Welcome To Esperanza Elementary Blog

I want to give you a special welcome to our Esperanza Elementary blog as we take our journey to found the school of our dreams. I invite you to visit us often and offer any ideas, thoughts, suggestions, questions, comments, etc. you might have.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Mentors Near and Far

Photo

A number of years ago I had the opportunity to hear Debbie Silver speak at a conference.  I was so inspired by her.  We have communicated numerous times via email since then.  Having mentors such as Debbie--near and far--can help us stay enthused about education and those we teach. 

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Finding Time to Read



We need to help our Esperanza educators and scholars find ways to be creative in finding time to read.  One thing I do is always carry a book or other reading material with me.   Amazing how much can read while waiting. 

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Another Great Use for Rain Gutters



I want rain gutters all over Esperanza for this very use--to display books!  This is a great idea for using them at home, too. 

Monday, May 28, 2012

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Food Security

I watched this morning the BYU Forum speech by Dr. Rulon Pope given on May 15, 2012.  His talk has great implications for how we approach our Esperanza scholars and their families because we are intentionally targeting a low socioeconomic population. 

The following is an article by Jessica Godfrey on May 16, 2012 in the Daily Universe about this speech.

Rulon D. Pope, a professor in the Department of Economics, spoke at Tuesday’s forum and delivered the 2012 Karl G. Maser Distinguished Faculty Lecture addressing Engel’s Law.
Pope demonstrated quality research, teaching and University citizenship and was selected as the recipient of the award, and was provided the opportunity to speak at the campus forum.
After graduating from BYU in economics, Pope went to graduate school at Berkeley and studied agricultural and resources economics. He developed an interest in poverty and malnutrition reduction and strived to enhance food security for the world.
Chris Bunker

“As followers of Christ, we all wish for the well-being of the world’s poor,” Pope said. “Developed economies also have their own version of food insecurity and programs to ameliorate suffering and malnutrition.”
Pope discussed the cause of food insecurity has previously been presented as a production problem, both through a detailed explanation he corrected the misconception and defined the food insecurity source developing from lack of adequate food distribution and economic growth.
Pope focused on how the demand of food production and combustion relate to Engel’s Law.
“The poorer a family is, the greater is the proportion of the total out which must be used for food,” Pope said. “The proportion of the outgo used for food, other things being equal, is the best measure of the material standard of living of a population.”
The law observes the lower the income of a family, the higher percentage of income will be spent on food.
Depending on the demand of a good, goods are titled “normal” or “inferior.”
“Ramen noodles may be a normal good for a missionary, he or she would buy more, hang a little more income,” Pope said. “But post-mission, after selling pest control or security services, Ramen noodles would likely be an inferior good.”
Pope concluded by listing five implications of Engel’s law.
First, the law denotes food budgets predict the well-being of a person or country and through economic growth solutions can be found to increase caloric deficits. Second, “the agricultural sector falls as a percent of economic activity as a country grows because income shares going to food gall with growth.” Third, an active agricultural sector is more important because it will help fund the economy and play a role in developing manufacturing. Fourth, the rise in agricultural products will reduce incomes more for the poor than for the wealthy individuals. Fifth, a 19th century lawyer Eugene Slutsky predicted “goods with larger budget share and larger responses to higher incomes will tend to be more price responsive.”
Engel’s Law ultimately implies the behavior of the poor will be more sensitive to price changes of food than the behavior of the wealthy.
“It is clear Engel was really onto something very important for an understanding of our changing world,” Pope said.

Jessica Godfrey

Jessica Godfrey


Saturday, May 26, 2012

How to Be Irreplaceable

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.
Coco Chanel,
French fashion designer

This is a great reminder that the purpose of an education is to help each student (scholar) find and develop his/her own unique talents and gifts. 

Friday, May 25, 2012

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Whisper to Get Attention




When we really want to get someone's attention it's best to resist the temptation to get louder and whisper instead. 

