Principal Review Of Field Trip Proposal: Fill & Download for Free

Not a teacher, but a principal.When I was 11 years old, living in Roswell, NM, our class took a field trip to a Coca-Cola bottling plant. When we got back, we were assigned to write a report on our trip. I wrote mine from the point of view of a bottle, starting with a dawning awareness as the hot glass cooled in the mold, proceeding through the bottling process, being loaded in crates and then a truck, sitting in a soda machine at a gas station, hearing the other bottles clank down the chute, etc., ending with the bottle returning to the plant to be sterilized and refilled, like they did in those days. We read our reports aloud to the class, students voted by secret ballot on which they liked the best, and the three reports with the most votes were then to be sent to the principal to pick a winner, who got a case of Coke. My story got almost all the votes, so many that only one other report got any, and the teacher had to pick a third.But after reviewing the three reports sent to her, the principal called me to her office and asked me if I had any help writing the story. I said, no, I had written it all by myself. She replied that she had been teaching for many years, and read hundreds of student reports, and that my story was not fifth grade work, and it wouldn't be fair to the other students for me to get the prize. I was crushed, but I was so innocent and naive that I did not even realize that she was accusing me of cheating. I thought she was saying that I had such a natural advantage over the other students that, since I could write at an adult level, it would not be fair to let me compete in academic contests.So I cried, but acquiesced.It wasn't until four years later, in ninth grade, that it dawned on me that when the principal had said it "wasn't fifth grade work", that she meant that she still thought an adult had written it for me. It stirred up weird mixed emotions. On the one hand, I was relieved to realize that gifted students weren't being told they should handicap themselves to even the playing field. On the other hand, I was angry that I hadn't been told more directly that they hadn't believed I had written it by myself. If I had been aware that they thought I'd cheated, I could have proposed an extemporaneous writing challenge, to write a similar narrative about a topic of her choice right there in her office while she watched.

Hugh Ellsworth Rodham, born 1911, April 2, Scranton, Pennsylvania, graduate of Pennsylvania State University, small textile supply owner; died, April 7, 1993, in Little Rock, Arkansas The second of three sons, Hugh Rodham was the first in his family to attend and graduate from college, able to attend Penn State University on a football scholarship.Upon graduation, he found work as a travelling salesman of drapery fabrics through the upper-Midwest. He met Dorothy Howell, who was working as a company clerk typist and after a lengthy courtship they married and moved into a one-bedroom Chicago apartment. With the outbreak of World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy, stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Station, an hour outside of Chicago, where he worked as a chief petty officer. He oversaw sailor training. After the war, he began his own small, independent drape and fabric printing business in downtown Chicago.He assumed responsibility for his younger brother, Russell, a former physician who suffered from mental depression. Gruff, often highly critical of his children as a way to encourage their improvement in school grades and behavior, he taught Hillary the habits of hard work and study and that one had to earn success. Extremely thrifty, he also taught his children to never waste even the smallest amount of anything from food to toothpaste.Mother:Dorothy Howell Rodham at the time of her 1942 marriage. (WJCPL)Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham, born June 4, 1919, Chicago, Illinois; married to Hugh Rodham, 1942; died November 1, 2011.Beyond what might be considered a traditional closeness with her mother, Hillary Clinton has described Dorothy Rodham as a crucial figure in life, not just a mentor and role model but one who had a story that sparked part of her lifelong mission on behalf of children's rights and protection.Were it not for the care, direction and attention from a neighborhood woman who Dorothy worked for as a "mother's helper," it is unlikely the young girl would have developed a sense of her own potential. Poised to begin college in California, her mother contacted her, asking her to return to Chicago, where she had remarried, promising to pay for her education. When Dorothy returned, however, she discovered that her mother intended to have her work for free as a housekeeper and would not underwrite her higher education as promised.In California, she also witnessed the effect of racial bigotry on her fellow students who were Japanese-American. It left her with a rigorous sense of justice and recognition of how many children experienced disadvantage and discrimination from birth. She taught Hillary and her sons that they were no less or more important than any other human beings.Although denied the chance for a college education, Dorothy would take many college courses during her adulthood. She also read voraciously as a way of teaching herself about the larger world.The impact of her mother's early life proved to be of enormous influence on young Hillary Rodham's perception of parenting and childcare.As a mother, Dorothy inculcated her daughter and sons to never permit others to bully them and to defend themselves. She also passed on her belief that gender was no barrier to any potential endeavor, and that it was right to expect, and fight for equal treatment as a right.Dorothy Rodham with her daughter Hillary. (New York Times)Hillary Rodham as a toddler in Chicago. (WJCPL)Ancestry:Welsh, French, Scottish, Native American, English; Hillary Clinton's paternal grandfather Hugh Rodham was born in 1879 in Northumberland, England and immigrated to Pennsylvania to work at the Scranton Lace Company.Her maternal great-grandparents, the Howells, were immigrants from England and settled in California.Her maternal grandmother, Della Murray migrated from Canada to Illinois and married secondly to Max Rosenberg who was born in Russia in 1901.Birth Order:Hillary Rodham as a young girl. (WJCPL)Eldest of three; two brothers, Hugh E. Rodham, Jr. (born 1950) and Anthony Rodham (born 1954)Physical Appearance:5' 6", blonde hair, blue eyesReligious Affiliation:Methodist. In being raised within the original tenets of Methodism as preached by its founder, John Wesley, Hillary Clinton's faith inculcated her with a sense of duty towards not just those in need in her community but also those in the world at large. She was baptized in the parish of her paternal ancestors, the Court Street Methodist Church in Scranton, Pennsylvania.Hillary Clinton with her influential youth minister Don Jones. (NPR)In 1961, her First United Methodist Church of Park Ridge's youth group was led by a new youth minister, Don Jones, who introduced the students to the "University of Life," that encouraged them into social action as a way of enacting the Methodist ideology. Jones would lead the group outside the comfort zone of their middle-class, white suburban neighborhood into areas of need and where they found ways to volunteer in community service. Discussions on matters of racial equality and social justice permanently altered her consciousness about the larger world and the problems within it.Hillary Rodham's childhood home, Park Ridge, Illinois. (politicalstew.com - Index page)Education:Eugene Field Elementary School, Park Ridge, Illinois, 1953-1957.In grade school, Hillary Rodham was an eager student lucky to have attentive and imaginative teachers, and she wrote an autobiography and co-wrote and produced a play about an imaginary trip to Europe. She also won her first "election" in these years, as a co-captain of the safety patrol.Ralph Waldo Emerson Middle School, Park Ridge, Illinois, 1957-1961Maine Township High School, East and South, Park Ridge, 1961-1965Hillary Rodham on high school student council. (WJCPL)In high school, Hillary Rodham was as immersed as her peers in popular culture, heading up a fan club for the singer Fabian, crushing on one of the Beatles and attending a Rolling Stones concert.She also succeeded academically, becoming a National Honor Society member, joining a debating society, and being elected to student council and as the junior class vice president. She later reflected on how influential Paul Carlson, her ninth-grade history teacher had been on her thinking about individualism and the rights of each person to determine their own fate, in the context of that era's anti-communism that was a large part of the agenda of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.Second from left, Hillary Rodham making her first television appearance on a local Chicago station, with her high school "Cultural Values Committee." (WJCPL)As part of an effort to create greater understanding among divisive sub-groups within her high school, she was asked by the principal to serve on a "Cultural Values Committee." The group's efforts to find common bonds among the disparate student body was her first recognition of what she would come to identity as the crucial "American value" of "pluralism," the idea that however different the details of their acculturation, all Americans were united by a set of values, most important among them being "mutual respect and understanding." Her work on the committee led to her first appearance on television to discuss their work.Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 1965-1969Hillary Rodham delivering her famous speech at Wellesley College graduation. (www.wbeegood.com)As Senior Class president, Hillary Clinton became the first student speaker at graduation, addressing the audience of faculty, graduates, their families, and guests in a speech that made national news. Here is an audio recording of that speech:Yale Law School, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969-1972Hillary Rodham in 1969. (Rex Features)At law school, Hillary Rodham was a member of the board of editors of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action, and graduated with honors.Yale Child Study Center, 1973-1974Upon graduating from law school, Hillary Rodham took a post-graduate year of study on children, exploring issues of early childhood development, child abuse, and medical-related matters. She also worked as a research assistant to the center's director, Dr. Al Solnit and one of her professors Joe Goldstein for their book, co-authored with Anna Freud, entitled Beyond the Best Interests of the Child.Occupation before Marriage:At the age of three years old, Hillary moved with her parents from their downtown Chicago apartment to a home in the booming, postwar suburb of Park Ridge. She was an active child, joining the Brownies and Girl Scouts, a girl's baseball team, and was often out biking, swimming and skating.Hillary Rodham with other children who raised funds for a local United Way campaign, presenting their earnings. (WJCPL)Even as a young girl, much of the diligence she would show later in her professional life were in evidence. In 1959, she organized backyard carnivals, sport competitions and gaming contests to raise money to raise funds, by nickels and dimes, on behalf of a local United Way campaign. It led to her first bit of publicity, appearing in a local newspaper photograph with other children handing over a paper bag of the money they raised. Hillary Rodham also worked as a babysitter both after school and during her vacation breaks, sometimes watching the children of migrant Mexicans brought to the Chicago area for itinerant work.Hillary Rodham as a "Goldwater Girl" in high school.