April is National Poetry
Month
Each state has a poet laureate.
In addition there is a poet laureate of the United States.
In our tribute to the poet laureates across our land, Education
Update has asked them the following questions. We have also
asked them to choose their favorite excerpts to share with
you, our readers. We hope you will discover a host of emotions
and inspiration to write your own couplets, sonnets or iambic
pentameter, as the spirit moves you.
• Where did you study poetry?
• When did you begin to write?
• Where do you find the inspiration for your writing?
• What are the biggest hurdles you’ve had to overcome in your career?
• What advice would you give someone who wants to pursue a career in poetry?
Ted
Kooser, U.S. & Nebraska
I
had to find time to write while employed in business. I worked
in the life insurance business for 35 years and did my writing
early in the morning before I had to get my necktie and suit
on. READ MORE
Ken
Brewer, Utah
I
don’t think I believe in “inspiration.” I
find the subjects of poetry everywhere and I write because
I enjoy it. I don’t wait to be “inspired.” I
write nearly every day... READ MORE
Fleda
Brown, Delaware
I
wrote poems off and on through all of my school years. I
won an undergraduate award for my poems, but I didn’t
take myself seriously until the time I was writing my dissertation.
READ MORE
Tom
Chandler, Rhode Island
I’m
still hurdling. Tell the guy at the gas station that you’re
a poet, and he’ll probably think of scented candles
and Yanni albums.
READ MORE
Mary
Crow, Colorado
Among
the hurdles I’ve had to overcome are the difficulties
of giving writing a high enough priority when so many things
need to get done. Developing discipline. Staying awake to
what I want to create.
READ MORE
Michael
S. Harper, Poet Laureate Emeritus,
Rhode Island
My
career began in the U.S. Postal Service at the Terminal Annex
in downtown Los Angeles, working ‘airmail’ and
mastering the canceling machine as a part time clerk on Tour
3. READ MORE
Kevin
Stein, Illinois
Read
everything and everybody: poetry, science, history, philosophy,
and the newspapers. Most importantly, read both those you
love and those who challenge your own dearest assumptions.
READ MORE
Margaret
Britton Vaughn, TN
I
first started writing love poems to little boys in the second
grade. In third grade, I wrote the lyrics to my first country
song, which was entitled, “Here I Sit Alone at the
Bar.” READ MORE
Poems
From Featured Poet Laureates
READ
ALL SELECTIONS
I Don’t Hear America
Singing in the South Bronx
By Gisela Rodriquez-Montalvo
I don’t hear America
singing in the South Bronx.
As the sun rises over this low and dismal place,
You can hear the stirring of a people in bondage... READ MORE
Cliff
Notes & Other Poems
By Donald Feinfeld, M.D.
READ
ALL SELECTIONS
SPOTLIGHT ON SCHOOLS
Teachers
Network Conference
An Interview with Dr. Charlotte
Frank
By Jan Aaron
The conference succeeded in reaching teachers at all
levels of experience and interests. There
were workshops specifically for new teachers focused on
basic needs from classroom management to teaching methods.
READ MORE
Dr. Arthur Levine:
Passionate about The Need
to Redirect Teacher Education
By Joan Baum Ph.D.
Although
a new plan at Teachers College (TC) establishes “educational
equity” as
the major mission, a key word for the locus of related activities
has already been changed. No longer an Institute, the new initiative
is now the Campaign for Educational Equity... READ MORE
Profiles
In Education:
Francie Alexander, Chief Academic
Officer
of Scholastic
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
Teaching
reading should be approached in a “thoughtful” way
that responds to scientific research. That means that Ms.
Alexander will be focusing on Scholastic as “an educational
think tank” and providing the nation’s political
and educational leaders as well as parents with another
level of resources. READ MORE
Manhattan Institute & Teachers
College Argue
Pros & Cons of School Choice at Jewish
Theological
Seminary
By Sybil Maimin
In hosting “Vouchers,
Charters, Choice: A Conversation About Education Policy,” the
Louis Finkelstein Institute at the Jewish Theological Seminary
was fulfilling its mission, begun in 1938, of considering,
from an interfaith perspective, public policy issues that have
religious and moral dimensions. READ MORE
Interview with Dr. Kerby
Alvy
By Nazneen Malik
Dr. Kerby Alvy, Founder and
Executive Director of the Center for the Improvement of Child
Caring (CICC), an organization dedicated to helping children
through effective parenting, fell in love with children when
he was just a child himself. READ MORE
New Math Standards Will
Make A Difference
By Alfred S. Posamentier,
Ph.D.
