Ann Arbor Public Schools: 1/21/08 Issue

This Week
In the Ann Arbor Public Schools

January 21, 2008

To: The Staff of the Ann Arbor Public Schools
From: Todd Roberts, Superintendent

This Week’s Good News!

January 21 is the day we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I hope you all were able to participate in one or more of the thoughtful and inspiring events that were presented in our community in tribute to Dr. King and his legacy.
The 4th annual Thurston Chess Tournament took place on Saturday, January 12th with rave reviews. Over 100 Ann Arbor-area chess players, ranging from Kindergarten to 8th grade, participated. Unlike previous years, this tournament was open to other Ann Arbor schools, which made for a great community-building event. Many of the players took part in preparation for the Michigan State Team Chess Championships, which will be held on February 2nd.
Special thanks go to tournament organizers Nejat Karabakal, Gene Darnell, Yuji Fujii and Jeff Alson (King Elementary School) for extra, behind-the-scenes hours and effort; and to Ray Garrison, our tournament director who also teaches chess in local schools. Thank you to all of those whose volunteer work during the tournament kept it running smoothly. Thank you also to Mrs. Manley and the Thurston PTO for allowing us to showcase our beautiful facilities, as well as the great chess players at Thurston!
On January 16, students from three middle schools competed in the city- wide Geography Bee. For the observers the competition had all the tension and drama of a basketball game between Michigan and Michigan State. Jon Strite, Jill McGinn, and Tracy Grant from Slauson deserve a round of applause for hosting this first Geo Bee event.
On Jan. 11, Pioneer High School’s Benito Juarez Chapter of the Sociedad Honoraria Hispanica held its annual initiation ceremony. The Sociedad is a national honor society for high school students that recognizes high achievement in the study of Spanish. The following 28 Pioneer students qualified for membership and were inducted: Sahar Aggour, Bradley Baker, Carly Carn-Saferstein, Promita Chakrabarty, Timothy Clendenin, Nishita Conjeevaram, Maeve Daly, Max Davis, Anna Dean, Ilana Diamond, Nour El-Kashlan, Katherine Globerson, Kara Grupe, Aniruan Guha, Gong He, Mari Isa, Woo Kang, Chad Kelsey, Meaghan Kennedy, Ruth Kershaw, Connor Luczak, Sang Moon, Neil Parikh, Salman Rajput, Andres Uribe, Diane Wang, Xiao Wang, and Seunghyun Yoo. Diane Kalata is the faculty advisor.
Bach Media Specialist, Kathy Trudell, received a grant from MEEMIC Insurance to the Authors in Schools program of the Ann Arbor Book Festival. Kathy and a committee of writers have worked hard the last couple of years to expand this part of the Book Festival. They have received $2,000 from MEEMIC for this year's program. Kathy tells the story in her own words, “The Authors & Illustrators in the Schools program was a dream of mine from the first time I attended the Ann Arbor Book Festival. One Ann Arbor author, Debbie Taylor, who was participating in a children's author forum, listened to my idea and graciously offered to begin the networking and soon we were collaborating with two other area authors, Nancy Shaw and Shutta Crum. My dream took flight and after being a pilot for one year, the AABF accepted our program and each year since it is gratifying to have more AAPS schools embrace the program.”
Pioneer High School Marketing Education students identified themselves as one of the best DECA Chapters in Michigan by receiving 78 total awards at the District IV. DECA Career Development Conference hosted by Eastern Michigan University on January 10, 2008. 7 students placed first in the District Proficiency Test, 13 students placed first in the District Occupational Test, and 18-placed first in the Oral Participatory Event. Forty of the one hundred-fourteen Pioneer DECA Chapter members qualified for the 62nd annual State DECA Career Development Conference to be held at the Hyatt Regency Dearborn on March 14-16, 2008. DECA’s District IV Conference at Eastern Michigan featured over 700 competitors from thirteen area high schools. The Pioneer High School DECA Chapter sincerely thanks The Pioneer PTSO for financial support of their participation in this District Conference.
DECA is an international association of marketing, management, and entrepreneurship students with more than 185,000 members. DECA’s co-curricular programs are integrated into local high school marketing and entrepreneurship programs to help teach the skills and standards required in business today. DECA’s renowned Competitive Events Programs uses interviews, tests, role-plays, business plans, and written project reports to evaluate marketing and management skills. These business and entrepreneurial skills are taught in the marketing classroom, co-op job training stations, and in DECA activities. These important skills have been identified by the business community as essential for success.
More than 2,000 Michigan DECA members from 165 Michigan High Schools will compete at the Michigan State Career Development Conference this year and over 300 business professionals will serve as event judges. Marketing students winning in their specific event at the State DECA Career Development Conference will receive automatic bids to compete in the 62nd Annual International DECA Career Development Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on April 25 - 30, 2008. The International DECA Conference in Orlando will bring 14,000 students from all 50 U.S. States, Canada, Germany, Guam, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands to compete in a truly world event.
Bach School Art Teacher Jim Schultz had over 200 students submit ideas to him for the Antarctic ANDRILL flag competition. He selected 30 of the best and Media Specialist Kathy Trudell submitted them to the ANDRILL research team for consideration. Bach student Angelina Bielby was one of two Ann Arbor students whose design was selected as one of the top seven. When Robin Gleason returned to Bach, all the flags were on display in addition to 60 penguin originals by the Kindergarten classes.
Thurston Principal Pat Manley has been selected to participate in the Educators to Japan program.
The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA) has selected a winner in its recent Environmental Steward Essay Contest, sponsored in partnership with the Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS), for students in Grades 3-8. Students of 11 teachers from seven Ann Arbor Public Schools participated in the essay contest. From more than 200 entries, a group of 13 finalists was selected by AATA. Their entries were reviewed by a panel of judges from the 826 Michigan organization, which encourages students in the area of creative writing.
Slauson Middle School student Jalil Boston, a seventh-grader in Ms. Teresa Schneider’s class, was awarded a Certificate of Achievement on December 20. Jalil and his class will also receive a trip on an AATA hybrid electric bus to Lansing, Michigan to meet our elected officials. His winning essay is included below.
According to AATA Manager of Community Relations Mary Stasiak, the contest judges felt that Jalil’s essay, “What the future of our environment holds (What does it mean to be an ‘environmental steward’ in my community)”, best exemplified the dual concepts of doing things directly to help the environment and encouraging others to do their part.
The class which entered the most essays, 31, Ms. Priscilla Bates’ seventh-grade class from Forsythe Middle School, will receive a local bus ride on one of AATA’s hybrid electric buses and a pizza party.
Speaking on behalf of the Ann Arbor Public Schools, Marketing Director Liz Nowland-Margolis said, “The Ann Arbor Public Schools has had a long supportive relationship with the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority in providing bus service to many of the students across the district.
“We were very pleased when that relationship crossed into the classroom giving students the opportunity to express what they believe the environmental future holds for them! It provided a real teachable moment for students to think how they can make a positive impact on protecting our valuable environmental resources.
“The AATA set an example of how public transportation can touch our lives in a variety of ways. I know the classroom teachers appreciated the opportunity to blend the AATA essay contest into the daily science and language arts curriculum. Congratulations to all of the AAPS students who participated and to AATA for bringing this discussion into the classroom.”
Stasiak said that AATA appreciates Margolis’ efforts in coordinating the school district portion of the project, and the teachers and school principals whose participation made the project such a success.
The remaining finalists, who will each receive an AATA certificate, are listed below by name, school, grade and teacher:
Daniella Kothyar, Allen Elementary, 5th, Cindy Johengen; Gwyneth Moreland, Ann Arbor Open School, 7th, Mary Wigton; Lior Appel-Kraut, Ann Arbor Open School, 8th, Mary Wigton; Christian Thomas, Slauson Middle School, 7th, Teresa Schneider; Amelia Diehl, Slauson Middle School, 7th, Teresa Schneider; Amy Chronis, Slauson Middle School, 7th, Teresa Schneider; Alex Todd, Slauson Middle School, 7th, Teresa Schneider; Maya Gianchandani, Forsythe Middle School, 6th. Priscilla Bates; Cody Zeisler, Forsythe Middle School, 6th, Priscilla Bates; Dana Feldman, Forsythe Middle School, 6th, Priscilla Bates; Adela Baker, Thurston Elementary, 4th, Sara Drew; and John Matthew Nicklas, Lawton Elementary, 4th, Jinx Cooke.
THE WINNING ESSAY:
What the Future of Our Environment Holds
(What does it mean to be an “environmental steward” in my community?)
Jalil Boston
Twenty years from now, I’ll be 32 years old, forced to raise kids where they can’t play outside, where they can’t even stand in the sunlight without worrying about skin cancer, and can’t make a simple trip to the grocery store without having to be concerned about acid rain. The constant fear of super tornadoes, flash floods and season long droughts because of global warming will be yearly occurrences (the Winter temperatures average record highs, while the summers are dry and the heat index averages 105 degrees Fahrenheit in the Midwest states).
What can we do to prevent this from happening? Here’s my idea…my parents have taught me a lot about accountability. For instance, take my room. If it is messy with clothes and trash everywhere, I’m unable to be comfortable, I can’t invite my friends over and every thing is just a big mess. It soon becomes embarrassing for anyone to see, even me. I couldn’t just leave my room messy like that because I didn’t feel like cleaning it up. Eventually, my parents would punish me for having such a dirty and unkempt room.
With natural disasters like tsunamis, hurricanes and wild fires we should have learned one thing: The way we treat the earth is exactly the way it will treat us. The earth, just like my room, it is not enough to mess it up and then clean it up, we have to prevent the mess from happening and be held accountable. If we continue on our current environmental path, we have yet to see the worst of mother nature.
I do things for the environment like recycle newspapers, bottles, old computers, cell phones, soda cans, and liquid containers. My family and I do things like reduce the amount of gas use, air-conditioning, burning oil and reduce the amount of times we use aerosol cans. My family doesn’t smoke, we have plants all over our house, we car pool when it’s necessary and take the city bus when it is accessible.
Each year, global warming will continue to get worse if we are effortlessly making the little progress we are now. While recycling and reducing the usage of our natural resources helps me do my part, I feel the biggest thing I could do is ask our government to require that more individuals, families, cities and states be held accountable for the poor care of the environment. I feel that children and adults alike have a voice in this matter, as this planet is something that we all inherit from one generation and pass on to the next.
I have begun to gather signatures from my family, fellow students, teachers and administrators, their families and friends in an effort to encourage them to support a bill to Congress. The bill is called the “CLEAN UP YOUR ACT” bill, mandating that we minimize the usage of our natural resources and that we rid ourselves of the “messy room” epidemic by cleaning our cities and forms of transportation by raising our pollution standards.
Basically, polluting should be a crime. I will eventually go door to door in my community asking for support of my bill in an effort to raise awareness about the importance of maintaining a clean and safe environment.
Attachment to the essay:
Copy of the Petition for the Clean Up Your Act bill containing 45 signatures and the following statement:
“The Clean up Your act bill is a bill that will force everyone to take the way we treat the environment more seriously. The bill will place limitations on the usage of natural resources and place harder standards on pollutions: making pollution a crime!”
Clague Principal Cynthia Leaman sends words of praise to the Clague Techs, “I just want to take a minute to give praise to both Michelle Hart and Elijah Newton. They are a tremendous asset to Clague School. Their dedication, enthusiasm, and extreme helpfulness makes my life and the life of the Clague Staff so much easier. I don't know how we would exist without their constant help. I wanted you to know how much I appreciate them. They are not only instrumental in helping keep us informed and afloat but they are a joy to work with. Michelle and Eli are pleasant, optimistic, and always calm. They have helped me at many a moments notice and gotten me out of several jams. As a new employee of Ann Arbor and a new Apple user, I am so happy that I have an opportunity to work with them and thought you might like to know.”

Todd Roberts, Ed.D.
Superintendent