(WJCPL)Ambitious at one point to become an astronaut, she wrote to NASA and received a response that stunned her when she was informed that women were not accepted for the astronaut program.Influenced by her father's strong loyalty to the Republican Party, Hillary Rodham was active in a young Republican group. She actively campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964. Also influenced by her mother, who was a Democratic, she was inspired to work in some form of public service after hearing a speech in Chicago by Reverend Martin Luther King.In the summer of 1968, she was accepted into the Wellesley Internship Program in Washington, for nine weeks, assigned to work as an intern for the House Republican Conference. In that capacity, she was directly led by the future US President Gerald Ford, then serving as House Minority Leader, as well as congressmen Melvin Laird of Michigan and Charles Goodell of New York.Hillary Rodham as a congressional intern with future president Gerald Ford. (WJCPL)She was then invited by Goodell to continue working as an intern on behalf of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller's last-minute presidential bid at the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami, Florida. She attended the convention and watched as Richard Nixon was nominated for the presidency by his party.In her senior year, she researched and wrote a thesis on Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky. Although she agreed with his premise that the disadvantaged of society had to be empowered to help themselves, she did not agree that social change came about best from working outside the establishment but rather from within. Although he offered her a chance to work with him after she graduated, Hillary Rodham decided instead to attend law school and work from within the system.She also worked at various jobs during her summers as a college student. In 1969, for example, she spent the summer washing dishes at a Denali National Park restaurant and sliming and boxing salmons in a canning factory in Valdez, Alaska fish factory.In 1970, she secured a grant and first went to work for what would become the Children's Defense Fund. Part of her research work that summer involved the concurrent Senate hearings held by Senator Walter Mondale's (Minnesota Democrat) subcommittee on migrant workers, researching migrant problems in housing, sanitation, health and education. Upon her return to Yale Law School, Miss Rodham determined to commit her focus to studying the law and how it affected children.Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton at the time they were dating. (WJCPL)On the final day of her law classes in the spring of 1971, she met fellow law student Bill Clinton from Arkansas and had their first date by going to the Yale Art Gallery to see a Mark Rothko exhibit. In the summer of 1971, Hillary Rodham worked as a clerk at the small law form Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein in Oakland, California. Bill Clinton, already declaring his love for her, followed Hillary Rodham and they lived in Berkeley, near the University of California campus.Upon graduation from law school, she served as staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the summer of 1972, however, she joined Bill Clinton, living in a series of western states working for the Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's campaign.In 1973 and 1974, while simultaneously working at the New Haven Legal Services during her post-graduate year at the Yale Child Study Center, she became exposed to severe cases of child neglect and abuse. The convergence of this work led her to help draft the legal process that the medical staff of the Yale-New Haven Hospital would use in dealing with cases where child abuse was suspected.Hillary Rodham as a member of the House Judiciary Committee's Watergate staff. (CNN)Hillary Rodham's first published scholarly article, "Children Under the Law" was published in the Harvard Educational Review in 1974. The article explored the sensitive issues involving to what degree judicial and legal powers should intervene in cases of child abuse and neglect.In the spring of 1974, she returned to Washington as a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives during the Watergate Scandal. With Nixon's resignation in August of that year, the need for the continued work ceased.Marriage:Bill and Hillary Clinton on their wedding day. (WJCPL)27 years old, married 1975, October 11, Fayetteville, Arkansas to William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born August 19, 1946, Hope, Arkansas), professor of law.Although her education, legal and professional experience led to her being given a number of choices at well-paying and established New York and Washington law firms, she decided to instead "follow my heart" and go to the small-town of Fayetteville, Arkansas where her boyfriend Bill Clinton was working as a law professor at the University of Arkansas Law School. Hillary Rodham also joined the law school faculty there as assistant professor of law.While they were dating, Bill Clinton secretly purchased a small house in Fayetteville that she had noticed and remarked that she had liked. When he proposed marriage to her and she accepted, he revealed that they owned the house. Their modest wedding ceremony and reception were held in their new home.The Clinton home in Fayetteville, now a museum. (Wikipedia)They married and lived here, briefly. Following Bill Clinton's election in 1976 as state attorney general, the couple relocated to the state capital of Little Rock, Arkansas.In 1976, the newly married Hillary Clinton attended that year's Democratic National Convention in New York, which nominated Jimmy Carter as the party's presidential candidate. Carter asked Bill Clinton to head his campaign in Arkansas and asked Hillary Clinton to work as field coordinator in Indiana. After the couple took a two week vacation in Europe, she relocated to Indianapolis to work for Carter's campaign.

Beat the plant operator in at 6 am. Review & organize calendar for today, and a week out. Read-respond to emails, phone messages. Check inbox, starting from the bottom up (that’s where the important stuff ends up). Work on the most critical project to move it along to next level by communicating with co-workers or external supports, creating a needed document, email, list, calendar events or timelines. Touch base w/plant operator on facility issues, because it’s 6:00. (This piece was written with my smallest—800-student—school in mind. I ran other schools up to 2400, so double or triple all this for bigger schools.) Check teacher eval folder for observations or conferences. Note teachers you need to speak with as they come in, re individual student issues, field trips, tech issues, responses to their note or question, testing, schedule issues, next-year change proposals, or their input on certain decisions. Complete one teacher eval to be submitted, and another eval on non-certified staff. Send notes to all deans, assistant principals, & counselors with a thanks on something they did well recently, and on priority issues for today and this week. Plan agendas for any upcoming meeting and decide what docs might be needed. Make delegation list for remaining issues. Go to early meeting w/parent over discipline issue, then to meeting with team leaders. Greet teachers coming in; now it’s 7:30. Short stand-up meetings w/teachers who have a question or concern. Touch base w/head clerical personnel for two-way heads up about spillover or upcoming issues. Add their items to your notes or calendar. Step outside onto the plaza, where kids are gathering for opening. Walk through the clusters of kids, speaking, greeting, asking input questions, quelling a disagreement, always calling kids by their names. Detect any anxiety, bullying, pot or liquor smells, etc. Return to front steps or main foyer for intake, because the 8:00 bell just rang. With your administrative team, continue to visually do a red flag scan every student for mood stability, inappropriate dress, or any indication of possible contraband or leftover behavior or social issues from the previous day. Pull aside students who seem distraught or angry so they can process with an adult before their first class. Call social worker, counselor or agency resources as needed for these. Walk the halls after intake is complete, touching base with students and making sure teachers are interacting actively at their classroom doors. Hand each teacher the flyer for the assembly, showing sections for seating and arrival times for each class. Note any requests or concerns by teachers along the way. When halls are clear, return to office and meet w/3 parents re discipline issues. Call in 2 students who witnessed a fight or other incident. Meet w/ lead clerical re priorities for the day and upcoming week. Do formal observations on two teachers, enter those into system. Do walk-through on four other teachers, writing notes to them with positive feedback, and noting any concerns for later. Stop by the senior English teacher’s class to pick up her assembly plan for the next day. Then begin your morning meetings, as it’s now 10:00: first is the PTO officers, then incoming student teachers for the next semester, then 2 discipline and one IEP (special needs), next a phone conference w/3 university professors proposing a joint project. All of these are stopped by your excusing yourself for 4 minutes during class change, because it’s the most dangerous time of day; having heavy adult presence during the change prevents fights and bullying; it’s all hand on deck, including you. You wrap up the meetings by 1:00, time for 3rd lunch, which you supervise personally, because one of your 2 APs is with a child who had a seizure, calling the life squad and the parent. The other one is sorting out a near-fight from 2nd lunch, in which each kid is threaten to call his cousins down to finish it off on the schoolyard after the final bell. Your security aide had intercepted an intruder who posed as a parent but was actually seeking his young girlfriend, who had been victimized by him in the past. The SRO is called in to determine whether to charge him for trespassing, because he’s done this twice before. Lunch is finally over. Security aides are advising you of 2 students who need conferencing b/c the APs are tied up w/other lunch conflicts. Two parents are waiting in the main office to see you; you meet with each and take notes to pass on to one teacher and the SSW. You call back 4 other parents, sending the remaining 6 calls to the APs. Other calls are piling up, from school partners, a former teacher who wants a recommendation to grad school, and a local college who wants to bring 2 student teachers in. You heat up your Lean Cuisine in the staff room, giving some smiles encouragement to security and a secretary there. Then you eat lunch in the team leader meeting. When they leave, you walk the 2nd floor because there seems to be a lot of kids in the hall, so where’s security? You know this b/c you glance at the monitor throughout the day just to help w/safety. Today is not a fire drill, so that saves a good 20 minutes. There’s 4 girls on the 2nd floor with no apparent mission. What’s going on on? You walk all 2 back to class and discover during your conversation with the other 2 that there is a fight brewing for after school. You shut down the fight by sending 1 student home with parent permission, holding the other one after school until Mom picks her up, and calling the other high school where the other parties are so they can take similar action. You trek up to the AP offices to check in on anything they need from you, and to reinforce their deterrent message to students who disrupted a class. You walk the halls one more time for visibility, check a couple of bathrooms along the way, and head down to the main lobby to assist with outflow to the busses. You join the last of the groups as they go out, staying visible on the schoolyard, and assisting, along with other staff, any child who has missed their bus, can’t find their bus pass, or needs encouragement to walk away from a potential argument that’s brewing. The last bus leaves, and you head back in, get a bottle of water from your office stash, and head for the freshman team meeting, answering questions and making notes about what could be done in next year’s freshman retreat to make the experience more successful. You head over to the gym to speak to a coach that’s not in your building about a parent complaint from the previous day. You stop by volley practice to give a shoutout to them for winning the previous week against a big rival. Heading back to the office, you check in w/your lead clerical, who hands you a stack of 9 people to call back, including your boss, the Asst. Superintendent. Two seniors stop in to let you know they got acceptance letters to their top choices and you are as ecstatic as they are! You call the AS back, then send a memo to him so that his issue, which you’ve already handled….is all in writing. You stop in to two other teacher meetings, then do 2 parent meetings (one scheduled and one walk-in), then realize you needed to hit the ladies’ room 2 hours ago. You realize on the way there that it’s getting quieter, kids who stayed for tutoring or detentions are heading out, so you go back to the main office to thank clerical for their work on such a busy day. A few teachers stop by on their way out, but many are still in their classrooms, doing lesson planning or sharing info with their team-mates. Back in the office, you look at the stack in your inbox, lots of new stuff in there: letters, forms, documents to review for upcoming meetings or decisions. You get more water, feeling like you can never catch up. But before you get to the inbox, you see another pile to process, the one with notes and stuff collected as you walked around. You sit down to check on any critical -looking emails, then pull all the new dates you got on your rounds and put them on the calendar, because the lead clerical just left, because it’s now 5 pm. You get on the big gridded whiteboard to sketch out schedule ideas for next year, in preparation for a staff input meeting tomorrow. You’ll have to share with them the preliminary budget that the central office has given you, which holds 3 less teaching positions. You look at the enrollment projections, and put a few ideas together to help structure the input meeting so that it doesn’t turn into a funeral. You put together an agenda that includes Putting on some upbeat music while teachers are coming in, and spending a few minutes doing some fun “shoutouts” to teachers for various things that have gone right so far this year. You want them to leave that meeting determined to help figure out a schedule that could work with attrition, rather than sending them home with the fear that it might be them or their teammate that would be cut. Teacher morale is critical, so since everybody’s now gone and it’s quiet enough to focus, you wrestle with all this for an hour and a half, until you have some workable options and feel like the meeting could work. You look up, and it’s 7:30; you’re late for the game. You gather up your pink call-back messages, pick 3 folders out of a file, and several items from the inbox, stuff them into your briefcase, and head out to the game. You check in with a security aide to find out how the JV team did. The varsity girls volleyball team sees you and players wave as you enter the gym. You stop by the section behind their bench to congratulate and high-five the JV players, who are staying to watch the varsity game. Then you go to the adjacent section and sit with a group of active parents to watch together with them, exchanging news and ideas for a new fundraiser as you watch. At half-time, you head out to go to the boys’ football game across town, stopping at the concession stand for dinner in the form of a hot dog. At 9:30, you get home, exhausted, switch on the 10:00 news with a cup of decaf and hope none of your students or former students have been arrested or killed. You pull out the first stack of papers you brought home to read, check your own mail and return personal email & messages so the family knows you’re still alive, and take a nice hot shower before falling into bed. ….So, that’s what we principals “do all day,” always working our brains to try to catch up with a job where you don’t have a prayer of ever catching up or getting to the most important work you really went there to do. Much of your work is invisible to others, and it’s a grueling sacrifice to just make sure that kids and staff are even safe every day. Do we ever get the big work done? (Like designing a better master schedule, or rethinking discipline altogether? Yes, some of it, but not enough. Could principals use better support so that the big stuff would have a better chance of getting done? For certain. Would I have traded my life as a principal in several city high schools for anything else? No way.