I’ve noticed a slew of advertisements recently, both on-line and on late night television (and herein lies a clue, future detectives, to my sleeping habits) for various training opportunities in law enforcement, national security, and various jobs for dealing with criminals and incarceration. Here is an email I just received a few moments ago:

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I recently sat in on a meeting of a group of pre-K through second grade teachers planning their school's Halloween celebration.They were charged with coming up with Halloween games for the event. One of the teachers provided the succint suggestion: " Take a traditional game, like bowling or bean bag toss, and put a ghost on it." This seemed to me to be a wise, efficient, and sufficiently scary recommendation for a holiday that calls for just the right balance between terror and delight.

Every year, at Easter time, I buy a new box of yellow "Peeps" (marshmallow candy chicks) as a kind of ready-made art installation that I keep on my living room coffee table. They look comfortable and attractive and synthetic in their neat little rows, sealed beneath the cellophane. I keep them in the box.

More and more, we are hearing calls for a more creative workforce activated by, as the business writer Daniel H. Pink calls it, "a whole new mind". The idea seems to be that in an information economy, developing creative and critical thinking skills is becoming increasingly necessary for our citizenry in order to effectively adapt to an ever-changing workplace and a radically fluctuating economy. If this is indeed true (and I believe that it is), our education systems must actively support learners in becoming increasing flexible, collaborative, and innovative.

While on a trip to Washington, D.C., I paid a visit to the offices of the U.S. Department of Education. Special structures had been built around the entrances to the building- replicas of the archetypal “Little Red Schoolhouse”. I later found out that these had been installed to protect government employees from falling masonry, but why were these particular wooden pieces of nostalgia chosen to grace the doorways to these large, gothic, stone buildings?

One of our most requested programs in Cook County is Conflict Resolution for Youth. Schools across the county express their difficulty in getting past conflicts to reach education each day. Students come to schools with complex issues including hunger, broken families, homelessness, fear, anger, and a lack of social interaction that previous generations take for granted.  

As part of their Renaissance 2010 school transformation plan, the administration of the Chicago Public Schools annually announces a list of low-performing schools to be closed. What's different this year is that community groups are at the table with CPS for the first time.

A classic grade school science (or is it art?) activity calls for charcoal briquettes, ammonia, salt, water, food coloring, and bluing. What is bluing? Bluing is a dye used to treat clothing that has yellowed with age and use. Here is copy from the website for Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing: