findingEducation’s Digital Teachers’ LoungeTips and insights from the findingEducation team.

As the founder of the Global Coalition Project, Bill Reilly has united classrooms around the globe through his vision to promote peace and global understanding. A social studies teacher at Bethlehem Central Middle School in Delmar, N.Y., for the last 16 years, Reilly was named one of Disney’s Educators of the Year in 2006 for his exceptional ability to teach “real world” lessons. Two years prior to that, he was chosen by the American Councils for International Education to represent the United States in a Eurasian/American teacher exchange in Azerbaijan.

FindingEducation met Reilly while attending the New York State Council for the Social Studies (NYSCSS) conference last week. Reilly described watching his students meet another group of students in Belize for the first time through an online video conference. “It was like two groups meeting aliens for the first time,” he said. “They were such different and diverse cultures, and they had such an interest in learning about each other.”

fE: What made you become a teacher?

BR: I was an archeologist for a few years and then an owner of a rare coin store. So I always had a love for history. I then walked into a children’s home one summer, thinking that I would work with kids for a summer until I decided what business to go into, and I never left working with children after that. I teach ancient history to sixth graders.

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Subject: History, Social Studies
Tags: Educator Profiles

Did you take the Quiztory last week? Now it’s time to check your answers:

1. Who acted as an intermediary between the Charles Lindbergh family and their child’s kidnapper in 1932?  John F. Condon

2. When was Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech published in Russia?  1998

3. After Berlin’s Reichstag was burned down in 1933, what did German President Paul von Hindenburg sign “for the Protection of the People and the State”? The Reichstag Fire Decree

4. When did Britain relinquish Rhodesia as a colony?  February 1980

5. Who videotaped the beating of Rodney King by a group of white Los Angeles police officers in 1991? George Holliday

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory, The Answer Sheet

Test your students’ knowledge of the notable events covered in findingDulcinea’s “On This Day” column this week with Quiztory. It makes a fun extra credit assignment.

1. Who acted as an intermediary between the Charles Lindbergh family and their child’s kidnapper in 1932?

2. When was Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech published in Russia?

3. After Berlin’s Reichstag was burned down in 1933, what did German President Paul von Hindenburg sign “for the Protection of the People and the State”?

4. When did Britain relinquish Rhodesia as a colony?

5. Who videotaped the beating of Rodney King by a group of white Los Angeles police officers in 1991?

What’s Coming Up?

Next week, “On This Day” will examine Dred Scott’s Supreme Court case, Daniel Webster and Russia’s February revolution. We’ll also take a look at ‘Axis Sally,’ the founding of the Girl Scouts of America and the Hanafi Muslim Siege of 1977.

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory

Santiago Llanquin/AP
Students are detained by riot police officers during a demonstration to demand reforms in the Chilean education system in Santiago, Wednesday, May 13, 2009.

In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chile was pulling “out of its first recession in ten years,” and needed to make improvements in income distribution, market competition and education, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). OECD charged that the quality of public education at the primary and secondary levels needed work in order to help Chilean children “reach OECD standards in learning outcomes.”

Encyclopedia Britannica provides an overview of the education system in Chile.

In 2008, Andrea Arango, a research associate with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, outlined “The Failings of Chile’s Education System: Institutionalized Inequality and a Preference for the Affluent.” According to Arango’s report, the Chilean government favors the privatization of education in the country. As a result, only wealthier students have access to quality education. Meanwhile, the system “offers inherently unequal opportunities for students from low-income families, who consistently experience sub-standard educational achievements as a result of an ongoing bias in favor of privatization measures.”

Following Saturday’s 8.8-magnitude earthquake, however, Chile may be hard-pressed to improve its economy or its education system. An estimated 2 million Chileans—one-eighth of the entire population—have been affected by the earthquake, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Tuesday.

Aid began to pour into Chile after the country’s president, Michelle Bachelet, asked for help. Though most countries have responded with medical personnel and supplies, drinking water, electrical generators, mobile bridges and other essentials, the European Union said it would send “‘an assessing mission’ to look at damage to hospitals, schools and other facilities,” Catherine Ashton, an E.U. foreign policy chief, told AFP.

At a time when rescuers are frantically searching for survivors, it’s too soon to account for all the missing, injured and dead, or properly assess the full extent of the damage to buildings such as schools. Unlike Haiti, which suffered widespread structural damage due to a lack of building codes, in Chile, “building codes are strict,” the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Still, Bachelet estimates that one million buildings have been damaged, while Education Minister Monica Jimenez told AP that several “[k]ey structures in Santiago” were badly damaged.

Public schools were set to reopen on Monday, after summer vacation, but now are scheduled to reopen on March 8.

Subject: Uncategorized
Tags: Schools Around the World

Did you take the Quiztory last week? Now it’s time to check your answers:

1. Suspects arrested in the 1993 car bombing in the World Trade Center’s basement garage were linked to which Islamic spiritual leader? Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman

2. What is the name of the most famous collection of rules governing duels? Code Duello

3. When was the Republic of Texas admitted to the United States? 1845

4. What was President Andrew Johnson impeached for? Violating the Tenure of Office Act

5. After his trip to Mecca, what did Malcolm X change his name to? el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory, The Answer Sheet

Test your students’ knowledge of the notable events covered in findingDulcinea’s “On This Day” column this week with Quiztory. It makes a fun extra credit assignment.

