Financial Literacy Is Important, Too!

Now that we have chosen Suzi Ramos to be our Literacy Coach and Cody Case to be our Math Coach, there is another area of education we want to make sure that we address---financial literacy.

An article, "Money Matters: The Case for Teaching Financial Literacy" by Anthony S. Colucci in Education Week Teacher notes information from a Consumer Reports survey of 12-year-olds: 28% didn't understand that credit cards are a form of borrowing, 40% didn't know that banks charge interest on loans, and 34 % didn't realize that you can't tell how good a produc it by how much it is advertised. These figures are disturbing when we consider how important it is for our citizenry to have this knowledge if it is to effectively address our country's current economic woes.

Colucci went on to recommend some things we can do to improve financial literacy such as:

• Taking advantage of the financial knowledge one of our stakeholders may have to help scholars (and their parents!) with financial planning.


• Partner with Junior Achievement.


• Draw on the resources of the National Council on Economic Education.


• Make financial connections to the curriculum.

Needless to say, there are many things our Esperanza scholars need to learn in a short amount of time but this is definitely one area we will want to address.

The Board Can Make Or Break Us

Yesterday three of our founding Esperanza Board members--Carmen Thompson, Flavia McKnight, and Janet Christensen--and I went to the Charter School Symposium held at the Karl G. Maeser Academy in Lindon. I am so appreciative of the people who have traveled the road before us who are so willing to share their knowledge so we can be successful.

The final session I attended consisted of a panel to answer questions we might have. The people on the panel included people who have been in the charter school business for a number of years. One thing they stressed --particularly to me--was to make sure that we had a strong Board that was committed to our vision. They said, too, that we needed to start now to move our Board from consisting of people who plan to work at Esperanza to people who would eventually be on the Board. We need influential people on the Board who understand our vision and who will advocate for it.

The panel members stressed over and over again how important it is for the Board members to be trained as the Board is the key as to whether the school will be successful or not. We can have the best teachers and a beautiful building but that will mean nothing if the Board isn't a quality Board.

Based on this counsel from the people who know from experience we need to devote a great deal of time and energy over the next few months seeking out those people who can help make our Esperanza Board a top-notch Board.

Six Degrees of Separation

Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains."

In 1967, American sociologist Stanley Milgram devised a new way to test the theory, which he called "the small-world problem." He randomly selected people in the mid-West to send packages to a stranger located in Massachusetts. The senders knew the recipient's name, occupation, and general location. They were instructed to send the package to a person they knew on a first-name basis who they thought was most likely, out of all their friends, to know the target personally. That person would do the same, and so on, until the package was personally delivered to its target recipient.

Although the participants expected the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries, it only took (on average) between five and seven intermediaries to get each package delivered. Milgram's findings were published in Psychology Today and inspired the phrase "six degrees of separation."

Although the following idea that Keith Ferrazzi shared isn’t exactly related to the Six Degrees of Separation Theory it does reinforce the idea that there are people who can expand our networks and help us achieve our goals. He suggested to his team a way to build the social capital of their organization—one relationship at a time.

Everyone was asked to come to a meeting with the name of one aspirational contact – someone who could make a critical difference to a current work goal. Each person shared the name of their target and then shared why – what did they hope to learn from the introduction? The group then brainstormed about how to approach the target contact with generosity. Within the next few weeks several people were ready to connect with contacts that they thought were way out of reach, and everyone else was further down the path.

We as a Esperanza stakeholders need to consistently do something similar so we can involve as many people as possible to help make Esperanza everything that it can be to make a difference for our Esperanza scholars.

Vocabulary and $100

When I was teaching at Realms of Inquiry a number of years ago I met a man who told my middle school students that every new vocabulary word they learn is worth an added $100 to their annual earnings when they start to work. Of course, there is no way he could know for sure about the $100 but nevertheless, it did stress the fact that knowledge, including vocabulary, is power. Therefore, we not only want to grow the vocabulary of our Esperanza scholars but we also want to encourage our Esperanza staff to set the example by learning and loving words.

Research studies show that reading is one of the best ways to learn vocabulary--and remember them--even more effective than just learning words from a list. Comic books can even expose students to new words. Yet, I still enjoy learning words from the vocabulary section in the Readers' Digest. I also enjoy my daily word from wordsmith.org that not only gives the definition of the word but also the background of the word which more often than not quite fascinating.