Although for years there
was a modicum of unhappiness with the New York State mathematics
curriculum—one which differs from the other 49 states—real
anger did not emerge until the fiasco of the June 2003 Math-A
Regents examination... READ MORE
Teachers Network Conference
Features Mayoral Candidates & Workshops
By Jan Aaron
Three hundred of New York’s
brightest (teachers) and other concerned citizens gathered
recently at The Fourth Annual Curriculum, Community, Collaboration & Celebration
Conference, hosted by Teachers Network, Deputy Chancellor Carmen
Farina and the East Side Community High School. READ MORE
Teacher In Space Candidate
Completes
Proficiency Flight
For pilot Bob Ray, it was
a routine proficiency flight, but for teacher Pam Leestma,
it was the flight of a lifetime and the first step toward realizing
her lifelong dream of traveling into space. READ MORE
Testing Serves Students
By Margaret Spellings
To some students, “test” is
a four-letter word. Given the choice, I’m sure many would
welcome the chance to be tested only every other year. But
the adults in charge of their education surely know better.
READ MORE
Councilwoman Moskowitz
Examines Vocational Ed
By Liza Young
Proper
vocational education is vital to many public school students
as well as to the health of the economy. Historically, quality
educational programs have been a staple of the New York City
Department of Education (DOE) system and were instrumental
in helping students segue into the manufacturing economy. READ
MORE
GUEST EDITORIAL
The Education Shibboleth:
Each
Child Must be Taught Differently
By Sandra Priest Rose
The
commonplace idea uttered by most professors in schools of education
is that each child must be taught differently. Twenty-six children
in a classroom, twenty-six lesson plans and strategies for
teaching. READ MORE
OUTSTANDING TEACHERS
OF THE MONTH
April
2005
In 2003, Education Update began the tradition of honoring teachers
each month for their outstanding work on the “frontiers” of education.We
are now continuing the tradition which will culminate in a ceremony in June 2005
with Chancellor Joel Klein in attendance.
READ THIS MONTH'S HONOREES
COLLEGE & GRADUATE SCHOOLS
Dr. Bonnie Kaiser, Rockefeller
U. Scientist Responds to Pres. Summers
By Liza Young
Harvard President Summers
recent comments regarding women and science have hit a nerve
or two, but his words have also generated intelligent and probing
discussion. READ MORE
Teachers College Students
Serve as Reading Tutors
to 4 Harlem Schools
TC Reading Buddies Provide
One-On-One Attention While Earning Course Credits
Forty
students from Teacher’s College, known as the TC Reading Buddies, are providing one-on-one
reading tutoring to struggling pupils at four Central Harlem
elementary schools. READ MORE
College of New Rochelle
Sponsors Lecture “Peacemaking In Time Of War”
At 7:30 pm on Tuesday April
12, the Westchester Consortium for International Studies will
host a lecture by noted author and speaker, Colman McCarthy,
for its “Presidential Lecture 2005” at the Student
Center at 7:30 pm. READ MORE
CCNY Physicist Myriam
Sarachik Receives Prestigious Women in Science Award
Dr. Myriam
Sarachik, Distinguished Professor of Physics at The City College
of New York (CCNY), has been named the 2005 L'ORÉAL-UNESCO for Women
in Science North American Laureate. READ MORE
College of Staten
Island: Rediscovering Discovery
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
“When most people go
fishing, they fish in the wrong places,” says Dr. Leonard
Ciaccio, Co-Director of the Discovery Institute at the College
of Staten Island (CSI) and Special Assistant to the President
of CSI for Schools, with a knowing smile. READ
MORE
The College of New
Rochelle marks
National Student Athlete Day
with BBQ and Children's Book Drive for
YMCA of New Rochelle
The College of New Rochelle (CNR) recognized
the achievements of 38 outstanding student athletes enrolled in the School of
Arts & Sciences
READ MORE
SPECIAL EDUCATION
The Effects
of Medicare’s “In-the-Home” Restriction
on Beneficiaries
By Paul Tobin
As a person living with a
spinal cord injury, and the Deputy Executive Director of the
United Spinal Association, I can attest that wheelchairs play
an integral role in assisting millions of disabled Americans
living independently everyday. READ MORE
FEATURE
Martha Abbott: Doyenne
of Global Languages
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
Language study now involves content areas, so that youngsters learning
about the butterfly, for example, get instruction in English
that is then reinforced in another language. One can only
hope that 2005 will be, as they say in Latin, an annus
mirabilis. READ MORE
METROBEAT
Discussing Our Five
Borough Economic Plan
By Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
New jobs numbers came out
recently, and they show that New York City’s economy
continues to grow. Unemployment is down to 5.9 percent—the
lowest it’s been since before 9/11. READ MORE
Celebrating Creative
Expression During National Poetry Month
By Matilda Raffa Cuomo
In April, the Academy of
American Poets will celebrate its 10th annual National Poetry
Month, a program that the Academy established to promote
appreciation of contemporary poetry. READ MORE
How to provide ‘Fiscal
Equity’ for School Leaders with ‘Fiscal Equity’
By
CSA President Jill Levy
Last month, I wrote about
what was missing from all the proposals on how to spend Campaign
for Fiscal Equity funding, the necessity for increasing the
support and resources for school leaders. READ MORE
Legislature Rejects
Pataki’s Education Cuts, Even As Gov. Continues Stalling
On CFE
By Assemblyman Steven
Sanders
Despite our best efforts,
the Governor refuses to acknowledge the most recent findings
of the courts, and despite our most vigorous objections,
the Governor has entered into another round of frivolous
appeals, doomed to failure... READ MORE
LETTERS
Response
To: Education Update Articles
READ
MORE
BOOKS
Children’s
Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education Celebrates
2004
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
The
book committee awards, under the aegis and expertise
of committee president Alice Belgray, always an SRO affair,
are truly one of the city’s most treasured tributes
to literacy. READ
MORE
MUSIC ART & DANCE
Those Who Can, Do!
By
Scott Noppe-Brandon
Recently,
I was a presenter at a conference where the panelists
were asked to discuss the relative health of funding
for artists in NYC and the United States. READ MORE
Quantifying Creativity:
A Recent Symposium Addresses The Importance Of Arts Education
By
Gillian Granoff
Recently, Arts Connection,
a non profit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting
the cultivation of arts in the school system, launched
a two day conference entitled Beyond Arts Integration:
Defining Learning in Arts Education at New York University’s
Steinhardt School of Education. READ MORE
MEDICAL UPDATE
Compounds Targeting
Only Metastatic Cells Effective Against Breast, Prostate,
and Colon Cancers
Two compounds that zero
in on cancer cells spreading throughout the body, while
ignoring primary tumor cells, could some day give doctors
a whole new weapon in the fight against tough-to-treat
metastatic disease, according to Weill Medical College
of Cornell University researchers. READ MORE
Weill Cornell Medical
College Stem Cell Scientist Named HHMI Investigator
Dr. Shahin
Rafii of Weill Medical College of Cornell University—an
internationally known cancer and vascular biologist and
stem-cell authority—has
been named by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)
as one of 43 new HHMI investigators, an honor bestowed
on only the nation’s most promising and gifted biomedical
scientists.
READ MORE
Match Day 2005: NYU
Medical Students Capture Best Residency Appointments
Recently,
fourth-year medical students from NYU School of Medicine
gathered for Match Day, a nationwide event that simultaneously
reveals critical residency appointments for all graduating
medical students across the country. READ MORE
Human Stem Cells
Can Develop Into Functional Muscle Tissue
The discovery
by Weill Medical College of Cornell University researchers
that a specific type of human fetal stem cell can co-differentiate
simultaneously into both muscle and blood vessel cells
may unlock the door to therapies that replace damaged tissue
in the heart and other organs. READ MORE
CHILDREN'S CORNER
Poetry Safari at
the Bronx Zoo
April is National Poetry Month
and Bronx Zoo visitors are invited to bring their inner-poet
to experience a day of rhyme, rap, and recreation at the
third annual Poetry Safari Weekend, April 16-17. Poetry
Safari is made possible by the generous support of JPMorgan
Chase. READ MORE
From
Dr. Toy:
Classic Toys are Never
Out of Style
By Stevanne Auerbach,
Ph.D
Classic toys are always
dependable. These long lasting toys “keep on playing” long
after the batteries and latest fads are long gone.
READ MORE
CAMPS & SPORTS
Summer Programs for
Children at College of
New Rochelle
The Summer Reading Program
is one-on-one and is conducted by graduate students in
literacy education, under the supervision of the Graduate
School faculty. This program offers assessment and tutoring
of reading and writing problems. READ
MORE