1. Suspects arrested in the 1993 car bombing in the World Trade Center’s basement garage were linked to which Islamic spiritual leader?

2. What is the name of the most famous collection of rules governing duels?

3. When was the Republic of Texas admitted to the United States?

4. What was President Andrew Johnson impeached for?

5. After his trip to Mecca, what did Malcolm X change his name to?

What’s Coming Up?

Next week, “On This Day” will examine the arson of the Reichstag, the federal raid of the Waco compound, Puerto Rican nationalists and their assault on Congress, and Rhodesia. We’ll also take a look at the beating of Rodney King, England’s King Henry VI and Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech.

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory

Sayyid Azim/AP
Some of the hundreds of parents and children line up to register at the Buru Buru 1 Primary School in Nairobi on the first day of the year Monday, Jan. 6, 2003, eager to capitalize on the electoral promise of free primary education made by newly-inaugurated President Mwai Kibaki.

Last week, we spoke with Alex Grossi, a young man who helped start the Kenya School Libraries Program, a nonprofit that collects books for libraries in Kenya’s schools.

Education in Kenya has been in the headlines quite a bit recently. On Monday, tennis star Serena Williams arrived in Kenya to open her second Serena Williams Secondary School, this one in Eastern Province, Kenya. Williams is a global ambassador for Hewlett Packard and has been on several charitable missions to the region.

On Tuesday, ABC7news.com reported on Kenya Dream, a class project at Cupertino High School. Students there adopted the Nthimbiri Secondary School in Kenya three years ago, with the aim of raising $100,000 for the school. So far, the students have raised $50,000.

In January, Ashley Seager reported for The Guardian on a new program to bring education to nomadic groups in Kenya. “My view is that people should not have to choose between their lifestyle and an education,” Mohamed Elmi, the minister for northern Kenya, told Seager. Now, 91 mobile schools have opened in the country, mostly in the north and east. Children begin lessons at 5:30 in the morning, study for a few hours, and then tend to grazing animals or gather water for the village. They may study again in the evening.

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Subject: Uncategorized
Tags: Schools Around the World

Last week, findingEducation interviewed our second anonymous teacher blogger, Mr. B, also known as Bronxteach. Mr. B writes the blog, “Is Our Children Learning?” He also teaches third grade at an unnamed school in the Bronx. Prior to that, Mr. B taught fourth grade for two years at another public school in New York.

When asked why he’s such a tough critic of his own teaching abilities, Mr. B told findingEducation, “I’m doing this because I want the kids to be able to go to college … I just feel like the stakes are really high. I honestly think it’s life or death. That’s how important a good education is for these kids.”

fE: What made you decide to become a teacher?

Mr. B: Towards the end of my senior year of college, my roommate at the time had already been admitted to NYC Teaching Fellows. So he told me about it and I applied. It made sense to me because I’d already done a lot of work volunteering, doing after school tutoring, mentoring and things like that. I thought I would go in and make a difference, so to speak, and then move on to whatever else I found.

fE: Your first year of teaching was a difficult year. Do you think that if you went back and taught the same students that you taught then, you would have a better handle on them now?

Mr. B: Oh definitely! Throughout the year other people would say to me, “Oh, you have just such a tough, such a horrible group.” But I held myself responsible. You set the tone for the environment and the student will get away with as much as you let them get away with. I think it would be a much safer, calmer environment now, but I can think of at least three students who definitely would have been a challenge in any classroom.

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Subject: Uncategorized
Tags: Educator Profiles

Did you take the Quiztory last week? Now it’s time to check your answers:

1. A new era of diplomacy between the United States and China dawned on April 6, 1971, when China invited nine Americans to play what sport in China? Ping-pong

2. When was the last Japanese-American internment camp in the United States closed? 1946

3. What was the name of Galileo’s book, published in 1632, in which he explained the Copernican theory? “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”

4. What document did the Soviet Union, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States sign in 1988, creating a timetable for the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan? Geneva Accords

5. When was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s citizenship in the former Soviet Union restored? 1990

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory, The Answer Sheet

Test your students’ knowledge of the notable events covered in findingDulcinea’s “On This Day” column this week with Quiztory. It makes a fun extra credit assignment.

1. A new era of diplomacy between the United States and China dawned on April 6, 1971, when China invited nine Americans to play what sport in China?

2. When was the last Japanese-American internment camp in the United States closed?

3. What was the name of Galileo’s book, published in 1632, in which he explained the Copernican theory?

4. What document did the Soviet Union, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States sign in 1988, creating a timetable for the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan?

5. When was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s citizenship in the former Soviet Union restored?

What’s Coming Up?

Next week, “On This Day” will examine dueling in Washington, D.C., the assassination of Malcolm X and the “Miracle on Ice.” We’ll also take a look at Mexican Gen. Santa Anna’s siege of the Alamo, the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight title and the 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center.

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory