$8,565 and Growing
The fund continues to grow . . . we are now at $8,565 and there are more donations in the pipeline.
Thanks to everyone who has made a donation.
Can Teaching Be Taught?
My mother believed that people either have being a teacher in them or not. You still need to learn how to become a great teacher and can benefit from training, especially in the classroom under the tutelage of an experienced teacher, but if you don't have being a teacher in you, training to become one is a huge challenge. She did experience would-be teachers overcome this challenge, however, so it is possibe.
With this in mind, I wonder what this Leader in The Economist would prompt my mother to say with its premise that quality teachers matter most to a good education and, fortunately, teaching can be taught.
Here is the leader from The Economist's take.
The article this Leader sets up delves a bit further into the natural-born versus well-trained teacher idea:
"Elizabeth Green, the author of “Building A Better Teacher”, calls this the “myth of the natural-born teacher”. Such a belief makes finding a good teacher like panning for gold: get rid of all those that don’t cut it; keep the shiny ones. This is in part why, for the past two decades, increasing the “accountability” of teachers has been a priority for educational reformers."
Consistent with Mrs Neu's view, though, more focus on classroom training is key:
"In America and Britain training has been heavy on theory and light on classroom practice. Rod Lucero of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), a body representing more than half of the country’s teacher-training providers, says that most courses have a classroom placement. But he concedes that it falls short of “clinical practice”. After finishing an undergraduate degree in education “I didn’t feel I was anywhere near ready,” says Jazmine Wheeler, now a first-year student at the Sposato Graduate School of Education, a college which grew out of the Match charter schools in Boston."
On one thing my mother would surely agree, that is, the power of good teaching is immense:
"Thomas Kane of Harvard University estimates that if African-American children were all taught by the top 25% of teachers, the gap between blacks and whites would close within eight years. He adds that if the average American teacher were as good as those at the top quartile the gap in test scores between America and Asian countries would be closed within four years."
Congratulations Class of 2016!
Congratulations are in order to the Class of 2016 at Davis Senior High School.
How many of you are Fairfield Elementary School alumni?
Happy Last Day of School, Fairfield Kids
The school calendar says today was the last day of school in Davis. Hope the Fairfield Elementary kids have a great summer. . . and congratulations to those moving up.
Ten years ago, it was a diploma and a hug.
Thinking About Criteria
With the end of the school year approaching, we are starting to think about the criteria for the Barbara Neu Memorial Scholarship to be awarded in the next school year.
This document from the Sacramento Region Community Foundation shows the criteria for other scholarship funds.
We welcome your input as we think about criteria and form a committee to help with selection of the scholarship recipient(s).
Message Devices
I was just clearing off old voice mails from my Mom's account, so, of course this column seemed appropriate to post:
This column shows how motherly concerns are often unfounded; and seen from a lens detached from parenthood, children can cope quite well when left to do it.
$6,545 and Counting . . .
Now the fund is at $6,545 with another $1,500 in the pipeline. Thanks for your support!
Scenes From Memorial Day
As noted, the fund got promoted at our town's Memorial Day races, so I thought I would share some of the scene.
First, we got listed on the T-shirt:
Here is the start of the mile fun run:
My son and I did the 10k and then he manned a tag sale in front of our house (which is very near the race starting point) to raise money for his Eagle Scout project:
Evan Neu in uniform, manning the tag sale
Hope you all had a great Memorial Day, too.
Here are some of the pee wee racers
Memorial Day Races
Every year, my company sponsors the Memorial Day Races that the South Salem Presbyterian Church puts on in my town in New York.
This year I asked them if we could sponsor in the name of the Barbara Neu Memorial Sholarship.
Like and Share Posts on Facebook
It helps to spread the word when you like and share posts on Facebook.
This post has reached the most people
Sense of Wonder
Keep your sense of wonder alive. That's a lesson of early childhood development that all of us should remember. As I tell my children: don't lose touch with kid world.
My brother read this "Surviving Parenthood" column at my mother's memorial:
This column stresses the importance of sharing a wonder moment with a child. It makes the wonder real and allows the child in all of us to see it.
Keep the Donations Coming
The Barbara Neu Memorial Scholarship Fund has now officially gone over the $6,000 mark. Thank you for your support . . . and keep the donations coming.
To donate to the fund directly, go to this page (click on the image or the donate button below) and select the YCF-Barbara Neu Memorial Scholarship fund from the drop down list.
Surviving Parenthood
One of the great joys (and horrors) we have as children of Mrs Neu is that our lives were often part of her curriculum.
We are also fortunate that many of our early childhood experiences that we’d otherwise have long forgotten were captured, only somewhat fictionalized, in a column my mother wrote for the Daily Democrat, “Surviving Parenthood,” under the pen name Lucy Robertson, when we were kids.
Here is one of those columns:
Mrs Neu wrote these columns weekly in the Daily Democrat from 1973-1974 under the pen name Lucy Robertson. This one shows the importance of teachers in a young child's life and why you should say thank you when your child experiences a good one.
In a note my mother wrote in gifting me a collection of her columns, she said their purpose was "to entertain and to educate."
"I used information that I had researched on Early Childhood and made my point in a personal way."
My mother liked the fact that no one knew she wrote these columns. Margaret Neu, according to my mother, once sent her a note with a cut out of the column "not knowing that I wrote it."
"Surviving Parenthood" also implies that raising children should not take everything away from your sense of self nor your other important relationships, most especially your relationship with the other parent.
If my mother had not been a teacher, she might have been an expert advisor and author on early childhood development or she might have been a columnist.
Spread the Word
Help spread the word about the Barbara Neu Memorial Scholarship. Share this site and its sister Facebook page, follow and share @MrsNeuFund with your followers on Instagram and Twitter (see also share links below).
If you want to go old school, we will gladly ship you some cards to hand out:
Seriously, contact us, if you would like some cards.
The Sunshine Committee
One of the things that inspired us to consider a memorial scholarship in our mother's name was the revelation that she corresponded with former students anonymously as a member of the "Sunshine Committee."
She used her sister's address as the return address and apparently recipients did not know this was Mrs Neu. Sometimes she included a bit of money, but always she offered words of encouragement in these cards and notes from the Sunshine Committee.
We only learned that she did this when Katelin Van Deynze's mother, Tracy, told us about it and shared some examples.
In one card, Mrs Neu explains what the Sunshine Committee is:
“We are not an official group at all. It’s just me and my sister who are saving our Starbucks spending and sending it your way. I hope that doesn’t dissapoint you. Wish we were a huge group sending sunshine to lots of people!”
This card explains the Sunshine Committee
If you've ever gotten a card or note from the Sunshine Committee, please consider sharing this, since we have no idea how many she sent or how many former students were recipients.
Now on Instagram!
Interact with the images on Instagram.
Drawing on the Talent of Mr Neu
Mrs Neu often brought in her husband, Dennis, so her students could draw on his talent as an art teacher.
December 1991 (or 1997?)
Scenes from the Seventies
Here are some scenes from Fairfield School in 1973.
From the Davis Enterprise, February 11, 1973; a third grader reads to teacher Grace Batchelder's first graders above; teacher Jean Risley helps Evan Means, age 6, use a magnifying glass, bottom left; and Mrs Batchelder watches Julie Roberts, 8, experiment with a sweet potato, bottom right.
Pony Rides Mark Fairfield Memories from the 1980s
These photos depicting Fairfield School memories from the 1980s show how much things have changed.
Memories from 1981-1986
There were Pony rides . . .
There were pony rides to be won at the Halloween potluck
And old-fashioned school buses.
Also known as a hay ride
More on Ernie's Reopening Drive
Ernie Pfanner's effort to reopen Fairfield School following its closing in 1978 is described in this article from California Farmer shared by Carolyn Pfanner at the Fairfield 150 celebrations (see below).
Photo of article highlighting Ernie Pfanner's effort to reopen Fairfield, leading "Ernie's Army" of supporters. Ernie is seen as a Fairfield student in the class photo at the bottom (he is in the back row on the right).
The articles depicts the unique rural school element to Fairfield that has been a source of diversity and connection to the agricultural heritage of Davis.
It also highlights the rural "can-do" spirit that has often guided Fairfield's parent participation and efforts to get things done to improve the school for its students. For example, Pfanner was able to cut the cost of a reopening the school by doing things like bringing in his own pump repairman to look at a broken water pump that was budgeted at $2,200 to replace: it turned out it only needed a new $10 valve.
“Pfanner says that if rural people are left alone they can work things out for themselves. There are still rural people in California who can get the job done within the system. ‘We faced a solid wall of opposition to the school when we started, but through dedication the job was accomplished,’ Pfanner says. ”
Having grown up in a small rural town in the Sierras, the rural element and its can-do spirit were also a big part of what my mother loved about Fairfield.