Learning another language is also a magnificent way to learn new words in one's first language. This became apparent to me as I learned Spanish. There are words in Spanish that are used in every day conversation among Latinos that only more educated monolingual English speakers use in equivalent English. Also, because Spanish is Latin based and so is academic language such as science terms knowing Spanish helps learn academic vocabulary.

Even if a new word does not mean an added $100 to one's annual income, a person is still richer in knowledge for every new word added to one's knowledge bank.

Productive and Meaningful Meetings

A talk at church today reminded me that how productive and meaningful a meeting (or a training!) is determined by what happens before and after the meeting. What happens in the meeting is important, but how prepared the attendees are will determine how much they get out of the meeting or training. In other words, have the attendees completed their individual work and assignments for the meeting? Also, what the attendees do after the meeting is important. Have new assignments been made with deadlines and who is responsible?

Moving Forward With Literacy

I have asked Suzi Ramos, one of our Esperanza founding board members, to be Esperanza's Literacy Coach. We had a three hour lunch yesterday discussing what we need to do to achieve our two big literacy goals: 1) teach our scholars to read and 2) encourage our scholars to love reading.

We are going to use the CELL/XCELL Model to teach reading using the following components: Shared reading, Read-alouds, Guided Reading, and Independent Reading. There are other things under each of these components we want to incorporate such strategies as reciprocal teaching, tutoring, PALA (our Spanish version of silent sustained reading), literature circles, etc. We also want to have a plan for addressing summer loss. We're excited for each educator who wants to work at Esperanza to choose one of these as an expertise and then teach the rest of us.

We have all kinds of ideas to achieve our second goal to encourage our Esperanza scholars to love reading such as having all kinds of book clubs made up of different Esperanza stakeholders. We want Esperanza to radiate with a love for reading so that anyone entering the school will be able to tell from a "whiff" how much we love reading.

Please--No Excuses

It was reported yesterday that Utah is among five other states including the District of Columbia to have a racial gap between white and Latino students larger than the national average. What was especially disturbing to me was the excuses that were being made as to why this is the case.

One excuse made by Mark Peterson from the State Board of Education was that Utah's Hispanic population is exploding. He said, "Over the last 20 years in Utah, our population has gotten much more diverse. We've gone from 3% Hispanic students to 15%, or from 1 in 26 students to 1 in 7 students." There are other states that have the Hispanic population growing at a faster rate that have more success with their Hispanic students.

Another excuse Peterson made was that the sort of remedies needed to address the issue are fairly expensive. Research has shown that one of the most effective methods for closing the achievement gap for Latino students is a quality dual immersion program. From my research and experience dual immersion programs are cost effective.

Another excuse made by Peterson was that many of Utah's Hispanic students don't speak English while Hispanic students in California are more likely to be born in the U.S. and therefore, grow up learning the English language. It's true that Latinos who speak English do better academically, but California is not a panacea for its education of Latino students. Plus, there are other states that have a faster growing non-English speaking Latino student population that are experiencing greater success with this student population.

An excuse made by Christina Morales, a member of the state school board's Coalition of Minorities Advisory Committee, was that we have too few minority educators in schools. It's true that more Latino educators would be wonderful for a variety of reasons including making minority parents feel more comfortable as well as being role models and mentors for Latino students. Yet, more Latino educators is not sufficient. I recently read the book Words Were All We Had by María de la Luz Reyes and in this book she notes numerous examples of where Latino students had Latino educators who did a lot of damage and wounded their souls. I have also witnessed first hand a Latino administrator who was so out of touch with the Latino parents in the school that the parents fought for his resignation. Also, the research of George Monsivais found that Latino teachers felt as unprepared as White teachers to effectively teach Latino students. In other words, they, too, needed to learn the most effective methods and strategies.

Other excuses such as poverty, parents' eduction levels and/or lack of familiarity with the school system, stereotyping in schools, etc. were given as well as to why there is this disparity. It's true that these issues are real. Yet, there are schools throughout the nation that are succeeding in spite of these real barriers. We must learn from these success stories and quit making excuses if the achievement gap is to be closed.