The Value of Teachers

The Value of Teachers
NY Times: 01.11.2012 by Nicholas D Kristof

Suppose your child is about to enter the fourth grade and has been assigned to an excellent teacher. Then the teacher decides to quit. What should you do?

The correct answer? Panic!

Well, not exactly. But a landmark new research paper underscores that the difference between a strong teacher and a weak teacher lasts a lifetime. Having a good fourth-grade teacher makes a student 1.25 percent more likely to go to college, the research suggests, and 1.25 percent less likely to get pregnant as a teenager. Each of the students will go on as an adult to earn, on average, $25,000 more over a lifetime — or about $700,000 in gains for an average size class — all attributable to that ace teacher back in the fourth grade. That’s right: A great teacher is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each year’s students, just in the extra income they will earn.

The study, by economists at Harvard and Columbia universities, finds that if a great teacher is leaving, parents should hold bake sales or pass the hat around in hopes of collectively offering the teacher as much as a $100,000 bonus to stay for an extra year. Sure, that’s implausible — but their children would gain a benefit that far exceeds even that sum.

Conversely, a very poor teacher has the same effect as a pupil missing 40 percent of the school year. We don’t allow that kind of truancy, so it’s not clear why we should put up with such poor teaching. In fact, the study shows that parents should pay a bad teacher $100,000 to retire (assuming the replacement is of average quality) because a weak teacher holds children back so much. READ MORE !

Literacy Tribune Newsletter: January 2012

Literacy Tribune: January 2012
The Adult Learner Network Newsletter

United Literacy, a non-profit organization, provides resources and support to adult literacy learners in the United States. Its aim is to make literacy education accessible and worthwhile for adult learners.

Main Story: Overcome Hurry Sickness in 2012
There is a sickness that you probably have not heard of, but you may have it. It is called Hurry Sickness.

A History Lesson: Benjamin Franklin, America’s First Postmaster General followed his own advice. He wrote things worth reading, and he did things worth writing about.

Organization Spotlight: South Coast Literacy Council
this California program which covers the southern portion of Orange County.

Member Spotlight: Jerome Nick
“Del Norte Reads staff and tutors are awesome,” says Jerome Nick, an adult learner who volunteers at the literacy program’s office, “They help me out a lot in the schooling part.”

Technology Watch: Google Chrome Extensions
Google Chrome is a free web browser. To use its extensions, you first need to have Google Chrome on your computer

The Literacy Tribune is looking for adult learner writers.
Are you an adult learner ?
Do you want to write ?
Do you want to publish your writing ?

You can write about:
Your road to literacy
Your literacy organization
Literacy resources you like
You can write book reviews, poetry, short stories
You can write articles about health, finance, or technology
You can write just about anything !

Creating a Nation of Learners IMLS 2012-2016

The Institute of Museum and Library Services Strategic Plan, 2012 – 2016

Creating a Nation of Learners

U.S. museums and libraries are at the forefront in the movement to create a nation of learners. As stewards of cultural heritage with rich, authentic content, they provide learning experiences for everyone. With built infrastructure in nearly every community in the nation and dedicated, knowledgeable staff, they connect people to one another and to the full spectrum of human experience. The nation’s museums and libraries provide opportunities for powerful learning experiences that inspire people throughout their lifetimes and contribute to the civic life of our nation.

Trusted in their communities, libraries and museums play important roles in creating an informed and educated citizenry and transmitting the values of our democracy. Our role at the Institute of Museum and Library Services is to provide libraries, museums, and policy makers with the resources they need to ensure that the American ideal of open access to information and ideas flourishes, through leadership, data, analysis, and funding.

Museums and libraries help to level the playing field. They provide access to technology, strengthen community relationships, and offer an entrée to services and information that some individuals might not otherwise have. Without libraries and museums it would be more difficult, potentially impossible, for some Americans to seek employment opportunities, enhance their education, and lead healthier lives. Libraries and museums are not luxuries; they are fundamental to supporting the civic life and well-being of our nation.

Economic changes are causing reductions in all sources of public (state and local) and private (corporation, foundation, and individual) funding for libraries and museums. At the same time, public demand for library and museum services is increasing. As stressed public agencies cut back on service, communities are more fully leveraging the assets of libraries and museums and calling on them to fill the gaps by providing workforce services, afterschool programming, teacher training, and broadband access.

Although many libraries and museums are fully embracing new service opportunities, they are also facing difficult decisions. Serious questions must be addressed about how libraries and museums will continue to meet public demand. Reductions in staff have direct impacts on public service, such as reduced hours, less programming for hard-to-reach populations, and less capacity to support important learning outcomes. Changing information delivery services, new platforms, and outdated information policies are creating new challenges to provide critical materials, both print and digital, that are the foundation for all other services.

In 2010, against a backdrop of societal change and economic uncertainty, Congress passed and the President signed the reauthorization of the Museum and Library Services Act (the Act), giving IMLS unique federal responsibilities for “the development and implementation of policy to ensure the availability of museum, library, and information services adequate to meet the essential information, education, research, economic, cultural, and civic needs of the people of the United States.”

Strategic Goal 1IMLS places the learner at the center and supports engaging experiences in libraries and museums that prepare people to be full participants in their local communities and our global society.

Strategic Goal 2
IMLS promotes museums and libraries as strong community anchors that enhance civic engagement, cultural opportunities, and economic vitality.

Strategic Goal 3
IMLS supports exemplary stewardship of museum and library collections and promotes the use of technology to facilitate discovery of knowledge and cultural heritage.

Strategic Goal 4IMLS advises the President and Congress on plans, policies, and activities that sustain and increase public access to information and ideas.

Strategic Goal 5IMLS achieves excellence in public management and performs as a model organization through strategic alignment of IMLS resources and prioritization of programmatic activities, maximizing value for the American public.

READ MORE !

The Little Free Library

The Art of the Little Free Library: Its Always The Season To Read

Here's Little Library #1

Little Free Libraries started in Hudson and Madison, Wisconsin.

The originators of this social enterprise are Todd Bol and Rick Brooks, both of whom have several decades of entrepreneurial and international experience. They first met in 2009 while exploring the benefits of green practices in small businesses, discovering that they shared a commitment to service and the quality of community life around the world.

The very first Little Library was built in the memory of June A. Bol. It sits in the front yard of a home above the St. Croix River in Hudson, Wisconsin.

As you can see, it is meant to look like a one-room school house. It's full of books about gardening and community life. Not a drop of water has trickled inside...but books have come and gone since its first week by the river.

Get the idea? Take a book, leave a book. Leave a note!

Give the gift of knowledge through reading. READ MORE !

A Love Letter to the Central Library

A Love Letter to the Central Library
Through Life’s Changes, the Downtown Landmark Remains
LA Downtown News: 11.23.2011 by Anne Marie Ruff

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - I love the Central Library. For almost two decades and through many life changes, the library has been a constant, like a good friend.

Obviously I’m not alone — this resplendent repository of art, literature and knowledge thrives on the multiplicity of people who pass through the doors and partake of what the library has to offer. I’m just one of many for whom the Downtown building has an inexorable hold.

I first met the Central Library when I was attending UCLA. Back in the days when the card catalog had just graduated to a computer, the Central Library offered books for my research papers not to be found in the URL (the decidedly un-cyber University Research Library). I found in the long block between Grand Avenue and Flower Street a safe place in an otherwise intimidating Downtown.

I know I am not alone in my passion for this place. Every day I see dozens of people, many marginalized or nearly discarded by the rest of the city, who eagerly await the opening of the library doors. In its rich rooms and elegant halls, they find refuge, rest, and who knows, maybe even help with their reading or computer skills.

More recently, I have been thrilled to know the library in yet another way. I provided two copies of my first novel — some of which was written within its walls — to the library’s fiction department. So now not only is the library part of me, but I am part of the library. READ MORE !

Anne Marie Ruff’s recently published first novel, Through These Veins, chronicles the development of a fictional cure for AIDS. All profits benefit Doctors Without Borders and the Ethiopian Institute for the Conservation of Biodiversity.

Libraries Are Essential Public Goods

Why It's Time To Speak Up For Our Libraries
Huffington Post: 11.15.2011 by Andrew Losowsky

Libraries are essential public goods.

Like our public parks and museums, public libraries are free, non-commercial gathering places for everyone, regardless of income. If information is power, then libraries are the essence of democracy and freedom. In these times of economic difficulty, more people are using them than ever, to do more than merely check out books.

Yet our nation's public libraries appear to be under threat by a litany of cuts, forced upon them by state and local committees, cuts that often began before the recent economic downturn. In a survey conducted by the Library Journal, 93% of large libraries reported having laid off staff, cut their opening hours, or both. In several states, including Indiana and Michigan, library branches have permanently closed their doors.

In a new Huffington Post series called Libraries In Crisis, we'll be looking at how today's libraries are about more than books. We'll show how they can be a community resource where reliable information and guidance is provided, free of bias and commercial influence.

This occasional series will look at the economic reasons for the current situation, and its consequences throughout the country. It will showcase models for library evolution, and hear from prominent voices about what makes a viable and vital library system. READ MORE !

Read the first piece in this series, "The Death Of The Public Library?"

November - Picture Book Month

Picture Book Month is an international initiative to designate November as Picture Book Month, encouraging everyone to celebrate literacy with picture books.


Every day in November, there will be a new post from a picture book champion explaining why he/she thinks picture books are important.
We are doing this because in this digital age where people are predicting the coming death of print books, picture books (the print kind) need love. And the world needs picture books. There’s nothing like the physical page turn of a beautifully crafted picture book.

Join the celebration and party with a picture book !