel of judges that included essayist Michael Dirda, Caroline Kennedy, and author A.B. Spellman.

The Poetry Out Loud competition is the product of a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. Each group dedicated $500,000 to fund the 2006 program, providing grants to state arts agencies to run the local contests. Participating schools also received free, standards-based curriculum materials including print and online poetry anthologies and teachers’ guides.

More (including video) here  (requires registration). 

Steinbeck or Cisneros?

Here's an interesting article about how schools in the Seattle area are rethinking what they ask students to read:

Schools' reading lists get a rewrite
By Lynn Thompson [Seattle] Times Snohomish County Bureau  

Joel Villasano speaks with pride about reading Shakespeare's "Hamlet" earlier this year.

The Elizabethan prose was dense and often incomprehensible, but there were great insults and sword fights. And once he had worked his way through the play, Villasano said, he felt a huge sense of accomplishment.

But the Mariner High School senior really lights up when he talks about another book his English class read this year: "Life of Pi," a story of a 14-year-old Indian zookeeper's son stranded on a life raft with a Bengal tiger. The book, published in 2001, is a harrowing high-seas adventure and a meditation on faith by a boy who loves God so much that he practices Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.

"Is it an animal story or a human story?" Villasano asks. "Is it about the survival of just the most powerful predators? Is one religion better than all the others?"

Villasano, who didn't speak English until his family came to the United States when he was 8, and who didn't like books much when he entered high school, poses these questions like a seasoned reader, his voice animated with curiosity and awe.

Largely in response to their more ethnically diverse student bodies, high schools in the area are broadening their literature selections to include more contemporary writers, more women and more minorities.

Students say the books engage them more immediately than the classics yet still raise timeless questions about existence and meaning.

Read the rest here.