As children we spend a good part of our day in school and what we learn about others and ourselves at school is as critical to our internal growth as learning science, math, reading, and writing is to our future livelihoods. These important crucibles for  learning and self-growth are often under-funded and under-appreciated. Host a Dinner Party to learn more about what is being done to improve children’s education and explore what you can do. This Dinner Theme reflects partially Earth Charter’s Principle 14a “Provide all, especially children and youth, with educational opportunities that empower them.”

Guests

Family, Friends, Students of any age, Educators, Parents of school kids, Community members who care about education, Retired teachers, Non-teaching school personnel including maintenance, cafeteria workers, office personnel, school bus drivers and school guards.

Setting

• If you are lucky and have connection with school employee, you might be able to use classroom setting at school or university
• Congressional Library in Washing DC or local library meeting space
• Room with books in own home including kitchen and cookbooks

Tablescape

Arrange in center of table small computer, chalk, paper notebook, pencils/pens, various books—art, music, science, math, literature, etc OR an arrangement or collage of photos/pictures of children in school settings around the world. (Google different classrooms settinges like Inuit, French, Russian, Brazilian, or German Forest).

Art/Music

Provide crayons and paper and invite guests to draw with their non-dominant hand (to reduce critical self-talk about drawing ability) a picture of their favorite teacher from years ago, or of themselves in elementary school or of their favorite classroom memory. Share and describe the pictures with one another.

Menu

Dishes made from Brain Food—some are wild salmon, free trade dark chocolate and coffee, and blueberries.

Wine: California School House Wine (pinot noir or chardonnay) OR wine or beverage of your choice.

Conversation Opener

Share photos of yourselves as students and comment on hairstyles, clothes and other fun aspects or simply talking about your relationship with your best friend in school.

Questions to be Asked After One Glass of Wine

What were the benefits and/or disadvantages of your public education experience?

Or if you were not a public education student, share the benefit and/or disadvantage of your private or home-schooling experience.

How might your positive experiences be transferred into your local school system?

• Research is inconclusive on the effect that smaller classrooms have on student learning. Some educators believe that an imaginative, energized and motivating teacher has a larger effect on positive student learning than smaller classroom size. The Harlem Children’s Zone schools study on Promise Academy also showed that a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values produced enormous student gains and closed the gap between white and black achievements (The Harlem Miracle; David Brooks; New York Times OP-ED Friday, May 8, 2009).
• What are your thoughts or experience? Please share your experience if you had a teacher who made an unforgettable positive effect on you.
• What are some of the challenges that your local public schools face today? Is there a difference in the challenges dependent on income levels of the parents and families?

Actions

• Simple acts of recognition of the positive teaching and education experiences in your local schools do make a difference not only to school personnel morale but they also reinforce what you want to have happen. Write emails/letters or make appointments with your public school administrators and/or teachers to share your positive feedback.
• Please explore further remedies that you and/or the group can get involved in that address challenges to your local schools that were discussed earlier in the conversation. The California Trigger Law creates a parents’ union, which advocates say will provide powerful and needed counterweight to teachers’ unions and district bureaucracies.Others states have also started such initiatives. If 51 percent of parents in a persistently failing school sign a petition, they can force the school to change into a charter, close it entirely or replace the principal and teachers.  What are your thoughts about this remedy for struggling schools?
• Nicholas Kristof writes in the NYT of “The Value of Teachers” about as study done by Harvard and Columbia economists that shows students with good teachers earon, on average, $25,000 more over a lifetime or about $700,000 in gains for an average class size. They suggest that if a good teacher is leaving that parents should hold bake sales or pass the hat around in hopes of collectively offering the teacher as a hefty bonus that would have him/her stay for an extra year. What qualities make up a “good” teacher?  For more information on teacher effectiveness tools go to http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/10/teacher_effectiveness.html How is teacher effectiveness being measured in your children’s schools?  Would holding a bake sale or passing the hat keep a “good” teacher there? If so, start organizing to make it happen.
• The Edible Schoolyard is an initiative to build and share a national food curriculum. This online resource center allows educational garden, kitchen and lunch programs across the nation to share their lessons and best practices.http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/ Visit the website to learn more and to initiate one at your children’s school. The edible schoolyard in New Orleans (WWW.esynola.org) involves students in all aspects of growing, harvesting, preparing and enjoying food together as a means of awakening their senses, cultivating a school environment that promotes a sense of pride and responsibility for our land and natural resources, and developing a love of fresh, seasonal foods.
• Attend a school board meeting or Parent Teachers Association meeting to learn more about what is happening in your local school and to see how you can help.
• Parents are most likely involved in some way with their children’s learning at school but if you do not have children in school, consider being a mentor or tutor at the school, to a neighbor’s child or within a group like the Boys & Girls Club.

Closing Toast

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.  ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

OR

It’ll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers.  ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful, Ronald D. Fuchs, ed.