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

A Source of Inspiration



This can inspire our educators and our Esperanza scholars when they feel they can't do something. 

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Monday, May 21, 2012

A Dream



The business of an educator--knowing the dreams of our scholars and helping them achieve them. 

Sunday, May 20, 2012

El Rocoto

(Paul Fraughton | The Salt Lake Tribune)  
Marcarios Diaz, the owner of El Rocoto in West Valley City, explains items on the Peruvian restaurant's menu. El Rocoto reflects the diversity of Peruvian dining with a broad menu of some 70 items (not counting desserts, drinks or side orders), including several dishes suitable as appetizers, with helpings generous enough to share.

Marcarios Diaz, the owner of El Rocoto in West Valley City, explains items on the Peruvian restaurant's menu.

I went to lunch yesterday at this restaurant with my Tertulia friends.  This experience reminded me of a some things:
  1. We should get to know the businesses in West Valley City--not only to know them, but for them to know us, too.
  2. We need to experience the different cultures that will be represented in Esperanza.
  3. Trying new things widens our horizon. 

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Proactive



Don't wait for your ship to come in--swim out to it. 

This is a great motto for our Esperanza educators, staff, and scholars!

Friday, May 18, 2012

Potential

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Our chief want in life, is, somebody who shall make us do what we can. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

We can do this as colleagues and educators at Esperanza. 

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Books for El día de los niños/El día de los libros

El Dia De Los Libros Featured

El día de los niños/El día de los libros
Today’s post about El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children’s Day/Book Day) comes to you in English and in Spanish and was written by Susan. She is a factotum of extreme importance in editorial and helps out with Club Leo amomg many other things.
El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children’s Day/Book Day) is a daily celebration of children and literacy that culminates every year on April 30. This celebration emphasizes the importance of providing books to children of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and making reading an important part of their lives. Here are a few books featured in our Club Leo catalog that are perfect for celebrating El día de los niños/El día de los libros.
Inspire kids to love books with Leonid Gore’s The Wonderful Book. The animals in the forest come across a lost book and wonder what it could be. A hat? A house? Finally, a boy comes along and reads the story aloud to the animals, and all agree that it is wonderful! This imaginative and original tale has lovely watercolor illustrations that will delight both children and adults.
Share a love of language and culture with Rachel Isadora’s Say Hello! The vibrant collage illustrations portray a rich diversity of people and cultures that children will love to explore along with Carmelita as she walks around her neighborhood. Carmelita says hello in Spanish, English, French, Japanese, and many other languages. This picture book provides a great introduction to the joy of language.
Hello World! by Manja Stojic is another wonderful picture book that emphasizes the joys of language and diversity. This book teaches readers how to say “hello” in 43 different languages! Each page features a painting of a child from a different part of the world and a greeting in a different language. Each greeting is spelled phonetically, so that you can pronounce it correctly. This book promotes a love of language and encourages young readers to appreciate cultures around the world!
A great way to celebrate El día de los niños/El día de los libros is to read a bilingual story, like Caperucita Roja/Little Red Riding Hood, the Club Leo $1 book in March. This is a classic tale that always delights. You can also get it as part of the Bilingual Tales Complete Set (18 books), available in Club Leo all year.
Happy Children’s Day/Book Day! Celebrate by reading your favorite book—or finding a new one to share with others!

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

How to Hire Rock Stars

Kevin Eikenberry's BLOG post on 5-16-12:

If you want to hire rock stars, you can’t wait until you have an opening to start thinking about hiring. Here’s an exercise to do today to help you implement this idea.
Create a crystal clear, three-dimensional description of your perfect candidate for a given job.
  • Develop clear expectations of the perfect employee in that role.
  • Identify the skills needed to start (must haves) and the skills that need to be developed.
  • Describe the behaviors you want to see in this individual.
  • Make all the intangibles, tangible.
When you build this crystal clear picture, a picture so clear that it is obvious when you see the person – it makes the interviewing and selection process easier. But that isn’t the most important reason to do it.
The most powerful reason to do this is so that you can begin to attract your perfect employee before you need them.
Let’s face it, clarity is attractive. Your clarity will help you bring the right people into your world and that same clarity will help people decide for themselves if they are your person, or not.
If you need to hire today, take some time to do this exercise. But if you don’t need anyone today, invest in the exercise for the future.
Think better bait on the hook, not seeing what will be in the fishing net.
Think attraction, not advertising.
Because the time to think about hiring is long before you need someone.

Great Leaders Grow

I recently read the book Great Leaders Grow by Ken Blanchard.  He used the word grow to demonstrate ways leaders need to grow:

G ain knowledge
  • Self-knowledge
  • Knowledge of others
  • Knowledge of industry
  • Knowledge of the field of leadership
R each out to others
O pen your world (at work and outside of work)
W alk toward wisdom

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Wise Counsel from Warren Buffet



Warren Buffet gave the following counsel at his annual shareholder meeting that I feel is the way we should treat teachers:

Motivate subordinates with trust and accountability, not money and control.
When Buffett acquires whole companies, he doesn’t get involved in day-to-day management. Instead, his main job is to keep the company’s management motivated. Because the heads of Buffett’s businesses are almost all millionaires in their own right, Buffett doesn’t focus on money. He pays people fairly so they don’t feel ripped off, but he thinks real motivation comes from trusting managers and setting them free. He wants his managers to act like owners; therefore, he treats them like owners. He gives them broad, multi-year objectives and then lets them reach those objectives however they please. For instance, he owns a carpet company and a company that builds houses. Most conglomerates would make their house company buy carpet from their carpet company in the name of “integration,” “efficiency” or “collaboration.” He doesn’t because he can’t hold his managers accountable if he places extraneous demands on them. He says his managers excel because he allows them to “paint their picture” as they see fit. The moment he starts standing behind them and starts telling them to “use more red” or “use more green” in their painting, he will lose their artistic genius.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Our Work As a Calling

I recently finished reading the book Emotional Equations by Chip Conley.  One of his chapters is focused on "calling."  He says that there are three ways to relate to work: 1) a job, 2) a career, 3) a calling.  The latter is the most rewarding. 

Conley quotes Abraham Maslow:  "One must respond to one's fate or one's destiny or pay a heavy price.  One must permit one's self to be chosen."  We aren't the caller, we are just responding.  Conley goes on to say, "You fit into a job.  A calling fits into you."

A good question to ask ourselves is:  "What am I becoming as a result of my work?"

It is our hope that everyone working at Esperanza is responding to a calling and not just looking at their work at Esperanza as a job, or even a career. 

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Lessons From Trees

I listened this morning to this talk by Elder Marlin K. Jensen.  It is filled with great lessons for us at Esperanza.


Elder Marlin K. Jensen speaks during a CES Devotional on May 6, 2012, in Sacramento, Calif—“Stand in the Sacred Grove”

 "A careful observer of nature ... can learn some significant lessons from the ecosystem that exists there,” he said.  Four lessons:

 Lesson No.1: Trees always grow toward the light.

"They [the trees in the Sacred Grove] have grown outward — to escape the overshadowing foliage above them — and then upward to absorb the greatest possible sunlight," he said. "Their crooked trunks and branches stand in stark contrast to neighboring trees that grow almost perfectly straight." Trees, like almost all living organisms, need light to survive and to thrive.  Therefore, we need to seek out those things that bring "light" to our lives.   

Lesson No. 2: Trees require opposition to fulfill the measure of their creation.

Elder Jensen spoke of an experiment conducted a few years ago in a designated area of the Sacred Grove. To provide the healthiest young trees a prime place to grow, gardeners cleaned out the area and took away opposition that could prevent the trees from growing. Their hope was that the trees would flourish and develop, as they grew without competition for water, sunlight and soil nutrients.

"As a result, none of the trees in the test plot compared in size or vitality to the trees left to grow more naturally and that had to compete and overcome opposition in order to survive and to thrive," he said.

Equally important is the principle that opposition must exist for spiritual growth to occur or for 'holiness' to be brought to pass.

Lesson No. 3: Trees are best grown in forests, not in isolation.

"If you think about it, in nature it's very unusual to see a tree standing alone," he said. "They almost always congregate in groves, and over time, groves may become forests."

It [the Sacred Grove] is a complicated ecosystem that includes numerous species of flora and fauna that rely on one another for food and shelter in the cycle of life.

We, too, need a similar inter connectedness and sociality for us," he said.

"Healthy trees need an ecosystem; healthy people need each other. People, like trees, are best grown in communities, not in isolation."

Lesson No. 4: Trees draw strength from the nutrients created by previous generations of trees.

Just as a grove of trees flourishes when benefitting from the nutrients of fallen trees, leaves and limbs, so can our lives benefit from the rich legacy left by those who have gone before us.  It is critical for the ‘rising generation’ to be mindful of and draw strength from past generations.  To live fully in the present—and plan for the future—we need the foundation of the past. 

"History in its most basic form is a record of people and their lives and from those lives come stories and lessons that can reinforce what we believe, what we stand for, and what we should do in the face of adversity," he said. "

"Good stories — if true — make good history," Elder Jensen said. "Remember, people, like trees, draw strength from the nutrients created by previous generations."




Saturday, May 12, 2012

The Importance of a Name

Me llamo Jorge

Me llamo Jorge
Sé que mi nombre
                            es Jorge,
Pero todos me llaman
                            -Chorg.

Chorg,
¡Qué feo sonido!
¡Como un estornudo!
                           ¡Chorg!

Y lo peor de todo
                           es que
hoy in la mañana
                           una niña me llamó

-Chorg-
y volteé la cabeza
No quiero convertirme
                         en un estornudo. 



My Name Is Jorge

My name is Jorge
I know that my name is Jorge
But everyone calls me
                           George.

George,
What an ugly sound!
Like a sneeze!
                           GEORGE!

And the worst of all
                           is that
this morning
                           a girl called to me,
"George"
                           and I turned my head.
I don't want to turn
                           into a sneeze!

                                                                                 by Jane Medina


Friday, May 11, 2012

Pursuing What We Love

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.” -- Maya Angelou
 


This is what we want to do at Esperanza!

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Value Mothers



Mothers are valued in every culture, but they are especially valued in the Hispanic culture.  We need to find ways at Esperanza to capitalize on this.  One way to do that is throught the Hispanic Mother/Daughter Program. 

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Teacher Appreciation Week

Make your teacher feel special on Teacher Day with this ecard.

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week.  This is a great time for students, parents, administrators, board members, colleagues to recognize the great work of teachers.  There are some fun email cards at 123greetings.com 

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Be a Visible Principal

Article from ASCD's Education Update May 2012 ( Volume 54: Number 5)

1.  Build Relationships with Students
Principals need to be everywhere in school--walking the halls, visiting classrooms, and dropping in during lunch time in the "dining room"
2.  Give Teachers Feedback
Walkthroughs provide important opportunities for giving teacher feedback.
3.  Be a Learning Leader
Effective principals model learning behavior. 
4.  Make Parents Your Partners
Let parents know both formally and informally when their children are doing good work, making improvements, and demonstrating positive behavior. 
5.  Get Out of the Building...and learn from others
6.  Tap into Community Resources

Monday, May 7, 2012

Climb Every Mountain






MOTHER ABBESS in the Sound of Music:

Climb every mountain
Search high and low
Follow every byway
Every path you know

Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
Till you find your dream
A dream that will need
All the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live

Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
Till you find your dream

A dream that will need
All the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live

Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
Till you find your dream

Suspension Doesn't Work

First. U.S. schools suspend millions of kids — 3,328,750, to be exact. Since the 1970s, says a National Education Policy Center report published in October 2011, the suspension rate’s nearly doubled for white kids, to 6%. It’s more than doubled for Hispanics to 7%, and to a stunning 15% for blacks. For Native Americans, it’s almost tripled, from 3% to 8%.
Second. If you think all these suspensions are for weapons and drugs, recalibrate. There’s been a kind of “zero-tolerance creep” since schools adopted “zero-tolerance” policies. Only 5% of all out-of-school suspensions were for weapons or drugs, said the NEPC report, citing a 2006 study. The other 95% were categorized as “disruptive behavior” and “other”, which includes cell phone use, violation of dress code, being “defiant”, display of affection, and, in at least one case, farting.
Third. These suspensions don’t work for schools. Get rid of the “bad” students, and the “good” students can learn, get high scores, live good lives. That’s the myth. The reality? It’s just the opposite. Says the NEPC report: “…research on the frequent use of school suspension has indicated that, after race and poverty are controlled for, higher rates of out-of-school suspension correlate with lower achievement scores.”
Fourth. They don’t work for the kids who get kicked out. In fact, these “throw-away” kids get shunted off a possible track to college and onto the dead-end spur of juvenile hall and prison.
“Studies show that one suspension triples the likelihood of a juvenile justice contact within that year,” California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye told the California Legislature last month. “And that one suspension doubles the likelihood of repeating the grade.”
Fifth. All these suspensions have led many communities to create “alternative” schools, where they dump the “bad” kids who can’t make it in regular public school. Lincoln High School was set up as one of those alternative schools.

This information came from http://acestoohigh.com/2012/04/23/lincoln-high-school-in-walla-walla-wa-tries-new-approach-to-school-discipline-expulsions-drop-85/
that Dolly Case shared with me. 

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Time: A Precious Commodity

I listened this morning to the BYU Devotional speech that Dr. Thomas Morris gave on May 1, 2012.  He spoke about the importance of time...and how we use it.  I share one of his examples to inspire us at Esperanza. 



ONe of Morris’ heroes is Milutin Milanković, a Serbian scientist who theorized that fossil fuels were affected by different ice ages throughout time. When World War II broke out, Milanković was captured and thrown into jail for six months. Instead of delving in self pity, Milanković’s mind turned to his work and he spent the time fine tuning his theory.
When Milanković died in 1958 his theory was mocked by his colleagues; but 30 years later, thanks to advances in technology, his theory was proved to be true and is now a fundamental practice to find fossil fuels.
“Milanković was focused in his life’s work,” Morris said. “He found little time to despair. He plowed forward, sometimes with delight, even under seemingly dire circumstance.”

Being Creative!





Finding different ways of looking at things can help all of us at Esperanza--educators and scholars--be more creative. 

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Happy Cinco de Mayo



A poem--Cinco de Mayo--by Francisco Alarcón

una batalla
en los libros
de historia

una fiesta
de música
y colores

una ocasión
para agitar
banderas

un baile
con piropos
y piñata

orchata
tostaditas
y guacamole

un mango
con chile
y limón

un grito
de alegría
y primavera

¡sí, ya mero
salimos
de vacaciones!


a battle
in some
history books

a fiesta
of music
and colors

a flag
waving
occasion

a flirting
dance
and a piñata

orchata
corn chips
and guacamole

a mango
with some chile
and limon

a cry
of joy
and spring

yes, summer
vacation is just
around the corner!

Friday, May 4, 2012

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Being Bilingual 'Boosts Brain Power'

Being bilingual 'boosts brain power'

Human brain Differences were seen in the brainstem (coloured orange in this picture)

Related Stories

Learning a second language can boost brain power, scientists believe.
The US researchers from Northwestern University say bilingualism is a form of brain training - a mental "work out" that fine-tunes the mind.
Speaking two languages profoundly affects the brain and changes how the nervous system responds to sound, lab tests revealed.
Experts say the work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides "biological" evidence of this.
For the study, the team monitored the brain responses of 48 healthy student volunteers - which included 23 who were bilingual - to different sounds.
They used scalp electrodes to trace the pattern of brainwaves.
Under quiet, laboratory conditions, both groups - the bilingual and the English-only-speaking students - responded similarly.
But against a backdrop of noisy chatter, the bilingual group were far superior at processing sounds.
They were better able to tune in to the important information - the speaker's voice - and block out other distracting noises - the background chatter.
'Powerful' benefits And these differences were visible in the brain. The bilingualists' brainstem responses were heightened.
Prof Nina Kraus, who led the research, said: "The bilingual's enhanced experience with sound results in an auditory system that is highly efficient, flexible and focused in its automatic sound processing, especially in challenging or novel listening conditions."
Co-author Viorica Marian said: "People do crossword puzzles and other activities to keep their minds sharp. But the advantages we've discovered in dual language speakers come automatically simply from knowing and using two languages.
"It seems that the benefits of bilingualism are particularly powerful and broad, and include attention, inhibition and encoding of sound."
Musicians appear to gain a similar benefit when rehearsing, say the researchers.
Past research has also suggested that being bilingual might help ward off dementia.

The Bilingual Brain Is Sharper

Wall Street JournalHealth Blog
The Bilingual Brain Is Sharper and More Focused, Study Says
By Robert Lee Hotz
April 30, 2012
iStockphoto
The ability to speak two languages can make bilingual people better able to pay attention than those who can only speak one language, a new study suggests.
Scientists have long suspected that some enhanced mental abilities might be tied to structural differences in brain networks shaped by learning more than one language, just as a musician’s brain can be altered by the long hours of practice needed to master an instrument.
Now, in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at Northwestern University for the first time have documented differences in how the bilingual brain processes the sounds of speech, compared with those who speak a single language, in ways that make it better at picking out a spoken syllable, even when it is buried in a babble of voices.
That biological difference in the auditory nervous system appears to also enhance attention and working memory among those who speak more than one language, they say.
“Because you have two languages going on in your head, you become very good at determining what is and is not relevant,” says Dr. Nina Kraus, a professor of neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern, who was part of the study team. “You are a mental juggler.”
In the new study, Kraus and her colleagues tested the involuntary neural responses to speech sounds by comparing brain signals in 23 high school students who were fluent in English and Spanish to those of 25 teenagers who only spoke English. When it was quiet, both groups could hear the test syllable — “da” — with no trouble, but when there was background noise, the brains of the bilingual students were significantly better at detecting the fundamental frequency of speech sounds.
“We have determined that the nervous system of a bilingual person responds to sound in a way that is distinctive from a person who speaks only one language,” Kraus says.
Through this fine-tuning of the nervous system, people who can master more than one language are building a more resilient brain, one more proficient at multitasking, setting priorities, and, perhaps, better able to withstand the ravages of age, a range of recent studies suggest.
Indeed, some preliminary research suggests that people who speak a second language may have enhanced defenses against the onset of dementia and delay Alzheimer’s disease by an average of four years, as WSJ reported in 2010.
The ability to speak more than one language also may help protect memory, researchers from the Center for Health Studies in Luxembourg reported at last year.
After studying older people who spoke multiple languages, they concluded that the more languages someone could speak, the better: People who spoke three languages were three times less likely to have cognitive problems compared to bilingual people. Those who spoke four or more languages were five times less likely to develop cognitive problems.
Not so long ago, people worried that children who grew up learning two languages at once were at a developmental disadvantage compared with those who focused on only one.
New research suggests that even babies have little trouble developing bilingual skills.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Infant Studies Centre reported that babies being raised in a bilingual family show from birth a preference for each of the native languages they heard while still in the womb and can readily distinguish between them.
Moreover, bilingual infants appear to learn the grammars of their two languages as well as babies learning a single language, even when the two languages are as different from one another as English and Japanese, or English and Punjabi.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

El Dia de Los Niños


Yesterday it was "El Día de Los Niños/ El Día de Los Libros."  Yet, it is great if we can celebrate children and books every day!