Tag: education

Time Magazine: Can School Boards Save Our Democracy?

This article seems a little bit “off track”: with so many pressing issues, everyday challenges, and people’s rights under attack, talking about school boards might seem obsolete. Still, I think, it’s just the right time for this topic. Since I arrived in the US, I have been fascinated with how the American school system works. I think it is deeply under-appreciated by those who were born and raised here and think that any other country in the world provides better education. I maintain that the best thing about American schools is the civic values they teach, and how they help the children of newcomers become American citizens, regardless of their actual legal status.

Full article text below.

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School Lunches

WBEZ program

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Knox Commencement

Yesterday, when I chatted with a Knox alumnus, Governor Pritzker’s commencement address came up again. I shared how I wanted to go to Galesburg and how that didn’t happen, and he said, “It’s online; you can watch it!”

Indeed, I completely forgot that I meant to watch it! And yes, it’s not the same as being there in Galesburg, but still much better than not seeing it at all!

I watched it today, and cried a little bit (more than once), and listened to almost the whole ceremony, but to Pritzker’s address especially.

His closing remarks were: How do you know you are on the right side of history? The wrong side of history wants you to be afraid. The right side of history expects you to be brave.

Our country needs us to be brave; all of us, not just Knox graduates.

I do not know any of the 2025 graduates in person; still, I watched the ceremony and looked at their faces with hope. Watched until the last note of “For the long, long road to Alma Mater.” And it was inspiring.

We Will Always Be Knox!

Learning that Governor Pritzker was chosen as a Knox Commencement Speaker was terrific! In general, news from Knox these days sounds very encouraging. With so many colleges bending to Trump’s ultimatums, it’s great to see those that stand their ground.

Also, the header of the Knox website page is more meaningful than ever: When history calls, be prepared to answer.

I really want to make a day trip to Galesburg on June 8 and listen to the Governor’s speech!

Copying the announcement from the Knox website here.

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Educational

Igor’s recent article discusses a now-high school principal who is a former immigrant student. As such, Julie Lam experienced firsthand the difficulties of navigating the American school system and is forever grateful to educators who helped her along the way.

A couple of days after Igor sent me his article, I caught the ending of an episode on BBC, where they talked about Finnish schools and Finland’s leadership in education. One statement specifically caught my attention. They said that if we compare the highest students’ achievements in Finland and the rest of the world, there is no significant difference. What is different is the average student’s achievement level.

Here is why I think these two are related. I often observe that recent (and not so recent) Russian immigrants, as well as immigrants from other authoritarian countries, judge American education based on the level of difficulty of the school courses offered to gifted students (because all of their kids are obviously gifted). I haven’t heard this kind of opinion for a while, but there are a lot of such parents in my current company. I hear a lot of conversations that are very critical of American education in general and Chicago Public Schools in particular, to the extent that “if they will close the selective enrollment schools, we are moving out of here.” Many of my co-workers enroll their children in the private school so that “they could have a proper education.”

I would be the last person to say that CPS does not have any problems. However, the American school system, with all its deficiencies and varieties that are sometimes difficult to grasp, is incredible. I want to say that it is a great equalizer, but there is much more than that. No other institution in this country is close to “equal opportunities for all.” Even schools that are severely underfunded teach their students important civic values, collaboration, and acceptance.

American schools make American citizens. Good American schools make good American citizens. People who scream, “Why do I have to pay taxes to fund schools that are not good enough for my children” are the same people who are upset with homeless people sleeping in their parking lots, panhandlers on the street corners, and unruly teenagers breaking the shop windows. And why don’t they see any connection?

WBEZ: Sex Miseducation

I forgot that I wanted to blog about this WBEZ episode, Comparing notes on sex miseducaiton .

It was aired at the end of March, and the name of it is very telling. The WBEZ guests discussed what they were taught at their sex education classes at school, and what should be taught. Absolutely worth listening!

Code2College

I mentioned briefly my “other volunteering,” and now I want to tell a little bit more about it. I can’t say I was skeptical, but I was cautious and wanted to wait and see how it would work out. Same as with OMD, the idea of Code2College is great:

Historically underestimated students – Black, Latine, low-SES and girls – have faced structural & economic barriers to entry into STEM majors and careers for generations. The STEM opportunity gap doesn’t have to exist and Code2College is on a mission to decimate it.

Code2College

In practice, there was a lot of havoc at the start of the school year because the number of students who applied and were accepted into the program increased ten times in comparison with the previous school year, and the organizers had a hard time matching mentees and mentors.

I was matched really late, and it ended up that the person with whom I was matched wanted to do another program. Then, when I thought that I was just not doing anything this year, I was matched with another high school student. She started our first zoom conversation admitting that she was not interested in STEM, but she wanted to go to college, and one more time, I thought that that was a bad idea to try to volunteer in this program, but finally, everything got sorted out.

I am really happy with my mentee; she knows what she wants to achieve, and besides her saying otherwise, she is very organized. I believe I know what one should and should not expect from a high school freshman, and the fact that she always returns my emails and texts and is always on time is remarkable!

I had some doubts about on-line mentoring (she lives in Texas), but now it started looking like this should work out!

Learning English At School: Visiting Teachers

A very unusual thing about my school was that we had “visiting teachers” from abroad – “zagranitza” felt unbelievably close. I remember two visiting teachers, both of them taught for a semester. 

The first teacher was Mr. McCarthy, and he was from the UK. I believe I was in the sixth grade then. He rotated through all of our English “groups,” so each group had him two or three times during a semester. It is possible that he taught the upper grades more frequently, but I was in the sixth grade and didn’t care. A couple of times, he gave presentations for a bigger assembly, talking about the UK and the educational system there. I remember that somebody asked him how much he was making, and he said that that’s the same as asking a woman how old she is, but that he would respond. I do not remember the numbers now. He explained that he would make more if he taught in a public school (in contrast to the US, the UK “public schools” are private, highly selective schools.) I also remember that our English teachers were ecstatic for the opportunity to have conversations with a native speaker.’

The second one (a year later) was Mr. McFerson, and he was from the US. The arrangements were more or less the same, so we had several classes with him. I remember how he told us a Goldilocks tale, and before he started, he explained two words from this fairy tale. I still imagine him saying: porridge – kasha, Goldilocks – Masha. However, the thing which impressed us most during this class was that he sat on the teacher’s desk and lifted one of his feet, putting it almost on another knee. I also remember how on Thanksgiving (which had to be a workday for him), our group monitor presented him with a souvenir doll and said: Mr. McFerson, we congratulate you with your national holiday Thanksgiving Day!

One thing to credit to our teachers: we didn’t feel like understanding the native speakers was “too difficult.” We understood English and American accents and were not shy to talk. 

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

Learning English At School

I started the series about an elementary school in the Soviet Union by
stating that across the country, all schools were almost the same in terms of what they taught and how did the schedule look like. However, there was something special about the school I attended – it was a “specialized English school with several subjects taught in English.”
The overall quality of foreign language teaching in the Soviet Union was poor, and Soviet people were notorious for not being able to communicate in any foreign language,
In our school, things were better, although far from perfect.

In all ordinary schools, students started to learn a foreign language in the 5th grade, while we started in the second grade. More importantly, for English lessons, classes of 35 + students were divided into three groups, so we had more interactive instructions.
In the second grade, we had English three times a week (which meant that we had five periods instead of four on these days). At least once a week, we had lessons in “lingo rooms,” where our desks were equipped with headsets to listen to the tapes recorded by the native speakers and practice pronunciation.

I should have my second-grade English notebooks somewhere, but I could not find them, so here are my third-grade ones. We did a lot of writing and reading but also a lot of oral practice, so by the end of the eighth grade, my English was fluent (I lost some during High School and got it back in the 90s when I started interacting with foreigners.

I think that by the fith grade, we had English every

In the upper grades, we used to joke that they were educating us to become spies, and we could not imagine how close to reality these jokes were.

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

The Trinity College And The Book Of Kells

I know you do not have to visit Ireland to learn about the Book of Kells, and most like, it would be better if I knew about it beforehand – then, I could be more appreciative in advance of what I was going to see. In case you are like me and had never heard about it before, it’s an amazing 800 A.D. manuscript containing four canonic gospels (BTW, I thought that the four gospels were canonized later, but that happened in the 4th century!) This amazing manuscript was produced by four monks who copied the text and three illustrators.

The wiki page for the Book of Kells reproduces a lot of illustrations and provides a lot of historic contexts. And obviously, you can’t take pictures of the book itself, so that’s the only way you can have an idea of how it looks like. Just one thing I want to say – it feels surreal when you think you are looking at the book produced 1200 years ago and think about real-life humans who did it!

Here are some pictures from the exhibition about the Book of Kells:

I thought that many years ago when I was really into history, I read about the origin of the name Pangur, and I thought it was used in the Gargantua book, but I can’t find any references now. All the links point to that cat 🙂
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