April is National Poetry Month
Each state has a poet laureate. In addition there is a poet laureate of the United States. In our tribute to the poet laureates across our land, Education Update has asked them the following questions. We have also asked them to choose their favorite excerpts to share with you, our readers. We hope you will discover a host of emotions and inspiration to write your own couplets, sonnets or iambic pentameter, as the spirit moves you.
• Where did you study poetry?
• When did you begin to write?
• Where do you find the inspiration for your writing?
• What are the biggest hurdles you’ve had to overcome in your career?
• What advice would you give someone who wants to pursue a career in poetry?

Ted Kooser, U.S. & Nebraska
I had to find time to write while employed in business. I worked in the life insurance business for 35 years and did my writing early in the morning before I had to get my necktie and suit on. READ MORE

Ken Brewer, Utah
I don’t think I believe in “inspiration.” I find the subjects of poetry everywhere and I write because I enjoy it. I don’t wait to be “inspired.” I write nearly every day... READ MORE

Fleda Brown, Delaware
I wrote poems off and on through all of my school years. I won an undergraduate award for my poems, but I didn’t take myself seriously until the time I was writing my dissertation. READ MORE

Tom Chandler, Rhode Island
I’m still hurdling. Tell the guy at the gas station that you’re a poet, and he’ll probably think of scented candles and Yanni albums.
READ MORE

Mary Crow, Colorado
Among the hurdles I’ve had to overcome are the difficulties of giving writing a high enough priority when so many things need to get done. Developing discipline. Staying awake to what I want to create.
READ MORE

Michael S. Harper, Poet Laureate Emeritus,
Rhode Island
My career began in the U.S. Postal Service at the Terminal Annex in downtown Los Angeles, working ‘airmail’ and mastering the canceling machine as a part time clerk on Tour 3. READ MORE

Kevin Stein, Illinois
Read everything and everybody: poetry, science, history, philosophy, and the newspapers. Most importantly, read both those you love and those who challenge your own dearest assumptions. READ MORE

Margaret Britton Vaughn, TN
I first started writing love poems to little boys in the second grade. In third grade, I wrote the lyrics to my first country song, which was entitled, “Here I Sit Alone at the Bar.” READ MORE

Poems From Featured Poet Laureates
READ ALL SELECTIONS

I Don’t Hear America Singing in the South Bronx
By Gisela Rodriquez-Montalvo
I don’t hear America singing in the South Bronx.
As the sun rises over this low and dismal place,
You can hear the stirring of a people in bondage... READ MORE

Cliff Notes & Other Poems
By Donald Feinfeld, M.D.
READ ALL SELECTIONS

SPOTLIGHT ON SCHOOLS

Teachers Network Conference
An Interview with Dr. Charlotte Frank
By Jan Aaron
The conference succeeded in reaching teachers at all levels of experience and interests. There were workshops specifically for new teachers focused on basic needs from classroom management to teaching methods. READ MORE

Dr. Arthur Levine:
Passionate about The Need to Redirect Teacher Education
By Joan Baum Ph.D.
Although a new plan at Teachers College (TC) establishes “educational equity” as the major mission, a key word for the locus of related activities has already been changed. No longer an Institute, the new initiative is now the Campaign for Educational Equity... READ MORE

Profiles In Education:
Francie Alexander, Chief Academic Officer
of Scholastic
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
Teaching reading should be approached in a “thoughtful” way that responds to scientific research. That means that Ms. Alexander will be focusing on Scholastic as “an educational think tank” and providing the nation’s political and educational leaders as well as parents with another level of resources. READ MORE

Manhattan Institute & Teachers College Argue
Pros & Cons of School Choice at Jewish
Theological Seminary
By Sybil Maimin
In hosting “Vouchers, Charters, Choice: A Conversation About Education Policy,” the Louis Finkelstein Institute at the Jewish Theological Seminary was fulfilling its mission, begun in 1938, of considering, from an interfaith perspective, public policy issues that have religious and moral dimensions. READ MORE

Interview with Dr. Kerby Alvy
By Nazneen Malik
Dr. Kerby Alvy, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC), an organization dedicated to helping children through effective parenting, fell in love with children when he was just a child himself. READ MORE

New Math Standards Will Make A Difference
By Alfred S. Posamentier, Ph.D.
Although for years there was a modicum of unhappiness with the New York State mathematics curriculum—one which differs from the other 49 states—real anger did not emerge until the fiasco of the June 2003 Math-A Regents examination... READ MORE

Teachers Network Conference Features Mayoral Candidates & Workshops
By Jan Aaron
Three hundred of New York’s brightest (teachers) and other concerned citizens gathered recently at The Fourth Annual Curriculum, Community, Collaboration & Celebration Conference, hosted by Teachers Network, Deputy Chancellor Carmen Farina and the East Side Community High School. READ MORE

Teacher In Space Candidate Completes
Proficiency Flight
For pilot Bob Ray, it was a routine proficiency flight, but for teacher Pam Leestma, it was the flight of a lifetime and the first step toward realizing her lifelong dream of traveling into space. READ MORE

Testing Serves Students
By Margaret Spellings
To some students, “test” is a four-letter word. Given the choice, I’m sure many would welcome the chance to be tested only every other year. But the adults in charge of their education surely know better.
READ MORE

Councilwoman Moskowitz Examines Vocational Ed
By Liza Young
Proper vocational education is vital to many public school students as well as to the health of the economy. Historically, quality educational programs have been a staple of the New York City Department of Education (DOE) system and were instrumental in helping students segue into the manufacturing economy. READ MORE

GUEST EDITORIAL

The Education Shibboleth:
Each Child Must be Taught Differently
By Sandra Priest Rose
The commonplace idea uttered by most professors in schools of education is that each child must be taught differently. Twenty-six children in a classroom, twenty-six lesson plans and strategies for teaching. READ MORE

OUTSTANDING TEACHERS OF THE MONTH

April 2005
In 2003, Education Update began the tradition of honoring teachers each month for their outstanding work on the “frontiers” of education.We are now continuing the tradition which will culminate in a ceremony in June 2005 with Chancellor Joel Klein in attendance.
READ THIS MONTH'S HONOREES

COLLEGE & GRADUATE SCHOOLS

Dr. Bonnie Kaiser, Rockefeller U. Scientist Responds to Pres. Summers
By Liza Young
Harvard President Summers recent comments regarding women and science have hit a nerve or two, but his words have also generated intelligent and probing discussion. READ MORE

Teachers College Students Serve as Reading Tutors
to 4 Harlem Schools
TC Reading Buddies Provide One-On-One Attention While Earning Course Credits
Forty students from Teacher’s  College, known as the TC Reading Buddies, are providing one-on-one reading tutoring to struggling pupils at four Central Harlem elementary schools. READ MORE

College of New Rochelle Sponsors Lecture “Peacemaking In Time Of War”
At 7:30 pm on Tuesday April 12, the Westchester Consortium for International Studies will host a lecture by noted author and speaker, Colman McCarthy, for its “Presidential Lecture 2005” at the Student Center at 7:30 pm. READ MORE

CCNY Physicist Myriam Sarachik Receives Prestigious Women in Science Award
Dr. Myriam Sarachik, Distinguished Professor of Physics at The City College of New York (CCNY), has been named the 2005 L'ORÉAL-UNESCO for Women in Science North American Laureate. READ MORE

College of Staten Island: Rediscovering Discovery
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
“When most people go fishing, they fish in the wrong places,” says Dr. Leonard Ciaccio, Co-Director of the Discovery Institute at the College of Staten Island (CSI) and Special Assistant to the President of CSI for Schools, with a knowing smile. READ MORE

The College of New Rochelle marks
National Student Athlete Day
with BBQ and Children's Book Drive for
YMCA of New Rochelle
The College of New Rochelle (CNR) recognized the achievements of 38 outstanding student athletes enrolled in the School of Arts & Sciences
READ MORE

SPECIAL EDUCATION

The Effects of Medicare’s “In-the-Home” Restriction on Beneficiaries
By Paul Tobin
As a person living with a spinal cord injury, and the Deputy Executive Director of the United Spinal Association, I can attest that wheelchairs play an integral role in assisting millions of disabled Americans living independently everyday. READ MORE

FEATURE

Martha Abbott: Doyenne of Global Languages
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
Language study now involves content areas, so that youngsters learning about the butterfly, for example, get instruction in English that is then reinforced in another language. One can only hope that 2005 will be, as they say in Latin, an annus mirabilis. READ MORE

METROBEAT

Discussing Our Five Borough Economic Plan
By Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
New jobs numbers came out recently, and they show that New York City’s economy continues to grow.  Unemployment is down to 5.9 percent—the lowest it’s been since before 9/11. READ MORE

Celebrating Creative Expression During National Poetry Month
By Matilda Raffa Cuomo
In April, the Academy of American Poets will celebrate its 10th annual National Poetry Month, a program that the Academy established to promote appreciation of contemporary poetry. READ MORE

How to provide ‘Fiscal Equity’ for School Leaders with ‘Fiscal Equity’
By CSA President Jill Levy
Last month, I wrote about what was missing from all the proposals on how to spend Campaign for Fiscal Equity funding, the necessity for increasing the support and resources for school leaders. READ MORE

Legislature Rejects Pataki’s Education Cuts, Even As Gov. Continues Stalling On CFE
By Assemblyman Steven Sanders
Despite our best efforts, the Governor refuses to acknowledge the most recent findings of the courts, and despite our most vigorous objections, the Governor has entered into another round of frivolous appeals, doomed to failure... READ MORE

LETTERS

Response To: Education Update Articles
READ MORE

BOOKS

Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education Celebrates 2004
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
The book committee awards, under the aegis and expertise of committee president Alice Belgray, always an SRO affair, are truly one of the city’s most treasured tributes to literacy. READ MORE

MUSIC ART & DANCE

Those Who Can, Do!
By Scott Noppe-Brandon
Recently, I was a presenter at a conference where the panelists were asked to discuss the relative health of funding for artists in NYC and the United States. READ MORE

Quantifying Creativity: A Recent Symposium Addresses The Importance Of Arts Education
By Gillian Granoff
Recently, Arts Connection, a non profit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting the cultivation of arts in the school system, launched a two day conference entitled Beyond Arts Integration: Defining Learning in Arts Education at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education. READ MORE

MEDICAL UPDATE

Compounds Targeting Only Metastatic Cells Effective Against Breast, Prostate, and Colon Cancers
Two compounds that zero in on cancer cells spreading throughout the body, while ignoring primary tumor cells, could some day give doctors a whole new weapon in the fight against tough-to-treat metastatic disease, according to Weill Medical College of Cornell University researchers. READ MORE

Weill Cornell Medical College Stem Cell Scientist Named HHMI Investigator
Dr. Shahin Rafii of Weill Medical College of Cornell University—an internationally known cancer and vascular biologist and stem-cell authority—has been named by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) as one of 43 new HHMI investigators, an honor bestowed on only the nation’s most promising and gifted biomedical scientists.
READ MORE

Match Day 2005: NYU Medical Students Capture Best Residency Appointments
Recently, fourth-year medical students from NYU School of Medicine gathered for Match Day, a nationwide event that simultaneously reveals critical residency appointments for all graduating medical students across the country. READ MORE

Human Stem Cells Can Develop Into Functional Muscle Tissue
The discovery by Weill Medical College of Cornell University researchers that a specific type of human fetal stem cell can co-differentiate simultaneously into both muscle and blood vessel cells may unlock the door to therapies that replace damaged tissue in the heart and other organs. READ MORE

CHILDREN'S CORNER

Poetry Safari at the Bronx Zoo
April is National Poetry Month and Bronx Zoo visitors are invited to bring their inner-poet to experience a day of rhyme, rap, and recreation at the third annual Poetry Safari Weekend, April 16-17. Poetry Safari is made possible by the generous support of JPMorgan Chase. READ MORE

From Dr. Toy:
Classic Toys are Never Out of Style
By Stevanne Auerbach, Ph.D
Classic toys are always dependable. These long lasting toys “keep on playing” long after the batteries and latest fads are long gone.
READ MORE

CAMPS & SPORTS

Summer Programs for Children at College of
New Rochelle
The Summer Reading Program is one-on-one and is conducted by graduate students in literacy education, under the supervision of the Graduate School faculty. This program offers assessment and tutoring of reading and writing problems. READ MORE