SATs and "The Top Dogs"

http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20090205/NEWS01/902050350

I just stumbled across the above article in the Courier Post. It reported that Haddonfield, Moorestown, and Cherry Hill East have the highest SATs in tri-county area. Haddonfield weighs in at 1726, and Shawnee, Medford, and Eastern are in that elite club of the top ten. So what makes a school fortunate enough to be inhabited by so many over achievers who perform well on the be-all and end-all of standardized tests? Do these schools have better educational systems? Are their curricula more rigorous? Do they have better libraries and more extraordinary technology? Are the teachers more engaging and better trained? I honestly don't think so.

Our students at Lindenwold are every bit as intelligent and dynamic as the students at Moorestown or Cherry Hill. On this note, we can't rest until we inspire our students devour their studies with a kind of religious fervor, until they all become addicted to becoming their own best teachers, and even after this happens, we can't rest.

I keep thinking of Abraham Lincoln, and how he intrinsically revered education.

Recently, I've noticed more students focused on their studies. More seem to come to class prepared. There is more focus and I see more hands going up. Does the election of President Obama have anything to do with it? Is this the stuff that fuels the SAT scores that are catnip for admissions officers? What can I do as a teacher to help equalize those SAT scores? Am I being quixotic or am I for real?

Sadness

Nearly everyone who knows me well is aware that I'm a compulsive newspaper reader. Today a column in the Sunday Inquirer caught my eye. Tucked away on page A6 was a column about a Brazilian supermodel who died from horrible infection, and featured right alongside was this photo of a beautiful, smiling girl.

I'm not going to go into gory details about her a short life filled with potential, a life cut down by an insidious bacterial infection that required doctors to amputate both hands and feet in an extreme, futile attempt to save her life. You can read it for yourself. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/38287079.html

The treatment failed. In December Mariana Bridi was riding a fast-track modeling career that promised to catapult her family out of poverty; a month later, her body is turning into clay and dust, a twenty-year old body shut down by a flukey virus

Of all the weighty articles that I read today, this one most captured my attention. Maybe it's because she is just a wisp older than many of my students, so many of whom think they're immortal, intoxicated by youth. Maybe it's because her life seems so tragic. For a supermodel to have her hands and feet amputated... Now I'm thinking of all the sad stories I've read about, all of those poor children from the wars in the Congo brutally robbed of their limbs by machete-wielding animals.

I told my students that I want their journals to focus on positive stuff and personal development. I realize now that this can't happen all the time. I'm very depressed as I complete this entry.

If I can carry away a positive from all of this, maybe it should be to simply be more thankful for my health, the health of my family and friends, and for the health of my students whom I shall see tomorrow. I'm reminded of our mortality, and that we're here for such a short time.

R.I.P Marianna Bridi