Monthly Archives: January 2014

American Promise

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We are making progress in bringing American Promise‘s filmmakers to campus for a screening.  The tentative date is April 15.  Pencil in the date, and check back here for more information.

The film follows two middle-class African-American boys for 13 years, as they make their way through a prestigious private school.  Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson are the filmmakers and parents of one of the boys.  It has won several awards and will be showing on PBS’s POV program on February 3 (11 PM PST on OPB).  Here is the trailer:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knFReWtLkgc]

http://www.americanpromise.org/#/trailer

Second Language Acquisition by the Numbers

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The Huffington Post, with Middlebury Interactive, recently presented an infographic:  Second Language Acquisition by the Numbers.  It makes a compelling case for increasing language instruction in the United States with facts about the languages most studied, language learning advantages, U.S. world language learning in comparison with the European Union, and the percentage of U.S. schools offering world language instruction.

Considering the number of English language learners (ELLs) in our schools, it is always surprising how few people in the U.S. are bilingual or multilingual.  We continue to have huge numbers of ELLs losing their home language rather than becoming truly bilingual, and we have far too few English-dominant students who ever study another language beyond two years in high school.

MLK, Jr. Celebration Events Continue

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration events are continuing all week. Here are a couple highlights:

The full schedule is online at http://oregonstate.edu/oei/mlk.  The Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/OSUMLKcelebration.

If you haven’t seen the Gazette-Times article about Monday’s Peace Breakfast, it’s a worthy read.  There’s even a slide show and video clip.  The Life@OSU page about this event fills in some of the details about award winners.  We also had a good turn out of volunteers from the College of Education at our service project yesterday – garden work at College Hill School in Corvallis.

The Classroom Closet: A Pride Panel on Queerness and Education

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Our panel discussion event, in partnership with OSU’s Pride Center, is quickly approaching…

The Classroom Closet: A Pride Panel on Queerness and Education
Tuesday, January 21 at 5:00 PM–6:30 PM, Furman Hall 4th Floor Atrium
Come listen to a panel of LGBTQ students, teachers, and faculty discuss their experiences in the K-12 educational system.

This is part of our professional development efforts, and we hope everyone leaves with some new insights and ideas for continued professional development—as educators working with LGBTQ students, parents, and colleagues and/or as LGBTQ individuals interested in working in schools.

Please bring a friend and help spread the word.  Here is the event poster:  CLASSROOM CLOSET poster.  We’re also listed as a Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration event: http://oregonstate.edu/oei/mlk-events.

John Hunter Peace Lecture at OSU

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John Hunter, master teacher and creator of the World Peace Game, will be lecturing at Oregon State University on Thursday, January 23 at 7 PM in Milam Auditorium.  This is an Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Peace Lecture, which is free to the public.  Please invite your friends.  More information is here, on the event flyer.

If you are not aware of John Hunter’s work, you may want to also watch his TED Talk: