Eva Kor's Survival at Auschwitz

Eva Kor is a 78-year old survivor of Dr. Josef Mengele's genetic research project in Auschwitz consisting of children from the ages of 2-16, the majority being sets of twins.  She articulates her story in such a way that you would never get the impression of how bad it truly was for her and the rest of the "Mengele Children."  When Eva speaks you can sense a lot of spunk in her character, which is probably what can be attributed to her survival.     



Eva and her twin sister, Miriam, were 10 years old at the time they were separated from their family and used as guinea pigs for research purposes.  In this picture you will see Eva and Miriam revealing the tattoos (a research number) each of the children received. 

Approximately 1500 sets of twins were placed in horrific, rat-infested living conditions with little food to eat. They were subjected to long days of standing naked and having their bodies measured inch-by-inch.  At one point both Miriam and her sister became deathly ill from the series of injections each of them received.  With Eva's determination to make it out of the camp alive, she recovered and helped her sister survive as well.  Most of the children died. 

In January of 1945, a Soviet Army liberated the camp in which approximately 200 children were still alive.  At the age of 11, Eva and Mirium only had each other; they never saw their parents or two older sisters after they were separated and taken for research.  It took five additional years for the twins to feel free and no longer afraid of being persecuted for being Jewish. 

In 1993 Mirium died of bladder cancer; her kidneys had stopped functioning.  It was learned at this time that Mirium's kidneys remained the size of a teenage child.  Presumably, this was the result of the injections she received under Dr. Mengele's control.

In 1995, Eva found the courage to forgive Dr. Mengele and wrote a forgiveness letter.  How she could find it in herself to forgive the man responsible for torturing so many children, resulting in several child deaths, and for her own sister's death, is remarkable.  To be able to write a letter to this man, and visit the site in which the torturing took place, required a lot of courage on her part.  As Eva stated, she immediately had a huge weight lifted after giving her forgiveness.  It is Eva's hope that others will be able to forgive, as she did.

 

 

 

Push for Better Student Attendance

My initial reaction to this article is... wow!  To think that school districts need to resort to some sort of incentive to raise attendance rates is mind boggling.  I don't understand how parents can allow their children to skip school for things that can be avoided.  Understandably, some doctor appointments can be tough to schedule for after-school hours when everyone wants the same time blocks, but when parents pull their children from school to take family vacations, I think that is ridiculous in the parents' way of thinking.  This type of absence from school is completely avoidable with better planning on the part of the parents. There are many days in which the children have a break from school when family vacations can be scheduled. 

Recently, in my kids's school, they had a Walk-A-Thon for a fundraiser.  The more money they raised, the longer they could walk around the school track during the day.  As soon as their raised funds exhausted the time-frame allowed, they were instructed to join in the classroom.  One of my daughter's friends was allowed to skip school that day because it would have been a non-instructional day for her.  Personally, I have a problem with the girl's parents allowing her to skip school for that reason.  What are they teaching their daughter about: 1) the importance of community service for the fundraiser, and 2) that every day of school is just as important as the next.

Schools that receive funding based on their attendance rates rather than enrollment numbers have the worst set-up.  By using this type of funding requirement, schools are asking children who are not feeling well (with stomach aches, fevers or whatever) to show up for the beginning part of school so they can be counted as in attendance.  These schools are putting healthy kids and teachers at risk of becoming ill also.  We all know when we are employed and have a sick co-worker, we ask them to stay home until they are feeling better.  The same should be applied to school-aged children. 

I have mixed thoughts on the Saturday school idea.  While I can see the option being open to those that have school anxiety or bullying issues during the normal school week, I also wonder how the school budget is affected by this additional day of instruction. 

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-09-03/education-attendance-incentive/57561242/1

Historical Perspectives of Education - Chap. 3

The first key point of this chapter relates to enrollment growth and the size of classrooms.  This has been a problem for many years.  For example, I was in elementary school in the mid 70's to early 80's.  Over a span of about 3-4 years, all 5th and 6th grade classes were held in a wooden building called "temporaries."  The temporaries consisted of about 6 classrooms (3 classrooms for each the 5th and 6th grades).  Each classroom had an average of 30 kids and was about the size of a 2-3 stall garage.  When I went into junior high (separate building) in the early 80's, the school was still in need of space.  My class was then shuttled by bus over to an old NSP building for a couple classes, and then shuttled back to the main school for the remainder of the day.  Because of the lack of building space for so many children, the school district had to pay for a full-time bus driver to haul all of the kids to and from classes throughout the day, 5 days a week, which also means the school district was spending money for renting out the NSP building.  In reviewing the numbers given for school budgets over the course of each decade from the 40's to 90's, I learned that we have been more than doubling our school budget requirements over the course of each decade.  My own scenario brings me to wonder how much money school districts are spending in the long run when they are holding off on building larger or newer buildings and either paying for rented space over a period of several years or paying the higher expenses of an older building.

I was bothered by the second key point concerning the professionalism in teaching when I read that more children are being home schooled today than a few decades ago.  What comes to question is, how good of an education are children getting from being home schooled when the parents have not had formal training in how to teach the material to their children?  Even more bothersome is the idea that parents who home school can choose the "unschooling" method and allow their children to learn through "whatever they naturally do."  I feel that home-schooled children should have as structured a curriculum as those of their public-school peers. 

I found the section on the direction of education to be interesting in the way education was viewed in each time period.  As time went along, the descriptions of what they felt children should learn became more detailed, but included virtually the same topics. 

Before reading the "Preparation of Teachers" section in Chapter 3, I was not aware that in colonial times the teachers only had elementary educations themselves, and only had to know something about the subject matter to teach it.  I also did not realize that they had other duties that were unrelated to education.  For example, I was not aware that teachers were also called upon to be a court messenger and to serve Summonses, to dig graves, to conduct ceremonial services at church, to ring the bell for public worship, etc.  It was very interesting to read the progress that has been made to the teaching program over the years.  I had never heard the term "normal school" before.

I was impressed with the many studies that have been done to become more familiar with the process in which children learn, and the characteristics needed to be a good teacher.  My thought is that children need to stay engaged in the learning process, and in order to keep the kids engaged, we need to retain their attention to the subject matter by making the subject interesting and lively.  In my opinion, teachers need to have a lot of energy and do "crazy" things to keep the kids involved. 

2 Million Minutes

I found it interesting to see the way the three different countries were portrayed in this movie.  China and India have many lifestyle similarities; the USA has a strikingly opposing lifestyle.  It would appear that economics plays a major role in the way of living in each country when it comes to the importance of education and family, and how each chooses to spend their time.

While the USA has a far better economic system than either China or India, we don't fare as well when it comes to taking education and family seriously.  I feel the movie accurately portrayed the importance American families put on education as the children were sitting in front of the TV, amongst their group of friends, and doing their homework at the same time.  Instead of concentrating on their school work, they were commenting on the TV show and carrying on conversations with each other.  In contrast, the children in India were amongst their group of friends, but the converation was focused on school and their future.  Interestingly enough, the boy in China who completed his homework chose to spend his free time on the computer....working on computer programming.  Chinese and Indian children have a strong drive to learn and their learning never seems to stop; they are highly motivated and aim for the passport out of poverty. 

Familiy life in China and India is also very different from that of Americans.  In China and India the families have a strong connection with one another. They eat together as a family and discuss important issues together.  In America we rarely see families sitting down to eat a meal together.  Instead, we see a lot of broken families, which leaves children hopping from one parent's home to another.  Neither parent really seems to have a strong bond with the children.

Even though Americans have the resources available to them, we take for granted the opportunities we are afforded.  We have no clue what it would be like to live in a country with so much poverty that we need to eat from banana leaves instead of from plates.  China and India embrace what little resources they have and strive to make their lives better.

Co-Teaching

While I see great benefits to co-teaching, I also see potential for a disaster.  In order for co-teaching to be effective, there needs to be excellent communication and planning between the two teachers.  Sadly, one of the biggest problems between co-workers is a breakdown in communication, which can lead to failure of the co-teaching concept.  Teachers must be chosen carefully to work together as a team; they need to have similar work ethics and be willing to give 100%, they must both have the same end goal in mind for the students, and they must both be flexible in allowing the other teacher to teach. They must compliment each other's teaching style, rather than contradict each other. 

25-Year Reflection on Teaching

A few of the biggest changes in teaching over the past 25 years appears to be the method in which the state tests the progress of kids, how many kids there are with special needs and how other kids interact with them, and how many children there are in each classroom. 

The Iowa Basics Test use to be given to each student and their progress was measured, but the emphasis always stayed on the three main emphasis areas of reading, writing and arithmetic.  Today the results of this test seems to be the only factor in determining everything from the future of the school's programs and funding, to determining the teachers' abilities and skills, irregardless of how skillful the teacher is in their day-to-day lesson plan.  The No Child Left Behind law put into place by former President Bush places a great burden on the schools and it's teachers today.  Schools and teachers have no control over the learning that takes place once the kids are away from the school setting, nor do they have control over the mindset of the kids while taking the test.  In my opinion, a more accurate measure of students' progress would be to test the kids at the beginning of a school year, and again at the end of the school year and view the progress for each individual child.  In this testing method, each individual child's progress is measured based on their own abilities, rather than placing the high-achieving students and the low-achieving students in one basket. 

I found it interesting that in today's schools you see kids being kinder to their peers than 25 years ago. Why would that be?  In today's world with both parents working out of the home, we don't seem to have parents spending as much time with their children, therefore, leading to less role-modeling of expected behavior.  Could it be that today's kids are just as mean to their peers, but that it takes place in a different manner?  Years ago we saw physical contact with playground fistfights; today we have electronics and cyber bullying, a more hidden way to abuse peers.  On the other hand, children may be better able to cope with their peers having disabilities and/or coming from different cultural backgrounds because they have been exposed to those children from day one and understand them.

I learned that a teacher's role requires many different characteristics, but the most important characteristics appear to be flexibility, energy, adaptability and patience. 

Japan's Interactive Approach to Education

The New International School of Japan's idea of intergrading kids within a three-year age range and with multi-cultural backgrounds seems to be a wonderful concept.  This form of education not only alleviates some of the comparison learning that takes place in classrooms with same-age children, but also gives the younger kids an upper edge on learning from their older role models.  Having two adults in the same classroom gives each child an opportunity to learn from two different styles of teaching, and allows each child a better opportunity for one-on-one learning.   Since the kids are allowed to speak and research in their own languages, there are no pressures for the kids, and they can learn at their own pace.

I believe Japan has the right mindset when it comes to introducing a new concept such as this one.  Seminars and orientations are scheduled for the public to learn more of this new style of learning so any doubts or unanswered questions can be addressed within the community, which in turn will benefit the school, and the kids, by gaining support from the community. 

http://www.japanschoolnews.com/2012/09/new-international-school-of-japans-unique-and-interactive-approach-to-education/

Speaking in Tongues

After watching the video entitled "Speaking in Tongues," I am still uncertain as to whether or not I support schools teaching our children another language.  While I see the benefits of learning another language at such a young age when the kids learn from repetition and are hungry for more information, I have strong beliefs that today's kids are in need, now more than ever, on the use of proper English - the native language in America. 

The video made me understand that learning another language would benefit today's generation when dealing with other countries for trade matters, or other business-related matters.  However, my strong belief that today's kids have such badly spoken English is due, in part, to the use of cellular phones and texting, and computers.  Kids have lost the importance of how to spell words correctly, how to speak proper English, and how to communicate in a more personal and professional manner.  Cell phones and computers definitely have their benefits, however, they also have downfalls in dealing with people on a more personal level. 

The video portrayed students whom wished to be able to speak with relatives from earlier generations.  As time passes, the generation/speaking gap will decrease as families will no longer be seeing immigration from other countries where family members do not already speak English when they arrive in the United States.  Additionally, speaking from previous experience, I had two years of a German foreign language class in high school.  While I felt fairly comfortable with the language at that time, I have lost the ability to read or speak German due to the lack of use of the language.  I now feel that my two years could have been utilized better by taking business courses instead.  If we are teaching children how to speak another language at such a young age, how much of that language will they retain by the time they are old enough to use it for business matters?

It is my belief that today's children should be learning English as a main priority and on a continual basis, and enjoy the added benefits of learning another language once the native language has been mastered and is being used properly.  It seems to me that learning another language should be handled similar to an extra curricular activity and be taught outside of school hours for those interested.

Chickenpox Vaccine

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate?  When I was a kid there were options on whether or not a child received a vaccine for the chickenpox virus.  Most parents dealt with the virus by encouraging the exposure of their child(ren) to other children whom had the chickenpox.  The idea behind this was so that they would catch the chickenpox, and become immune from the illness later in life.  Since parents encouraged the exposure, many kids came down with the virus and were absent from school for days until the blisters crusted over and you were no longer contagious.

Today, it is a requirement that your child be vaccinated with the varicella virus before starting school.  As this article indicates, the requirement of the vaccine seems to have played a role in the change in absenteeism of kids in today's schools.  Yet, there is still some controversy for parents on whether having your child vaccinated is the right method in controlling the virus.
 
The chickenpox virus can remain latent in a person's nerve cells for many years.  Anyone who had chickenpox as a child may later become ill with shingles (a band of blisters). Although there is a shot available for those that come down with shingles, the blisters are said to be painful. Children, such as myself, that were exposed to the chickenpox virus as a child may now also need to deal with the later version of the virus - shingles. 

As a mother of two children, I never hesitated to give my kids the varicella vaccine.  My thought was to avoid the virus in any way possible.  As it turns out, my kids would have been required to have the vaccine before they started school anyway.  As an additional bonus, my kids will more than likely not have to deal with the shingles virus either.